Rethink Social Network, Ducks, Dolls, and Divine Robots

May 8, 2013

Tonight I have the chance to revisit this amazing talk I listen to at UX week 2012, form Dr. Genevieve Bell. A few brain storming points that resonate with me:

West vs East on technology, is the difference really a thing?
- In western culture the fear of technology (or smart object) will eventually arises and invades human’s superior position in this hierarchy. And I think of the recent debet of privacy concerns in social network and personal online data. How much percent of the public’s fear of the “google crawler logic” or “facebook sharing allegorism” is rooted in the same fear and untrust of technology in western world? In comparison, Dr. Bell do mention in Asia culture like Japan, people seems to have more trust on technology, believe technology was born with good attention. And I do see in Asia people adapt to new technology in a faster fashion. In average, people are more tech savvy. And even have higher tolerance on not-so-friendly technology. Also bad things happening in this perspective like people have higher percent to be fooled by fraud call, and allowing software wars happening on their PC, like the one between Tencent and 360 (in China). Another thing I think of is, the rise of user experience design in the past 10 years, how much it’s triggered and reflected by the low-technology-tolerance western culture?
The electric fairy & today’s product marketing of tech products
- the story of electric fairy and princess phone is fascinating in the way that is so familiar! So here is a brand new technology or offering and in order to drive market adoption, first thing you have to do is make it symbolic. Make it be part of a story that human can relate to socially and emotionally. This really gives me a new perspective of product marketing and how our current work would possibly fit into the history.
The possibility of technology as the extension of humanity
- If the goal is build for a better world. What is the possible best relationship between human and technology, and how we get there? This reminds me another recent TED talk Erik Brynjolfsson: The key to growth? Race with the machines In this talk there is a story about human vs computer chess game. And the best player now is not human, also not computer. But the team form by both human and computer player. Another great post form Reid Hoffman Will Software Eliminate Physical Retail? Not Quite. Reid points out the future of retail is the retail experience that augmented and amplified by technology. But not just a simple replacement.

Lots of open ended question in the post, and I would love to know what’s your thoughts of what the future can be. Thanks for reading. =)

Best talks of UX week 2012 (base on Albert's bias)

December 6, 2012

MUST WATCH

Genevieve Bell | UX research at Intel
My take away: I often think the most important design input material are user filed research and user behavior analytics. But what I learn from Gene is “history” could be such an inspiring design input, that UX people can look at their products in the perspective of continues evolving human history.
http://vimeo.com/52634332

Jensen Harris | The Story of Windows 8
My take away: Jensen the creator of office ribbon, come back to talk about how Windows was designed. I find fascinating about how much detail was put into crafting it, as well as how big an organizational change Microsoft have to make in order to accomplish Windows 8
http://vimeo.com/52173464

Austin Kleon | Steal Like An Artist
My take away: Just a super inspiring story of how a artist grow into his possibility, by the influence of the great ones before.
http://vimeo.com/52028220

STILL AWESOME

Jennifer Pahlka | Citizen Experience: Designing a New Relationship with Government
My take away: Famous lady from Code for America. I think LinkedIn could actually be big part of the city improvement.
http://vimeo.com/52033297

Bill McIntyre | Toy Inventing in the 21st Century: Hard Plastic vs. the Attention Economy
My take away: Love this talk, Bill is not a designer, but a toy inventor! He walks through what’s the challenge of toy industry suffering from the growth of mobile gaming and TV game. And you can clearly sees the kid inside Bill. =)
http://vimeo.com/52029530

Rob Maigret | Cars, Castles, and Spas
My take away: Steve Johnson, this talk is for you, watch it! Design head of Disney Digital, Rob talk about his experience of purchasing Porch, and he observe, analyze every user interaction point. Very funny talk.
http://vimeo.com/52173465

Veronica Erb | How and Why to Start Sketchnoting
My take away: People who love doodling, this talk will give you some nice tips on how to make this skill a useful tool.
http://vimeo.com/53185795

Remember Bill Moggridge

September 9, 2012

Designer Bill Moggride just pass away few days ago. He is the designer of the 1st laptop, co-founder of IDEO, author of Designing Interaction

I do have the honor to sit in Bill’s classroom when I was studying IIT ID. And I will miss Bill so much. The memory is still fresh, sitting in his classroom is always fascinating, even in the year 2007, he still insist to teach by pen and paper and project his drawing in real time on the projector. He IS the living body of empathy and humanity. I remember in one design class we are designing a ID card swiping reader (using our school own ID card). In the brainstorming I step out of the room alone and taking my ID card to experiment how different angle and distance will trigger the reader. Bill just stand beside me and look at me doing it. With full curiosity in his eye and no interference. Still too much to remember about Bill. Best wishes to Bill’s family.