From Pabini Gabriel-Petit (pabini@ixdg.org), IxDG Face-to-Face Co-Coordinator:

IxDG, the AIGA Center for Brand Experience, AIGA-ED, and BayDUX are co-sponsoring an event on December 8:

The Future of Digital Product Design

Dirk Knemeyer will speak about the present and future of digital product design. Following Dirk's presentation, professionals working in various aspects of digital product design will participate in what should be a lively panel discussion on this topic. In addition to Dirk Knemeyer,panelists include Neil Day, Pabini Gabriel-Petit, James Leftwich, and Luke Wroblewski. Frank Ramirez will moderate the discussion.

Every attendee will receive a free copy of the newly published book, The Dictionary of Brand, from the AIGA Center for Brand Experience.

For further details, including time and place, please go to the BayDUX website.

If you'll be in the San Francisco Bay Area on December 8, we hope to see you there.

(Reposted from AIGA Experience Design mailist list)

Please join representatives from AIGA ED, UPA, and MiMA for a special happy hour with Peter Merholz and Marc Rettig. This free event is sponsored by AIGA Experience Design and the Carlson Marketing Group.

November 18, 6-8 PM at 222 Event Centre, 222 1st Ave NE, Minneapolis, MN.

Open to everyone, espeically those who develop, design, research, and validate products and services that require software or digital life: information architects, HCI experts, usability engineers, interaction designers, interactive designers, graphic designers, industrial designers, and others.

[I think experience designers should attend, also, as the event's named after their profession. Why is it so hard to say "experience designer"? -- Bob]

The dynamic and compelling Paul Saffo is presenting The Case of the Blind Venetians as part of the PARC Forum Series on Innovation in Palo Alto on October 28.

It is fashionable, but premature to write off the future of the US info tech sector. The dot.bomb collapse and offshoring are quite real, but hints of the path forward are hidden in the history of Silicon Valley and the tech sector. And the secret is this: innovation advances from failure to failure, not from success to success. The time has come to understand and embrace this hidden source of the US' technological dynamism, lest we end up like Venice in it's last century, trapped by old habits and sinking beneath the sea that once sustained it's economic and innovation miracle.

Frontier Town, in Essex County, New York -- an attempt from the 50s to recreate the Old West in the Old East -- has closed down ("Western Theme Park Turns Into a Ghost Town," New York Times, Oct. 16. Frontier Town was typical of recreational attractions scattered across America, re-creations of imagined Golden Ages in the nation's past: Williamsburg, Plymouth Rock, Tombstone, Frontier Town, Disney's Frontierland, etc. Said Keith Delafrange, the last owner of Frontier Town, who still lives nearby, "I'm 59 years old and to have played cowboys and Indians for a living isn't the worst thing in the world."

Frontier Town relied more on the personal enthusiasm and performances of its cowboys and Indians, dance hall madams and saloon keepers, and the Indians attacking the railway, than it did on SFX. In fact, the horses, wagons, and guns were real, although the guns were loaded with blanks.

Of course, America had no Golden Age -- even in the times of the Native Americans, intertribal warfare, draught and starvation, and disease created tension -- but it's necessary in this land of constant immigrants to have a National Mythos that brings everyone together. In the past, we used the past as a launching pad for our dreams about the future. But the American long view is increasingly misty these days, unclear to most, terrifying to many. And without a future, who needs a past, even one so enthusiastically re-enacted?

Credits: Poster on eBay, Photograph from NY TIMES

Last night's meeting was tremendous. Large turnout (200+), lots of exchange, and much to think about.

Best quote of the night, from Mark Rolston, SF-IDSA and Frog Design, describing how industrial designers plan for the product experience: "We aim for a singularity, a point, where the product, the user, and the designer all come together." I'll publish a fuller report later today.

This was an important undertaking. Kudos to organizers Richard Anderson and Rashmi Sinha, keynote interviewee Don Norman who set the tone, and sponsors BayCHI and the fledgling UXnet.

Once a year is too long to wait for us all to get together. I'm volunteering right now to help with the next one.

This looks to be a can't-miss-it event -- the first of its type to my
knowledge -- bringing together the entire Bay Area UX (user experience)
community in one place. I hope I'll see you there! -- Bob

(Click on the link below for the full information on the event.)

USER EXPERIENCE: WHY DO SO MANY ORGANIZATIONS BELIEVE THEY OWN IT??

Don Norman and a panel of representatives of UX organizations (Rashmi Sinha & Richard Anderson, moderators/organizers). Tuesday, October 12, Stanford's Kresge Auditorium. 6:30-7:45 pm�Socializing, 7:45-9:45 pm�Program.

Years ago, Don Norman coined the term, "user experience," which has since become a prominent label for a multidisciplinary field. But what did Don intend the term to mean? What is "user experience," really? Why do so many professional societies believe they own it? Why do so many organizations in a business believe they own it? Don Norman tackles these and related questions in a conversation with Richard Anderson.

A panel discussion with representatives from multiple UX organizations (UPA, SIGCHI, AIfIA, IxDG, SIGGRAPH, STC, AIGA Experience Design, HFES, IDSA, and UXnet) will follow. The panel, moderated by Rashmi Sinha, will explore the goals and interests of each organization, and how they come together to form the mosaic that is UX.

Special Networking Hour

An opportunity for User Experience professionals to network and learn about participating UX organizations (AIfIA, UPA, BACHFES, IDSA, SF & Silicon Valley SIGGRAPH, BayCHI, IxDG, and STC), complete with food and drinks. Each organization will have an information table and representatives at hand to answer questions.

In the current edition (#0438, Oct 1, 2004) of the WAVE Report, Publisher-Editor John Latta offers a thorough report on and discussion of the Video Electronics Standards Association's Display Interfaces Symposium 2004 held in the Bay Area last week. I've reprinted John's observations in full (click on the "Continue reading" link just below.) I highly recommend visiting the WAVE Report website when this issue is published online, to garner Latta insights on other techno-societal issues.

John, BTW, has been publishing the WAVE Report since the early 1990s, in one form or another. It's one of those cognate newsletters that helps us to bound experience design, but doesn't get into it per se. Think of the WAVE Report as a technological lighthouse topped with the flapping arms of a large societal semaphore.

Continue reading "WAVE REPORT on Display Interfaces Symposium 2004."

Innovation Convergence 10 looks like the place to be this September. Featuring an all-star cast of innovators, including our own new co-author, Tom Mulhern.

One question: why do these innovation conferences always cost upwards of $2,000 (in this case, $3,000 with workshops)? Distilled wisdom dispensed by experts is one thing, but an audience distilled on the basis of wealth -- that's not innovative, it's pure showbiz.

Whither The Touch?

The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) is pleased to share this call
for papers. This call is for the AIGA special session of the College Art Association annual conference in Atlanta 2005.

The AIGA is seeking papers that address the question, "What is the place of the sensual in contemporary design processes and education?" The sense of touch is evident in the results of consumer product design and has been documented by the exhibition catalogs of the first two National Design Triennials, �Design Culture Now� and �Skin."

This session seeks to investigate how the sensual is currently integrated into the areas typically associated with the process of creation in design, and, in what way is the sensual evident among the design disciplines in digital internetworked modes / environments of creation?

Further, is there a role for the sensual in pedagogy where digital, instrumental training occupies ever larger proportions of classroom time? Your responses are sought across the spectrum of design disciplines, and are sought of practitioners, educators, theoreticians and critics.

Continue reading "Call for Papers (AIGA): "The Sensual in Contemporary Design""

Mark Hurst has announced the next GEL (Good Experiences in Life) Conference , scheduled for April 28-29, 2005, in New York City. According to Mark,

"GEL is the only conference of its kind, focusing on experience itself, rather than on taxonomies or frameworks that only indirectly relate to experience. We all know a good experience when we see it; at GEL you'll hear the user's perspective, since (designers or not) we're all on the receiving end of experience most of the time.

"GEL brings together over a dozen eclectic speakers who are experts in a number of fields. Internet-related topics (on e-commerce, research, journalism) will be interwoven with offline topics (photography, performance art, education) to create a day focused on experience in all its forms."

GEL's special. Don't miss it. Sign up now and get a discount.