It was great to meet and/or hear talks by Richard Bullwinkle, David Maher Roberts, Jesse Streb, Anthea Foyer, Utku Can, Harry Mower, David Berkowitz, Alex Hachey and special thanks to Dan Shust for putting it all together.

Fitting everything into 10 or 15 minutes is challenging, but makes for a dense overview of new ideas. If anyone stopped by and has any thoughts to share please email or comment. It was difficult to find room for conversation during the session with so much going on.

…update…
Here are the slides from the talk.

This Hill Holliday video of users trying new connected TV technologies has been making the blog rounds so this might be a little redundant, but it sums up such an important point for people working on iTV products. See their original blog post here.

An Experiment In Cord Cutting

Beyond Scifi: Design For Surfaces and Big Screens touched on a few different ideas in contextualizing futuristic UI design for real world usage with current technology. Many of the new platforms we’re using like touch tables, touch walls, and interactive TVs, seem straight out of sci-fi movies. However, in movies they’re often used as cinematic props or storytelling devices. Things that blow us away at the theater might actually be boring or frustrating for an actual user. So I pulled out some common challenge areas and decision points that can keep futuristic platforms feeling cool and futuristic for users. The key areas I’ll be posting blog articles about are:

1. Communal Computing
2. Modes of Interaction
3. Leniency of Input
4. Modes of Free Gesture

(more…)

Comcast showed off a great execution of multi-platform strategy for the new TV experience at The Cable Show last month with their program guide on the iPad. Is this the train of thought getting Steve Jobs to rethink the hobby status of Apple TV?

John Underkoffler’s TED talk and MS Kinect previews have been making the rounds, but the following links feel more prescient…
Fujitsu’s motion sensing laptop interface makes no sense
Why talk to a computer? Surely talking to a human is traumatic enough?

Though I’d still be interesting in trying Kinect. The motion controls seem to be direct: real motion = onscreen motion (hopefully without much UI to bog you down). I also hear tell of some kinda DDR killer. I’m just not sure it’s the answer to input devices, or even to gaming (especially if you live above someone).

As for g-speak, I haven’t heard of or seen any concrete applications. Swimming through abstract 3D data or video editing via sign language sound like a lot of extra work – physically and conceptually. I’m starting to think the future peaked a couple years ago and tech is getting dramatic, fussy, and simply for the sake of making more tech. I wouldn’t throw away my mouse just yet.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
- Einstein

I’ve spent the past few weeks collecting thoughts on the Valerie Casey keynote at SXSW, but it got too complicated. So instead, here’s a bunch of stuff I found insightful or inspiring in the process (followed by some thoughts on how to move forward)…

In Colonizing Sustainability, David Stairs shares some of his thoughts on Designers Accord and others. There are also notable comments by John Thackara and Eric Benson.

The idea of “System Design” makes me think of the discourse around “Design Thinking” in the fact that design is now so broad it can mean basically anything. On a related tangent, Rick Poynor’s thoughts on Bruce Mau struck me on the difference between designers and design thinkers and the why there’s some unease with the latter.

But a lot of the truly influential ideas I find come from non-designers…
• Built to Trash: Is ‘heirloom design’ the cure for consumption?
• ‘The Road From Ruin’: Are We Naive Idiots For Thinking Business Can Be Anything But Greedy?
• Jacqueline Novogratz: Pioneer of “market-based” philanthropy
• Tim Kasser: Professor and Chair of Psychology (focus: materialism)
• Michael Pollan, food guru
• Jeffrey Hollender on The Responsibility Revolution, CSR 2.0, and Blowing Your Lawyer’s Mind
• Live simple: Radical tactics to reduce the clutter, complexity, and costs of your life.

My big question in all my searching was – is sustainable design financially sustainable? I’ve mostly seen projects that *cost* designers money and the few potentially for-profit endeavors involved seductive green consumer products (or as Casey would say, doing “less bad”). Is this movement being promoted by professional organizations as a hobby?

What I would really hope to learn from the leaders in sustainable design is how to create relationships with other industries. How do we work with non-profits, government, and business innovators who are rethinking old standards of success? How can we start collaborating with professionals in policy, science, social research, journalism, etc. instead of naively fumbling around with these ourselves? This kind of facilitation and networking could really enable opportunities for designers and start to reshape the character of our industry. I’d also like to see more real-world examples with success metrics and not just gallery shows. For successful projects, I’d be interested in hearing the specific challenges and solutions from the designers involved. All the designers I’ve seen in this space are very heavy on self-promotion and very sparse on details and actionable takeaways for fellow designers.

In absence of that kind of larger “system” change on the part of design sustainability advocates, I still think there are positive changes designers can make in the context of their jobs. Maybe this is treating the symptom and not the problem, but it’s more realistic and actionable regarding what many designers are able to do at this point in time. For interaction designers specifically, I found the following areas…

1. Software Design & Information Diffusion – Make sustainable options easy. Use software and easily accessible information to engage people, encourage better alternatives, and connect those who can work together. Think of the larger social and cultural impact of design choices. (see Danah Boyd’s keynote on privacy)
2. Create New Future Visions – On a recent trip to Disneyland I saw a McMansion of the future that had a kitchen with over 5 flat panel displays and a child’s room that turned bedtime reading into a multimedia extravaganza. With the housing bubble burst and the economy collapsed, the vision seemed more retro than futuristic. What are these gadgets adding to our lives and what is the real cost in raw materials, energy consumption and healthy child development?
3. Hardware, Systems, Business Models – It’s hard to apply ideas like “heirloom design” to technology and the current rate of hyper-consumption is great for the economy. However, the overwhelming amount and toxicity of the waste, not to mention endless personal debt, is not sustainable. Consider designing hardware with more easily replaceable components. Plan for repair, not replacement. Make them rugged for the long-term, not delicate. Reduce wherever possible. Use fewer platforms with standardization for development (sorry Don Norman, c.f. unitasker). A current problem area is the cell phone business model with its hardware churn and convoluted financing. I also think of those early gen iPods and iPhones with the mirror finish. The *second* you got your hands on it, it was scratched or scuffed. This led you to buy more plastic tchotchk in the form of “protectors”, made it virtually impossible to resell, and got you wanting a new one almost immediately.

Given the hangover people have been getting at CES the past few years (see Guardian and Newsweek reviews), maybe putting goals 2 & 3 together is a much more viable direction that it seems. We could also use some time getting all the crap we already have to work right instead of endlessly making more.

4. Power Usage – This is an area we probably think about least because it’s the hardest to get around. All digital work runs on power and hardware innovation to improve efficiency may add to the waste/replacement problem of #3. But consider the energy requirements we create by making digital experiences more common and more addictive. We think switching from analog and paper will save raw materials, but how many plugs and power strips are there now vs. 20 years ago and how many server farms and off-site computing centers are supporting all your digital services? There are also health and well-being repercussions from sitting looking at screens all day. If we can’t solve this while still holding our jobs, maybe there are ways to introduce balance into systems we create.

So there’s some starting points and I will post whatever examples I find. If you want any more thoughts on design and sustainability, you’ll just have to take me drinking some time.

Saw a few more panels, but Danah Boyd on “Privacy and Publicity” was definitely a stand out. It’s easy to get in a muddly info-overload state with about 25 different talks/events an hour for about 9 hours. But as you hope for in an opening keynote, this talk was clear and had an important message that needs to be heard.

Boyd spoke of how reckless we are with privacy in this orgy of social media and showed us some of the real casualties. She brought up excellent points on the qualities and value of privacy and the perils of celebrity, especially when it’s forced. She discusses how far-reaching changes in Facebook privacy rules were rolled out in a careless and exploitive manner and goes into some consequences you probably never thought about. There are many whose lives depend on controlling this information – like those who have been abused by a partner or family member or children of illegal immigrants. There are also groups like teachers who can’t complicate their identities among their students without consequences and of course kids and teens who don’t always realize the consequences of what they’re doing. She also discusses the implications of using aggregators to find and feature personal content.

It’s a must-hear for anyone designing features and systems for social media. It comes down to respecting your users over irresponsible experimentation in a ruthless quest for being the next internet meme.

I have to say, going to a conference has a different feel when you’re a presenter and not just a punter. I end up paying more attention to presentation techniques (the transitions, the things that work, the things that can go wrong) as well as how panels frame the content – what they include and leave out. And being on the last day leaves more room for prep and anticipation and less room for partying. Oh wellz.

The first panel I got to was Touch + The Holy Grail of Delight. This seemed the most like Beyond Sci-fi so I was especially curious. Turns out it’s a bit of a different focus, theirs being retail. They talked through their use cases on immersive out-of-home touch screens that augment and personalize product information in stores.

There is some crossover with my talk in getting at the importance of multi-platform strategy. Us UX designers just can’t stand the thought of porting what’s essentially a web site to these emerging platforms. The more we can get that across to clients the better!

Being a touchy-feely day, I also caught A Touchy History of the Future. The talk basically covered some emerging and futuristic technologies like brain interfaces, RFID, jetpacks, etc. with some thoughts on how compelling or viable they were. Um, I think. They were actually couched in terms of how compelling or viable they were in a future zombie apocalypse. Kinda funny, kinda random. But I agree with Stassi on voice (it’s too loud).

The last one I caught was PayTV vs. Internet – The Battle For Your TV. Or rather, I caught the first few minutes until the Austin Convention Center had to be evacuated (!). I think it turned out a false alarm, but in the confusion I didn’t catch the rest – and really wish I did.

I wished the *showdown* between Cuban and Ronen was framed a little better for those unfamiliar with their apparent blogging saga. I didn’t entirely know what they were fighting about being that the issue is large and complicated. But from the little I saw as well as the blogging and scanning some tweets, I’d have to side with Cuban.

From looking his blog, I believe Ronen is naive as to how complex and interconnected the economics and practicalities of content production, marketing/distribution and infrastructure are. He sees the current system as flawed and the inevitable direction more choice and segmentation. But the current system works for the average user. You can try to end broadcast as we know it, but something fairly similar would spring up in it’s place.

We at SXSW are a unique bunch. We crave interactivity and choice and open systems, but for most people all that amounts to is more work (to find media) and much less payoff (in quality). Content bubbles up in You Tube because of one reason: it’s short. People are not going to browse 1/2 or 1 hour shows or 2 hour movies to find what’s good. That would take all day. Someone else will end up doing it. And while they’re at it, they should make the quality better so it doesn’t look like it was shot in someone’s bedroom. And next thing you know, you got an industry of networks and production companies that is looking for exposure through the people who build a wide-reaching technical platform, i.e. cable companies.

I also think the hate of cable companies is curious in that they seem to be the potential partners of the Boxee business model (making the software and hardware of set-top boxes). I totally understand the burning desire to make a single, optimized platform. TV platforms are unique (in a bad way) because unlike any other device, the TV is a single display that switches between a bunch of wildly different computers that are running through it. Integration is a noble goal, but you would need more that a great UI for that experience. You need content and the wires to get it to people.

Granted, I’m not exactly non partisan on this issue. I work on UI for, oddly enough, Ronen’s own maligned provider Cablevision. Because of vastly different technology and histories, the iTV and internet communities have strangely little contact together, but people in iTV certainly know of UI trends and social networking. The development cycles are also huge and hardware roll-out is glacial as opposed to the ADD device replacement of consumer-driven PCs and web. There are definitely ways iTV can change and it indeed is. There’s just a lot of procedural and economic complexity dealing with infrastructure and content licensing. TV can learn from the internet, but I also think the internet is also going to have to deal with this – only in retrospect. You used to have a business model first, then work on the product. Internet sometimes works in the opposite way, but you eventually have to end up in the same place – viable and sustainable.

I’m really trying to understand this issue in that it’s a crucial one for the future of ALL media. It relates to similar challenges in music and (in the wake of Kindle and iPad) books and is one I hope to explore in greater depth. But for now, I really must get some sleep. -.-

I’ll be talkin’ Tue. March 16 at 5pm in Austin, TX with developer Daniel Williams about Beyond Scifi: Design For Surfaces and Big Screens. In true beyond sci-fi fashion, I’ll give you a space food stick if you show up early and ask.

…update…
Here are the slides from our talk (with some very slight revisions for web posting). Podcast is scheduled to post in August.

Any discussion of NUI inevitably leads to controlling computers with your mind. A 60 Minutes segment from a little over a year ago shows the state of the technology via its most important users – those without any other alternative. It’s still slow and cumbersome (even with sensors surgically inserted into your head) so will likely remain a novelty to the average able-bodied user for some time to come. But perhaps growing interest will help those in need.

less intrusive headset from Emotiv for $300