Hippo Dignity

This weekend, I was honored to be an invited speaker at the IDSA North-east Division’s regional conference, which was held at the Rhode Island School of Design. Woot! It’s always nice to revisit College Hill — I went to Brown, so I get all nostalgic about my theory-head SGML-coding 21-year-old self, who I think would be surprised but not disappointed to learn that the SGML has turned out to be at least as important in my life as the theory.

Highlights of the bits of the conference I was able to attend:

• Hearing Jon Kolko tell an audience of industrial designers and ID students that the really cool new design job to aim for was something called “information architect.” I am so telling all my ID colleagues.
• Allen Chochinov of Core77’s line “if you’re as smart as you bill you are,” which I am, I warn you all now, stealing.
• The conversation I had with three-fourths of the IxDA lunchtime panel members on the ride up, which was at least as enlightening as their pretty terrific panel was.

It was all really interesting, and it would have been nice to stay, but it was, I have to admit, even nicer to have an excuse to visit Harry and his fantastic crew in their New England digs. I was treated to a performance of Mona’s “Peter Rabbit” musical (”Stunning!” - The New York Times) and a trip to the town fair. Isabel even demanded to sit next to me at dinner, which I hope means we are no longer archnemesises.

But that was not the high point. Oh, no. The high point was, after a twelve-year battle over which was the correct version of the song, getting to sing “Little Rabbit Foo-Foo” with Mona Teasley as her dad weakly attempted to insist that it was supposed to be “Bunny.”

“You are wrong, Daddy,” said Mona.

“This just gets better and better,” said Harry.

“And Michele is right. Girls rock, and boys do not.”

She’s a genius, I tell you. A genius.

Our office hosted a discussion on designing for the body tonight , featuring the founders and presidents of two design companies — one that makes sex toys, one that makes body armor. It was an interesting discussion; the similarities of the stories of starting the businesses and the design challenges they faced was actually thought-provoking in itself. And the discussion of how the things we carry, or the things we use on our bodies, become extensions of our selves tied into some other things I’ve been thinking about, and is going to rattle around in my head for a while.

There were samples of both firms’ work out in the studio for us, and later the event attendees, to see. It made for an interesting late afternoon. Luckily, only the body armor was ever tried on.

Bulletproof Boss
Originally uploaded by ianonymous.

(Seriously, I’m told that vest can stop rifle fire.)

Now that it’s safely over, and Jason can’t drive out here to cause trouble, I can report that my talk to the Usability Professionals Association, “Information Architecture Meets Industrial Design: Working Collaboratively Across Disciplines” was very well-received, and more fun to write than I’d expected.  I talked about my experience working on the IQ/MAX turret, a specialized phone for financial traders.

It was a presentation.  It was written in Keynote.  And yet I keep calling it a “paper.”  Old habits are very strong indeed.

I’ll be giving a revised version of the same paper talk at the IA Summit next month, so, should you be really interested in information design, come on down — I’m speaking on Monday morning, late enough that I’ll be fully caffienated, but not so late (I hope) that people will be ready to leave.

At the end of a long research project: we’ve logged something like 20,000 miles in the air so far, and that’s before the two trips out west to present our results.   I want to do a full-on Jan Chipchase and post about the pleasures and terrors of doing user research far from home, but for now I’ll leave you with this vivid warning sign from the Milan subways.  Never attempt to have sex with the train doors, people, and have a good weekend.

Part of the pleasure of working with industrial designers is watching the way they interact with stuff — people who make physical products think about those products very differently than most, in the same way I obsess over details of interfaces. I’ve learned so much about how the world around me is made, in the most basic ways, from working with them, listening to them, asking them questions. So it was a delight for me to have my MacBook get delivered to the office and watch the industrial design team examine it like doctors doing a physical.

I did refuse to let the mechanical engineer open it up, even though I count the day that her boss took apart an iPod nano among the more mind-bending experiences I’ve had at this job. But I wanted to take my new computer home in one piece, and I did. I’ve spent the weekend catching up on errands and sleep, and playing with the cool toys on the new computer. Unexpectedly, I have some UI complaints — the new iPhoto I find harder to use than the older version, and switching states in PhotoBooth is totally unintuitive — but overall it’s a pleasure to use.

Best of all, I think the built-in iSight could change the way people interact with their computers: it’s almost impossible not to have fun with it, to want to play with it, and once you get enough of an installed userbase, the opportunities for networked interactions get a whole lot richer. For now, though, I think it makes the relationship with the computer both more intimate and more performative — you want to watch it watching you. And of course it opens up whole new vistas of procrastination…

Check me out on today’s Gizmodo:

Question (is) Everything: Design that answers unimagined questions

Note please the Half-Life shout-out at the end (hi, Harry!).

If you want to read Eric Von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation, cited in the essay and a major inspiration for my own thinking on the topic, it’s available from his site under a Creative Commons license.

The essay began as some idle thoughts, while drawing several variant sitemaps for the same project, about everyone’s favorite theoretical trope, the problematic (defined by noted Marxist-structuralist wackjob Louis Althusser as “the system of questions commanding the answers given.”) There is no sign of Althusser in the final version, or indeed of sitemaps, in case you were worrying.

I would be remiss if I didn’t blog this perfect example of how design can actually do good, rather than just look good: the Hippo Water Roller. It’s basically a sturdy water barrel with a push handle, but designed so cleverly that 200 pouds of water can be easily pushed by a child or old person.

What a tremendous asset to have in a place where fresh water is an hour-long walk away — and it’s humbling to be reminded that we live in a world where some people have the time and leisure to come up with concepts like the Hippo Water Roller, and some people would consider just having the Hippo Water Roller an unbelievable luxury. In fact, it’s the cost of the thing ($35), and of transporting them in bulk (a lot more), that is currently the problem. They should solicit individual donations as well as corporate ones — donate the cost of a single Hippo, and tell your friends…

ETA: Vicki tells me that individual donors should go to Operation Hunger. Which I shall. Thank you, Vicki!