Bobulate

Today, the School of Visual Arts in New York City is unveiling a project we’ve been working on for some time: a new Master of Fine Arts in Interaction Design, a program to launch in Fall of 2009. The program was jointly concepted by Steven Heller, co-founder (with Lita Talarico) of the renowned MFA Designer as Author program, and me over the last several months. I’ll be charting a new path of sorts in coming months, taking on the position as Chair of the program, while continuing to foster my own information architecture and user research practice in parallel.

The program is in the early stages of development as we shape the curriculum and work with faculty and potential faculty. The caliber of the instructors so far is quite staggering even to me, and I’m thrilled to see what is emerging with each new component. More…

Despite popular opinion, vocabulary can actually be pretty volatile. Take “innovate,” for example. At one point in the not-so-distant past, “innovation” had some pretty positive connotations. We aimed to be innovative; books on innovation crowded our reading lists; we bookmarked and emailed articles mentioning the topic. But somewhere along the way, “innovation” became dirty. The word has lost its way. More…

I’ve always been that person who brings a something to write on to every meeting — a sketchbook specifically. But for years I never used it to sketch; instead, I fill it with fairly rigorous notes of every meeting detail. Almost ten years of sketchbooks are archived neatly nearby (by size, then date), and their notes, historical artifacts of meeting narratives for later reference.

But last year, I had the pleasure of working with Jonathan Harris. After meetings with Harris, I watched my 10-year-old sketchbook-tradition change: what used to be pages of fairly rigid text notes evolved into charts, scatterplot graphs, four-quadrant diagrams, and Venn diagrams. More…

A quick Monday note to mention a recent project I’m quite excited about. WordPress fans may already know that the redesign of the administration panel has been talked about for some time. Well, this weekend saw the release of WordPress 2.5, which included improvements far and wide, including the redesign of the admin.

I’m honored to have been a small part of its redesign. WordPress approached Happy Cog to streamline WordPress’ information architecture and design. We worked with the valliant Matt Mullenweg, who in turn gathered feedback from the team at Auttomatic, while we developed a new structural and design system. More…

It used to be that having drinks after dinner was a sign of something substantive. First dates that led to after-dinner drinks signified something promising; group dinners that moved the conversation to a bar signified a good time; a professional dinner meeting that started and ended with martinis, a success.

But the drink is no longer the only signifier of substance, I’m finding. It’s post-dinner links that are really indicative of substance. More…

On Sunday, SXSW Interactive brought the unexpected: inside, the first onstage marriage proposal, and outside, a downpour. Austin typically gets just over two inches of rain in March, but Sunday, just in time for thousands of web people to descend on the downtown area for lunch, it poured. And while a few came prepared for the weather, most did not.

Of all people, Zappos, the online shoe seller, stepped in to help. Zappos representatives, posted at key doors to the conference center, handed out perfectly packaged Zappos-branded ponchos. More…

To finish something is quite delightful. Watching other people — people you admire — finish something is the next-best thing. That’s why I’m duly delighted to report that Indi Young’s first book, Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy With Human Behavior, is in publication and available for purchase from Rosenfeld Media (although I’m not the first to report as much).

The book’s official description:

“There is no single methodology for creating the perfect product — but you can increase your odds. One of the best ways is to understand users’ reasons for doing things. Mental Models gives you the tools to help you grasp, and design for, those reasons.

Adaptive Path co-founder Indi Young has written a roll-up-your-sleeves book for designers, managers, and anyone else interested in making design strategic, and successful.”

And while part of Rosenfeld Media’s process, as publisher, is behind us for now (save promotion and marketing), the reader experience with the book is just beginning. More…