A Question of Professional Ethics and Friends

Professionalism and ethics questions between two parties are fairly cut and dried. However, things can very quickly get murky when muliple parties are involved. Justice asked me to advise on a situation.

Justice works for DesignStudio and they have a large client account BigClient. Recently BigClient employed an in-house designer called Riley. Coincidentally Justice and Riley happen to be friends who both move in the same active social circles. One day Justice overhears the DesignStudio execs wondering why they are now getting less work out of BigClient than before. They are discussing the latest design outputs of BigClient and wondering where they are coming from. Justice knows from social conversation with Riley that Riley turned out better than BigClient expected so BigClient is giving more work to Riley instead of taking it to DesignStudio.

Should Justice tell the DesignStudio bosses or not? I would say no.

Telling DesignStudio bosses might win some brownie points and demonstrate loyalty towards DesignStudio. But Riley probably did not intend the information about extra work to go any further than the social group. If DesignStudio bosses acted on this information and spoke with BigClient then that might make things difficult between BigClient and Riley.

One could think that Riley should be more careful with what they say but add in a couple of drinks and people toasting each other's accomplishments for the week and it's easy to let things slip. Telling the DesignStudio bosses is acting in the employer's best interests but loyalty between friends should count too.

There needs to be some leeway and forgiveness between friends. Firstly it would be a sad world where friends could not privately discuss some aspects of their work out of fear of being taken advantage of. People need safe places to vent their excess emotions; happy or sad. Secondly this time Riley let slip some information, next time it could be Justice innocently doing the same. Friendship is not about one-foot-wrong and you get taken advantage of. A good friendship will outlast a job.

For these reasons, if I was Justice, I would not tell my bosses about Riley. DesignStudio's Account Managers will probably be told if they contact BigClient directly and ask.

(Scenario based on a true story, real names not used)

“Should I study graphic design?” Jobs, Career, Money

Having a suitable personality is only one part of the decision to study design. In these economic times (Economic Crisis during 2012) students thinking going to design school need more certainty that there are jobs, careers and money after graduation.

There are jobs in graphic design in the skills NZ employers want. These are; advanced web, mobile, and cross-media design. There are some jobs in other media and the competition for these jobs is fierce.

In 2012 Web design is no longer a specialist role – it is now part of the overall package expected of an entry level designer. Many first jobs expect a cross-media designer who can apply a consistent visual look across many mediums. Specialist web design roles require advanced HTML/CSS with at least one of the following; mobile design, front-end development (such a jQuery), serverside skills or CMS skinning.

The NZ Government Careers advice section now says:

Number of design graduates increasing, which has created more competition for jobs. Because of the high numbers of design graduates, competition for most entry-level design jobs is high. Employers often prefer to hire people who have specialist knowledge and/or experience with design programs. People wanting to enter design jobs may have work on a short-term or freelance basis, or volunteer their time, before they can get full-time work.

Why is website gloomy? Their definition of graphic design is narrow and outdated. Print is seen as key and web only gets the barest mention. This does not reflect the reality of the job market.

Now entry level jobs pay less, expect more and require new hires to be immediately profitable. There is no time or patience to train because employers can be choosy. A new entrant designer might earn just over minimum wage until they have proven themselves. Employers now use word of mouth to fill entry-level positions because they do not want to deal with the hundreds of unsuitable applicants who apply to any and every design job ad. How does this affect the decision where to study design?

Does the design school have specific training in the skills, mediums and technology that are currently employing. One red-flag phrase you might hear is: “Technology changes but good design does not”. This view ignores the rising role of the aesthetics of time and interaction and neglects how a viewer's relationship with a medium affects communication. Each medium has its own peculiarities that require specific skill masteries. Furthermore, that red-flag line would be unaffected if the students were trained in more employable mediums. It is simply no longer enough to hope an overall strong aesthetic sense will be enough without employable media skills. Consider also how the school is working with future technology. Graphic design and technology have always gone hand in hand and big changes are coming.

A good design school will have a strong visual culture. Most will claim they do but check the work by attending their graduate exhibitions. Look at the typography. Look for a variety of work in different styles. Look for consistency of design across mediums. The work should be aesthetically rounded and conceptually pushing boundaries.

How successful are graduates of the school jobs in design? While finding you a job is not the design school's role, the percentages of graduates transitioning from study to jobs in graphic design within six months of graduation can be telling. Beware of the super-star stories; “Famous Person studied here”, "we have graduates working for Famous Company". A few super-stars is not a good indicator of an excellent course because some people will just succeed despite their education. Instead look at what happens to the average graduate. How are the B students doing?

There are far easier ways to make a living than graphic design but it is a very rewarding field full of change and challenge.

Read more articles about graphic design careers.

WorkOut Poker Episode 2: Bet Sizing

Continuing on with first steps towards an ExerciseUI, this episode makes some improvements to existing gestures and adds gestures for bet sizing.

Some of the existing gestures needed a bit of fine tuning so that they would trigger more reliably and not trigger at unwanted times. The gesture for fold changed into three raises of the knees in either a left-right-left or right-left-right pattern. This is to allow some variation in the marching step used to fold. The previous left-right pattern just didn't quite feel right when playing.

In the last episode the Kinect would stop updating in FAAST. This was edited out of the video, but having to restart FAAST every seven or eight hands was tiresome. To anybody else having this problem, the answer is to run FAAST in administrator mode and to plug the Kinect into a USB that connects directly to the motherboard. Usually these will be on the back of the computer. It seems that the Kinect does not play nicely when going through intermediary USB hubs.

There are four betsizing actions for 33%, 50%, 75% and 100% of the pot. It was ticky getting the 50% and 75% actions to distinguish from each other. Doing cross hand above the shoulders move would trigger both the 50% and 75% pot size bets. I did manage to get something workable, though some care must be taken such as; squarely facing the Kinect camera, pausing after raising hands and pausing after hands are crossed. I hope to make this even more robust in future.

The increased stability meant I got in a 50min poker session. I ended this voluntarily - the software was rock solid this time. The activity level is still very low but it does beat sitting around. The next episode will experiment with multi-tabling to see if that improves the activity level to something more resembling a workout.

Episode List
Episode One: Basic Functionality
Episode Two: Bet Sizing
Episode Three: HUD

WorkOut Poker Episode 1: Basic Functionality

In a previous article "The ExerciseUI" I explored the idea that exercise should be something integrated into our daily workload. Technology is becoming cheaper and easier to use. Here are some baby steps.

I happen to really like Poker, so I made some custom gestures in the FAAST Kinect software for PokerStars. The three man gestures are: fold, check/call and bet.

Playing one table of Zoom poker creates a low tempo of activity. The most common poker action is folding so this is linked to the most common exercise: walking on the spot. The other actions require big hand movements with energy levels that correspond to the severity of the action.

This is early days yet; there is much more to do. While the activity levels are low, making this control more than one table will improve the tempo considerably. I also hope to estimate loads placed on different muscle groups to vary the gestures for actions to meet exercise goals. In this way we can work AND exercise.

Episode List
Episode One: Basic Functionality
Episode Two: Bet Sizing
Episode Three: HUD

PhD Progress Report to August 2012

It's been awhile since I have posted on this topic so here's what I've been doing with my PhD. I have since made several improvement to the semantic web browser described in my last PhD update and have been experimenting with techniques to reduce information overload.

Reminder: My research tries to reduce information overload when displaying data where the structure of that data is not known ahead of time.

There is a good body of research in linking determining how related text strings are by meaning (the linguistics meaning of semantics). The problem for me is that the speed is not fast enough for building displays at runtime in a web-browser. I instead went with lexical methods that use naïve rules to just compare characters in a label. There are well establish algorithms for this; Dice, Levenshtein to name a two. My implementation of Dice in Javascript is now in the WikiBook project called Algorithm Implementation

What is not immediately clear is how these algorithms should determine similarity when two triplets with labels resolved are compared. Assuming that the subject is equal/equivalent then just how does x->firstname:John relate to x-->surname:Xeedown? My most recent chapter took Dice and Levenshtein string similarity algorithms and then compared an averaging of the predicate and object similarities versus simply taking the higher of the predicate or object similarities. I conducted a study with twenty human participants and have analysed the data. The data is indicating that a naïve lexical algorithm can give acceptable (i.e. “usefully better than random”) results in line with what human participants would say about the same triplet pairs. This is encouraging.

In that study I also tested any algorithm for determining if triplets were redundant. This is used to subsume (not display) triplets when it is deemed that other triplets contain equivalent information. I already had built such an algorithm using intuition and voodoo – and the testing on humans indicates that the algorithm is usefully better than random at matching what humans also rank as redundant data. This is also encouraging.

Using the redundancy algorithms I now manage to avoid displaying quite a number of triplets. In some cases, using data from dbpedia, about 55% of triplets are simply not displayed because they contain redundant information or are turned into lists.

I also used the similarity algorithms (actually the inverse) as the distance metric in hierarchical clustering of triplets. The cluster hierarchy is then flattened which results in groups of related triplets. While not giving perfect results, for a “first naïve attempt” at grouping triplets the results appear to be better than random – though I have not tested this.

I am currently writing up research results and learning tons about statistics as I go. It is particularly interesting to read about the debates in statistics for multi-rater agreement in Likert scales. After trying to come to grips with so much math I eventually went with the old method of just just looking at the shape of the of raters histogram.

Going forward from here is the next chapter. This one leaps off from the “first attempt” approaches described above and attempts to find algorithms that learn the user's preferences for ordering, grouping and redundancy. Recommender systems research has some particularly interesting avenues to explore here. I currently invisage a conversational User Interface that allows the user to express their data display preferences (order, grouping, redundancy etc) via direct manipulation.

The performance of any algorithms found and adjusted will then be tested against human raters. Once that study is complete I then theoretically switch into “write up” mode for the thesis but will need the ocassional coding distraction of actually implementing the results of the studies into Eme. Things are looking promising.

Arduino LCD: Hunt the Wumpus Conversion

This week I recreated an old text game that I remember as a kid in the '80s: Hunt the Wumpus. The game is apparently from 1971. Basically you wander around a map trying not to fall into a pit trap or get eaten by the wumpus. You win by shooting the wumpus - but don't shoot yourself!

Code: http://eturnerx.com/files/arduino/003_wumpus_hunt_eturnerx_arduino_lcd.html

The map is a squashed Dodecahedron. Arranged into three rings. The inner and outer rings have five rooms while the ring between them has ten rooms. Every room links to exactly three others; back and forth on the current ring and another to change the ring. While the interconnections in the map never change, my version of the game scrambles the room names whenever a new map is generated (on power up or when selected at game over). A new map also randomises the starting positions of the player, the pit, the bats and the wumpus.

Shots can travel up to five rooms, but can only travel into rooms that you have already visited and or have been one room away from. It is possible to shoot yourself.

The implementation uses a state machine in the main loop. It's a pretty big one but things don't seem to get out of hand. That's why I love the state machine approach; it allows the programmer to think of the overall structure but then just concentrate on the single task they were working on. For a much simpler state machine check out the previous video.

Checkout the other games I have converted

Arduino LCD & State Machine Demo: Life & Poison counters

Continuing on from the last video; adding a hidden Poison counter is a good chance to build a simple switch()...case state machine.

The code: http://eturnerx.com/files/arduino/002_mtg_lifepoisoncounter_eturnerx_arduino_lcd.html
Last video: http://youtu.be/t6Y_GCoSUt4

A more comprehensive example of a state machine is in the next video; A Hunt the Wumpus game conversion.

Arduino & Freetronics LCD - Magic:The Gathering Life Counter

My very first YouTube video. This is my first real Arduino project. The next video in the sequence explores adding a hidden poison counter.

Link to code:
http://eturnerx.com/files/arduino/001_mtg_lifecounter_eturnerx_arduino_lcd.html

LCD Quick Start Guide
http://www.freetronics.com/pages/16x2-lcd-shield-quickstart-guide#.UBKMm7T9OK9

LCD Product Page
http://www.freetronics.com/products/lcd-keypad-shield#.UB4Q8LT9Oqc

Design Demons: The Critic Demon

An earlier post gave an overview of the design demons: Creative, Critic and Pragmatist. This post takes a closer look at the Critic Demon. A designer should also seek to develop ability in each of the each of their demons so that the overall team is stronger.

The Critic Demon is more strongly related with the left side of the brain. It is the analytic thinker that evaluates and judges the ideas flowing from the Creative demon. The Critic demon can be overly picky and will have impossibly high standards. When the Critic demon is rejecting all ideas then perhaps trade-offs should be made in the design. The Critic demon is most suited to the development and refinement stages of the design process. The Critic demon will cripple the Creative demon if the Critic demon has influence during the Concepting phases. The Critic demon's favourite word is: Perfection.

The problem with perfection is that there is never a single solution and design is often a trade off between many competing factors.

The underdeveloped Critic demon will be unable to properly evaluate the ideas of the Creative demon. The underdeveloped Critic will allow poorly resolved and aesthetically unpolished work to progress. A person with a weak critic demon and good execution skills will make a high volume of rough work. They might be successful through volume alone.

The strength of the Critic demon can be improved through education, reflection and critique (see the critique section). Critical analysis and logical thought is the life-force of this demon. Any study into understanding of design theory, history and case studies will permanently strengthen this demon. The act of reviewing and thinking about design work - especially honest criticism confirmed by trusted peers - is the Critic demon's gym workout.

The noisy Critic will distract the Creative demon and may war with the Pragmatist demon during the later stages of the project. The Critic will discourage the Creative demon by saying how each idea of stupid and this will stop the Creative demon from leaping from idea to idea. The pragmatist will want to finish a project but the Critic demon will insist that it is completed properly before it can be released - even if this means expending more resources than allowed for the project. This can delay the delivery of a project.

A noisy Critic demon can be taught to speak only in turn. Use good conceptualizing procedures where the Creative is free to talk for a set period of time before the Critic can judge the ideas. Standard brainstorming technique is to simply record all ideas without judgment or editing for a set period of time and only then allow for the Critic to speak. Focusing on the resources allowed for a project (esp. the deadline) gives the Pragmatist demon enough power to overcome the Critic. A beginner design can delegate the critic function to a trusted and more experienced peer. This should eventually train the critic to influence at the most useful times.

A strong Critic demon is important for a designer to produce professionally polished works that are executed well. Working to improve the Critic demon will give long term benefit to the designer.

Design Demons: The Creative Demon

An earlier post gave an overview of the design demons: Creative, Critic and Pragmatist. This post takes a closer look at the Creative Demon.

Each of the demons has their own levels of ability and influence. Ability is the strength of the demon in their specialisation. Influence is how likely the designer is to listen to demon. Each demon‘s talents are better suited for different parts of the design process therefore a designer should train themselves to minimise the influence of each demon and instead judge when their advice is most appropriate. A designer should also seek to develop strength in each of the each of their demons so that the overall team is stronger.

The Creative Demon is strongly related with the right side of the brain. It is the lateral thinker that comes up with the original ideas. Many of the Creative demons ideas are impractical, but one should not discourage the Creative demon from making them. When somebody has Designer's Block then their Creative demon is tired and out of ideas (see the Creativity section for help). The Creative Demon gets enthusiasm and rewards from coming up with many cool ideas. This makes the Creative demon very useful during the concept stage of the design process but a distracting influence during the development and production stages. However, the Creative demon can be useful during problem solving that can happen during production. The Creative demon's favourite word is Freedom.

The underdeveloped creative demon can come up with only derivative ideas occupying a limited range. A person with a underdeveloped creative demon but with strong execution skills will be very good within a small number of visual styles. This person will follow tutorials on the internet on how to produce some effect in popular software.

The strength of the Creative demon can be improved through stimulation and exposure to many different ideas. Inspiration is the life-force of this demon and it must be constantly replenished. Viewing the design works of others, visual art, music, culture and new experiences all provide inspirational fuel. Increasing the visual knowlege of the designer makes their creative demon permanently stronger. Also the act of creation in itself - especially when creating with others - is the equivalent of sending the Creative demon to the gym.

The noisy creative demon will continue to distract the designer way past the time concepting is completed. A noisy creative demon will always interupt with a completely different approach while the designer is trying to develop and produce an already selected idea. This can pull the designer off track and if they are seduced by their Creative demon's voice then they will always come with something new instead of finishing what they have started. This can delay the execution and delivery of a project.

A noisy creative demon can be taught to speak only in turn. Until the Creative demon knows to only speak in turn or when something is very important, the designer should move deliberately through each stage of the design process. At the end of each stage the designer should force themselves to make a decision that is not reversible without a second opinion from a more experienced colleague/friend. This should eventually train the Creative dragon to be noisy and quiet at the right times.

A strong creative demon is important for a designer to produce works that go beyond the mundane and ordinary. Working to improve the Creative demon will give long term benefit to the designer.

PokerStars on an iPad (including HUD)

Some people are curious as to how I play PokerStars on the iPad - complete with Holdem Manager HUD and TableNinja. The answer is easy: remote desktop. I use this setup to play from around my home, any place with wifi, and even over 3G (tethered to my cheapo Android phone). Sure there's the brilliant PokerStars app, but that doesn't have ZOOM, HUD or TableNinja.

Specifically: I use the LogMeIn Ignition product. Install the free LogMeIn client on the desktop computer, grab the LogMeIn Ignition app from the app store, set up an account and you're good to go. And it only costs a few dollars total to do. You can probably use other free/cheap remote desktop products (e.g. VNC, RDP) but I like LogMeIn Ignition because I don't have to worry about firewalls and other complications because it just works.

This technique should work for any Poker site.

TIP: On the iPad, once you're running Igntion, use the settings to force the connection to use 1024x768 screen resolution. That's the iPad1/iPad2's native resolutions so you'll have less problems with things being too small. Ignition will reset the desktop computer to it's original resolution when it ends the remote desktop session.

TIP: TableNinja works brilliantly in this setup. No keyboard? fine it still does default bet-sizing for you.

TIP: TableNinja and a wireless keyboard is where it's at. Connect the iPad to the big TV (or a projector), sit back on the couch with a beer and it's game on!

Multitabling does work - but due to the low screen-res you'll want to do this in stacked mode.

Result: ZOOM poker - anytime anywhere. Oh yes we can :)

If you like this article then perhaps you'll also like WorkOut Poker where I use a Kinect to play poker by waving my arms around.

The “Temp” Designer

Many industries already use skilled pools of temporary workers. This allows employers to temporarily fill capacity or skill needs. There are many labourer pools that allow construction companies to have a more flexible workforce where they can scale capability where needed. New Zealand schools have shared pools of relief teachers. The IT industry contracts specialist workers into their customer companies. There is a business opportunity here for design studios.

The default answer for a flexible workforce in graphic design is to employ freelancers. But freelancers can be a risky hit and miss affair for companies who are less able to judge the abilities of freelancers. One solution could be for studios to provide contracted “temp” designers to their client companies. Instead of contracting by project the contract covers a temp in-house designer for set hours who works at the client premises. The designer remains an employee of the studio (not the client).

This enables a client to add capability or skills to an existing in-house design team or to have the advantages of an in-house designer with few of the downsides. The general advantages of in-house designers include; set budget, low overheads per project and quicker communication.

There are benefits for the clients that are unique to the temp. The first is that the studio provides a guarantee to the skill and ability level of the placement designer. This eliminates the risky hit and miss of hiring an in-house designer or engaging directly with freelancers. The temporary designer contract can also include some oversight; the designer is mentored by senior members of the studio. This gives experienced insight without much additional cost.

There are other benefits: the temp designer can be in the client placement part-time so that they are working alongside other designers some of the time. This will help in keeping their creative and technical skills sharp. The temp designer maintains access to advice from specialist colleagues. The studio also takes care of cover during holidays.

Where a client has an on-going need for graphic design work but cannot necessarily afford a fulltime designer then a temp designer can fill this need. Because the temp designer is probably a fulltime employee of their studio then the churn common with part-time employees is less of a risk.

Small design jobs can accumulate within a client organisation. Unfortunately the overheads in setting these up as projects under the usual studio-client relationship can be prohibitive relative to the size of the job. A temp in-house designer has much lower per-project overheads so can clear away these accumulated jobs quickly.

The temp designer is another service that a design studio can offer their clients. When used in the right situations then it can provide good value to the client and simplify the studio-client relationship for collections of small jobs. Temp designers can become another tool for the studio to keep their clients happy.

Scope Creep is your Friend

We all have those clients – the ones that have a huge idea but only a tiny budget. It is impossible to deliver on their grand vision but maybe you can help them with a first step. And then there is the “just had a cool idea” client who creates scope creep.

As design projects get larger with more deliverables and much more coding scope creep becomes a real issue. The default answer is to contract tightly so scope creep is prohibited. But without some scope creep the project risks becoming irrelevant to the client. The unhappy client then might look elsewhere for the next job.

Both these clients can be dealt with in much the same way. Project management techniques currently being explored in software development (Agile and Lean) have direct parallels to design projects. We can start with some fuzzy overall goals and then iterate towards them learning as we go. This means that what was once evil scope creep is now considered a vital part of thinking and learning about the needs of the project.

Some of the commercial designers I have spoken to recently have started doing something similar though the iteration was more driven by a sales need to generate more income from previous customers. The subtle shift in iterative design projects is to treat every customer as a relationship where you are both journeying together. Each small project is another step closer to the goal.

The sales script goes like this: Keep selling the customer on their enthusiasm for their big idea. Talk universe conquering stuff. Then get the client talking about a small first step. Make it something of real value but requiring little risk/effort by either side. Fit within the tiny budget.

Completing that first step project is like dating. Each party gets to see if things with the other will work out without having wasted too much energy. There is an implied expectation that further work will arise but client or designer are both free to depart at this point. That is the sales advantage of this approach – the client is already thinking about the next small job to do with your design company.

After that first step hold a "retrospective"/reflection both within the design studio and with the client. Were their processes that could be improved? What worked well? What could be improved? What did we learn from this project? What are the new ideas we have for the next small project? – see no longer evil scope creep but friendly extra business.

As small tasks are completed (and presumably you’ve been paid) momentum and energy begin to build around the project. Listen to the client and together agree on “next steps” that will bring value to their business.

For the free-lancer a few tasks will tell you if the client is worth building a relationship with. If the client has complex needs then consider offering to go on retainer so that they (and you) have greater control over the budget.

Working in small iterative projects with retrospection before quickly iterating helps to build stronger relationships and should result in projects that are more relevant. Treating scope creep as a positive thing will eliminate a source of negativity in the client-designer relationship. Scope creep is then your friend because it brings repeat business to you.

Responsive Web Design: Design Theory's Experimental Frontier

Some questions to ponder while reading:

• How does our understanding of grids change if the page size is no longer fixed?
• How does our understanding of typographic layout change if column sizes are no longer fixed?
• How does our understanding of visual hierarchy change if layouts are no longer fixed?

Important advances in simplifying the understanding of aesthetic formalism have often come about by quantifying design in mathematical terms. From the Greek golden section, to Müller-Brockmann's grids, the photographer's rule of thirds, the typographic scale, W3C colour contrast algorithms and Donald Knuth's work in computer typesetting - these all distil aesthetic ideas into formulas.

Traditionally the output mediums were of limited fixed sizes and so a sensible designer could redesign for a different size without much needed to quantify layout in response to weird output sizes. A few general rules of thumb and a good sense of aesthetics was all that was necessary.

Things have changed; Websites are now displayed on a wide variety of devices with different screen sizes and proportions. It used to be that a designer would simply ignore anything but desktop or design a second site for mobile. For over fifteen years web designers have been able to largely ignore increasing desktop screen-resolution by fixing their designs at a certain size within the browser window - effectively ignoring the live resizing of browser windows. This meant no difficult decisions regarding text-line lengths and image sizes relative to column sizes because this could all be fixed at design time. But as the number of devices increase (and thus variety of screen size) many web designers are realising that they should design responsively.

The gateway drug for responsive web design is the flexible grid. Designers are forced to think in terms of ratios (expressed in percentages) instead of pixels. Further to this as the web browser window size is moved into previously nonsensical proportions, the responsive web designer is faced with unique challenges to preserve "design integrity". Solving these challenges via flexible grids, media queries, typographic hacks and even changes to the visual hierarchy are forcing designers to express these visual relationships in code.

Responsive web design at its highest craft is about flexing within specified constraints then having alternative plans when those constraints are violated. How narrow can the browser window get before a column is dropped? How small can the logo go? How wide can a line of text be? All these decisions made by the responsive web designer and codified in CSS and JavaScript provide a living source of data for new understandings in layout and proportion.

Web designers are pragmatic people and don't like doing things twice. So as the body of aesthetic approaches in responsive web design grows many of these heuristics are becoming encoded into behaviours in JavaScript frameworks that are freely shared. Here, JavaScript and CSS code provide good documentation of the ratios and formulas at work. So while web designers pragmatically solve the problems of non-constant screen sizes, their experimentation leads to a new way to look at layout, proportion and hierarchy and this will lead to a greater understanding of mathematics of layout aesthetics.

Designer Work Style.

Nearly 20 years ago I was in a management paper and learned that workers exist on a continuum between the consistent 9-5er and the inconsistent burst worker. It is no surprise that creatives are burst workers. A person whose natural tendency is to work in bursts but who has learned to fit into the 9-5 paradigm will have significant swings in productivity and motivation during the workday. It's almost axiomatic that the more creative a person the less consistent they are.

Designers rise to the challenge of completing deadlines but can become easily exhausted. Much of our training of designers instils into them the primacy of the deadline above all else and this reinforces the burst personality. For the industry this is helpful in that it helps "get projects out the door" and the downtime is necessary for rest, recovery and reflection. The danger is that overwork is much more difficult to detect and burnout is a real risk.

Burst work is fine when project are of generally short duration (i.e. not months or years) and deadlines are not daily. But as our deadlines extend (larger projects particularly web and development) then burst working is less desirable. IT has the "deathmarch project" where the deadline is far away but everybody is pushed into overwork to make it and larger design projects carry the same risks.

My own experience is that there are very few designers who find the consistency of 9-5 easy who are also great visual creatives. The consistent 9-5ers are normally competent and reliable but lack that creative spark or flair. They may be great technically and/or quite good visually but they're likely never going to win a creative award.

Don't knock them because their consistent workers are an important part of a design team. Not only do they handle the routine jobs more accurately and with less frustration, they also provide a yardstick of "normalcy" to their peers. They remind people that families are waiting, the sun goes up and down and the tides go in and out. They are living examples that despite our obsessive tendencies towards our projects and deadlines that there are more important things.

Burst work could be why we place so much emphasis on professionalism - particularly punctuality and attendance. Just to try and counter-act the tendency towards relying on burst work instead of proper planning. Perhaps this is the Confucian balance to the natural tendency of designers. The Confucian education principle here is that education often involves strategies for handling imbalanced tendencies. "Be more aggressive" a passive person and "Be more passive" to an aggressive person. In this aspect design is pragmatic: we need to work together at overlapping times in a team and we should do that when our clients are active (i.e. the working day). It helps our socialisation to even loosely fit a working pattern common in our culture.

There is a danger: if we do successfully turn these normally naturally burst workers into consistent 9-5ers then we may kill what it is that gives them the creative spark. Mindless consistency is the enemy of creativity. Therefore a mixed burst-consistent approach might provide a compromise; the creative bursters are allowed an equivalent but more irregular schedule provided they meet deadlines.

This is just another of those things that makes design hard: the right amounts of consistency and burst, unbounded creativity and creative pragmatism, obssessiveness but with perspective maintained. And this provides important decisions for employers building a team: it's often not just about the skill set, but how their work-style fits the work you do.

My PhD: The Simple Version

I have been struggling to come up with a simple way to explain my PhD but I think I have it.

My research tries to reduce information overload when displaying data where the structure of that data is not known ahead of time.

This is a particular problem for the Semantic Web because of the Innumerable Corpus property. That is: there is an innumerable amount of data expressed using innumerable ontologies (structures). This research will help in the construction of a general purpose semantic web browser.

What is the scale of the problem? If an ontology is well known then a human can hand-craft a display for that ontology but that display is fragile and fixed. Fragile meaning that it will only work for that one ontology and will not display data that only partially uses the ontology (and what is data is used from multiple ontologies?). A fixed display will not necessarily suit the needs of all users.

Where ontological enrichment research expands the amount of data available about a subject, my research reduces data to the minimally most useful set compared to what is known about user goals. My research then attempts to select displays that reduce information overload by taking into account user needs.

I currently (Feb 2012) have a beta semantic web browser (Eme) suitable for continued experimentation. I am currently working on algorithms to make intelligent decisions for the display by discovering how data triplets are related.

Are triplets related somehow? completely independant? members of the same set/list? redundant equivalents? or a related alternative? Knowing this allows us to make intelligent decisions about the display; related triplets can be grouped together, members of a set can be displayed as a list, redundant triplets can be eliminated and alternative need only one of the alternatives displayed.

Best time to join cash tables

On PokerStars I've noticed a little bit of a trend on the lower limit tables. These limits are just full of regulars with 11/8 stats that are annoying to play against when there are too many on the table. Ideally you want tables with at least two fish that you can exploit. Here's my tip:

Join tables in the five minutes before the half hour or the whole hour.

Why does this work? Well it turns out the people with these stats are grinders. They play a fairly predictable game over a large number of tables. They also tend to play to for a set length of time which incidentally tends to end on the half or whole hour. These are the times when seats might open up on tables with the fish. With so many seats opening up it might even attract a few new fish to your tables.

Say Hello to Your Design Demons

Based upon more than a decade in graphic design education I have a working theory called “Design demons” to explain the psychology behind the design process. In a previous post I looked at how design schools grades matched particular designers. Design demons more specifically looks at how the personality of the designer relates to the design process and therefore acts as a basis for giving individualised advice for designers to develop themselves.

There are three primary demons in the designer’s mind that each battle for attention. These are the Creative, the Critic and the Pragmatist. The label demon was chosen because these are powerful forces that can both help and overwhelm. Each demon has a different level of loudness, ability and affinity for a stage of the design process.

The Creative demon is the divergent thinker. Full of enthusiasm, curiosity and ideas this demon always has a positive attitude: “Wouldn’t it be cool if .... “ The Creative demon is the wellspring of new ideas. The Creative demon is at their best during the early “Concepting” stages of the design process though the Creative demon can have a role to play in later stages for problem solving. However, if the Creative demon is always coming up with new ideas then the project will neither be polished nor finished on time.

The Critic demon evaluates ideas and judges them. A strong Critic demon enables the designer to choose their best concepts and refine them further. The Critic demon decides when an idea is good enough to pursue further. Therefore the Critic demon relates to the Development and Refinement stages of the design process. An overly negative Critic demon will trap a designer into constantly going back to the drawing board. A poorly developed critic is unable to make decisions.

The Pragmatist demon is the taskmaster. This demon watches the clock, the budget, the ability of the designer and other available resources. The demon tells the Critic demon to stop being so picky and to move on because the deadline is looming. A weak Pragmatist demon will miss milestones. An overly safe Pragmatist demon will only allow easy to produce, safe ideas to progress. The Pragmatist is most useful in the feasibility and production stages of the design process.

Developing ability in each demon is part of a good design education. For beginning designers they will learn to listen to each demon in turn as they progress through the design process. More experienced designers can allow all the demons to speak at once.

Example of Design Demons 1: Often highly creative people struggle in graphic design programs because their Critic demon is too weak to rank concepts and the Pragmatist demon is not strong enough to keep an eye on the clock. Right up to the last minute their loud Creative demon will be feeding them with crazy off-the-wall and impractical ideas. These people can become successful designers by reigning in the Creative demon and allowing the other demons room to develop.

Example of Design Demons 2: Sometimes a designer can get stuck in a loop where the Creative demon cannot come up with anything to satisfy the Critic demon. This is either a sign that the Critic demon is too loud and the Pragmatist demon needs to make the Critic demon choose something that is “good enough”. Or, it could be a sign that the designer needs additional help in developing ability in the Creative demon.

My hope is that thinking in terms of Design Demons helps educating designers and gives a framework for designers to self-evaluate their strengths.

Future Design Careers: Getting started in Infographics

This article follows up the post on Information Visualization Design careers with some practical tips to get started. Some of you gave feedback that this was an area of design that interested you and wanted to know how to get started.

Like any area of design a portfolio is everything. Start by building up a infographic pieces and add these to the general design portfolio. Use some publically available statistics on an interesting topic – perhaps something that is currently in the news. Approach a charity and pitch to do an info graphic for them pro bono. Once the portfolio contains a few infographic pieces then the designer can add infographic to their list of skills.

At present there are few jobs that are infographic only positions. Most will be design jobs where you may get the opportunity for infographic work. For now, an in-house designer in a progressive communications department probably has more opportunity to create infographics than a studio designer. An in-house designer could approach the Information System department an offer to work with them to produce infographics.

While infographics will be a big part of our future, the current state of affairs means that infographic designers must create opportunities for themselves by selling the idea of infographics to their clients. Current clients just do not understand what an infographic is or how it can be useful in decision making.

Current infographics are flat 2d pieces that are generally posters. There is opportunity to produce data visualizations that are in other formats like on web sites or large displays. However these will require some coding ability on the part of the designer. A designer who already has ability to code could utilize their skills to produce live data visualization graphics.

Finally, aspiring infographic designers should participate in the growing infographic community in order to stay up with latest trends, get inspiration and build an understanding of what good infographics are. Some website links follow.

• http://infosthetics.com
• http://www.coolinfographics.com
• http://submitinfographics.com
• http://thedailywh.at/tag/infographic
• http://infographicworld.com

Future Design Software: The ExerciseUI

Recent research (see Men’s Health, NPR & NYTimes) has shown that sedentary office jobs, like those of designers, shorten lives, increase heart disease and increase weight. Since the research is conclusive and given the numbers of sedentary computer users about to enter their 50’s in the next decade the risk of Health and Safety lawsuits for employers increases. Designers are particularly at risk due to the addition of deadline hyper-focus and overstress. Sedentary jobs could become the next biggest wave of health lawsuits since the OOS/RSI lawsuits of the 1990s. If this happens then work place computer usage will need to change to be less sedentary.

At first employers will provide subsidized gym memberships, but these will be of limited use because gym attendance needs extra hours in the day. Employers will mandate exercise breaks but stressed users will not take these when under deadline pressure. The solution will be to include more movement in the actual everyday usage of computers.

There already is a growing awareness of the fitness potential of gesture based user interfaces. Nintendo already sell exercise related games that are entirely gesture based under the Wii Fit name. PlayStation Move and Xbox Kinect are Sony's and Microsoft’s answers to gesture based gaming. Since the exercise potential of gestural user interfaces is obvious then it will make sense to build exercise into the office computer user interfaces of the future. Imagine controlling your computer and getting a work-out at the same time. An ExerciseUI is the cross over between gestural user interfaces and physical fitness.

Since we already have widely available consumer gestural technology then the only barrier to adoption is social and cultural.

Widespread adoption of ExerciseUIs will cause gym memberships to fall. However, personal trainers can find new roles on user interface design teams where they will consult on safe and good mixtures of movement for users. Since exercise is a very individualized thing, offices will have consultant personal trainers who will work with users to customize their ExerciseUIs for their health and ability needs.

At first people will complain about the extra physical effort needed to drive the ExerciseUI but their fitness levels will gradually increase. Short-term productivity may decrease compared to current mouse GUIs but longer term productivity and morale should increase for many tasks. The reason is that more exercise will improve physical health, mental health and give happy endorphin boosts.

During periods of deadline stress the extra physical movements and speed to drive the computer faster will help burn off deadly overstress hormones. Stressful periods that overwork the body into anaerobic stiffness will physically force users to rest between tasks. This will help them mentally balance stressful work better as they learn to take breaks when their body forces them and rest their brains.

Workplaces will need to change dress codes to allow for more exercise friendly clothing. Showering facilities will also be needed. ExerciseUIs will also require a bit more space per user compared to current office cubicles.

Provided ExerciseUIs give good productivity for common office computing tasks then there are few downsides and many benefits to adopting them. Lawsuit pressure might force this to occur sooner rather than later.

(Read more articles in the Future Design Software series.)
(Read about the first ExerciseUI project: WorkOut Poker Episode 1