Technology, Information, Experience Design… Helping you get it.

Join the great NYC UX Book Club community along with VizThinkNYC at Liquidnet this July to talk about solving problems with pictures and our latest summer reading, Unfolding the Napkin.

Date: Thursday, July 22, 2010

Time: 6:30PM – 8:30PM

Location: 498 Seventh Ave, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10019

Book: Unfolding the Napkin: The Hands-On Method for Solving Complex Problems With Simple Pictures

By: Dan Roam

The NYC UX Book Club is back! And along with VizThinkNYC we’ve got a great event in store for our next get-together.

For our summer gathering we decided to follow up on VizThink NYC’s fun and interactive exploration of visual thinking and problem-solving based on the revolutionary work of Dan Roam with a good old book club delving into his latest work, Unfolding the Napkin.

Unfolding the Napkin is Dan Roam’s reworked version of his original book, Back of the Napkin, where he laid out a framework and explored a set of tools to solve any problem using pictures. Unfolding the Napkin walks us through a series of hands-on exercises and case studies that will help us hone our built-in visual problem solving skills and leave us with another tool in our kit to tackle whatever problems we face. Don’t worry if you can’t draw. We’re not talking about art here. The book is broken up into four individual workshops that guide us through the four stages of visual problem solving:

• Look
• See
• Imagine
• Show

As an added twist we are anticipating several informal, off-the-cuff gatherings to go through these activities together between now and the July 22nd gathering. It doesn’t take any more than three or four people, the book, and a pencil to make it happen. Look for announcements here or on twitter (hashtag #unfoldnyc). Feel free to call a gathering publicly or privately. And don’t worry if you don’t go through the exercises with a group, they work just as well alone.

If all that isn’t enough, we will be holding the gathering at Liquidnet’s spectacular midtown educational space. Many thanks to MJ Broadbent and the folks at Liquidnet for their continued commitment to innovation and education through hosting events like this one. If you haven’t been to Liquidnet for an gathering like this, you’re in for a treat.

Space is limited and security requires a full list to enter the building so please RSVP on our facebook group.

Here are the details:

Schedule:

6:30-7:00 Drinks and mingling

7:00-8:30 Group discussions (maybe some drawing)

8:30-9:00 Farewells and, for those interested, food and drink somewhere nearby

About the Book:

Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin, a BusinessWeek bestseller, taught readers the power of brainstorming and communicating with pictures. It introduced a completely new way to look at problems and see solutions, from the boardroom to the sales floor to the cubicle.

This companion workbook, Unfolding the Napkin, helps readers put Dan’s principles into practice with step-by-step guidelines. It’s filled with detailed case studies, guided do-it-yourself exercises, and plenty of blank space for drawing. Roam structured the book as a complete four-day visual-thinking seminar, taking readers step-by-step from “I can’t draw” to “Here is the picture I drew that I think will save the world.”

Unfolding the Napkin teaches readers how to:

• Improve our three “built-in” visual problem solving tools.
• Apply the four-step visual thinking process (look-see-imagine-show) in any business situation.
• Instantly improve our visual imaginations.
• Learn how to recognize the type of problem we face and corresponding pictorial solution.

The Back of the Napkin introduced visual thinking; Unfolding the Napkin is the guidebook that will soon be heavily marked up and dogeared.

Hope to see you there!

- The UX Book Club Planning Team

Elizabeth Pastor, co-founder of Humantific, will shed light on the emerging world of Visual SenseMaking. In this energetic 2-hour session, you will see how Humantific applies Visual SenseMaking to real-world challenges, build a basic visual toolkit, and learn how to unpack a problem through visual modeling. Time permitting, you will have the opportunity to practice your new skills on a real-world challenge.

Check out a short video recap of the full-day Intro to Visual SenseMaking workshop, part of the Complexity Navigation Program.

About Humantific

For more than ten years, the Humantific team has been helping business leaders make sense of complex business challenges and opportunities utilizing its hybrid Visual SenseMaking toolbox. With extensive experience working with organizations, we understand deeply that before meaningful ChangeMaking occurs, meaningful SenseMaking needs to occur.

Date & Time
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
6:30 PM — 8:30 PM

Location
Liquidnet
498 Seventh Ave, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10019

Space is limited. Please register here

Hope to see you there!

At New York City’s second VizThink event, veteran public speaker, Jonny Goldstein, will show you how to use visual thinking as one of your tools to create and deliver a powerful presentation.

By the end of the session, you will develop and deliver a 2 minute mini-presentation, with visuals, to a small group.

Special Guest: Heather Willems of Image Think will capture our session proceedings visually in a mural which she will create in real time. Check this video below for a demo of Heather and Nora creating graphic recordings.

Registration Deadline: Noon, Sept 22. We need to provide Liquidnet with a list of attendees in advance, which necessitates this deadline.

Date & Time
Thursday, 24 September 2009, 6:30 PM — 8:30 PM

Location
Liquidnet
498 Seventh Ave, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10019
Map

Space is limited. Register here
Please register by Tuesday, 22 September 2009, 12:00 PM

Join the great NYC UX community at SVA’s MFA in Interaction Design department to talk about social experience design and our latest summer reading, Linked.

Date: September 30, 2009
Time: 6:00PM – 8:00PM
Location: 209 E 23rd St., 6th Floor New York, NY
Book: Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means
By: Albert-László Barabási

In the interest of making the most relevant, crowd-pleasing and
talk-worthy book selections, the planning team has decided to gather
options around topics or themes in the UX zeitgeist.

For our September gathering we settled on the theme of “social
experience design”, inspired by the upcoming IDEA conference in
Toronto. To that end, we presented at our last gathering a line up of
book titles related to this theme. Linked, our next book selection,
was the clear preference by those who attended.

Linked is the kind of book that will completely blow your mind when it
comes to understanding the deep, organic structure of networks and how
that structure is shared across everything from cells to societies to
the internet. It will cause you to rethink the nature of social
connectivity and, most important, they way you go about designing
social experiences.

And if that’s not enough of an enticement, we’ll be
holding the gathering in SVA’s brand-new Interaction Design MFA
studio. Many thanks to Jeff Kirsch, one of our planning team members,
who arranged for the location.

So, if you’re in to reading Linked please join us for a fine
evening of wine and great conversation!

Space is limited so please RSVP on our facebook group.

Here are the details:

Schedule:
6:30-7:00 Drinks and mingling
7:00-7:30 Group intros and discussion
7:30-9:00 Smaller group discussions (longer if it feels right)
9:00-9:30 Farewells and, for those interested, cleaning up and more
drinking

(A small donation of $10 is requested to cover food and beverage
costs. Thanks in advance for your participation.)

About the Book:

Albert-László Barabási, the nation’s
foremost expert in the new science of networks, takes us on an
intellectual adventure to prove that social networks, corporations,
and living organisms are more similar than previously thought. A full
understanding of network science will someday enhance our ability to
design blue-chip businesses, stop the outbreak of deadly diseases, and
influence the exchange of ideas and information.

Engaging and authoritative, Linked provides an exciting glimpse into
the next century of science and an urgent new perspective on our
interconnected world.

Hope to see you there!

The UX Book Club Planning Team

Cindy Chastain
Ray DeLaPena
Fritz Desir
Rachel Keeler
Jeff Kirsch
Jonathan Knoll
Chris Palle
Chris Sanchez
Anders Ramsay

I was lucky enough to attend the first SVA Summer Intensive in Interaction Design at SVA this past July and after the program completed the folks at SVA asked me contribute to a recap of the program.

Check out the post at http://interactiondesign.sva.edu/blog/entry/summing_up_the_summer_intensive/

Here’s the complete text of my recap:

I had been designing software and systems for almost ten years before I became aware of Interaction Design as a discipline. Like so many others, my life took a turn after an encounter with a polar bear. After I read Information Architecture for the World Wide Web in 2007 I realized that there were disciplines I hadn’t heard of that turned out to be what I most loved about the design work I had been doing. It was as if I had been designing in Plato’s cave and Lou’s and Peter’s book opened my eyes to a whole other world. I’ve spent the following two years reading and educating myself in the canon of UX. I joined the UX Book Club, IxDA, IAI, UPA, and dove into the community. My interest in the Summer Intensives was first to evaluate the possibility of attending the MFA program. At the same time I wanted to get a better handle on the landscape of the profession and see how my experience might translate to the way organizations like Frog, SmartDesign, and Local Projects worked. I also wanted to get to know other people who were interested in taking the Intensive and see what we had in common and how we were different.

I expected at the very least to take away some usable skills that would make me a better designer and to get a feel for the SVA IxD Program; the space, the staff, and the overall approach.
Each class in the intensive had its own attraction for me.

Elements of Communication Design

I have a particular interest in visual thinking and communication so working with Nick Felton for a month was an incredible treat. I have always been drawn to the artifacts of design, from architectural blueprints to machine assembly diagrams, flowcharts, wireframes and most recently visualization of data, processes and complex systems. Nick gave the class a quick primer in typography and grid design and followed that up with a couple of projects that opened the door to be creative and make beautiful works with specific communication goals. Not only was Nick a great source of guidance and inspiration as we worked through our projects but there was an exciting and enriching exchange between the students in the class. I know that my project improved dramatically after getting feedback from Nick and the rest of the class.

Practice of Interaction Design

Carla’s class gave me a peek into the process of interaction design and of how things work at a couple of companies I greatly admire (Frog and Smart) but it was much more than a peek. Albeit in an intensely compressed way, we were guided through the process and able to experience a few of the most exciting aspects of design for me; sketching, collaboration, iteration, and critique. Carla also touched on the many directions there are to go in this field and encouraged the class to find the areas we are passionate about and delve into them. For me Carla’s class demystified interaction design done “the right way” and made me realize that there are more possibilities than I knew about before the class

Practical Programming for Designers

I have been working very closely with developers for a long time. I can read and understand code but have rarely been responsible for creating it. My feelings about coding are similar to someone learning a new language. They’re often afraid to speak because they know their accent will be totally off, their grammar will probably be wrong, and they don’t have the vocabulary they need to express their ideas. A good designer needs to be able to communicate with developers. We need to speak their language. The best way to do that, as with speaking a new foreign language, is to just open up your mouth and start speaking. Ian gave the class a good introduction to the building blocks of all programming languages and showed us that it’s not that hard to dive in and start coding.

The thing that stuck with me most after completing the Intensives is that there’s a huge range of activities going on around interaction design. If you are passionate, creative, and dedicated to developing your craft you can contribute to creating beautiful experiences. Another realization that was reinforced through this experience is that the people involved with this program and this community are an encouraging and friendly group. There is a palpable excitement about the development and direction of this profession and the good that can come of it if we continue to keep empathy, collaboration, and continuous iterative improvement as core values in our design and the growth of our community.

I would recommend the SVA IxD Intensives for people new to the field who want a better idea of what directions there are to go, for specialists looking to get a feel for other areas of experience design, or for people who want to understand what the vast landscape of Interaction Design looks like today and help start down one of the myriad paths there are to tread.