Thoughts on Design

Multiplier Tools

2011-11-02T22:32:00.000-07:00

It's clear by now that computers did not shrink our workweek. Instead they allowed us to produce more in the same number of hours. 2D CAD's allowed architects to draw faster and cleaner. As technology kept advancing, speed became the standard and quality became the new target. 3D CAD let architects design in ways that were not possible before, avoiding issues and creating new complex shapes.

The interesting thing is to see how these advances have pushed the bar in so many areas. A very basic example that I ran across recently was with pumpkin carving. I picked up a $5 book that came with a handful of tools. The book had a number of templates and some very basic instructions. The tools were much better than the safety knifes from a few years back allowing you to make much more intricate cuts. With the help of the improved tools and templates my daughter (age 7) carved out a better pumpkin than I ever made, even in my high school years. I was able to keep up with my 4 year old daughter's work however.

While the templates and specialty pumpkin carving tools would be considered an unfair advantage in my day, today it's the norm. Triangle eyes are not acceptable even for a 2nd grader today. Meaning, a triangular hole punch to carve your pumpkin in 10 seconds is an improvement, but people want multipliers. They want the tools (template, instructions and specialty tools) that will let them carve a world-class pumpkin.

What this mean to me is that the products we create should never merely deliver the expected, they need to deliver world-class quality just to keep up. Regardless of the skill level we predefine for our users, the products need to help them become superstars.

Form Follows Function, even in gardens?

2010-06-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

I've never been much of a plant person. I just never got into the pretty flower thing. Turns out there is a lot more to it then that. Specially when you pull in the environmental aspects. I attended an Ocean Friendly Gardens class today here in Torrance. It was put on by the Green Gardens Groups, Surfrider, South Bay Environmental Services Center and the City of Torrance.

They put together a great class that surprisingly only spent a few minutes on the plants and bout 2.5 hours on all the other aspects of a healthy garden. The big surprise for me was the importance of run off water, permeable soil and how it relates to my home and the ocean. I figured that since "It Never Rains in Southern California" rain gutters and run off water had no importance to me. Once they rationalized it, it makes perfect sense. More dirt accumulates the longer we go without rain. And since the water rushes down the gutter down pipe, the ground is not able to absorb it so it just runs off. Now that little bit of rain water is gone into the drains instead of in my garden.

What this all means is that I can't just stick a bunch of pants in the ground. I have to manage rain gutters better, create contours to direct the water and possibly even a space to store water. Then I have to fix the mess of compacted soil that does not allow water or life to thrive. This will not only help my garden but also avoid water from accumulating under my house.

This lesson sounds painfully familiar from the interaction design world. The client thinks they just want a prettier site, but without looking at the entire system the design will fail again. And ignoring to fix the real problem can be much more expensive down the line?

Cram Sessions

2010-04-23T11:28:00.001-07:00

I went to an iPad camp this weeekend and had a great time. It was Saturday and Sunday, 10am-7pm. I was amazed at how much we were able to get accomplished. We had a product position statement, goals, scenarios, flows and wires by 3pm on Saturday. These are all things that are typically eliminated from small projects because they take too long. Even though they were not done to an optimal level, it definitely helped us get on the same page, make decisions and keep the product focused. This cram sessions approach could apply well even in corporate environments.

Selling the Value of Process

2010-03-25T14:19:00.000-07:00

I joined a new team in my office recently which seamed to appreciate design more than other groups. I was quite enthusiastic about this new potential for proving out the value of a proper design process. It was soon clear, however, that while the appreciated the value of the final product they did not understand or value the process of design itself. The expectation was to magically land on that final beautiful elegant solution.

The main points of resistance that i was hitting was the perception of delaying progress due to red tape or legacy speed bumps. Explaining needs gathering efforts, persona modeling, scenarios and others was "understood". That is, they didn't disagree with the explanations. However within that meeting, they were eager to jump into the wireframes. Here is where the public perception of wireframes grew to be a bigger thorn in my side. For an outsider, the number of wireframes produced quantifies progress. Personas, scenarios and the like are seen as obstacles that delay that count. I think at some point I even blurted out "I am not defined by wireframes!". The more this wireframing continued without proper definition of scenarios and personas, the more derailed and "artistic" the site became.

A month later, the amount of progress that had been made was disappointing/expected. Meetings still kept getting derailed by new requirements and distorted scenarios. The amount of time needed to properly define personas and scenarios would have been made up, not to mention a stronger platform to build upon.

Looking back, the problem is easy to spot and it happened very early on. Before anyone can even think about wireframes, process has to be communicated and expectations have to be set. When you try to explain process a couple of weeks in, it is seen as an obstacle. The value if process also has to be quantified in order to speak with business stakeholders. "Two weeks now allows design to work independently 5 weeks earlier". It allows scopes to be estimated and schedules to be met.

Nudge

2009-05-20T22:51:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness" and attended an interesting UX Book Club meeting where we discussed various details. The meeting itself was much more engaging than I expected as I don't consider myself much of a reader. The book goes over a number of findings around how people tend to react better to suggestions or nudges rather than mandates. I recommend the book to anyone who is designing anything that involves user response.

As a very brief overview of the book, Nudges are contextual design decisions that aim to maintain choices for the users. Instead of mandating that users select a specific item, the better choice is defaulted, positioned or socially associated in such a way that will lead the user towards it. As you might imagine, the "better option" is difficult to define and is extremely contextual. How much you should nudge is also a delicate balance, but one thing that is clearly spelled out in the book is how important these nudges end up being. Intentional or not, the way we present options has a huge effect on the outcome.

One of my biggest take-aways was the scenario where users fail to answer because they either forget or because the options are too complex. Many times, the designer or choice architect at they refer to it, can make an educated nudge as to what the answer should be. In certain situations, no decision can have a devastating result, while an educated default answer will be right 90% of the time. The book uses extreme examples with topics such as health care and retirement investments, but the nudges are still relevant at lower level options fond in software.

Another very interesting point was how people make automatic and reflective decisions. People want to be good, but in the heat of the moment bad decisions are sometimes made. Nudges made during reflective moments, when people think straight, can affect decisions during automatic or impulsive moments. I can see this affecting impulsive online purchases or frustrating moments with software. Perhaps help options can be introduced earlier when the user is in a calm, reflective state. Inevitably, the user will hit some road block and become frustrated. If they are already familiar with the help options and structure, they may be more likely to find the help topic rather then jump straight to the more costly phone help support.In turn the software company does not have to charge for phone support because call volume is maintained lower.

I've always looked at the world through designer goggles, but this book has given me an extra view into how my designs WILL affect outcomes to people's goals. The simple decision of default option is not so simple anymore.

UI as a Craft

2009-02-08T21:14:00.000-08:00

It looks like advanced product interfaces have extended beyond the Apple campus. B&O launched the BeoSound 5 System and it really holds up the interface on a pedestal. Not only the digital UI but the physical controls as well. A metal wheel eats into the screen real estate as if to say, I'm rich enough to loose those pixels. It may sound funny, but no other products sacrifice pixels for style.

The thing that really caught attention is the quality of the interface, I feel that it actually meets the quality and design of B&O products. It's not frequent that you see this happen. If you look at nav systems in luxury cars, they never match up to quality of the leather upholstery. The Nissan GT-R may be the one exception. They actually pulled in some video game designers to help them design the car's interface. The result is an immersive, gear-head (what's the tuner version of a gear head?) experience.

The things that these two companies have done effectively is pay for the craft of the UI. It is well understood that a product has to pay for real metal parts or fine leather work, but it is not yet understood what fine UI work is. There aren't very many examples out there to refer to for starts. Secondly, there is miss understanding that glossy graphics will accomplish this. Craft goes beyond appearance, it is engrained in the material and gives the perception of extreme effort and skill.

The business needs to want and be ready to pay for craft and the designer has to remember how to produce craft. Aside from the usual "breaking the mold" and "blood, sweat and tears" bit, craft is a team effort, a skilled craftsmen effort. It cannot be handed over to some guy to complete, only the most trusted engineers can carry through with you vision. The whole team needs to be truly onboard with the desire to produce craft.

Embed Widgets

2009-02-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

You know widget embeds have gone mainstream when the government starts using them. When I went to the FDA's web site to find the list of peanut butter products being recalled, i found this.

One huge realization is that this organization is relying on the community to spread the word on bad products instead of JUST the FDA pushing out the information and finding people.

Livescribe Pulse Smart Pen

2009-01-12T23:45:00.000-08:00

MeetUp A.I.

2008-12-27T22:10:00.000-08:00

I was doing a search in MeetUp.com for a running group today. It automatically narrowed the search to LA because that is where my profile has me pinned to. I didn't find any group that suited me so i though I'd create one. The new group form came up with the default group name reading "Los Angeles Running MeetUp Group" and the description defaulted to "Meet others in your local area to Run with. Plan group runs and participate in various long and short distance running. Discuss safety and more."

I had to pause for a second. I thought that maybe I had been on auto pilot and had magically typed it. But I hadn't. Not only did the new group form remember that I was looking for a running group, but it had also pulled my location info and typed out a logical title and description. I'm sure these templates are limited to certain topics, but I was really impressed that they had something smart to propose and not some funky fill in the blank description.

It's got to be one of most enlightening experiences I've had on the web.

Paperless IxD

2008-12-16T23:02:00.000-08:00

Can IxD encourage green behavior? We can promote digital usage over printing. Yes people want to print, but if we give them better alternatives with computer aided deliverables, we can persuade people not to print. iRise pushes the iDoc or interactive document. Once you print it, you loose 50% of it's value, maybe more. Other apps and sites can do the same.

Make it portable.
Allow users to take the artifact off line or to another on of their computers. In a pinch users need to review it on the road or at home, if it is not portable, printing is the knee jerk reaction. Mobile device compatibility may be part of this equation as well.

Make it shareable.
Allow users to show it to others. While not all the editing options may be required, commenting or some form of mark up is common. If this feedback system is then harnessed into a sliceable dice-able list, the computer aided element can be pushed.

BackUp
Safety is another reason people tend to print. What if your system is not around in 5 years. They may still need their data, after all is it theirs. Provide export options or other back up means.

Defining a Product

2008-11-14T15:09:00.000-08:00

What role should an interaction designer take in defining the product? In some cases, the designer is given all the parameters that the final product needs to have. The more parameters are handed down, the more the IxD's role becomes not only production, but a translation exercise. The solution that produced can only be as good as the translation. In some processes, this is intentional. "Request a wireframe from the IA and then pass it on to the visual designer". This then leaves project management as the cornerstone of the project in turn producing process centered design.

While is the issues seam painfully obvious, some companies end up in that rut. The main issue is simple, the end user interacts with the product not the project. The teams effort should be focused on the product, not the project. TImelines, resources and politics should be peripheral and should not drive the product.

So if the project manager is not in charge of the product who is? I propose that the interaction designer should own the project. They are the ones designing the end product and the ones that know goals and tasks that the user needs to be able to accomplish. Again, those points can be communicated to somebody else, but they become translations. This does extend the interactions designers responsibilities. They need to wok with business owners, end users, tech, QA, visual design, copy, etc. But the greater understanding of each of these with lead to a better product. Specialties can still exist and grow, but they should all live under one person that truly understands the product, FIRST HAND.

Google, The King of Data

2008-11-04T10:40:00.000-08:00

Google has been the internet darling for a while now. They seam to get everything right. First search, then maps, email and on and on. The other tech darling, Apple also seams to get everything right, ever since the iMac at least. But when you look at the products from the two companies they have very little in common.

Apple focus is on polish. The motto seams to be, "No feature shall interfere with polish." And the do a great job of it. Their products are fashion accessories. Their apps are pleasant to use and create beautiful work.
Google on the other hand, seams to care nothing about polish. Their color choices are the worst, second only to UseIt. Google's idea of simple seams to come from a different dictionary than Apple's. G-Simplicity is centered more around removing elements and nothing related to the classic definition of white space. Each element removed means less burden for the user. Sometimes that mean's the user will not be able to preform a task, but where Google really excels is when the burden is passed to the system and the feature is maintained. Google Map is the perfect example where the user can type in the street number, street name, city and state in the same text input and the system figures it all out on it's own. It's difficult to remember back to the days when they were all separate boxes. This in turned cleaned up the UI tremendously. But more important than the visual clean up is the burden that is removed from having to "speak" to the computer in short blurbs. Now you can just bark out Simon Says commands.

With Google's new web browser, Chrome, this feat is accomplished once again. Funny enough they got rid of the Google search box that all the other browsers are so proud of. The single input runs a search or goes to a url. IE has been doing this for a long time, the problem is that they didn't pass the burden to the system, the just delay it. With Chrome, the system has to intelligently figure out if it should go to a URL or run a search. While the difference is minor, the experience is greatly enhanced. Again, it's the Simon Says approach. Which coincidentally inspired Chorme's logo.
This could all play perfectly for Android if G-Simplicity is continued. Searching for data from a central place, before you even tell it what app your referring to could produce some real competition for the iPhone. I don't expect it to ever be as fun or as polished as the iPhone, but as Google apps prove, easy access to data can rule the land.

The Next Automotive Revolution is an App

2008-09-03T12:58:00.000-07:00

I was reading September's Wired this morning while commuting on the Metro. The cover is plastered with "The Future of the Electric Car" with an unrecognized guy walking and very normal looking car in the background (as normal as a Renault can look to a US audience). So it turns out that the guy is Shai Agassi, a former head dog from SAP. His qualifications are a strong grasp of software and business. No real mastery in automobiles though. His big idea came from a group that he was invited to, Young Global Leaders. I'm not sure if their mascot is The Brain, but it could be. Agassi made a pledge with Mutobmo (NBA guy) and Skype cofounder Zennstorm (sorry, I'm missing an umlaut there) to "make the world a better place". That eventually lead Agassi to start Better Place, a company dedicated to bringing no only an electric car the masses, but an entire grid.

Agassi is not a car guy. He's not inventing new technology to make batteries more efficient. The real magic he is bringing to the table is the software and business that allow it to work. Batteries and charging are the biggest cost and usability issues. His plan leases the batteries and sets up grid of stations where you charge or swap you drained battery for a freshly charged one. You can still charge your car, but that is a longer process that is only feasible at home or work. So really, he's addressing the problem from the user's point of view instead of technology centered. Apparently there's something to this UCD thing after all :) The main product that he is innovating is the software that will inform the user of battery life and where the nearest station is. Once the driver gets to the station, the system needs to recognize the car as subscriber and charge or swap out the battery.

His first test is a whole country, his native Israel. Apparently the guy gives very convincing speeches as he has the government backing him with tax cuts to motivate sales. Denmark is also on board for a second country. The concept is a major undertaking, but it has some major backing. Israel for instance has the urgency to become oil independent so they may be a good place for beta testing. I imagine they they would be more lax on glitches when the alternative means buying oil from an enemy. Denmark has an excess of wind power (?) so DONG is ready to power the grid.

I found this entire article extremely inspiring. Take existing technology, add some UCD and persuasion and change the world. Easy.

Brand Power

2008-07-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

Vista has had quite a bit of bad press. Between past XP experiences during its early releases, Apple ads and word of mouth, most people have a bad impression of Vista. Microsoft set out to study this with the Mohave Experiment. The study discovered or at least made the claim that people's negative impression of Vista is purely from word of mouth and that if they actually gave it a chance, they would love. The usability test video makes a good case even if it is a very superficial test.

Skipping the validity of the tests shown, it is an interesting study of how bad of an influence word of mouth can have. Microsoft already has a rough time maintaining and cleaning up their brand and their market doesn't help the matter. Enterprise level system admins are many times the first to review these new OS's and will also be the first to say no when a potential disturbance presents itself. The opinion of system admins or family admins goes a long way.

ScrapBlog for Design

2008-05-23T17:12:00.000-07:00

As a subscriber of Dwell magazine, I have been getting into green modern homes. Through additional sources like web, conferences, books and local architecture, I have a lot of ideas of what I would home to look like. But it's all in my head. I need to manage and share all those ideas.

To help me gather some of that info, I've used ScrapBlog. It's an online flex app for creating single or multi-page scapbook books, but in more of a blog type format. That is, any event may be worthy of a scrapblog. It's a good idea because it is easier to get people to build a scrapbook over time instead of all at once. In a way, the blog approach removes the burned out of album making.

What I needed, however, was not a scrapbook, but rather a way of gathering ideas. The tools that ScrapBlog offers were actually very effective for the task. Because it is online, it was easy to share with my family (stakeholders) without them having to figure out how to open the file. It is able to gather photos easily and allows you to arrange them in whatever layout you need. Finding a new use for the tool and more importantly a solution to my gathering problem was a perfect example of web apps today. New uses are being discovered every day. Web apps need to be built to be flexible and business need to open to new opportunities.

Sketch and Unite

2008-04-22T00:05:00.000-07:00

I was listening to a lecture by Bill Buxton that he gave at the IxDA Interaction '08 conference, that I really hated missing, and it really struck home. I have the luxury/burdon that most of these things apply to directly to me and my team's process as well as the product I design. Bill talked about team unity and how sketching can be the catalyst.

THe example used was the iPod. While ease of use and design are the attributes that are given all the credit for it's success, a lot more comes into play. The interface could be better and so could the industrial design. But because these are coupled with seamless syncing, an easy way to manage music and a huge easy to use music store plus a great set of ads, the combination of everything delivers a great solution for the customer. Users don't need to turn to additional software to close the loop. The ads and price point add a level of pride of ownership.

So it turns out that as designers we alone cannot delver a product that is going to make tons of money, we need the help of the rest of the team. For the most part, this requires a CEO that is willing to rally his team together and focus them around a single idea. It requires that they understand the value of closing the loop across the various realms. As designers, we can help this process along by involving more groups in the design process. Getting the team excited about the product and selling them on the user centered goals is a start. For the appropriate stakeholders, involving them earlier in the process and having their ideas affect the product will help them take ownership.

Sketching allows you to create many ideas very quickly, at a point in the process where little money has been invested, so why not. It also leaves holes for the rest of the team to fill in. It’s not just that sketchy keeps the conversation at the right level, it also invites the team to pitch in, to be part of a great initiative. Design is not about a great designer innovating, it’s about pulling the team together to deliver a killer package.

Some of this stuff may not be mind blowing, but boiling down the pieces and putting a language around it can be very helpful when selling UNITY around the office.

Define a Target

2008-04-11T23:43:00.001-07:00

It is invaluable to define a clear target to rally the troops. Without that target, the troops are unsure what they are fighting for, they can't make decisions for themselves and they don't know when to stop. Design and development teams thrive on these types of elements to maintain motivation.

What are we fighting for? How will we change the world? The design and development team wants to know that their work has some meaning, that it will be the best in some way. Without knowing exactly what that end state is intended to be, it is difficult to grasp how it will be the best of bread. Which in turn causes teams to loose motivation. The work ends up being no more more that a series of task that they do in order to get paid. For some people this is OK and they prefer to work in this manner, but you can't expect them to innovate or go beyond the call of duty without motivation.

What do I do next? The key to a efficient team is that they are self motivated and know exactly what to do next. If they need to wait for instructions on the next steps, bottle neck start to form. They are not able to make educated decisions based on their granular knowledge which can lead to lost opportunities and avoidances.

Are we there yet? It's not just about knowing if a given task is complete, it's also about knowing to what level each piece has to be taken to, again related to granular knowledge. This obviously has an impact on scheduling causing last minute decisions to either ship in a weak state or miss the delivery date.

These are just some of the issues you face when you do not have a well defined target. Working with ambiguity, however, is something that we are constantly faced with in our tight deadlines and vague client directives. So how do you maintain a motivated, self-driven team that can schedule it's time? You could have Colin Powell make presentation for you, but hopefully you stipulate that the target may change or evolve over time. You can also use concepts instead of detailed pictures to communicate the state. Sometimes this can be done in a single sentence statement with lots of adjectives. Communicating the concept is much quicker then deciding on a final design on day 1. If there is a visual that is presented as the target, it should be made clear that final may evolve. You don't want box in creativity either. Thats a different blog.

Self-Referencial Design

2008-04-01T23:34:00.001-07:00

Cooper and others mention how self referential design will lead you down the wrong road, how it does not lead to solutions that solve the problem for the real users. There are few things to consider here:

Designers, by nature, focus on different things than most people. We are tinkerers, we love to figure out how things work and why they were done the way they were. Users who take things at face vaule or are afraid to find out how and why will have a very different point of view.
Designers or not, there are different ways of doing things. There are personal preferences, ergonomics and life experiences that alter the way we do things.

The draw-back to self-referential design is clear. Designing for a single users will limit the usability and the product will quickly become uncomfortable to use.

I agree with this, but I feel it is a bit too black and white. It is a true statement when considering the extreme cases, but there has to be some balance between a designers' personal knowledge of life and target user findings. We can do exhaustive user studies, but we cannot study or test every aspect of a product. Nor can we study things that do not yet exists. These things come from a designers gut and personal experiences.

Without self-referential design we loose vision for new and exciting products. We can also loose focus on the products' direction. User research can help validate and align the concept, but value has to be given to the initial idea that came from one person that ran into a problem. The need to solve the problem for themselves is self-referential design at it's best and worst.

Cooper does no advocate against having a vision, but the problem is that these concepts get distorted into arguments against any designer decision. We need to have discussions around the value of pure ideas. There is a trick to pushing a vision through the process without getting it white-washed in countless meetings. At some point, the spark is lost and you have a cheap copy of your own concept. A recent article in Wired about Apple evil/genius ways of doing business. It talks about how the most companies try to level off the playing field, allowing everyone to chip in. At Apple it's more about one person dictating where the product needs to be and when it is done. So you have Steve Job's vision being executed by the worlds best peons, which is not a bad thing. It's not that they are not contributing, it's that everyone s driving towards a single goal that may only be clear to one person.

Does this mean that having a vision is self-referential design? It depends on the level that you take each definition, but in a sense, yes. A vision will drive you against user research findings. It puts the designer's gut feeling on a pedestal. And since backing up those feelings is harder to do than using user research, force is sometimes the vehicle that will get you there as is the case with Apple.

Humanizing Software

2008-03-25T21:40:00.000-07:00

A recent conversation at the IA MeetUp got me thinking about various traits that can humanize software. That is, behaviors that are coded to either wear, grow or learn with specific user. At one point, Apple's crayon color pricker would wear the crayon the more you used it. This in turn acted as a flag for your favorite color. Some splash screens, in iWork's Numbers for example, don't give you an option to "Don't show this again", but instead hides the screen after a certain number of launches. Additionally, if you don't open it for a while, it will show the screen again(I haven't verified this behavior yet). On the personalization front, most efforts stop at the "Recent Files" list in the File menu, or opening your last file when you open the app.

There seams to be more potential though. Cooper talks about software that learns with the user and adjust to match their use patterns. Web sites take a step towards this when they remember the username or country of choice. Are there opportunities for software to user not just the last tab you were on, but the most common one you use? Apple's spotlight search does a similar thing. Typing in a partial name will show the most common result, you have to type more to reach there rarely used files.

There is also the people behind the software, the ones that built it. We seam to prefer that software shows no sign of human intervention, software that just appeared magically in our computers. At my work, we recently had a issue where a very rare error pop up a dialog reading "Notify Paul". This seamed to be an embarrassment for the company and quite a mini panic. If there dialog would have read cryptic programmer code, I'm sure this would have been handled as a usually bug. So why are we so afraid that the developer or design peek through the software. In fashion, many brands bare the name of the designer. Fine restaurants also flaunt their chief's name. Even cars use their founders name as if to promote their entrepreneurship and passion. Its there an opportunity for software to spread this type of passion and brand loyalty. Apple comes to mind in the way Steve Job's passion and eye for design seams to resonate though each product they deliver.

Staying Current

2008-03-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

As I was rocking my baby to sleep, I realized that I need to keep myself current. By myself, I mean my online self. My current site has a resume and portfolio, both of which are a good 7 years old now. Despite it's age, it is already my 4th iteration on the portfolio site so I have already learned that managing it requires some intensive design work. Since I am not looking for new employment at the moment, I don't really want to dedicate that type of time on it.

The next conclusion I came to was that resumés and portfolios are a very difficult way to communicate who I am as a designer. Thought process and personal interests have a much better potential at communicating what I am about. Since both of these things happen on a day-to-day basis, I figure a blog might be the right vehicle. It might also help me document some of my findings for follow up or referencing. So here goes. I am trying a new approach of letting go of full design control over the page for the sake of built in rich functionality.

CA | Boom Modern Design Show

2008-03-14T22:23:00.000-07:00

I recently attended the CA|Boom design show as part of innovation day at my office. The great thing here is that you get to see more than materials in trade booths, you get to see them in use. The show consists of a convention booths and home tours. The homes range from the far out designs to more (financially) reasonable remodelings.

The mood is also very pleasant, there are people from a wide range of design disciplines. From contractors to car design studios looking for inspiration. One conversation I was having with a couple of ladies stuck with me. They were surprise that I and my software design team were there. I tried to explain that the process for designing software is vary similar, if not the same to architecture. In the end, you're just swapping out the materials. There were 3 design themes that caught my eye this time around that also tie back to common design patterns for interaction design.

Simplicity
Most of the homes felt very clean and simple. They did not have furniture pieces scattered throughout. Yet somehow magically, the elements were still there. Bathrooms still have storage, kitchens still have tons of cabinets and living rooms still have plenty of seating. What helps them achieve this magic is that many elements are blending into the walls and other architecture elements. For instance, the kitchen cabinets are the same color as the wall so that they don't take any visual hierarchy.

Non-Modal
Many spaces did not have a clear definition of where they started and ended. Some even peeked into other rooms. This creates the sensation that you are never fulling in one living mode. It's almost an acceptance to the fact that we all multitask our lives.

User Experience-Flow Another common pattern was how the user/visitor was taken through the home. Some started with a walk through the garden where colors, textures and materials preped you for what was to come. Once in the home, living rooms flow from to the dinning area and to the backyard.

Check out the photos.