Nope. If we're using the concepts of lean startup and UX, the next thing we want to do is "get out of the building" to test those hypothesis. In this case, we're going to have to get out and "talk to the nice people."

And when we get out to talk to them - we're not talking to them about our solution - we're asking questions to find out how these people are solving this problem WITHOUT our product. We're literally getting to know how they think and why they choose to do things a certain way.

Lizard Brain Training

First, let's acknowledge the reality of the situation. Talking to people is one of the most difficult tasks we have as we create our products and services. Even the most extraverted of people struggle to keep themselves talking to people that they aren't comfortable with or that have a different context than they do. But, if we're smart, we'll train ourselves to overcome that lizard brain reaction and begin stepping in and trying things out in this part of our world, just as we do in all the other parts of our business.

"You'd be amazed how often we create customers who we don't really like and who don't interest us. Ah, that crafty brain at work again - trying to convince us that we don't really need to go out and talk to those "annoying, stupid, frustrating, strange, scary, not us" people. But maybe, just maybe, I might want to go out and talk to a few "Michelle's." Therein lies the game."

INSIGHT INTERVIEWS

Let's say you "recognize" a person who might fit your persona as you move through the world. What do you say to them?

Most of us instinctually launch into an explanation of who we are and what our product is and how we're doing what we do and…and…and. Seeing any problems with that? Who's doing all the talking in that scenario?

90% listening
It turns out customer development is not really about TALKING to people but rather LISTENING. It's about asking the questions that allow people to tell their stories about how they navigate the world without your product, as well as what delights or disappoints them in those situations and why they do things a certain way. It's being honestly curious about those "decide" moments when they choose to buy, participate or choose another direction.

In other words, you'll be listening for their personal story, which invariably points out where your made up assumptions don't even vaguely match reality (you're wrong) - and helps find new intriguing patterns and deeper underlying motivations you didn't know about to investigate. Their stories inspire you to keep moving, thinking and trying things.

Enter kindly
I have a friend who always greets me at the door, face alight and hand out to grasp mine. Saying my name, she pulls me in the door and then quickly seats me so she can ask me a questions about how things are going. In that simple greeting - she has taught me everything I need to know about talking to the nice people.

A big part of calming both ourselves and others in our interviews is having an "entrance" that is memorized but practiced enough that it has become natural. This is one of our big tasks in the LUXr workshop on conducting quality interviews.

In the accelerator programs we work in I suggest they try a strategy of learning. "Hi, my name is Mair Dundon and I'm an entrepreneur who is just learning to do customer interviews around how people do XXXX." When working on my own product - I tend toward something a little less formal. "Hi, my name's Mair. Would you have a couple of minutes to talk about the apps that you're using on your phone? Would you like a coffee? My treat." Find a way to quickly fit in what you'd like to talk about. Comfort the person by setting a time frame. Offer a gift.

Know your focus
Each time you go out to do customer development, you need to be clear what you need to learn. Can you learn about what makes people crazy about something in the problem space you're working in? Maybe you'd like to hear more about what different types of services a person uses to download photos. Is there anything they particularly love about any of those services? Can you learn more about their particular workflow?

Last week when I was doing some customer development for my upcoming workshops, my friend Scott Tran told me that he's begun going into his interviews looking not only for stories about how people do things without his product, but also learning about that "buying moment" - why did the person decide to get that service, upgrade or change how they do things. He'd learned about that idea in another workshop and simply wrapped it right in to his practice.

Ask open "story" questions
Asking questions really is an art form. I recently read a wonderful post in which the author felt his success was because he had learned how to ask questions when he worked as a journalist. The type of questions that we'd like to ask during insight interviews are both specific and open ended. Before you head out be sure to get a set of topics that give you a good foundation for subject matter (the problem space you're working in) and then try a few of these leading questions….

"Have you ever…."
"And then what happened…"
"Why (or how) did you do that…"
"Can you say more about that…"

Noteworthy
Taking notes is one of the big challenges in doing customer development. When I'm working on my own - I tend to ask if I can record the conversation so that I can relax and listen more carefully. Always ask permission before you record any conversation. Some people take a 2nd person along just to take notes. This is interesting because both of you will hear different things. This does take practice though - as you want to keep a single focus for your customer. 

If neither of those options is available then I simple jot down quick one or two highlights of the conversation on a piece of paper and then fill it in as clearly as I can immediately following the interview. Go after the "why" and "how" moments in the conversation.

Graceful exits
What if they say, "No."? This is a good thing. Thank them for letting you know and quietly exit. AND notice two things - notice if anyone around you feels badly for that other person saying "No" to you. If you're quick you can catch them as you leave. "Did you have a few minutes to talk to me about…?" Also notice that the person saying no will almost always feel guilty even if they're annoyed with you for interrupting (you'll discover people are SOOOOO much nicer than you thought they were). If you'd like you can offer them an out - "Maybe I can catch you later" or "Can I give you my card?" are both options I've used.

Everyone has a story
Don't throw out people who don't "fit" your customer persona. I've actually seen hyper-focused entrepreneurs "drop" the human being they are speaking with when it becomes evident they aren't the "right" person. Really? As you become more practiced at talking to people you'll discover that having a conversation with almost anyone brings insights - even if it just shows you more clearly who isn't your customer.

And if they don't fit the persona  you're working with then maybe they're a different group - one you hadn't ever imagined as being your customer. Keep track of them until you begin to see a pattern emerge. As we grow our companies we all have moments where we need to democratize or move out into wider markets and new segments. Consider outliers and "not right now" people as valuable - they're the ones that can provide "ah-ha" moments and game-changing insights needed to shift our direction.

Practice

Creating offerings using customer development really turns our business on it's head. First we hypothesize that we might have a solution that customers need. Then we test that assumption by getting out and talking to them. 

As we interact with our customers we gain "insights" that translate that back into new or shifted hypothesis. And if that tells we're on a strong path, we then create the smallest experience (MVP) we can think up to test whether our solution really does solve a user need. And eventually we create a company and business model that best serves ongoing growth and innovation.

Throughout it all - we need to continue customer development. This means that we better get really good knowing who our customer is, finding them, asking good questions and then listening to them to shake out even more patterns and insights.

Join me as I begin doing live LUXr workshops on Talking to the Nice People where you can practice all of these skills. Customer insights are just one conversation away - let's get started!

In practicing customer development we ask some very basic questions:

• Who are my customers?
• Where can I find them?
• What do they really need?
• How do they behave so I can recognize them?
• Can I find a pattern and group them in some way?

Using lean methodology to try and answer these questions means that we need to have some way to make a guess (also called a hypothesis) of who our customers are so that we can then "get out of the building" and check those assumptions by interacting with live humans in their natural habitat.

But first we have to get our "guesses" down on the page so we're not running around like crazy people. Lean UX brings a variety of helpful techniques and process from traditional product development. These methodologies allow companies and teams to "learn to fish" in defining who their customers are, as well as, what problem is being solved or desire fulfilled for each group of customers.

CREATING A PERSONA

One tool that we use in customer development is to create a "persona" that provides us a snapshot or archetype for the people we think are our customers. I like to think of them as my "people prototypes." What is deeply counter-intuitive about this process is that it requires us to create a very specific fictitious person - 1 individual who is "representative" of a group of people out in the world with similar needs, behaviors and sometimes attributes.

It's also important to create an appealing person - one who stays with us and who we begin to care about in our product development.

It turns out that our brain isn't very good at understanding and recognizing abstractions and "ideas" when it comes to people. Just because we create a "group" doesn't mean we recognize them when we're moving around out in the world. It is however good at matching and grouping pictures and stories as more or less alike. It automatically creates these groupings and "rules" for you in the form of assumptions. The brain then uses these rules (habits) to choose and drive behavior - unless the rules are challenged and reorganized by conscious process and learning.

The mind is also very touchy about "strangers" in any circumstance - seeing them as dangerous. This is why all of us struggle to do customer development and actually talk to the nice people - it's so much easier if we just use our unconscious assumptions as "true" and dive right in to the "real" work.

The only problem with allowing unconscious assumptions to run the show is it increases our risk hugely - if you don't know if your assumptions about people and markets are accurate, how can you know what's working? 

Create Your First Customer Guess
A great example of how to build a clear picture of one of our customer's comes from LUXr. In the next few weeks I'll be teaching a workshop on creating these customer personas or you can learn more by working your way through LUXr's 7-workshop online offering.

A first draft of a persona for a personal growth product

Naming
LUXr takes you through the process of naming and quick sketching YOUR customer in a location that makes sense. This may seem kind of dumb at first but as your brain engages and if you can push through the confusion to choose one thing - it begins to create a human story rather than just a murky idea of what "they" might be like. At this point - you typically have no idea who your customer is - so choose one and go.

I can guarantee that talking about Ben or Michelle in your day-to-day is far more likely to bring about useful, delightful offerings than simply talking about "our users." 

The idea isn't that this sketch is realistic or right - but rather that it allows you to relate to this person who you are creating as your customer. Is Michelle happy? Sad? Frustrated? What is Michelle thinking? What in that picture makes Michelle YOUR customer? Being specific, and yet playfully sketchy to get around your internal censor, gives your brain the information that it needs to begin "seeing" and "matching" in the world around you.

Specifics
Then we move into demographics. These are just the facts about the person. We want to choose facts that are relevant for our product. This is a specific person. We might want to share Michelle's exact age, city they live in, job they have. We choose facts that support this being our customer. Again, counter-intuitive. Does that mean if we talk to someone that doesn't match this demographic exactly that they aren't "right?" No, it simply means that we're creating a clear picture of this one person so that they can become more "real" and 3-dimensional.

Behaviors
Then we dive into the really good stuff as we create behaviors that Michelle has that make her our customer. I like to say that these are the ways that I might recognize "Michelle" out in the wild. What actions does Michelle take that either put her into the problem space my product is trying to solve or predisposes her to be delighted by the additional capabilities my product provides?

Needs and Goals
And then we ask why Michelle does those actions. What are Michelle's needs and goals? These are not abstract, generic goals that we all "should" have but rather the driving forces in Michelle's life.

When your brain begins to protest, "I don't know what the heck this person needs." Keep guessing. Your brain is making these assumptions unconsciously and driving your decision process about what to design and develop in your product. Don't you think it's smarter to get it down on paper and start doing - start understanding the person you're creating this for? This isn't a one shot deal. You'll get plenty of chances to correct and tweak. For now, just make it up as accurately as you can. Tell one possible story. Guess. 

Curiouser and curiouser
When we back up and look at what we created one thing that is generally true about our first version is that the person is pretty "generic." See if you can get more specific. You may have unconsciously created someone you know - exactly. Or maybe you've created a clone of yourself - "Hey, I'm the customer of this product," you say. See if you can shift it so you're forced to find people you don't already feel like you "know." Tough to listen and learn if you're stuck in "I already know that." 

Can you make Michelle a person that you actually like? Can you tweak the description so she's interesting to you? NOT the SAME as you - just interesting. Don't make her too wacky - just interesting. Is this someone that you would want to talk to - that you would be curious about? Perfect. Now you're ready to test your assumption.

You'd be amazed how often we create customers who we don't really like and who don't interest us. Ah, that crafty brain at work again - trying to convince us that we don't really need to go out and talk to those "annoying, stupid, frustrating, strange, scary, not us" people. But maybe, just maybe, I might want to go out and talk to a few "Michelle's." Therein lies the game.

Do you begin to see? We really are creating our customers. Why not create customers that we care about, that inspire us and that we work to delight at every turn? Why not create customers that we actually want to get out and interact with all the time? What if every human we interact with was valuable and to be learned from? That would make life interesting wouldn't it?

They're your people - so make them awesome.

What is it about these workshops that has me so happy? Having taught live and online project-based courses for 14-years in traditional environments, as well as facilitating all kinds of process in my career - I find the "try it out" and "do to learn" nature of workshops using lean UX process a real joy.

This isn't about me standing in front of people telling them what I know - it's all of us in there figuring it out together by doing. And really, the one thing that I know clearly about this world right now, is that it's all made up - so we need to get spectacular at iterating and experimenting everywhere in our lives.

What are these workshops about? Workshop 1 - Finding Your Customer with Personas - shows you how to create a customer persona or as I like to call them a "people prototype." None of us really know who our customers are until they start buying. In lean startups we want to test our hypothesis of who these people are - but first we have to get it out of our heads and onto the page. That's what this class is all about. We explore this made-up person's behavior so we can recognize them in the world and the needs that make them our customer. But this is just a guess - we learn how to test this hypothesis in Workshop 2.

Read more about the "why" behind creating customer personas

Workshop 2, Talk to the Nice People - Insight Interviews, starts off with a bang with a process Kate Rutter from LUXr calls "The Molecule." You'll be able to start each week with a focus snapshot of customer, problem you're solving and solution those customers will use. Then we'll move right into forming topics, creating open questions and an intro that gets us into the conversation with our customer. Most important of all - we'll practice all the skills - repeatedly. Then we'll evaluate what we learned from even this small amount of practice. You'll be a little shocked at how ready you are to get out there and start talking to the nice people.

Read more about the process behind running an Insight Interview

*Attending either Workshop 1 or Workshop 2 will give you the opportunity to sign up to get a big discount on the full 7-week online LUXr Curriculum directly from LUXr, Inc. to continue your learning.

We're going to have a whole lot of fun in these workshops - come prepared to dive right in. I'd love to have you join me.

Over the past few years my work life has had to be designed over and over again. Each time I thought I had found a sustainable business model, a resting place, a place/time/path to simply get to work - things would quickly degenerate and become unworkable.

I spent enormous amounts of time trying to figure out a single path through to a sustainable life, growing deeply frustrated and feeling incredibly stupid at not being able to do so. Until one day - after reading a great article on resilience by Ezio Manzini, I finally got it - a single path to a rich and financially stable life wasn't what I needed. It wasn't even possible for me because of my life circumstances. What I needed was a nimble and responsive way to earn money - I needed a patchwork quilt of earning.

"We can look to the people of the planet in two ways. We can see 7 billion people on the planet today or 9 billion people tomorrow as the biggest threat and the biggest problem, because we are a little planet. But given that those 7 billion people are you, me, my friends and the people we know, we see them not as problems but as people with capabilities, intelligent operators. So the planet is very rich with potential intelligent operators. What does it mean to enable all the potentialities of so many intelligent people?"

TALK TO THE NICE PEOPLE

Excited by that quote by Ezio Manzini from the article and relying on the design process I've been practicing more and more over the past few years - I set out to "talk to the nice people" to listen (and learn) how others in my community were creating their financial and work lives in a tough economy and rapidly changing world. I talked with friends who held 3 jobs, contractors who kept multiple projects moving, folks in "traditional" 9-5's with a side business doing things like making jewelry and selling it on Etsy or picking up weekend gigs doing odd jobs for people. I was a little shocked at how many people are cobbling together money from different sources even when they have big "full-time" salaried jobs.

Feeling heartened - as discovering a community of other humans working the same problems always does - I set out to test out my hypothesis that a nimble, broadly-based earning strategy would work for me.

TO THE WALL

Then I did a little wall work - throwing out ideas of small ways I could earn money - starting from past experience and then working into new possibilities. I thought about all of my past jobs, training and variations on those themes. I even threw in some of the different ways that I might work rather than just sticking to job names (i.e. remote, video, new work paths such as Task Rabbit or Skillshare). My stickies were filled with over 50 ideas of potential ways for me to earn.

To winnow things down I divided the ideas into a quick "4-up" grid that used like/dislike and hard/easy as it's organizing factors. This is a great way to take tons of info and winnow it down into the things that are most immediate and the least risk for you to try.

As I was sorting I had the insight that my "easy" choices were those that I could pick up and run with immediately. Things became hard, but not impossible if I were to choose to do the prep work to set myself up to pursue them. In this process though, we only use the upper-right quadrant. I chose 3 in of the like/easy category to pursue immediately - a Skillshare class, product design consulting and startup facilitation.

EXPERIMENTS IN PROGRESS

The next week I put up my 1st Skillshare class description (Creating an Awesome Twitter Community). A couple of friends appeared who needed accupressure sessions. New opportunities to do lean UX facilitation appeared via LUXr - and via a good friend - I had the chance to work with a couple of accelerators and incubators as both a facilitator and mentor to the various startups from all over the world. I began a simple pricing plan for my product design coaching - offering my knowledge base and mentoring to entrepreneurs and teams on the fly. One of the companies I worked with came 4 separate times to do 1-2 hour sessions vetting their ideas. They found a good one and are running with it. Last month I had my first non-profit contact me to do some coaching & facilitation. And I picked up a 6 week product strategy contract.

Suddenly my work life was transformed. My patchwork of earning was in full swing after only 2-months of experimenting. And as I continue laying more groundwork, it's expanding my possibilities. For example, you can watch my brand prototyping on this site and for my new lean UX workshops starting in April. It'll be wonderful to get back to teaching to learn.

LEARNING AND GAINING INSIGHTS

This is not to say that things have been easy or a happened in a straight line. I've had several big failures that had great insights and next steps buried in them. For instance, my Skillshare class was tiny. I learned that I need more lead time for marketing and that I no longer have any strong marketing channels beyond my Twitter feed. It's been six years since I taught regularly and my new brand (and name - teacher formerly known as MD Dundon) no longer have any recognition for people. I'm working on that. I've learned that I have to practice switching gears. Very different activities (accupressure/consulting) need to happen on different days. Teaching amps me up - not good to have quiet activities follow. I need blocks of time to write and design on my own. I need "wandering" time to let things percolate. I need co-working time and people to help keep me moving.

And one of the main reasons for this radical shift - my need to be up in Seattle to help out with on-going family challenges - continues to require my time and attention. Keeping all of these balls in the air has been an adventure, but again, as I lay in better architecture, community and connections - this is becoming simpler all the time. I really am becoming more resilient.

In resilient design we talk about designing with, addressing cultural issues and building social networks and communication. I'm very clear that this journey to design resiliently has to start with my own life. And I have no doubt that this will help me in my broader design practice - I can't help but become more collaborative, curious and connected with so much learning woven through my life. And if I can find ways to allow my own capabilities to shine - how much more fun will it be to allow others to do the same. Now that is a beautiful design life.

What does your patchwork quilt of earning look like? How are you being resilient in designing your life? How are you building life architecture that allows you to be nimble?

Complex Visual Storytelling
In 2011 I began creating a series of case study PDFs that allowed me to tell a story of my work with an individual client. After prototyping for many months - I'd finally created 3 solid stories that showed my work across a broad generalist skillset and most importantly to me - showed that I worked in physical products, software and cross platform implementations.

Now I was ready to start telling more stories of process and ways that I want to work across my skills and beyond. To do that - I needed a stronger design - visually and informationally.

With that in mind, and to avoid the "planning as doing" habit I've been reinforcing in my daily life the past few years, I dove into a project to prototype the presentation of my portfolio in static form.

I had some basic guidelines:

1. Present a wide variety of information - photos, outlines, wireframes
2. Create a visual language (color, style and organizational graphic elements) that lets me communicate process and complexity
3. Keep evolving my quietAction branding and also bring my name higher up into the communication structure

Since I don't do visual design day-to-day an additional quest was to wake up my skills and explore some different styles of design. This required some time looking at different inspirations I'd been collecting over the past year. I quickly realized that the first part of this prototyping push was to prep materials for my prototyping. So I collected links from portfolios, sites and apps that had visual, information or styles that I found appealing. I also collected text, screenshots and vector art for some basic elements that I could throw into the prototypes.

DAY 1

I began with the brand and visual design from my case study PDFs and attempted to start iterating in new directions.

I was really rusty when I started so I began by trying match some of my inspirational designs. Could I make it dimensional? Could I flatten it out? Could I go for full whitespace design?

What happens when I add increasingly complex information? How can I show the breakout of one part of a product flow so it's clear what is being shown? How about an outline with wireframes? Could my basic architecture and visual hierarchy hold up?

While I was pleased with the informational communication of the day's prototypes, I was left with an overall dissatisfaction with how "stick-ish" it all was. I found the flat, outline quality of all of the elements - text, brand and information - didn't allow any of them to shine. It ended up looking just as complex as it was.

DAY 2

The next day I took this underlying dissatisfaction into the process and continued to attempt to organize the information and iterate on layout and adding more whitespace.

Discriminate and reset
Eventually, it was clear I was rearranging deck chairs (i.e. on the Titanic) and I stopped to chat with my brilliant design friend, Cliff Jew. Over the years I've come to value Cliff's ability to talk through design issues with me and to help me see what I'm missing so I can keep iterating in a new direction. This process of "discriminating" is critical in a prototyping process. You have to know when you've stopped heading in a direction that is fruitful - reset - and then be able to move nimbly in a different direction.

When I explained my irritation with so many flat elements on the page hindering my ability to distinguish between levels of information or even visual flow around a page - Cliff immediately jumped to the idea of "traveling through" the information rather than simply laying it out to be read. Traveling and storytelling both have a time component. What could I add to the visual design that allowed us to make the information special and also allow us to move through it in an organized way. Cliff remembered an old project he designed that used 2.5d graphics to lead a person through a setup of a physical product. By adding a spatial component he was able to separate out textual and design elements from the most important data.

Taking a one of my designs he quickly overlaid a couple of examples of dimensional objects into the page to see if they would fight. Rather than fighting, the additional of a spatial quality to the data made it into a "secret garden" that a person could engage with separately from the text and brand container.

After I got off the phone with Cliff, several things started to happen. I let go of my original brand container and moved toward a stronger whitespace design that focused on my name and that this is my experience exploration (portfolio). I learned how to orient my vectors spatially in Illustrator (be very, very frightened :D). I suddenly got much braver. You can even see the happy accident moment - "Look what happens when I go FULL whitespace" in my Evernote documentation.

DAY 3

2 days later I finally got back to this project and was very pleased with where I had landed. I decided to try laying in some of the material that I had from my case studies to see how things held together when I added even more complexity. I think it turned out pretty well with a lot of room for improvement and continued prototyping. And it's a huge leap from where I started. Definitely well worth the time and effort.

THE REAL LEARNING

So, in this 3-day sprint I learned quite a few things.

1. It's good to have some prep time to gather some base materials to prototype with. While it's cool to have placeholders, it's tough to keep a flow going if you don't have any raw materials handy.
2. Discriminate. Know when you've run into a wall. Phone a friend or simply leave that direction alone and try and jump to something completely different.
3. Keep yourself moving and be brave.

Self-documenting storytelling
One of the principles of Lean UX is that you want to engage in process that is self-documenting. In this case, I quickly created screenshots, threw them into Evernote and added some discussion of how the day went. Because I did this each time I took a break - the result was that I had a living document that helped me tell a story far more powerfully than any single static document could ever achieve. I consider this one more portfolio prototype in these days because it - more than the static elements - will become my FUTURE story.

I can't encourage you enough to begin incorporate this hands-on style of moving through so many of your life challenges. For me there is very little that you can't apply this to in my life. Stay tuned as I'll share some other prototyping I'm doing as I get further along in the process.

It also seems intriguing to find prolifically quiet and introspective as well as prolifically active and engaged this year. It's time to move on from seeing "doing" and "output" as the only metrics of a prolific life.

There are many people who inspire me in this quest.

Luke Wroblewski comes to mind. I greatly admire his ability to create containers for his writing and experiments in the form of his brand, templates (blog, presentations, books) and prototyping practices (Bagcheck, Polar). Awesome. I really appreciate seeing how he clears the path to getting his adventures out into the world where others can continue to build off of them in an ever renewing and prolific conversation.

Zaha Hadid inspires by the way she moves between mediums to explore across all dimensions - 2, 3 and 4D. The fact that she incorporates painting into her process makes the squishy artist side of me and the grid architect happy. This expansiveness in process no doubt helps her reimagine the way space and matter work together - allowing her to reshape form in so many amazing ways.

Each time I attend the balcony talks before an ODC performance, I fall in love again with the amazing minds and explorations of the choreographers Brenda Way, KT Nelson and Kimi Okada. Keeping a dance company moving AND tending active artistic lives over 40 years is no small feat - these women inspire me to live life richly in the midst of life's traffic as well as prolifically.

And then there's my Mom. She'll be surprised to be included here. She feels like she never gets much done but when I see how much she accomplishes in a day in terms of care for each of us, explorations in healing and wholeness and just her way of being in the world - I begin to understand prolific in a whole new way.

What is prolific if you move away from doing and output as its defining success? Is it possible to be prolific without ever writing another blog post, talk or book? Taking another picture or tweeting another link? If prolific was a way to satisfying my own enjoyment of moving through the world rather than a way to try and gain approval and love from outside of myself - would it lose it's charge? Is there a quality or shape of life that allows prolific to simply appear?

I always love a good lived question, don't you?!

Chris Coyier wrote:

I wish everyone in the world would blog.

Did you solve a tricky user interface problem today? I’d love to read about the options you considered and why you picked the one you did.

...

I enjoy living vicariously through you, even for a moment.

Read the full post. Read more by Chris at The Pastry Box Project

I love all of the examples he gives. And that's the same reason that I read other people's blogs. Given my daily prototyping and other play-in-progress, getting back to blogging will be a welcome relief. And some other daily writing might be in order in other formats as well. As Chris points out so beautifully...it's fun and potentially valuable to others to share the adventure.

I'll be playing here this year. Expect things to move around a bit as I attempt to find some fun ways to allow myself to get more of my writing out into the world. I've grown frozen and it'll feel good to thaw back out, shake myself off and get moving again.

How do you do that in your life - get unstuck, unfrozen, pry your foot off the brakes in your life?

I was also excited when I saw the video of electronics in a painting that Jie Qi, a grad student at MIT in the High-Low tech group and the instructor for the class had created. Natalie Freed, the second instructor who has just completed a degree in Personal Robotics from MIT also showed a pop-up book example with more possibilities of paper switches and play. As I've started to weave metal into my canvases, it seems like a natural extension to find ways to allow people to interact with the paintings.

DAY 1

One of the things that I deeply appreciate about the people that I interact with that go to school at MIT is their understanding that we need to do to learn. Jie began the workshop by showing more examples of people working in paper computing as well as some of the examples that had been created to show all of the different types of projects we could try. Then they threw us in.

Simple Circuit
We learned how to create a battery holder with copper tape leads that grew into our first simple circuit. By placing the copper tape from the positive (+) side of the battery and the copper tape from the ground (-) into a closely aligned pattern we were able have multiple locations to add LEDs. Using Scotch tape we firmly pressed the tiny yellow and red LEDs down so the correct end touched the positive and negative copper tape. Voila. Our first circuit - in the first hour of class. 

Simple Switch
Jie quickly moved on to showing how to create extensions off of the main connection by soldering the intersections. And how to jump over the connections using a paper or tape bridge so you didn't accidentally complete the wrong circuit. And then how to solder the LEDs into place. And then how to make breaks in the tape, and create a small flap of paper and copper tape that when pressed down completed the circuit - and light the LED. Our first switch. All before lunch.

Pre-programmed Microcontroller (ATTiny85)
After lunch, things got even more interesting. Giving us an image with callouts of how things needed to end up, she began showing us how to create a more complex circuit that interfaced with a pre-programmed microcontroller chip. Starting with a simple fold-over battery holder we were soon hard at work creating the positive and negative connections we needed to use the microcontroller in our project.

I began by drawing the basic circuit diagram in pencil on my page so I could more quickly lay down the copper tape. This reminds me of the kind of complex wireframing that I do for my interaction design practice - one of my favorite tasks. Then I flattened and traced the microcontroller body and flattened prongs so I could see where each of the legs needed to have a connection meet. I started laying the tape down to get the ground line from the battery attached to the - lower-left leg of the microcontroller. Then the + battery connection to the upper-right + microcontroller input. 

I quickly learned how to cut my copper tape into tinier strips to allow it to only hit a single leg of the microcontroller. After I got the basics soldered in place, Jie showed me a little variation that allowed me to have other LEDs flicker in the opposite pattern from the original LEDs by taking my - LED end and connecting it to both the battery + and output from the flicker leg of the microcontroller. Neat. And it all worked. Bliss. 

That night I spent hours creating possible project fodder. I found old vector art from an interface I created for a Flash project and printed it on transparency film. I played with tons of different papers seeing how the LED was affected by shining through them. I even played with ways to create snow luminaria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminaria patterns. And I had to bring along my paper flowers from my play at Teahouse Studios Jumpstart Creativity evening.

DAY 2

Graphite Potentiometer
In the morning we explored creating a "slider" out of a thick area of pencil graphite. The closer your finger gets to the + end of the switch the more power flows through the circuit - making the LED brighter or cuing a set of programming on your microcontroller if it's watching for the power levels coming into the input leg.

Then we looked at different sensors we might use for our microcontroller project. We could use simple switches, paper sliders, a microphone input, or a touch input where your body completes the circuit.

Microcontroller Project
I chose to create a circuit that was programmed so that when someone blew into the microphone it began lighting each of the LEDs from the bottom up. Drawing the circuitry actually took me longer than building it. I had missed a few things in the previous project, like how to add a reset switch to the project but I quickly hit stop points that allowed me to catch those missing pieces.

In the end, I had a fun little lattice that actually worked as advertised - although it had become a VERY slow art project via a misset timer in the microcontroller code that set each new light to turn on after 3 or so minutes. You'd have to know my fascination with all things slow to understand my delight with that little mixup.

Other people's projects were really fun as well, including a paper boat, touch circuit paper doll string, origami, boxes that light when closed and a really fun paper speaker. I'm very grateful to Jie and Natalie for sharing all of their knowledge and coaching.

I'm over the moon about how much I learned in the class. I've already begun creating a more attractive simple circuit project that I can bring along with me to interviews. While I'm not sure how I'll incorporate it into my art projects, I love how quickly I was able to get deeply into the electronics and really create. The fact that I've already picked up again is a good sign that I may have found a DIY form that I can keep playing in.

More Paper Computing Examples

• Pulp-based Computing by Marcelo Coehlo
• Fold Loud by JooYoun Paek (My artfuture interview with JooYoun)
• Anabiosis: color-changing butterflies by Akira Wakita Lab
• Paper speakers by Hannah Perner-Wilson
• Jie at the Exploratorium and at the Tinkering Studio

When he started speaking, Tom seemed a tad distracted. It seems that he was still thinking about what Jennifer and Jody had talked about in their opening remarks. "Local - social - mobile aren't fads. Things have always been that way, we're just getting technology that allows us to explore that." And then he was back to telling about rapid prototyping - Google X style. As the experience lead of Google X, the R&D team at Google that has brought us intriguing prototypes such as the self-driving car and Google Goggles, Tom showed us how his team works.

RAPID PROTOTYPING X

"How long do you think it would take to create a physical prototype for Google Goggles?" The crowd guessed a few days, weeks, months. Throwing an image up on the screen - he comments, "1 hour." Then he showed how his prototype, created from a Netbook, Pico projector, coat hanger, and screen from a sheet projector actually does provide the EXPERIENCE of seeing additions to reality through a layover lens. This is not about the final form and version. This is about creating an experience that can then be tested and tweaked - as quickly as possible. The rest of the day was used for multiple experiments in software and input to the system. Could they create a finger mouse? Could they use any surface to control the interface?

Then he moved to an image of Tom Cruise in front of the gestural interface from Minority Report. Throwing a slide up on-screen which shows a coat hanger above a whiteboard, with an input he created out of chopsticks, a binder clip, pen and presentation clicker. Using this 45-minute prototype he was off and experimenting with gestures and software that changes its response to how you move your hands - pointing to select, grabbing an email. By fast prototyping in this way you're learning things that you can't learn any other way. As the creator of the prototype you experiment and use it in the ways that make sense to you. You create new rules and gestures.

Then when you invite others in to play, you learn even more as you watch them interacting. See how they do a small flick when you thought a grand gesture was a better way to move through pictures. Watch them as they begin to slow down and rub their shoulders. Ask them what's going on - their shoulders are sore. Eventually the team figured out that if you keep gestures below the heart and in the "batting box" that you can use them all day. Above the heart creates soreness and fatigue to the muscles. All this from a 45-minute prototype and tons of experiments with it over a single day.

The main point of this - get to as real an experience as you can as soon as possible. You're going to learn the lesson at some point anyway, so why not learn it now?

Moving back to Google Goggles he showed pictures of some of the multitude of different forms that others had created for this type of device. As they began looking at the final form of the product the team followed the same process and created a single line of modeling wire that would hold the experiments to the face. Then they carefully cut and measured pieces of clay to match the exact weight of some of the components they were thinking of using for the device. This allowed them to wrap the pieces around the wire in as many ways and combinations as they could come up with. They discovered when testing weight, balance and comfort of wear that putting the heaviest weight behind the ear allowed the highest comfort because it used the ear as a fulcrum rather than the bridge of the nose.

"And we were already aware of how strong the ears are...<small grin> but that was a different experiment."

"Don't get dazzled by technological frameworks. Ask yourself what is the most basic question we're trying to answer. What are you trying to learn? How can I get to something to test that in an hour or less?"

RATE-BASED GOALS

Moving on to the theory behind the practice he showed how bringing down the time to create your prototypes maximizes the rate of learning. He points out that increasing the total number of experiments you do, increases your overall chance at success. Since we tend to fill the time we expect a task to take - think it'll take 4 months, takes 4 months - we can work toward high-speed prototypes by unhooking ourselves from fit and finish expectations. His team uses rate-based goals to maximize and constrain this process.

Don't guess. Learn.

He points out that while we're really good at the actual development of our products, we really aren't very practiced at the entry to the process - the research phase. So often we jump to the end point - the possible outcomes of "what our product could be" - talking and guessing as to what it could be. Then the most senior person in the room chooses what they think the best option will be and we go and start prototyping.

We're physical beings. So work in that medium.

This is backwards. Outcome-based goals assume that you already know what you're making. Don't spend time talking, sketching or creating words to describe the possibilities. It's about building - and learning from that. With fast prototyping research phase at the front of your process you can explore a much larger range of possibility, much more quickly, with a more accurate read of the market that the product will launch into or disrupt. It's important to note that this is not about what it looks like, it really is about getting the correct FEEL as quickly as we can.

On Google Goggles, rate-based goal was to produce 15 hardware prototypes a week for 10 weeks.

Don't fail. Learn.

He feels that the idea of "failing faster" isn't the point. You can fail without learning and learn without failing. Rather than shaming each other for supposed failures, tell the team about the tiny percentage that did work so that we can learn together and move forward with that knowledge. Know what directions that you aren't going to pursue but keep doing variants on the prototypes that are heading in good directions. This is not a free-for-all. It's important to discriminate and determine which of the experiments are answering your questions and providing the learning you need.

On the Google X team, each Friday they show what worked and what didn't from the 15 experiments. Magical or "that has to be in the product" moments were starred. Then they planned for what experiments would be continued or new directions they wanted to try. Some weeks this would produce 40 or more stars. At the end of the 10 weeks there were hundreds of stars or important learnings from the process. The team then begins "constellating" by creating groupings or constellations of features and experiences that would make for a coherent, desirable product. Stepping back to look at the constellations, a decision is made on which to pursue and the development phase begins.

Benefits of Rate-based goals

1. Simple way to measure progress
2. Immediately actionable - no more waiting
3. Allows you evaluate experiments faster
4. When you can evaluate faster, you can experiment faster

Try ludicrous things. Don't need to spending time arguing about what "shouldn't" do. Since we've lowered the cost in terms of time, let's do it and experience it together. Can lead to happy accidents and new directions, or at least a few more possible outcomes that won't be used.

Definitely need to set a limit on when you will stop this process because of the nature of this type of creativity. Each pass only increases the creativity and speed of the team. At some point you need to stop and get to the next phase - getting your product produced and out into the world.

A question from the audience was about what he was looking for in the people on his team when he was working to accomplish things like 15 prototypes a week. He said he likes to look for Pi shaped people who have good generalist tendencies but also have a deeper knowledge of at least one right-brain and one left-brain skillset. This way they could pull on both sides to do some of the work needed in balancing creativity with real-world editing of their efforts. Nice to have people that can do that internally rather than needing to get that kind of validation from outside via committee. He's also seen partnerships of people to form this kind of a type of loop work really well.

Another question was about documentation. He felt that you needed to stay with communicating the "feel" of the feature and product rather than the specs of what it should be. Just as a composer creates, putting notes on the page to help recall the path that was traveled, so a prototype is the communication of what needs to be built. If there is guessing as to the intention in that process then it becomes something else. There's a disconnect in learning from one stage to the next. Better to let the person listen to the composer playing the piece - communicating via experience "this is what I want." We want to do the same. "This works, do it like this."

Personal shifts

This was a timely talk for me. As I struggle to find work that fits, there's an obvious "problem" that requires experimentation and doing in my life. Tom was quick to point out that this type of process works across everything in our lives. i agree. Currently, I'm in the midst of a 3 week design portfolio research process. I plan on using my learning from creating 5 or more prototypes a week to create a class that allows others to prototype their own portfolios. This is perfect for a hybrid Skillshare class and I look forward to learning together. Did you notice the amazing amount of energy and focus in that little waterfall of doing? So powerful.

Already this process is shaking out tons of bad habits. I've become a thinker rather than a doer in the past few years. It feels amazing to simply move back into trying things and seeing what happens. I promise to report back on my learning in a future post.

Rapid Prototyping X by Tom Chi from Kicker Studio on Vimeo.

Hosted the past 2 years at the wonderful Art Institute building on Chestnut Street, the day is filled with short, intense talks from people across the year's theme.

Natural User Interfaces

Jennifer Bove and Judy Medich of Kicker Studios started the day off by talking about this year's theme - natural user interface development. Natural in this case is equated with "human" interactions. While these types of interactions are often talked about in relation to multitouch environments, this year's conference would move into reality-based interactions as well.

What are these interfaces attempting to do? They're working to detect and make sense of touch, voice, and movement. They are starting to appear in our clothes, doorknobs and glasses as well as on our mobile devices. Time for computers to learn the human interface and "speak human."

Fast Prototyping X
The talks for the day started off with a bang as Tom Chi the experience lead of the Google X team that brought us innovations such as the self-driving car, Google Goggles and interior maps. His talk was on Rapid Prototyping of the X team variety - definitely not what most of us think of as fast prototyping. I was so inspired by this talk that I'll post my notes with some pictures to tell you how this particular topic has shifted my entire way of working in the past 3 weeks.

Eye, Tanya
Next Tanya Vlach told us about her very personal and powerful Eye, Tanya project . After an accident left her without an eye, Tanya, inspired by I, Robot she began experiments to turn her eye into a robot. She created a Kickstarter project and in the midst of her journey was confronted by and began investigating the deep fear of tech and the body in our culture. She showed examples of 7 of 9, Ghost in the Shell, Aeon Flux and asked whether she was now part commodity. Is she for our entertainment because of what she is doing? Her exploration continues as she works with leading scientists to create interfaces between her brain and eye.

Implicit Interaction
Then Chris Noessel and Stefan Klocek from Cooper gave us a tour through the conversations that they're having about HOW to talk about the devices and interactions that we're working on now. They point out that people are good at people. Children are really learning about how to be people and interact with other people. 

Tne talk then went on to show how current computers are far from being good at people. For instance, computers don't have a way to parse deeper context when we trigger and stop their automatic behaviors. The door to your car auto unlocks regardless of whether you're going to the car or simply putting out the trash. They don't understand paralinguistics - gesture, tone, irony. Flow-based interactions are intriguing as we seek to flow from one device to another. In this arena things like tribal agreements, dialects and customs can hang up the interactions. It is however fun to contemplate where we want to head as computers do become better at people.

Lunch was catered and gave everyone the chance to enjoy the awesome view of the bay from the top decks as well as to enjoy, interact with and chat with the creators of the robots in the Robot Petting Zoo.

Design Meets Science
In the afternoon we had 2 more talks before breaking into workshops and panels. I enjoyed Alan Rorie's attempt to convince us that we should get comfy talking to scientists because from their point of view we're designing things for brains & the nervous system. This makes a scientist's research into the why behind haptics, tactile interfacing, eye movement, language process, visual attention and gesture planning a great resource for inspiring our design work - if you talk to them.

While I thought his view of the mindset of the scientist was a bit unrealistic - process oriented, forward thinking, uses intuition/hunch/luck to guide where to go but reality to come to conclusions - there was some merit to the similarities in process. The knowledge that he felt that scientists had to offer was about how the brain functions (neurobiology) and generates behavior. He encouraged designers to understand the sub-fields: Behavioral (Decision-making), Perceptual (sensory systems), and Cognitive (attention) that could be explored for use in their designs.

In particular he gave us great advice on searching for research content around the type of work you're doing and contacting the authors. Finding the right keywords is the hardest part. He suggests pairing a search term in quotes with keywords such as Google scholar, Pubmed, or review paper to find papers. As you find relevant content you can mine them for references and contact information. If you can't get access - try typing the title along with filetype:pdf into the search field. If that still doesn't work, then contact the author directly to see if you can get a copy of the research. Be sure to let them know how interested you are in their work.

Designing Robots That Get Things Done
Next up, Matt Powers gave a fun talk that showed where robotics is right now. He pointed out that entertainment has given us a really unrealistic expectations of how robots can work. "It's maddeningly difficult to get a robot to recognize a human much less prevent themselves from hurting one." And thus, the shift in focus in the robotics world from embodied cognition that can deal with messy reality to creating intelligent machines that using statistical inference can make concrete predictions. Thus the emphasis is on creating robots to do jobs that people don't or can't do. Since the robot cannot operate without interaction from people - super capable robot but can't read your mind - we still have to tell what to do and when. His favorite depiction of robots in the movies is Wall-E. "They got a lot right with robots that specialize in a single task."

Workshop: Prototyping Natural Interactions Using Arduino and Immersion's Neutrino
When the groups broke into panels and workshops, I thought it would be most fun to do some hands on. When we arrived we found a stuffed animal, an Arduino board and a haptic (vibrational) output. After a short intro those pieces were joined by an Immersion Neutrino board to provide us with a platform that had preprogrammed haptic feedback options and a pick of sensors. My team chose the tilt sensor and created a quick story about a narcoleptic cow that would fall asleep, fall down and begin to snore. We programmed the snoring, did surgery on our cow to add sensor and later the haptic feedback. We were so involved we missed cocktail hour but it was fun to get a chance to collaborate and play.

I particularly appreciated talking with Immersion's Product Manager David Birnbaum, who showed me some great UI examples on Android. Now I know what kind of development I need to start on the Android side. Developing standard UI holds no appeal - but for haptic interfaces - I'm happy to climb over the development hurdles.

The rest of the evening was a party for Kicker Studios with great drinks, amazing food from the food trucks outside and a fun group of folks to hang with. Another excellent year for D3. I look forward to next year!