Urban Camouflage, New York, June 2004

I’m off to New York next week for a handful of speaking engagements. If you’re going to be at any of them, please let me know!

• Guest lecture in Chris Fahey’s Interaction Design Fundamentals – School of Visual Arts MFA in Interaction Design – Nov. 16
• We’ve Done All This Research: Now What? – Web 2.0 Expo – Nov. 17

(PPT here)

• Design Research Presentation – Pratt Institute – Nov. 19
• Yes, My Iguana Loves to Cha-Cha: Improv, Creativity and Collaboration – IxDA NYC (SOLD OUT!) – Nov. 19

(slides here)

• Getting Generative: User Research Applied to Business Decisions – School of Visual Arts MFA in Interaction Design – Nov. 20

It looks to be a busy time between now and the end of the year, with a lot of exciting opportunities. Some details still TBD; I’ll update with links when we get ’em. Meanwhile, if you’re going to be at any of these presentations, please let me know!

• An Introduction to User Research – CCA’s Design MBA Program – San Francisco, August 27
• Moving from Data to Insights to Opportunities – EPIC 2009 – Chicago, Sep. 1
• Understanding Cultural Context – IxDA Chicago @ DePaul University – Sep. 1 (RSVP here)
• “Yes, and” for Better Design/Design Research – IDSA Project Infusion – Miami, Sep. 24
• We’ve Done All This Research: Now What? – Nokia Design Speaker Series – Sep. 30
• Reading Ahead: Considering The Book’s Future in the iPod Era – UC Berkeley Center for New Media and School of Information – Sep. 30
• Design Research Workshop – Istanbul Technical University, Department of Industrial Product Design – Nov. 5
• Tasarƒ±ma ƒ?lham ve Veri Saƒülamak ƒ??ßin Etnografik Ara?ütƒ±rma (Ethnographic Research for Inspiring and Informing Design) – International Istanbul Industrial Design Summit – Nov. 6-7
• Guest lecture in Chris Fahey’s Interaction Design Fundamentals – School of Visual Arts MFA in Interaction Design – New York, Nov. 16
• We’ve Done All This Research: Now What? – Web 2.0 Expo – New York, Nov. 17
• Yes, My Iguana Loves to Cha-Cha: Improv, Creativity and Collaboration – IxDA NYC (SOLD OUT!) – New York, Nov. 19
• Design Research Presentation – Pratt Institute – New York, Nov. 19
• Getting Generative: User Research Applied to Business Decisions – School of Visual Arts – New York, Nov. 20

I’ll be headed to NYC and environs next week for a couple of days. Not a lot of downtime, but I am hoping to check out the Apple store. Any other suggestions? It’s been six months or so since I’ve been there.

The NYT describes the Twinkies Brand Bake Set which allows kids to make a home version of the famous Twinkie. Not exactly the same, but a similar item. The home version is under license, and offers a second official channel to get the Twinkie experience. But no mention is made in the article of the various bakeries that sell a store-made fresh gourmet version.

Fluff in NYC is one such place.

They sell Fwinkies and Fwodels. I think this is a chocolate-covered Fwinkie (an evolution of the original).

I was in New York earlier this week. On Friday morning I looked out the window and saw this

I am pretty sure it’s been several years since I had seen snow. After a while it stopped. There was quite an interesting view looking north at Central Park.

It worked out fine for me; despite some anxiety about just doing basic stuff like getting around when weather was happening, it stopped for good once I left the hotel, and turned into a sunny day. Some annoyance with slush, but it worked out. I was amused at myself having grown up with this stuff but being so completely unsure (or to some extent, unprepared) in dealing with it.

I’m here in the Millenium Hilton directly across from the World Trade Center site. I went out about 9:30 pm and there were more than 50 police cars parked alongside the road. Some had flashers on. Police were walking around and standing around. I walked through the area to see what was up; eventually it seemed that they were staging for something else. After about 30 minutes they peeled off in heats of 5 to 20, every few minutes, with lights flashing, and sires whooping. They went in the same direction, but then turned off different side streets.

Why? What was this about? There was one TV crew there; I’ll see if anything is on the news about this.

Update: the waiter in the restaurant says that the police do this every morning, staging before their morning assignments. Maybe this was the evening version? Seems awfully dramatic.

These two signs were on adjacent buildings, mere feet apart and somehow the combination amused me; both seemed to have too many words and create a level of officialdom and importance that seemed out of scale for the idea itself, let alone the physical unimposingness of the locations.

Looks like I’ll be back in NYC later this week. My second trip in 2 (or 3?) weeks – sometimes it’s years between opportunities to visit New York, now my cup runneth over. I’m pretty excited!

The New York Times reports on a grassroots taxi redesign effort: A nonprofit group called the Design Trust for Public Space plans to ‘define the ideal taxi and taxi system of the future.’ At a workshop on May 24, designers, architects, city officials and representatives of taxi owners and drivers sketched out an array of ideas. Matthew W. Daus, the chairman of the Taxi and Limousine Commission, has given cautious support to the effort. “This is a good exercise to get the perspectives of consumers and passengers, and also of architects and designers who are not involved in the day-to-day business of cabs.”

Yet the perspective of consumers and passengers is not included in the process! This seems like a fantastic opportunity to try to understand the needs of the users of the system from another point of view, rather than as users of the system who presumably arrive at these workshops already ready to solve the problems they’ve defined. Let’s take a step back and try to understand what isn’t working for someone else. Ethnographic study of the cab-riding experience, anyone?