brightly colored food

I’ll be at the DUX conference for the next couple days. If you’re there, look for me or drop me an email and we’ll meet up.

I had to admit a tiny ping of melancholy when Molly mentioned that she was heading to the Microsoft Social Computing Symposium. The irony here is that I’m up here in Seattle right now, working with engineers in our Kirkland office.

Between the people I met at IBM Research, grad school, conferences, and then all the papers read, I recognized most of the names on the list. There are times I miss the chummy, heady world of academia: when a good design gets thoughtlessly overruled in a design review, when there’s no time to really think about a design problem, when the folder of articles I’d like to read becomes a dumping ground.

That said, I love making products that people actually use. As much as I enjoyed school, it’s just practice for the real thing. Furthermore, and sadly, the seepthrough from the knowledge produced in the academic world at conferences, symposia, etc. into the world of digital product design is pretty insignificant. Few academics really speak the language of design, and, thrilling as I found a lot of that to be now, I generally find myself more inspired by elegant design solutions (even if from completely different domains) and conversation with other designers.

This post isn’t meant to end on a sad or bitter note. Academia’s a great place, and school was a home for a while, and people often have conflicted and complex feelings about formative places. I read The Corrections when I was back in Iowa a couple weeks ago. Same idea.

Comments are back. I had a bad case of the comment spam and forgot to re-enable them. Thanks.

Also, after too long just admiring the brilliance that is del.icio.us, I’ve started occasionally posting. If I keep up, I may do that linklog thing here - we’ll see.

Finally, as a show of good faith that I haven’t given up blogging entirely, here’s a bauhauriffic mockup I did about a month ago on the ride home from Google.

I’m off to Boston tomorrow for the Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conference. The attendees list is online. It’s a smaller conference, but many friends from CMU, IBM Research, and the blogging world will be there.

There’s a news section on the DIS website with an RSS feed, for everyone who can’t make it. Laptoppers at the conference can find me over AIM/iChat at cthornton251; hopefully we can get some decent SubEthaEdit sessions going on.

Went to a lecture by John Tang on awareness and interactions. There’s a short overview of his recent work here. Quite nice, really. Very much in line with the stuff I’ve been researching for my thesis.

Other thesis news: next Friday (12/12) from 2-5 I’ll be presenting a poster, along with the other 2nd year design grads, as we give updates on our thesis projects - we’re now halfway through. My poster will be on “Social Awareness, Presentation, and Connection” and will present findings, insights, design implications, and concept sketches based on interviews I’ve been doing with first-year undergrads on their use of instant messaging. It’s still too early to go a horn-tootin’, but there’s a couple of nice bits in there that could have potential for prototypes in the spring. Anyhow, stop by if you’re around and I’ll do my best to entertain and inform. It’s being held in the hall outside the grad studio, on the second floor of Margaret Morrison.

If you like your interaction design theory pronounced with a healthy Italian accent, you might want to check out the video stream [windows media format] from the Symposium on Foundations of Interaction Design, being held at Ivrea today and tomorrow. I already missed Don Norman, Tom Moran, and Gillian Crampton Smith (Ivrea is 6 hours ahead of Pittsburgh/East coast time).

Maybe if enough people ask nicely they’ll put up the archives online…

Notes from the annual conference. Looks like I picked the wrong conference to miss - lots of great speakers.

From InfoDesign

I haven’t even been in Cambridge for a week and already I’m leaving again. I’ll be in San Francisco and other Bay Area locales for the next week, meeting new and old friends as well as attending the DUX conference.

I won’t be blogging the conference, but I will have my Hiptop/Sidekick, so drop me an email (in the sidebar to your right) or AIM (cthornton251) if you want to make plans to meet up.

Not that I’m anticipating it, but if DUX is no good, I’m definitely going to check out the Planetwork conference, also being held in San Francisco on the same weekend.

The list of presenters may be very well be even more impressive: Douglas Engelbart, Brewster Kahle, Kevin Kelly, Mitch Kapor, and with Bruce Sterling, Hunter Lovins, Howard Rheingold, and others who have yet to confirm.