To design for experience, we must know what an experience is and how it comes to be. Designers need to understand how interpretation takes place when people interact with products. How do people make sense and meaning of the world? How is the intent of a person shaped by an interaction, and how does the subjective interpretation of the interaction become an experience?
From my notes.
Gaining feedback on use
A prototype for an audio story telling app.
An iPad reading experience prototype
Early last week we had a session at a local classroom modeling future experiences and testing prototypes for software for iOS that we are working on.
The key element of an optimal experience is that it is an end in itself. Even if initially undertaken for other reasons, the activity that consumes us becomes intrinsically rewarding. … the doing is the reward.
Mihaly Csikszentmnihalyi
Waiting for my order at Starbucks in Fuzhou. It was hard to find good coffee there and I would have to rely on Starbucks for a Latte fix. Unfortunately the milk they use would often cause problems.
I have been back in Hsinchu since July, staying under the radar, as I often do, but have been asked on a number of occasions what I have been doing to keep myself busy. As is also often the case my responses have gone off in all kinds of directions – my conversations are still often like hypertext and it takes effort to focus.
Though it was only official in September, I left NetDragon at the end of June, immediately packed my bags, and got out of Fujian as fast as Cathay would take me. Which as it turned out wasn’t that fast, as I had a layover in Hong Kong. I had been thinking about writing about the experience but I have decided that there is little point in sharing much of the details. If we think of companies as products, like Apple reportedly does, NetDragon ticked all the boxes, the feature list was long, but like so many tech. products the actual experience was poor. Poor to the point that I wasn’t going to achieve what I set out to do. There are some good people there and I worked on some interesting things, but over the long term it just wasn’t worth being away from my family. As I get older I have less patience for wasting my time, our greatest commodity.
Now, I am taking a risk by spending time on pursuing something different. I would like to say that it’s all puppies and pizza but it isn’t. It’s hard, frustrating, and very often boring. Through a combination of books, online courseware, and tutorials I have been spending my days learning programming with Swift. I’ve taken programming classes in the past, worked on apps. in Xcode, and did a lot web development, but with the exception of mark-up languages I was at best a hack. A cut’n’paster. So I am giving myself 4 – 6 months to see how far I can advance with my studies. To be honest I am not making great progress, boring tasks plant the seeds of procrastination, but I’m not ready to quit yet.
Lastly, I started with Sheryl a new company. It’s called Smart Bean, and I see it is as a new kind of family business, with everyone involved in it’s success. It’s akin to stalls at the farmers market, a breakfast shop in Hsinchu, or what younger, more hip people than myself, call a side hustle. When I was a musician we called it surviving. Though it’s my main focus in the months to come we don’t have grand ambitions like so many start-ups you read about in tech blogs. We just want to work hard at something that’s fun to do and hopefully be rewarded with experience and enough business success to smooth out the rough spots as we transition away from Taiwan. Our company has an educational product focus with Apple’s iOS being our platform of choice, for now. The iOS app business feels like the “Pro Blog” trend of past and we are going in realizing that it’s very difficult for a small independent developer to make money. I think it’s fun to be working on the whole product development stack, not just writing reports or managing the work of others.
Other than that, it’s great to see my kids everyday again. I spent the better part of a year in China and Canada, and visits were sparse. I’ve had to lay off running for a while but I’ve been training and hope to be running again ASAP. Now that the heat has gone, Hsinchu is a pretty decent place to be right now.
We took photos but I think my faced destroyed the camera as none turned out. I think the map was included on your shirt since there were no race officials to guide you.
We participated in the chocolate run 5K yesterday that was held in Zhubei. I think we were envisioning a repeat of a similar event in Taoyuan a few years ago, which was great fun for the kids (chocolate donuts at the aid stations) but unfortunately this race was poorly organized and poorly attended. Holding events is hard but for the most part, with the exception of some rough spots, most races in Taiwan are well done. Being as this was a branding opportunity for the sponsoring company, it must have been perceived as a disaster – there weren’t even many representatives from the company helping to run this slipshod event.
Complaints aside it was a fun run and the weather cooperated with cool temperatures and no rain. And what other time can you have chocolate ice cream for breakfast?
I ran with Sheryl for the first 3 and a half, then ran through a red light (they weren’t holding traffic) and ran at race pace for the last 2. It felt fine but for some stiffness in leg leg, likely my IB band. Unfortunately, my plantar fasciitis hasn’t disappeared despite 3 months of relative rest and daily training. I now doubt whether I’ll return to marathon training at the start of December.
1) 令人滿意的體驗是一種以成功方式進行的過程驅動型行動。
2) 豐富的體驗內含擬真的連續性和互動性，其可由一系列令人滿意的體驗所組成。
This bad habit keeps coming back to bite me. I’ve realized for years and lamented on more than one occasion my lack of good documentation, that I can use for myself, of the work I have done on projects (not to be confused with my project deliverables which are fine). Recording the process, the problems, results, success, disasters, and hopefully some nice attractive imagery goes a long way to communicating to others what you do or have done. I’ve worked with people who are absolute masters of this, I am not.
This is especially essential when most of our deliverables don’t necessarily result in immediate results that can be easily communicated via screenshots. Industrial designers and graphic designers have it easier. I am exaggerating, but show people a beautiful render or a lovely poster and they are sold. An excel file and their eyes gloss over. Righty so, as I too hate excel.
What makes it worse, is most of the work I have been involved with over the years does not even exist anymore, or has changed beyond recognition.
Story telling is more important than ever and it’s a skill I must spend more time honing.
Teaching rhythms and pattern matching using popsicle sticks
Using rudimentary analog tools to model digital games
We had a short session this week to model an analog game to see if children respond enough to make it work as a digital experience. A bit like paper prototyping but with popsicle sticks. Teachers are a wealth of knowledge in this domain – they are often tasked to creatively come up with short fun activities without anything more than the basic items they have in their classrooms or homes.
On the art of flipping it…
Towards the end of my 30s, I learned to accept that things sometimes don’t work out and that life throws curveballs. One thing that I always say at work, and that my team has adopted, is when something comes our way that is seemingly a problem, or is really not good, I just say, ‘Let’s flip it, let’s flip it.’So you say, ‘Okay, this sucks. This is absolutely not what I anticipated. It’s absolutely not what I want, but I’m going to flip it on its head and make it good.’
I feel that is something that I’m also teaching my children because you can really do that. You can either start complaining and feeling sorry for yourself or you can channel all of that frustration into how can we look at this from a different angle and make it to something good.
Seriously. It starts with really small things but it is such a powerful tool to remind yourself to flip it.
swissmiss
This year has certainly thrown me some curve balls, but it’s important to see opportunity in the midst of big problems.
