An Insurgency of Quality

Dave Hussman, one of the leaders of the post-agile movement, recently hosted a one-day conference on the topic of “Redesigning Agility”, and invited me to give a plenary talk. The focus of the conference and my talk were how to integrate agile development with interaction design. I was very pleased with how things went.

Here you will find the complete text of my talk, entitled “An Insurgency of Quality”, along with all of the slides I showed. I made a few ad libs, but mostly stayed with the script in order to assure that my message not be misunderstood.

The conference, called “Code Freeze” (due to it being January in Dave’s home town of Minneapolis), was sold out and the audience was razor sharp. The attendees were developers; that is, mostly programmers, but with lots of designers, coaches, testers, and managers, and not a few who wore several of those hats.

This talk is a complement to one with the same title I delivered at the IxDA's Interaction08. That one was directed at designers; this one is for developers.

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Blending Agile and UCD at CHIFOO

The Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon (CHIFOO) hosted Lane Halley and Jeff Patton for a talk and workshop on blending agile practices and user-centered design. On Wednesday night, May 6th, Lane and Jeff presented a talk titled “Making Sense of User-Centered Design and Agile.” Thursday, May 7th, Lane and Jeff taught a full-day workshop titled “All Together Now: Blending Interaction Design and Agile Development Techniques.”

The slides from the May 6th talk are available on SlideShare. Pictures of the May 7th workshop are available on Flickr.

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Video of Kim Goodwin speaking about how to integrate interaction, visual and industrial design at IxDA NYC

Last night, our own Kim Goodwin presented her talk "Designing a Unified Experience" at the IxDA NYC, generously hosted by our friends at LiquidNet.

(Click the button on the bottom right of the "screen" for a fullscreen view.)

About the talk

Interaction design, visual design, and industrial design are distinct disciplines for good reason: Each excels in different ways. Interaction designers must be good at imagining structure and flow, which requires strong analytical skills and a high degree of rigor, especially for complex systems. Visual designers and industrial designers are masters of visual and physical usability but are also masters of emotion: They know how to evoke caution, attract attention, and instill desire for a product at first glance. Users have just one experience of a product, though. All three aspects of the design must work in concert, or the product will fail to satisfy. Integration of the three disciplines is a central theme of Kim’s new book, Designing for the Digital Age.

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Hey, Oregon! Cooper talk and workshop at CHIFOO

The Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon (CHIFOO) hosts Lane Halley and Jeff Patton in Portland for a talk and workshop on blending agile and user-centered design. On Wednesday night, May 6th, Lane and Jeff present a talk titled “Making Sense of User-Centered Design and Agile.” On Thursday, May 7th, they'll teach a full-day workshop titled “All Together Now: Blending Interaction Design and Agile Development Techniques.” Here's more information about the course and registration details. We hope to see you there!

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Kim Goodwin's IxDA keynote on Slideshare

Kim Goodwin delivered the closing keynote at interaction 09 on Sunday, and it's now available on Slideshare.

Clarification: We've posted only the slides and notes on Slideshare. We'll post a link to the video of the presentation when it is available on the IxDA website.

The title of the presentation is "Each One, Teach One," and it discusses the future direction of interaction design as a profession. We've seen demand for our services increase dramatically over the past few years, and, in order to continue to respond to this demand, we need to make more of us. Part of the solution involves creating academic programs to provide the foundation for learning the craft of interaction design; another part is to create a culture of mentorship. This means that all of us need to learn to teach what we do.

As Kim says, "[Being a good mentor] takes good listening, observation, and collaboration skills. It takes imagination, because you have to see the potential in someone who isn’t yet able to demonstrate everything they’re capable of. It takes a willingness to explore and wander a bit instead of going down the path of least resistance."

Check it out, and tell us what you think.

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