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

Want to brainstorm, solve problems, and communicate ideas more effectively using pictures?  Sure you do…!

Join us on Weds, May 19 at 6:30pm for a fun and interactive exploration of visual thinking and problem-solving based on the revolutionary work of Dan Roam.  The event is free, no experience necessary, and we’ll even supply the napkins!

In his groundbreaking book, “The Back of the Napkin,” Dan brought visual problem-solving (made-simple) to the masses.  If you’re not familiar with his work (or even if you already are), we highly recommend checking out his website which contains a generous assortment of information, tools, and resources:  http://www.thebackofthenapkin.com

(*Note:  While our VizThink NYC event will be touching just the tip of the iceberg of his work, you might be interested to know that Dan Roam will be delivering his 2-day workshop right here in NYC in September.  You can find details of Dan’s training conference here … http://www.thebackofthenapkin.com/events/)

Back to our VizThink NYC event…

Facilitated by our VizThink NYC team, we’ll discuss some of the key tools from “The Back of the Napkin,” and together explore how we can apply them in the real world.

Also, our following (follow-up) event in June will be a discussion of Dan’s accompanying hands-on workbook “Unfolding the Napkin” with the UX Book Club NYC, so you may want to pick up a copy of his books and dig in…!

Please RSVP asap for our fun and informative VizThink NYC event, as seating is limited and we expect a full house.  Please RSVP with you full name in order to get into the building.

Also, we ask that you please be considerate of your fellow VizThinkers and sign up ONLY if you’ll be able to make it.  We’d hate to have an empty seat while someone else is sitting at home napkinless.

Date & Time
Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 6:30 PM — 8:30 PM

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

In keeping with the subject of our book, Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, we wanted to see how the people that attended the event connected and what the network that formed would look like.

To do this we gave each attendee a sheet of stickers with a unique number on them.

We asked that each attendee exchange stickers with anyone they “linked” with and stick that person’s number on to the back of their sheet.

At the end of the night everyone turned in their sheets and I entered the data into Many Eyes, a new initiative by IBM’s Collaborative User Experience Visualization Lab whose purpose is to “democratize visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis.”

Looking at a visualization of these results is all the more interesting as I think back on the event and remember that each of my links was a real life connection with a real life person. For me, this is one of the awesome powers of visual communication. The image itself conveys information in a way that words simply could not. But on a more personal level graphic representations of ideas or memories provide a depth of understanding I just don’t get any other way.

As with most of the other people who read the book, I wonder how this new perspective and understanding about how networks form and work can be used in my design work. Will it allow me to devise a way for a network to grow or to remain healthy and vibrant? Can I use my new knowledge to make myself into a well-connected “hub” or identify existing hubs to become a more active and connected part of an existing network?

One thing I certainly got from the book was a new perspective on how the world works and there’s not too much more you can ask of a book, right?

Finally, to wrap this all up in a neat bow that ties together networks and the book club, head on over and join the new UX Book Club NYC Ning social network.

Looking forward to connecting with you.

- Ray

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

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