Two years ago I blogged about a strange ad for Ball Park Franks

The Ball Park Franks ads running now feature a guy with a pretty serious gut, working on his backyard BBQ, talking in goofily intense tones about meaty, juicy, and….girthy. I guess since no English speaker has ever heard or used the word before, he says “girthy” like 8 times, each time with a silly-but-frighteningly intense growl, drawing it out….Giiiirrthy! he exclaims, with manly satisfaction. Is he talking about the food, or himself? Or what the food does to him? Either way, it’s clearly okay with him. And so it should be with us, no doubt.

I often talk about that ad in my presentations to illustrate the shifting boundaries of normal in our culture, including the different vectors for men and women in terms of health and body image.

Last week I was speaking to sensory scientists at a seminar in Toronto, and afterward, two different women who had been involved in that product came up to me – one had been involved in the user research (I only got the quick story – but it involved a shift from the product as a mom-for-kids to a Grilling Experience), and one had worked on the campaign. The actor, it seems, came up with Girrrthy himself, and the team looked at each other, wondering if they could actually use that. They did, and like it or not, the ad got a lot of attention. Seems like there’s new folks behind the product and the campaign nowadays and they’ve reverted back to their previous family-friendly positioning.

I was quite excited to meet these folks! How often do you get to give an example in a meeting and have someone tell you that they were behind that very example?

I’ll be doing a brown-bag presentation at adaptive path on Tuesday, entitled The Overlap: Cultures, Disciplines, and Design. I hope this will be the theme of an upcoming FreshMeat, if I can ever get around to writing it!

Steve will raise some questions about whether or not some things are better as unambiguously one thing or the other, or if there’s more richness to be mined in the spaces between. Indeed, will it become essential to live, work, and play in that space?

Excited to see a bit about Hong Kong in the travel section of today’s New York Times. Since we started planning our trip, there hasn’t been much coverage or advice of the places we’ll be going in January, as we travel to Bangalore where I’ll be speaking at the Easy6 conference. There are books and lots of web resources, but still always cool to see something in the Sunday paper as you plan a trip.

We’ll be going to
Hong Kong (obviously) for about 4 days
Bangkok very briefly
Bangalore for about 4 days
Mumbai for about 4 days

and then an unbelievable journey home – it’s just travel all the way back, we won’t be chunking it up as with the outbound portion. I can’t imagine how destroyed we will be upon our return!

Easy6: India’s conference on software usability
INDIA’S SIXTH USABILITY CONFERENCE

To be held on January 23, 2006 at The Taj Residency, in Bangalore, India.

For the fourth year running, I’ll be speaking at About, With, and For, organized by the ID in Chicago. This year it’s October 28-29, at Navy Pier. The details of my talk aren’t up, but I’ll be doing a workshop about the relationships between improv and ethnography and innovation. It’s similar to the tutorial I’m teaching at DUX in early November. AWF is always a great event, and the first set of speakers they’ve announced looks pretty good; check it out!

I’ll be the keynote speaker at Easy6, India’s conference on software usability. Held in Bangalore, India, in January, 2006. Here’s the page for Easy5.

My paper Projective Techniques for Projection Technologies has been accepted for the DUX05 Conference. I’ll be sure to link to the final case study when it becomes available (Update: PDF here), but I will say that it’s about the user research that informed the development of the HP Home Cinema Digital Projector. I wrote about the process in a previous issue of FreshMeat.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll also be doing a tutorial at DUX, Whose Line is it Anyway: Innovation, Ethnography and Improv.

Looks like there’s more info about the CanUX speaker list coming up in September (I’m one of said speakers; that’s why I blog this). Should be an exciting event – and a good opportunity for a vacation. Did I mention it’s been a few years?