2by Two Conference - Day Two Notes (one day late)

Some people say their dog ate their homework as an excuse for not updating the conference journal. Not I. Last night I had too nice of a time tipping pints with new friends. Tonight, I left my (paper) journal with conference notes at the residence of the Austrian consul on the 67th floor of Lakefront Tower (or something similarly named) and don't have enough information to provide a good report.

No, really. I mean, could anyone make *that* excuse up?

I actually can provide a fair summary for Day Two without my notes but will need them for Day Three so...

On the second day I was part of the User Studies group. This was a particularly enjoyable panel, including some really wonderful minds and a variety of excellent presentations. There were two presentations on very interesting (developing) software products to assist user research. There were four presentations on case studies on user research, two of which introduced good general processes and two others that provided some definite specificity regarding their respective domains. My presentation was about the word "participant" as a replacement for "user," which is well covered ground for those familiar with my writings.

As a deliverable, our session suggested two different strategies for chapter outlines for "the definitive book" on user studies (again, I don't have my notes so this is from memory):

Iteration 1
1. Why conduct user studies?
2. Definitions
3. History of User Studies
4. Ethical Issues
5. Variables in User Studies
6. Conducting research
7. Integrating user studies into the design process
8. Vernacular Design
9. Managing data
10. The future of user studies

Iteration 2
1. Foundations of user studies
2. Exploring context
3. Strategy and planning
4. Conducting research
5. Managing and analyzing data
6. Testing results
7. Integrating results into the design process
8. Future of user studies

I am quite exhausted after three days, not to mention the late nights! I am looking forward to the final day but rather need to get some sleep if I'm going to be worth anything for it...

2by Two Conference - Day One Notes

Not many conferences are four day affairs, but this multi-conference collaboration between the Institute of Design (Chicago) and the International Institute for Information Design is one such event.

The first day proved solid. An invitation-only conference, the participant base numbered around 50 on the first day. The small size not only encourages close interaction, it also ensures that the participant base is very focused on the issues at hand and qualified to be a meaningful part of a high-level discussion on them. This provides a strong platform for making meaningful progress and perhaps producing meaningful deliverables.

For the first two days, we split into four groups of interest: User Studies, Methods, Research and Collaboration. My day was spent with the Collaboration group. With 12 participants, two co-moderators and a sharp assistant, the group engaged in lively conversation about collaboration-related topics. A fair amount of focus was spent on the educational/academic domain, particularly in reconciling the capabilities of Internet learning with the advantages of a traditional higher education. We also began to delve into a taxonomy for collaboration and the activities related to collaboration, most directly manifesting in our individually defining what "collaboration" is, in furtherance of perhaps suggesting an accurate domain.

I had the opportunity to make a presentation but particularly enjoyed the presentations of and comments from the other participants:

Chris Barlow presented about the re-definition of creativity. In particular he underscored the importance of *social factors* and *trust* in a collaborative environment. Given that a successful collaborative effort includes experts from a range of specialties, it is only through social factors and trust that we can respect one another's domains and successful collaboration can take place. This point should not be lost; I have experienced it in practice myself. It reinforces the importance of better understanding humanity in an emotional and cognitive sense in order to make progress in our various domains, including collaboration.

Roger Remington made a presentation on the National Graphic Design Archive, outlining not only what it did and why but the challenges that it faced. What began to resonate with me through Roger's presentation - synthsized with comments made previously - is the lack of clarity in individual roles, relationships and domains in the world, leading to rampant inefficiency and an inability to realize (what should be) easily attainable success. Most specifically, and something that is near to my heart, visionairies are not allowed to be visionairies, because people do not understand and respect their domain; likewise, specialists and not allowed to successfully fulfill tactics in their core areas, because the boundaries are not respected and non-experts participate at an inappropriately high level. We need a meta map of domains, from which we can draw lines in order to understand which lines can (and should) be crossed as part of successful collaboration and when certain people need to keep responsiblity and authority in their particular slice of the process. I'm lucky enough to be somewhere that is making these sort of definitions for our own internal application, but the lack of broader understanding and definitions is a detriment to broad success.

Chris made an excellent point that collaboration is not an intrinsic good, it is only a tool that is sometimes appropriate and sometimes not. Right now, and I've felt this in the AIGA in particular, there is a "movement" afoot that seems to condone collaboration in all domains when it is not always appropriate or the best approach. A good tool, yes, but not always applicable.

Dietmar Winkler pointed out that collaborators often try to keep *control* of a process outside of their domain, or after their functional involvement or specialty is already over, to the detriment of the project. This was an excellent point. I myself have been guilty of that sort of behavior and have seen how that can be a detriment to the collaborative process and eventual deliverable. Education or strong leadership of the collaborative team are two possible methods to successfully combat this.

Arlene Gould talked a bit about EcoDesign - a movement toward the synthesis of business and the common good. That is something I need to learn more about.

Some good conversation started about resistance to change or unwillingness to participate in situations that threaten to create change. Multiple people suggested that change is only resisted if the ideas or the communication is bad. While I do not agree with this categorically, many of my own failings in making change can be tied back to poor communication, in particular. When we feel people resisting us, we should explore ourselves first, then look for the disconnect with others.

Ruth Lozner made a wonderful point about humanizing interaction - that by revealing vulnerability and connecting in a personal way we are able to develop trust and more productive interactions. Good stuff.

Jay Rutherford pointed out that the effort to make individual designers more "creative" is not the correct focus; rather, we should be building a better process, identifying broader functions and relationships in order to improve multiple domains and promote collaboration. Yes indeed!

The conversation at this time led me to think about the vital need to *map how people think* so we can team them in complementary ways. Achieving success and maximizing human resources should be an easily scientific process, not unstructured alchemy. By better understanding how people think and operate we can engineer a more productive reality.

Alain Rochon gave a good presentation on creating a process and standards for a project to simplify governmental public communication in Quebec, Canada. His primary thesis was that writing and graphic design complement one another, sharing space in the information, structure and usability domains while splitting on the tactical levels of visual presentation (graphic designer) and writing, language and terminology (writer). While not groundbreaking, this continues to reinforce the basic roles and process in non-digital visual communication deliverables. It also is another example of "information" being at the top of the heirarchical structure and needing a multi-disciplinary approach to appropriately design. A good quick take-away are the two questions his participants brought to the overall project: 1. What prevents easy understanding? 2. What are ideal ways of simplification?

Regina de Oliveria Heidrich presented on International Exchanges, focusing on her University Center Feevale in Brazil and extending an open invitation for any other universities to participate in a collaborative network with her school. Good stuff.

Jill Dacey gave a presentation sharing her (hopefully) successful collaboration with the International Institute for Information Design to secure over $350,000 (U.S.) of funding from the U.S. Government and the European Union in furtherance of international information design curriculum. Let's keep our fingers crossed and thank Jill and the other participants for doing good work that could have positive effects for everyone in information-related fields.

Jay Rutherford wrapped up the formal presentations with a detailed review of the Medienquadrant program at Bauhaus University in Weimar (www.uni-weimar.de/m2). This spawned an extensive conversation about online learning, referenced at the beginning of this post. Jay's thesis was that social interaction is critical - he cited a Patricia Kuhl quote - and that Internet delivery of college courses is not necessarily a good thing.

In this breakout alone, five continents were represented. Amazing. The diversity of participants and the really high level and thoughtful contributions from the assembled groups was something special. I can't wait for tomorrow!