THE COSMONAUTS

Is data from focus groups really relevant? This is what Donald Draper thinks:

Acabo de publicar toda la información sobre el próximo curso para formar a diseñadores de interacción. Será la tercera edición del Programa Vostok.

Mi abuelo, alguien de quien he aprendido muchas cosas, solía decir que “las cosas o se hacen bien o no se hacen”. Esa ha sido mi forma de entender el diseño desde que empecé, no sólo para ejercerlo sino también para enseñarlo.

He decidido volver a enseñar diseño de interacción.

Quiero volver a formar gente como creo que hay que hacerlo: sin prisas, enseñando con ejemplos, hablando, debatiendo y trabajando. Creo en la honestidad absoluta de enseñar ejemplos buenos y también errores, de hablar de lo que no funciona y de lo que sí, y también de invitar a gente mejor que uno mismo para que comparta sus formas de hacer. Quiero que mis alumnos practiquen, discutan, lean, salgan a la calle y observen para luego volver a practicar.

He estado dos años sin enseñar. No me sentía con ganas porque dudaba de muchas de las cosas que había enseñado antes. Tras dos años de trabajar muy duro he desterrado alguna creencia y he reforzado unas cuantas certezas. Primero pensé en organizar un curso de dos días, algo intensivo. Lo descarté porque realmente no sería capaz de transmitir todo lo que quiero transmitir. Si hay que enseñar diseño, hagámoslo bien.

En noviembre volveré a reunir a un grupo de 6 u 8 personas jóvenes que quieran crecer como diseñadores de interacción y que estén dispuestos a venir al estudio todas las tardes de los viernes durante 5 meses. Les enseñaré lo que sé, les haré trabajar duro y les trataré como si fueran mi proyecto más importante.

Empezaremos en noviembre. Dentro de poco tendré una web con todos los detalles: fechas, temario, precio, plazas) y podré empezar a seleccionar a los alumnos. Mientras tanto, si te interesa escríbeme a javier@vostok.es.

SUMMARY IN ENGLISH: I’m back to teaching interaction design. Starting this November I’ll repeat the Programa Vostok course I taught twice some years ago. It will be a 5 month course with classes every friday afternoon in Madrid. Classes will be in Spanish. Contact me if interested: javier@vostok.es

We recently noticed that some people miss filling a gift card when sending flowers through floresfrescas.com. We know they miss them because some users later complain about not having that option. This is the solution Mark Mackay came up with:

These are some of the principles we’ve applied here:

• Place the alert as close as possible to the spot where the decision has to be made.
• Add visual feedback that something important is going on (the message flashes) so it is noticeable.
• Change the form (size, color and text) of the confirmation element to make sure the user notices the alert

Here’s the full scene:

If we knew that not noticing the cards was too frequent we’d consider haing another step in the process just for filling the cards. But we are unsure about that and there is no easy way for knowing this (no, usability tests don’t work for that because users pay extra attention when observed). So instead of redesigning the process making it more effective and painful we went with this “user interface hack”.

These are @sebadog‘s notes on the presentation Javier and Mark did at the iPadMadCamp last Saturday. We think they’re great. Especially if you read the tiny letters on the bottom left hand margin  ;) You can see it High-Res here. Thanks for sharing this with us @sebadog. More to come soon…

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, from Tinker.it, has posted a map of the schools, academies and such where one can learn interaction design in Europe.

View Larger Map

Very interesting!
BTW, the map is collaborative so anybody can add whatever he or she finds relevant.

This is one great piece of advice for those who want to teach design: Those Who Can, Teach. 1000 words of advice for design teachers. I have a bit of experience on it now and I can tell most of the advice Allan Chochinov gives is real and good.

(it’s funny that I spent almost 3 hours last night engaged in a talk just about this)

Me comenta Kepa Landa que la Universidad Europea de Madrid ofrecerá para este próximo curso un grado en Diseño, oficial, aprobado por el ministerio y pionero en España.

Parece que aún hay poca información sobre el profesorado, pues sólo veo 12 nombres (y muchas más asignaturas). El plan de estudios tiene buen aspecto, bastante completo, aunque con poquita carga de diseño de interacción dado que las especializaciones son Diseño Gráfico, de Interiores, de Producto y de Moda, un poco en la linea del IED.

Creo que hubiera sido bueno apostar más por el nuevo diseño de producto, con más énfasis en lo tecnológico y en la interacción persona-ordenador. Aún así hay que reconocer el mérito de sacar una titulación así adelante. Les deseo suerte!

This friday we had the last class of Programa Vostok’s second course on interaction design (esp) (Madrid). The six “cosmonauts” and I did some rapid prototyping for a nice project we have, we also discussed on professional expectations, had a great dinner and some soft partying at the most amazing terrace in town. Here is a picture of the Madrid crew;)

As some of you know, the course took place during these last six months both in Madrid and Barcelona. Ariel Guersenzvaig, professor in Barcelona, wrote a post summarizing the experience. It’s worth a look if you are interested in the course and live around that city or plan to be there next year.

I have to say that I am very happy with the results for the Madrid crew too. We now have a group of six cosmonauts who have been trained in many issues, almost all of them on the list of subjects (esp-pdf) anounced and on many more.

This year we had some talks by invited people:

• Jesús Carreras gave us a workshop on Card Sorting.
• Ale Muñoz talked about data visualization.
• María Martínez did a pre-release private demo of iwannagothere.net and explained some of the design decisions behind it.
• Clarisa Doval talked about user dynamics in websites for dating.
• Nauzet Santana gave us an introduction to Robotics and Lego Mindstorms.

Pretty intense, yeah!

This is my second year teaching the course. Now I see that each course gets to be unique in its own way. Students are different (this year there was less homogeneity), I am motivated with different subjects and of course I get better at explaining some things compared to last year but some others get worse. I’d prefer some variability over making something scriptized and completely predictable. It’s more fun this way.

All 12 students (6 in Madrid and 6 in Barcelona) are now professionals who can face most of the usual tasks an interaction designer does on his professional life. They’ve seen many examples (good and bad) and they’ve done a lot of work by themselves. Even some of the projects they started may become reality soon (stay tuned to Projekt Bahnhof).

That makes a total of 17 great professionals who will always be part of Vostok. I feel very proud of them.

Congratulations, especially to the new ones!

Some are extracted from the talks I attended while some others come from my personal-internal reboot:

1. There is a world out there, go reach it.
2. Your shit is someone else’s food (metaphorically speaking, ok?).
3. Own no more than 5 things you use, or else things will use you instead.
4. Leave your shit behind, it will serve others and make you more free.
5. If you reinterpret space and use it in non-conventional ways you are on advantage.
6. Courage is one of the most important things in life.
7. You can design your own life.
8. Do-ers are better than thinkers (in case you had to chose).
9. Conferences on a far away city are great for putting thoughts in order.
10. Web2.love is still the only strategic approach that makes sense when creating things.

I would love to see some more of these shared by other atendees. Please, let me know if you happen to post yours.