It’s time to sum up some of the noteworthy writings/happenings of the year. Let’s get to it!

• The highlight of the year was the publication of Interviewing Users, my first book! Check out reviews by Garrett Moon, QRCA Views Magazine, and Digital Anthropologist, as well as Goodreads and Amazon.
• Some book goodies online include: cover, foreword, excerpt, acknowledgements, FAQ, testimonials and images and diagrams.
• We had book fun celebrations, with book launch parties in New York and San Francisco.
• I co-organized and hosted the IxDA Student Design Challenge in Toronto and helped with the judging for the 2014 event.
• While we’ve only done one episode so far, Dave Gray and I (along with special guest Chris Reimer) did an online show called We Might Do A Show called We Might Swear
• It was a big year for speaking. I debuted a new workshop at Fluxible called The Designer is Present. I talked about (and led workshops in) Interviewing Users at Catapult Labs, Twitter, Yammer, Citrix, Mozilla, UX Week, MIMA Summit, UX Book Club DC, UX Book Club Philly, Rome UX Book Club, O’Reilly, IxDA NYC and IxDA Los Angeles/LA UX Meetup (slides, video).
• I spoke about Bad Ideas at the Silicon Valley IxDA, SVA’s Products of Design, SJSU Human Factors/Ergonomics Alumni Symposium and SXSW.
• I spoke about improv at Walmart, mobile research at PayPal, design-led innovation at TiE Silicon Valley and Skill Building for Design Innovators at TorCHI.
• I spoke about analyzing research data at UC Berkeley’s New Product Development class and about interviewing users SVA’s Interaction Design class in Research Methods.
• We gathered and shared a huge number of compelling user research War Stories (and are still looking for more).
• Around the blog, we examined social norms around taking pictures of your food, took umbrage at rescinded bonuses, the commoditization of innovation and inauthentic customer stories, considered the impact of activist avatar changes, and explored motivations for behavior change in customers.
• We found interesting sites like Awkward Chatbot and Does The Dog Die?
• We mused about design and meaning and form, self-referential products, socializing death, sex toy design, innovation as eevolution not revolution and the limitations of data.
• In globalization, we looked at the appeal of a Friends cafe in Beijing and importing lowrider culture.
• We found an amazing healthcare case study about sweeping cultural change that wholly reinvented the way services were conceived of and delivered.
• We looked at the role of pop culture and the Bieb specifically.
• In support of Interviewing Users we did interviews with Tomer Sharon, Denise Lee Yohn, Ethnography Matters, Huffington Post, Maish Nichani, Business 901, UIE Book Corner, UX Matters, 33 Voices, UX Magazine and the eLearning Coach podcast.
• We wrote extensively about user research and interviewing, with pieces about robot interviewers, self-reporting in the YouTube era, Harry Dean Stanton and silence, Marc Maron and listening, empathy, pattern-recognition, how body language changes you inside, an approach to interviewing without questions, eye contact or rapport, the art of the interview,
  a curious way to get participants, how stories fuel listening and the dangerous power of the interviewer.
• While we didn’t travel overseas this year (gasp!) we did get around and shared some of what we saw in Austin for SXSW, Baltimore, Kitchener-Waterloo, LA, Minneapolis, New York , and again, Portland, San Diego and Denver, Tampa, Toronto, and again.

All those years ago: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

Lots of emotions as the year winds down, with another one waiting just around the corner. Here’s some of what went down this past year.

• We welcomed Beth Toland to the team. Yeah!!!!!
• Steve is closing in on the last of the writing for Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights to be published by Rosenfeld Media in 2013.
• Our columns for interactions magazine included Content, the Once and Future King (with an associated quickies) and Never Eat Anything Raw.
• We looked at the naturalness (or not) in talking to strangers in this post and this one.
• We found perspectives on interviewing people, including a funny take on journalistic norms in in Birbigs’ short film, dark patterns in this article about conversation, Deborah Tannen on interrupting, Henry Thomas and the power of silence, rapport building at Safeway, and the hilarious BBC Radio series People Like Us
• We addressed user research best practices in Tips to Improve Your Interviewing Skills (with a ton of great stuff in the comments), Seventeen types of interviewing questions and Interviewing past the platitudes.
• We really got going with a series of posts called Curating Consumption (co-published on Johnny Holland until they shuttered), with this year’s posts here, here, here, here, here, here and (whew) here.
• We hit the road and took pictures this year, going to NYC (and again), Dublin (and more), LA, (SXSW, Lisbon (and more), Phoenix, Atlanta, Barcelona (and more), Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney (and more), and Ottawa.
• Observations like Stupid computers and our tolerance for them were inspiration for a strong editorial, Stick to the Knitting, in the Journal of Usability Studies
• We began collecting fieldwork War Stories and built up over 35 fantastic, real, dismaying, insightful, hilarious and frustrating stories from the experiences of fieldworkers. More stories still to come; meanwhile go to that link and just keep reading as they are great!
• We drew inspiration from Gotye, Richard Saul Wurman, and Kevin Kelly.
• Steve presented Championing Contextual Research in Your Organization (slides) as a UIE Virtual Seminar and at WebVisions Barcelona and WebVisions Chicago. This exploration informed (and was informed by) our own breakfast roundtable on the same topic.
• We did at a heap-load of other workshops and talks including the Phoenix Design Summit, UX Lisbon (including slides and sketchnotes for two talks), and CPSI. Steve spoke about Early-Stage User Research at General Assembly, Skill Building for Design Innovators at Service Design Melbourne (and at Carleton University in Ottawa), Qualitative Data Analysis for the University of Dundee, best practices for user research to the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s “Design Thinking for Business” class (and Academy of Art University in San Francisco) and led an Immersive Field Techniques workshop at UX Australia (Sketchnotes 1, 2, 3 and also here). Steve also presented We’ve done all this research, now what? at Mozilla and The Power of Bad Ideas as the closing keynote for UX Camp Ottawa
• Video are available for We’ve done all this research, now what? (from Mozilla), Skill Building for Design Innovators (from Service Design Melbourne), and Discover and act on insights about people from UX Lisbon.
• Core77 published Steve’s Power of Bad Ideas and we found even more bad ideas here and here. The exploration of Bad Ideas led to the aforementioned closing keynote at UX Camp Ottawa.
• Steve presented Yes My Iguana Loves to Cha-Cha about design, improv, and creativity at IDSA SV, Carleton University, Schwab’s “Brain Circus, and Silicon Valley ACM. Read a great writeup of the talk here.
• Earlier this year Steve helped organize the Interaction 12 Student Design Challenge. Check out the winners. Planning ahead to early 2013, Steve is involved in the challenge again and our participants are here.
• We considered packaging design as experience design, pondered the moral calculus of offsets and noticed financial pings.
• Some cool patterns in media projects included reframing the image-heavy web by removing text and going beyond the frames of existing content.
• Where was the umbrage this year? We held it in check, focusing only on Hertz.
• We reviewed disturbing but enlightening video projects that explore social norms, including handholding breaching experiment and Surveillance Camera Man.
• While the Omni project ended up going dormant, we published two thought-provoking interviews with brilliant women: Molly Wright Steenson: Shifting time and Lucy Kimbell: Expanding the visible and sayable.
• ChittahChattah turned 11, we shared a bit about the life at Portigal every week, and kept it up with lots and lots of ChittahChattah Quickies.

Journey through the past: 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

Another year is speeding towards its conclusion and we wanted to share our highlights for 2011.

• We are joined by inveterate sing-talker, Tamara Christensen! Hooray!
• Steve is writing The Art and Craft of User Research Interviewing: Diving Deep for Insight to be published by Rosenfeld Media in 2012.
• Julie and Steve wrote several columns for interactions magazine: What To Expect When You’re Not Expecting It, Elevator Pitch, and Kilroy Was Here.
• We got our umbrage on about a Braun customer survey, Newegg’s gobbledygook customer communications, HP’s TouchPad advertising, Kimpton’s attempts at personalization, Facebook’s anti-empathetic approach to redesigns, Netflix’s user-blindness, web security questions, breast cancer memes, and irrelevant and badly executed cross branding.
• We kicked off the Omni project, examined how people completed everyday tasks in previous eras of technology, gained mucho insight from Nicolas Nova and Adrian Hon, and completed an extensive secondary research slash cultural audit.
• We drew inspiration from Haruki Murakami and Neil Peart.
• Steve was interviewed about the future of reading and digital books for Digital Book World and about interviewing users for the User Experience podcast.
• We reflected on consumption in general and information specifically, flow states in user research, muffin signifiers, hearing protection and customer service, nerds, recycling, gendered design and marketing, silliness at 76 stations, and MacWorld.
• Steve spoke about Discovering and Acting on New Insights at Lift11 (video and slides), Improv in Brainstorming at APDF, Successful Collaboration (slides) at Frontiers of Interaction, Best Practices For Interviewing Users at SXSW (slides and audio), Culture, User Research and Design at OCAD (slides and audio), We’ve done all this research, now what? at UCB and CHI2011 (slides), Uncovering Innovation From The Outside In at the UIE Web Apps Masters Tour, and User Research Analysis in a UIE Virtual Seminar (buy). He also taught full-day workshops including Spinning Data Into Gold (slides) with Rosenfeld Media, and Immersive Field Research Techniques (podcast) at UI16, and We’ve Done All This Research, Now What? at Unfinished Business (slides) and UX Hong Kong (slides).
• Julie presented Finding the Right People for the Center for Design Research at the University of Kansas (slides);
  Tamara co-presented Big Ideas, Focused Action, Problem Solved at the Oklahoma Creativity Forum (slides)
• We offered a design and experience critique about the One Day For Design experiment.
• Steve shared photographic observations from Geneva, Hong Kong, Toronto, and Florence and Lucca.
• Julie and Steve were out and about in New York (Julie, Steve), Boston, and Portland.
• Our blog (the place for debating/defending the design of really really nichey products, it would seem) turned 10 (yes, 10!)
• We redesigned our business cards around the theme of What’s Your Story and started a blog series to explain the stories behind the new designs (collect all six!)
• Steve began co-chairing the IxDA12 Student Challenge
• We doubled our office space, taking over an adjacent space that opened up in our complex. Kitchen! Couch! We’re living large!
• Not to mention like a bajillion quickies!

Really nostalgic? Check out summaries from 2010, 2009 and 2008.

Yes, it turns out that All This Chittah Chattah is the place to wrestle for the hearts and minds of today’s consumers. With our frequent discussions of the consumer’s perspective as well as innovative technologies that respond to cultural shifts, we’ve developed a reputation as the place to be seen and read by the alpha-influencers who make any product a success.

Three years ago I blogged about a dual-flush toilet (and it’s explanatory memo).

What followed were a number of “comments” from people championing this product or its competitor, sometimes with a less-than-transparent reveal of their identity as someone who works for the company itself.

And in a similar vein, just the other day, I blogged about a device that would let you open a bathroom door with your toe. Immediately a competitor jumped in to defend his product as the “original” (and while you can’t tell from here, he posted from the domain name he’s championing).

A few days later, a devastating riposte from someone who is clearly not a fan.

Now, we don’t know if Elise (who goes by fuzzygirl89) is authentic or not, but I’m definitely suspicious (extraneous specific detail rings false to me). The gloves are definitely off here in the Chittah Chattah Product Death Match. Seriously, is this what it means to be an entrepreneur (or worse, a sales guy)? Sitting at home with your alerts, fingers in the ready position, inches above the keyboard, ready to pounce on any mention of your product in any corner of the web?

2010 has been an amazing year for us. While we can’t talk about many of the incredible experiences we had doing fieldwork and working with clients, below are some of the highlights that we can share:

• New faces! Our team is ably enhanced by Julie Norvaisas and Wyatt Starosta (also see a conversation with Julie here)
• Steve shared observations of Austin/SXSW, SXSW again, Austin again, Munich, Rome, and gleaners at the Munich airport
• We noted symbols and meaning, branding in the details, the need for authenticity in marketing (and in jeans), and the need for something we’re calling anticipatory design,
• We took umbrage over ridiculous user experiences from United Airlines, airplanes and elevators, hotel elevators, conference badge design, a cupcake store, Lenovo, and a shaver out-of-the-box experience
• We mused about packaging and branding, conceptual collisions, neighborhood erosion, Harley branding dissonance, uncomsumption, localized stereotypes, super-immediate gratification, global norms for question asking, how research informs design, and this thing we call user “needs”
• We tracked provocative, charming and curious messaging, designs and user experiences from a cupcake store (by Steve; by Julie), a parking lot, toilets, Vodafone’s retail outline in Munich, building painters, JetBlue, what’s in the garage, foreign groceries, Devo, and the Savannah police
• We prototyped the ideal research study for Netflix (sadly, we never got the gig)
• We drew inspiration from Eminem, Will.i.am, Jack White, photographer Michael Schmidt, James Toback, fiction in the New Yorker, Douglas Coupland, and Neal Stephenson
• Steve assessed the human impact, micro and macro, of technology and design for interactions, extracted innovation principles from an discomfort-inducing ad for menstruation products for Core77, considered Homer Simpson and global culture for Core77, and interviewed Eric Ludlum (of Core77) for Ambidextrous
• Steve was interviewed for a book about innovation in design for emerging markets and in a podcast with Jared Spool about user interviewing best practices
• We interviewed ourselves for the premiere of Core77’s Wiretap feature
• Steve presented When Not To Follow User-Centered Design Techniques at HFES, Ethnography as a Cultural Practice at PARC, Skill Building for Design Innovators at CHIFOO, Culture, You’re Soaking In it at UPA 2010 in Munich, Integrating User Insight (with Aviva Rosenstein) at SXSW, and Deep-Dive Interviewing Secrets at a UIE Virtual Seminar
• Steve also lectured on improv and creativity for Seattle’s CHI group, Reading Ahead for Adobe and SCAD, innovation skills for Amazon, and synthesizing user research at the Austin Center for Design, Formation Design Group, CHI2010, University of Oregon, PDX IxDA, SF IxDA, and Interaction 10
• We attended November’s User Research Friday 10 and reflected on what we learned; we also led a Thursday workshop for User Research Friday and reflected on what we learned. We also attended last February’s User Research Friday 10 and reflected on what we learned
• Whew!

You can also see previous summaries from 2009 and 2008.

• [from steve_portigal] Homeless World Cup – [An interesting reframe of sporting championships and an interesting reframe of 'charity'] The Homeless World Cup is an annual, international football tournament, uniting teams of people who are homeless and excluded to take a once in a lifetime opportunity to represent their country and change their lives forever. It has triggered and supports grass roots football projects in over 70 nations working with over 30,000 homeless and excluded people throughout the year. The impact is consistently significant year on year with 73% of players changing their lives for the better by coming off drugs and alcohol, moving into jobs, education, homes, training, reuniting with families and even going on to become players and coaches for pro or semi-pro football teams.
• [from steve_portigal] In Scholastic Study, Children Like Digital Reading [NYTimes.com] – “I didn’t realize how quickly kids had embraced this technology,” Ms. Alexander said, referring to computers and e-readers or other portable devices that can download books. “Clearly they see them as tools for reading — not just gaming, not just texting. They see them as an opportunity to read.”… “The very same device that is used for socializing and texting and staying in touch with their friends can also be turned for another purpose,” Mr. Chen said. “That’s the hope.” But many parents surveyed also expressed deep concerns about the distractions of video games, cellphones and television in their children’s lives. They also wondered if the modern multi-tasking adolescent had the patience to become engrossed in a long novel. “My daughter can’t stop texting long enough to concentrate on a book,” said one parent surveyed, the mother of a 15-year-old in Texas.
• [from steve_portigal] Get a Geek in Five Easy Lessons [AMD at Home] – [AMD tries for humor on their corporate blog but ends up with an awkward, dated, false, sexist and generally alienating tone. Was this wise?] It’s hard to find a good man, but not impossible if you’re willing to make a little effort. Working in high tech, I’m mostly around guys all day. And I can tell you that – in general – technical guys are pretty cool. If nothing else, they will always be able to fix the TV, your PC, and the sprinkler system in a pinch. Yes, they have way too many gadgets, but come on, how many shoes do you have? How about just the black ones? So, if you’re single and find yourself at a TweetUp chatting with the cute geek in a backpack, here’s how to speak his language, appreciate his hobbies, and potentially snag a date at Fry’s. (Leslie Sobon is corporate vice president, product marketing at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions.)

It’s been a busy year and as we head into the home stretch, looking forward to 2010 (supposedly the year we make contact), we wanted to take a look back at the past 12 months and call out some of the highlights.

• Our blog, All This ChittahChattah, turned 8
• We conducted our own study (Reading Ahead) about the future of the book and digital reading, blogged at length about our process, posted an in-depth narrated presentation of findings and opportunities, tracked the cultural progression of the digital books issue, presented at the UC Berkeley Digital Futures speaker series (and subsequently at Blurb), conducted a design contest with Core77, and selected a handful of exciting winners
• We helped to launch REACH, a global network of small “design research” consultancies that can better serve clients across multiple markets
• We found good (or at least interesting) design exemplars in/at/from/by information-rich street signs, David Lee Roth and Runnin’ With the Devil, sour cream, NPR, the Forestry Service, real-life interfaces (and again), a farmer’s market, and a drink menu
• We were disappointed by user experiences that fell short, from AT&T, Yahoo!, car dashboards, and Land’s End
• We noticed workarounds for hotel rooms, parking lots, shopping carts, input devices, and loud guns
• We found some curious branding, storytelling, and other customer-facing strategies by Starbucks, M&Ms, Papa Murphy’s, parking garages, The Griddle Cafe, a range of business names (and again), the Santa Barbara Zoo, Verizon’s Hub, YouTube, municipal garbage, Old Navy, Columbus Foods after a devastating fire, KISS (and again), and Jewish delis
• We revisited themes, findings, or product launches from previous projects about IT professionals, safety gear, digital cameras, mobile telephones and saw our client MediaMaster shut down their service
• We bemoaned bad approaches to product development with personas (and again), surveys, and a shallow view of user-centeredness
• We continued to explore where, when, why, and how to use customer information in product development, including a provocative article by Don Norman, and a thoughtful piece by Robert Fabricant
• We found surprise and amusement in gendered home territories, grocery stores, pillows that preserve the shape of a baby’s head, retailing dead formats, license plates, and grassroots product development
• In the face of tremendous growth for Twitter, we considered some of the barriers to adoption as well as the opportunities still to be addressed
• Steve was invited backstage to designer-vibrator-purveyor JimmyJane and found their brand not fulfilling its cultural change (and world domination) business opportunity, a perspective later taken up by the New York Times
• We posited how the electric car industry can create a better story around their optimal use cases
• Steve led his workshop “Well, We’ve Done All This Research…Now What?” for sold-out groups at Interaction|09 and EPIC, as well as abbreviated versions at IxDA-SF, BayCHI (slides and audio here), Web 2.0, and Nokia
• Steve spoke to students from Pratt, SVA, Istanbul Technical University, and CCA’s Design MBA Innovation Studio
• Steve spoke about user research, design and innovation to the MEDEA Collaborative Media Initiative, the Istanbul Industrial Design Summit; about culture to the Chicago IxDA, the Amsterdam UX Cocktail Hour, and HFI; and about improv and creativity at the IDSA and the IxDA-NYC (see slides here and video here)
• Steve gave a webinar about Creating Authentic Product Experiences to the University of Oregon’s Contemporary Design class; we’re looking for future opportunities to give this webinar and even put together a trailer
• World travels lead to a comparison of election posters as well an an examination of toilet paper sizes
• Steve took pictures in Vancouver, LA, Santa Barbara, Amsterdam (some highlights here, here, here, here, and here), Belgium (some highlights here), Miami, London (highlights here), Istanbul (highlights here), and New York
• All This ChittahChattah is now on Twitter and portigal.com is available in a mobile version
• Steve’s chapter, Listen, Do You Want To Know A Secret? was published in here) for Photo Reporter Magazine, Let’s Embrace Open-Mindedness for Johnny Holland, The Cultures of Design for DMI Connect, Organizational Empathy, from Top to Bottom for Appliance Magazine, and on video, offered some quick advice to aspiring designers
• Steve was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, in an article about the adoption of e-book readers (thoughts, from the cutting-room floor, here)
• Steve contributed to William Lidwell and Gerry Manacsa’s book Deconstructing Product Design
• Steve published a second year of True Tales columns for interactions: Poets, Priests, and Politicians, Interacting With Advertising, Ships in the Night (Part I): Design Without Research?, Ships in the Night (Part II): Research Without Design?, We Are Living in a Sci-Fi World, and On Authenticity

Previously: Our 2008 review

• Discussion thread: Pictures in my blog don't appear in feedburner subscriber emails (not resolved) – People that receive this blog by email are apparently not seeing the images. However, I am. So what is screwed up, and how to fix it? This is daunting and frustrating.
• Ethnographic Research: A Key to Strategy (in 2009 we appear to need yet another brief yet direct intro to how ethnography supports business) – Recently, Intel ethnographers have veered into strategic questions. Like many high-tech companies, Intel makes long-term bets on how markets will play out. Will television and PC technology converge? Are baby boomers retaining their PC and TV habits as they age, or are they comfortable shifting to new media? Will smartphones take over most of the functions of personal computers? (thanks, Ben Kraal)

• Toilet seat covers, upgraded – Dora Cardenas, Toletta's cofounder and VP of communications, explains: “The product concept came to me and my husband while we were trying to find small travel packs of disposable paper toilet seat covers to use ourselves. Not only was I shocked to learn that travel packs are hard to find, but the products we did find didn’t have any ounce of style or quality tissues. All the products we found looked and felt like something you would find in a camping supply store—not exactly something retail stores and supermarkets would be proud to carry on their shelves.”
• TOLETTA – Because you never know – TOLETTA is the world's first premium brand of paper toilet seat covers. From the funky music to the edgy and stylish packaging, it's easy to see that we're not your ordinary toilet seat covers. Not only do our products look great, the premium tissue helps women feel better about using public washrooms. So for all you señoras, señoritas, and diva fashionistas, you'll never have to settle for those cheap and flimsy paper toilet seat covers again.
• John Maeda's mini-manifesto in Esquire – I don't convulse with joy every time Maeda utters something, but I did enjoy this brief piece (despite his use of "the consumer"):

  "Technology is outpacing our ability to use it. And it's the job of designers to restore balance to this equation. Technological advances have always been driven more by a mind-set of "I can" than "I should," and never more so than today. Technologists love to cram maximum functionality into their products. That's "I can" thinking, which is driven by peer competition and market forces. (It's easier to sell a device with ten features than one.) But this approach ignores the far more important question of how the consumer will actually use the device."

• Nussbaum says "Innovation" is dead but "Transformation" is the new black – The conflation between talking about ideas and discussing their labels is kinda frightening. Glad to see someone cited my latest interactions articles about the power of words to clarify our interactions.
• Dan Pallotta, author of Uncharitable, on KQED Forum – What I heard was very exciting; Pallotta considers the unquestioned framework (and its history) around how charities operate and challenges these principles. He's extremely knowledgeable, thoughtful, and passionate. This was one of the best discussions of innovation – and its barriers – that I've heard in a long time.
• Katherine Bennett explores design research methods and find the journey is at least part of the reward – "I'm two-thirds through with my MSID in design research at Art Center, and I feel the need to take stock of where I am. I've been teaching design research to product design students at Art Center since 1991, but since my journey down the path of getting this additional degree I have been traveling over some interesting ground."
• I only started a blog because steve portigal told me to – "My name is Bria and I am a designer." Nice to see my writing having impact

In 2008 All This ChittahChattah hit our seventh anniversary. Here are some highlights from the past year.

• We found a toilet flusher that comes with a memo, I investigate the bathroom for Core77, and Dan gets trapped in the bathroom.
• I consider the culture of financial traders and then what happens when you don’t take that into account
• In world travels, Die Hard is globalized, appetizingness is culturally constructed, the revolutionary IDEO shopping card is old hat in Japan, I am saluted by a bear, Crocs make an appearance, friction never sleeps, some pictures from Japan here, here, and here, the world tour of donuts, how to say maybe, and Tokyo enjoyment
• I publish a year of my column, True Tales, for interactions: Persona Non Grata, Everybody’s Talkin’ At Me, The Journey Is The Reward, Hold Your Horses, Living In The Overlap, and Some Different Approaches to Making Stuff
• My flickr photos were lost forever and I wrote the obituary
• The nature of art
• Only-in-LA fading kitsch
• Tracking the process of observing cultural artifacts: 1. Bottom Biting Bug and 2. Ayumi Hamasaki
• Dan critiqued an AIGA Gain article about design research
• I’m not the only one who has a mythical mental model for how Netflix processes envelopes
• I’m interviewed by Influx Insights, profiled in a Japanese technology magazine, the Institute of Design student blog, and included in What Insight Does Ethnography Deliver?
• We celebrated Groundhog Day
• Dan reviews talks by Alan Cooper and Stefan Sagmeister
• Body image norms around the world and in Miami
• I notice bananas in London
• A visit to Celebration, Florida
• UPS shoehorns personas into a website user registration and I’m interviewed for a Forrester report on personas.
• A couple of examples of how seemingly simple problems are actually much more complex when it turns that people don’t simply adopt the solutions we’ve decided are best for them: school lunches and banking services
• Tattoos for children as a safety measure
• Advertising imitates art and advertising imitates advertising
• Observational ephemera: the series
• The creative processes of sound designer Ben Burtt and actor Philip Seymour Hoffman
• Untouchable touchscreens, non-interactive kiosks, and advertising forcing functions
• The end of free cookies at Safeway
• The fallacy of measuring innovation
• My keynote from the Design Research Society conference, and my talk Research and Design: Ships in the Night? from User Research Friday
• Dan encounters Cloud Gate
• My workshop on noticing at the Design Research Conference; happiness and noticing; Dan and Steve write about the power of noticing for AIGA Gain
• We contribute to the Stone Cellars wine packaging redesign, new product innovations for BIC, and a new digital recording product for Belkin.
• My chapter was published in Age of Conversation 2
• I’m a guest for Lextant’s Design 40 weekly dialog and featured in a Lunar Design podcast about the speed of innovation and the pace of creativity
• We unearth some old correspondence with Malcolm Gladwell about, well, outliers.