Posts tagged “brisbane”

ChittahChattah Quickies

Mice as Stand-Ins in the Fight Against Disease [New York Times] – Looks like this has been happening in some measure for a while, but some new methods are increasing the usage. The most science-fiction thing you’ll read all week.

In what could be the ultimate in personalized medicine, animals bearing your disease, or part of your anatomy, can serve as your personal guinea pig, so to speak. Some researchers call them avatars, like the virtual characters in movies and online games. “The mice allow you the opportunity to test drugs to find out which ones will be efficacious without exposing the patient to toxicity,” said Colin Collins, a professor at the University of British Columbia.

Australia 2012 [Flickr] – My complete set of pictures from Australia earlier this month.

Chinese families’ worldly goods in Huang Qingjun’s pictures [BBC] – We’ve seen other projects like this, but the focus on China captures a material culture in transition.

Amid China’s tumultuous dash to become rich, one man’s photographs of families posing with their worldly goods will soon seem like records from a distant era. Huang Qingjun has spent nearly a decade travelling to remote parts of China to persuade people who have sometimes never been photographed to carry outside all their household possessions and pose for him. The results offer glimpses of the utilitarian lives of millions of ordinary Chinese who, at first glance, appear not to have been swept up by the same modernisation that has seen hundreds of millions of others leave for the cities. But seen more closely, they also show the enormous social change that has come in a generation. So the photo of an elderly couple of farmers outside their mud house reveals a satellite dish, DVD player and phone.

Four Big Things, a phrase dating from 1950s for most sought-after goods for newly married couples: sewing machine, bicycle, watch, radio. It’s since come to refer to whatever is most fashionable at the time. By 1980s the four big things were: TV, washing machine, rice cooker, fridge. Now, consumer goods flood China’s cities, it tends to be used to describe people’s aspirations for the latest thing.

Must-See Video: How a Woman With No Arms Dresses Herself. What Assistance Can Design Provide? [Core 77] – I love the reaction; that excitement of discovering how current solutions could be improved. Designers are so great at bringing that creativity and know-how to bear to make change for the good. But let’s remember, we don’t need videos to be posted by users to uncover what things aren’t working for them. Are designers waiting for broken products to appear in front of them so they can spontaneously improve them, or are they out there looking at current behaviors and solutions in order to proactively find opportunities. Designers: you don’t need the disabled (or anyone) to post their own videos, go and shoot your own!

I hope that more folks with disabilities make videos like this, not just to share with others what their particular trials are, but to enable us designers to improve upon the objects they use.

FILMography – a Tumblr with an incredible series of images where a printout of a still from a film is held up in the actual location where that scene was shot. It’s a “trick” I’ve seen before but mostly as a one-off; the breadth here is fascinating.

FILM + photography = FILMography.

Out and About: Steve in Brisbane

I got back last week from two weeks in Australia, traveling around as well as speaking at UX Australia in Brisbane and Service Design Melbourne. Here is the third of four posts with some of the highlights (see 1 and 2 previously). All my pictures are making their way to Flickr, as well.


Hmm. Update: Golden Casket is a lottery company, not the store itself. And “casket” more typically refers to something like a treasure chest than a coffin. The language discontinuities wonderfully surprising!


Brilliant idea to highlight a positive so specifically.


Burger King, in some parts of Australia, is Hungry Jack’s.



While the text and icon evoke the fleeing-immigrants signs seen in Southern California and Arizona, this supposedly refers to a traffic island in the middle of the street where pedestrians can wait if they are caught in the road when the light changes. However, this location had no such island.


Dolphin attendance. What can we infer about the dolphins with the dashes in place of checks? Or the dolphins with a line through the week?


Jelly.


Peanut butter.


From the Gallery of Modern Art (or, if you prefer, GOMA), biomorphic scooters.


“I never stopped loving you” reminded me of the iconic “I love you so much” graffiti-cum-icon in Austin. One is in an art museum, and the other is on the side of a building.


The piece is called Distillery: Waveforming. It uses biofeedback, as you clip a pulse oximeter to your earlobe and the iPad display starts to play mellow music and visually echo your heartbeat. It was like a digitally-induced high. I hope we all get one soon.

Come to Steve’s UX Australia workshop on interviewing


I’ll be teaching Immersive field techniques: Interviewing and observing for user research, a full-day workshop at UX Australia in Brisbane, in August 29th.

Interviewing is undeniably one of the most valuable and commonly used user research tools. Yet sometimes we forget that it’s a skill we need to learn, because:

  • It’s based on skills we think we have (talking or even listening)
  • It’s not taught or reflected on
  • People tend to ‘wing it’ rather than develop their skills

Without good interviewing skills, research results may be inaccurate or reveal nothing new, suggesting the wrong design or business responses, or they may miss the crucial nuance that points to innovative breakthrough opportunities.

In this day-long session, we’ll focus on the importance of rapport-building and listening and look at techniques for both. We will review different types of questions, and why you need to have a range of question types. This session will explore other contextual research methods that can be built on top of interviewing in a seamless way. We’ll try some practice exercises for improving your own interviewing skills. Through a homework exercise and a field trip during the workshop, we’ll also practice observation of users in an environment.

This workshop is an evolution of something I’ve been teaching for a number of years (and continue to refine). Over the past couple of years I’ve led forms of this session in Istanbul, Vancouver, Savannah, Toronto, Lisbon, Barcelona, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. Now it’s Australia’s turn.

I believe some of the conference workshops have already sold out, so if you might be going, please sign up soon! I look forward to seeing you there!

Series

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