The PROTECT IP Act: What You Need to Know

If you’re a regular reader, you know that the Think Blog is generally where we expound on ideas that are impacting our lives as Experience Designers. For this post, though, I’d like to take a step back and talk about something that is going to impact your life. End of sentence. No qualifier. This will impact your life.

Unless you’re an über geek of the political or technical variety, you probably haven’t heard of the PROTECT IP Act currently making it’s way through Congress (or its prior, defeated, incarnation COICA). The intent of this bill is to give the US government (and private parties) new powers to halt online infringements of intellectual property, especially in regards to domains registered outside the US. No problems so far, right?

The issue is how these new powers are described, enacted, and enforced.

"Just what do you think you're doing, Brad?"

Quickly, let’s talk about why this applies only to domains registered outside the US. Simply, there is ample legislation protecting IP from infringements from within our borders. Between the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 and the Department of Homeland Security’s recent seizure of “offending” domains (an act of questionable legality, some would say), there are plenty of tools for IP holders to prosecute alleged violations of their rights within the US. That same action becomes difficult when there is no US registrant of the domain in question.

The solution posed by PROTECT IP (and previously COICA) is to wipe those allegedly offending domain names from the collective indexes of any “domain name system server” (we don’t need to get into it here, but the vague nature of this definition is troubling by itself), thus rendering the site effectively non-existent…unless you happen to know its IP address…or they change domain names…or use non-filtered DNS servers…etc. As many have shown, this would encourage a huge fracturing of the DNS system which essentially ensures that when I type “www.thinkbrownstone.com”, my browser knows at what 10-digit IP address TBI’s website lives. Needless to say, this approach has some faults.

To better illustrate, here’s an example:

I’m a law-abiding Swede with a fantastic idea for a new website that will allow people to post images, videos, and other kinds of media celebrating the culinary masterpiece that is the pancake (also accepted: crêpes, pfannkuchen, pannenkoeken, palacinka, and others). We’ll call it Pancakr. Let’s assume that my site begins to take off and I manage to get VC funding, despite the lawyers’ newfound trepidation of running afoul of PROTECT IP. Pancakr goes viral and everyone is posting pics of their latest quick-bread conquest. Unfortunately, many of the pics from the US feature PancakePuss, a trademarked character of the ISLOP restaurant chain. I should also mention that because Pancakr has gone so insanely viral, sites are popping up all over the Web with Pancakr related (and unlicensed) merch. PancakePuss is particularly popular, especially on t-shirts.

ISLOP is unhappy to be missing out on the royalties, but because all this activity is being done by non-US actors, the PROTECT IP Act is their only viable option. The Justice Department orders all domain name servers, ISPs, search engines, and social networks to stop redirecting to a host of sites accused of violating ISLOP’s IP. Pancakr is on that list, despite the fact that its biggest “crime” was providing the ability for people to link to their favorite pancake photos. Two years pass as we litigate our way through the judicial system, finally winning reinstatement in the DNS catalogue. Not that it matters at this point. Honestly, the investors would have been smart to drop the case and just move on to the next big thing. Two months, two years, two hundred years…they’re all the same when you’re vying for a sliver of the 21st Century attention-span. Oh, and those PancakePuss t-shirts? They’re still selling like hotcakes all over the web.

OK…a bit silly…greatly over-simplified…but you get the point. Wide nets, presumption of guilt, half-baked solutions built on tenuous technical knowledge, and a blatant disregard for free speech make for sloppy, ineffective, and downright dangerous law.

To clarify even further, here’s why this is going to impact you (assuming you use the Internet or participate in 21st Century Society).

• This is a Ready, Fire, Aim approach. Domains would be guilty until proven innocent.
• It makes linking to material that may be copyrighted (see point #1 above) cause enough for shuttering. Do you like YouTube? eBay? Flickr? Imagine them getting funding in their nascent years under this Act. Goodbye innovation.
• The Internet, to date, has been revolutionary in that it is truly world-wide and without borders. PROTECT IP would end this by creating a “US-approved” subset of the Internet. One can easily see how this Balkanization would quickly spread and the damage it would cause.
• As a society, we value creativity and try to protect it. However misdirected PROTECT IP is, that is the right and good intent that I believe Senator Leahy is trying to uphold with his bill. There are other societies who value conformity and obedience. Where is our moral credibility to denounce their Internet restrictions when we do the same?

You could (and perhaps should, given it’s potential impact) spend hours reading up on PROTECT IP. I similarly could spend many more hours writing about it. Let’s make a deal instead. If you still have questions, read the links I’ve included in this post. If you  want more, just search “PROTECT IP”. Once you’re satisfied, contact your Representative and Senator and tell them what you think (pro or con). Ideally, write them a real paper letter or give them a call (email is still kind of a second-class citizen in terms of impact). If the Internet has taught us anything, it’s that a lot of people taking very small actions can have a huge impact. Let’s get all Groupon up on this thing!

I’m sending letters to my Congressmen today. Won’t you?
(seriously…do it…they will hear you)

Find your Representative: http://www.house.gov/representatives/

Find your Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

P.S. Big thanks to Leo Laporte and his TWiT podcast for turning me onto this issue!

CDC’s Zombie Apocalypse Goes Viral

It’s been a busy week at Think Brownstone and I’ve been trying to post something on the Think Blog. Although I have a backlog of topics to get to, every time I put hands to keyboard I had a bout of writer’s block…  until Brad mentioned the odd juxtaposition of the upcoming Rapture and the CDC’s blog post on preparing for a Zombie Apocalypse May 16th.

Since the original publication on the 16th, the CDC’s article has been going viral at a slow, lurching pace. It finally landed on the front page of CNN at 2:09 May 19th. Coincidentally, most scientists agree that’s about the same amount of time it would take the Solanum Virus to overtake the US Eastern Seaboard.

Braaaaaiiiinnnnsssstorming

I’m confident that the CDC’s blog post and the Rapture events are purely coincidental, but I wanted to take a moment to commend the CDC’s courage in publishing this story. The article is actually a well thought-out piece that uses the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for emergency preparedness. As it turns out, most of what you need to do to prepare for a zombie attack is similar to what you would be doing if there were a hurricane or tornado warning.

If I had to guess how this article was approved for publication, I’d imagine some government stuffed shirt raised concern that this serious topic deserves a serious treatment. Turns out, the government has tried that approach before with mixed results. One or two wise folks in the room pointed out that the goal of the article was to raise awareness. What better way to raise awareness than to get attention with a tongue-in-cheek title and introduction?

Perhaps this mini-campaign came out of a technique we use at Think Brownstone when a team is having trouble generating new ideas: Reverse Brainstorming. In a reverse braaaiiinnnnssss storming session, the participants come up with ideas that would prevent them from achieving a goal or that would cause their problem state. Once you have a good list, brainstorm ways to prevent those things from happening. Poof – you now have a list of things to help achieve your original goal. It’s the reverse-reverse psychology of brainstorming methods and, among other things, it can help get you out of a rut.

The CDC only gets one chance to do something like this before it starts to look schlocky, and I think they aced it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to buy some duct tape, canned beans, a baseball bat, and some extra shotgun shells (’cause you know, rule #2 and all).

Design Thinking: Don’t Call It A Comeback

Like so many other things in the blogosphere, Design Thinking is apparently dead. That is, if you agree with Bruce Nussbaum, the once eloquent champion of Design Thinking who recently declared that it was a failed experiment and that it’s time to move on. Apparently, he’s not alone. A growing number of critics are joining the chorus – some have gone so far as to say that extolling the virtues of design thinking is at best misguided and at worst, likely to inflict dangerous harm.

As the argument goes, Design Thinking was envisioned to inject creativity into the hyper-analytical, profit-driven processes that hamper organizational change and innovation. As it evolved over the last decade, it was commoditized to appeal to business culture and eventually transformed into a linear, methodical, risk-averse Process (with a capital P). It’s suggested that this Process stifles, not cultivates, the experimental, precarious, and often disorderly activities that fuel innovation.

Available at your local tattoo shop. You might want to get it only as a stick-on.

Others think that business never bought into the message. Helen Walters notes that there was never really a consensus on the definition of Design Thinking or agreement as to how it should be implemented. Purported successes were either elevated as the unrivaled accomplishments of the elite few who “got it” or degraded as merely incremental changes that would never amount to widespread organizational transformation.

Still others argue that Design Thinking was doomed from the start. It will never produce the results we were hoping for because design considerations will always be an afterthought, long after strategic decisions about a product or service have been established. Business is driven by numbers and expediency, not creative chaos. Therefore, designers should just be resigned to their fate as “aesthetic window dressers.”

Ironically, Nussbuam’s post included a video in which he asked Tim Brown from IDEO if, within this period of great turmoil, design should be considered a social movement. Brown replied that the concept of design as a social movement is not new but what may make it so is the combination of Design Thinking plus social networking sites, collaborative environments and all of the other things that are allowing so many more people to create and/or influence design outcomes. It’s through what he calls “the democratization of design,” that design has the potential to solve major social issues.

On the one hand, Design Thinking has no sustainable value but on the other hand it has the potential to transform our world? I don’t get it. It’s not time to move on. It’s time to refocus. The best place to start is to establish a consensus on the guiding principles of Design Thinking… a credo of sorts. Here are some initial thoughts to jumpstart the conversation:

Design Thinking Thrives On Passion For Purpose

Design Thinking is inspired by an unwavering commitment to improve the human experience. We believe that meeting this challenge improves quality of life for all of us, and we’re committed to doing it one company, one process, and one outcome at a time. We help our clients envision and enact solutions within the context of what’s important to both the users and business. Organizational politics, unrealistic deadlines and arbitrary constraints may deter our progress but we’re committed to fighting the good fight to rid the world of frustrating experiences from the most endemic and systemic to the most mundane and minute. We’re okay with incremental change as long as it’s constant.

Design Thinkers Work With Their Clients, Not For Them

We share a deep appreciation for, and commitment to, a holistic view of design – infused with experiential wisdom and a process (yes, a process, but with a small “p” because it’s open and flexible) that enables us to tackle complex business problems, with our clients. We don’t say to our clients, “okay…now we’re going to go off for a few weeks, do some design thinking, and come back with an idea that’ll make you more innovative.” We simply guide them to think in a different way – to understand the benefits of an iterative and interactive process. We work collectively to achieve a common understanding of the problem and opportunities before us, to observe and learn from those who will be experiencing our outcomes, and ride the ebb and flow of the creative process recognizing that the true innovation is never constrained by the status quo.

Design Thinking is Contextual

Design Thinking is an inclusive process that leverages the collective knowledge and experiences of those who are most impacted by its outcomes, but it must also address the overarching needs of the business. We have to come to terms with the fact that our clients are not going to pursue novel solutions without the promise that they will contribute to the bottom line. If we want to ensure that design considerations are at the forefront of strategic discussions, we have to be diligent about framing design outcomes within the context of market opportunity. In a sense we have to be “a creative group with business minds.” To this end, we must commit to an ongoing dialogue by sharing our stories of success and failure and learning from each other’s experiences rather than simply espousing the idea that only a select few can actually get it right.

What do you think? If you believe that it’s way too early to declare that Design Thinking is a failed experiment, what inspires you to stay focused?

Taking The Design Conversation Beyond Designers

My dad was a teacher (industrial arts, performing arts, special education), a general contractor, a motorcycle enthusiast, a trumpet player, a furniture maker, a lethal racquetball player, a cigar aficionado, and a whole host of other things. On paper that seems like the resume of a pretty well rounded individual – and he certainly was. But what is very interesting in retrospect is how he wasn’t any of these things in isolation. His knowledge of all of these little aspects of life informed decisions he made elsewhere, resulting in novel approaches to challenges that often suffered from a tradition of “having always been done that way.”

This broad and general interest in, well…everything…and his ability to distill concepts and apply them elsewhere, was one of the reasons why he was very often successful when diving deeper for projects within his “professions.” I believe that one of the best things you can be as a designer is open-minded, wide-eyed, and eager to learn how and why people do things they do – whether it’s why carpenters use those seemingly antiquated flat pencils (1), why the sommelier hands you the cork after opening a bottle of wine (2), or why a semicolon, dash, and closed parenthesis has become widely recognized a winking smiley face (3).

ANSWER KEY!

1. Because they don’t roll away – not to mention that they’re more durable for throwing them in with a bunch of other tools, have better grip, can draw thin or thick lines depending on how they’re rotated, and are tough enough to mark up concrete and stone.
2. Because feeling a cork to determine how cool, wet, dry, hard or soft it is can tell you a lot about whether the wine has been properly stored – it’s not to smell it.
3. Because of the “Law of Prägnanz” – the tendency of humans to interpret ambiguous images as simple and complete versus complex and incomplete.

Sometimes the various design circles we travel in can feel pretty insular. We tend to see the same folks showing up repeatedly as speakers and attendees at conferences, tend to all react to and discuss the next big idea (or internet meme) as a community, and tend to put our thoughts and ideas out there knowing that the people swimming in the lanes closest to us are those most likely to read and comment on them.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, and it’s great to have a community of colleagues to kick things around with…but perhaps obviously, the best designs often come from being inspired by and interacting with folks who don’t populate our beaten paths (like the inspiration sparked by the whole TED model, for instance).

As designers at Think Brownstone, it’s a measure of success for us to have our ideas and conversations ripple out beyond our peers. We’re starting to see evidence of that as we’ve recently had comments on the Think Blog from academics, musicians, consumers, and others – as a design community, this kind of interaction will only make us stronger and more creative.

I’ll close with one of those pearls of wisdom from my dad that was delivered in a typically off-handed and matter-of-fact way, but that I’ve never forgotten. One hot summer day when I was a kid, as the garbage truck came lumbering down the street, my dad dropped what he was doing and said “hey, come help me grab some beers out of the fridge” (yes, you read that right – beers). When the truck pulled up, my dad handed a generous amount of cans to the genuinely surprised and grateful men. As it rolled away I asked him why he did that…

“Everyone you meet in life, whether it’s the guy picking up your garbage, the guy signing your paycheck, or the guy begging you for change, knows how to do a thousand things you don’t know how to do. Aside from just being nice to people because it’s a good way to be, you can learn a shitload from them.” – Bill Starke

The Slide That Haunts & Inspires Me

I recently attended the IA Summit in Denver, where I attended many thought-provoking sessions, led by great speakers with interesting perspectives on all things Information Architecture. (A collection of links to decks and info about most of the sessions can be found here.)

While I took many ideas, lessons, and inspiration away from the experience, there was one slide that has really stuck with me since the Summit.

The slide appeared in Jared Spool’s talk about “The Most Valuable UX Person in the World”. He described the skills and areas of expertise that this person would possess, and showed a slide listing those skills that looked like this:

Copyright Jared Spool - From "The Best Is The Enemy Of The Good"

Several things really struck me about this slide.

First, I never paused to think about all of the qualities that make for a great Experience Designer, but wow – that slide illustrates the impressive breadth of skills that we as UX Professionals practice and refine on a regular basis. Of course, most of us specialize in one or two areas, but we should all strive to hone our skills across the board, supplementing and complementing the expertise of our team. (By the way, if you feel that you possess many of these skills and knowledge areas, contact us – we’re always on the lookout for more of those Most Valuable UX Persons to join our team).

The second thing that struck me about this slide is that we are in such an exciting field: one that incorporates many different disciplines, one where we can learn from our peers who have different specialties than we do, and one with so much possibility for fun and interesting work.

The final and most poignant take-away from this slide was how closely the items on the slide parallel my area of focus: add the word “Learning” above “Experience Design” and you can see almost exactly what is required to create great learning experiences (I’d add Adult Learning Theory and Cognitive Science to the slide, not just for LXD, but for XD as well). This is what many Instructional Design practitioners are missing: the perspective of all these skills and knowledge areas that can inform learning strategy, process, and deliverables.

Jared went on to mention three “specialty collections” in our field: Mobile Design, Service Design, and Content Strategy in his talk. At Think Brownstone, we’re adding Learning Experience Design to the list.

Thanks for the inspiration, IA Summit!

Twitter’s API Change: Stifling Innovation for Consistency?

Back on March 11, Twitter announced that they would be modifying their API Terms of Service in such a way so as to discourage 3rd party Twitter clients in favor of their official client (if you’re interested in specifically how they changed it, check this out).

If I may be so bold as to assume your Legalese is as bad as mine, let’s boil this down to the key point: people are upset that Twitter is placing a previously non-existent restriction on third parties from creating a viable business replicating (or improving upon) the “original” method of displaying and creating Tweets.

Now let’s be clear, Twitter is perfectly within their rights to do this. There’s nothing that says they have to open up their API to anyone for anything, so on one hand any access they grant is icing on the 140-character cake. However, we also can’t forget the standard that Twitter set for itself by being so open from the get-go and the benefit they derived from that openness. It’s users who proposed the hashtag and original (not the new-ish) retweet conventions. It’s the near-universal availability of Twitter clients for all shapes and sizes that have allowed them to grow by almost a 100 million Tweets DAILY since last year.

Why is this so interesting to us at Think Brownstone? Twitter’s main argument for this more restrictive model is user experience. Read their official explanation for more detail, but the gist is that not everyone is implementing things consistently and that’s creating confusion for Twitter users. (As an aside, if you’re in the User Experience field, this is fantastic news…companies with multi-billion-dollar valuations are willing to risk ostracizing whole swaths of their most loyal users and supporters just to ensure a consistent user experience). This makes sense until you read later on (in the same official post) that “90% of active Twitter users use official Twitter apps” and that “the top five ways that people access Twitter are official Twitter apps….”

So we’re brought back to the classic walled-garden vs. open-source argument so readily apparent in the ongoing iOS vs. Android debate. Sure, Apple seems overly restrictive in forbidding people from changing button functionality (well, sometimes), but I would argue that it’s this level of control that allows them to create the most consistent and pleasurable modern operating system experience (be it mobile or desktop). On the other hand, I consistently find myself saying “my app doesn’t do that” whenever I compare different versions of the same app with my Android-owning friends (like Mike here at TBI).

The difference between Twitter and Apple is that Biz et al are now taking away some level of control that they’d previously ceded to the masses (whereas Apple has NEVER given us control)…and they’re doing so in a manner that pretty blatantly screams monetization. And hey, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Businesses need to make money to stay afloat. But if their official client is so successful and widespread, why stifle the possibility of innovation in third party clients? Let’s hope this isn’t a sign of things to come from what’s been an organization to admire in recent years.

Designing Penitence

When asked to list the tenets of good experience design, XDers count out things like “informative, intuitive, engaging, attractive” and they’ll almost always save their pinky point – the grand finale – for “fun.”  Whatever the objectives, an experience is generally made richer and more effective if your users have a good time. But what about when fun is the antithesis of what you want to achieve?

Let’s take the prison system for example. Correctional Facilities, Reform Schools and Detention Centers are all pretty up front about their objectives (and not typically too concerned with the “fun factor”):

We’re going to correct you.

We’re going to reform you.

And perhaps the most honest…

We’re just going to detain you.

But let’s go even more old-school: what sort of experience design challenges might a “penitentiary” face? What does that name suggest about the objective of the facility? No matter how hard you try, you simply can’t penitent someone.  Penitence has to come from within the user as a result of the prison experience. It’s the classic learning theory challenge – along the continuum of things you can teach someone designed to elicit behavioral change (declarative knowledge, concepts, psychomotor skills, and attitudes), the most difficult outcome to achieve is a genuine change in attitude.

So how would you engineer an experience such that it engenders remorse?

Eastern State Penitentiary, Courtesy of Jocker/CREAKTIF

Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) offers a fantastic glimpse at one attempt to tackle this design problem.  First off, if you haven’t visited ESP yet, you should definitely check it out.  It’s a fascinating place.  Architecture, environmental design, psychology, sociology and a host of other disciplines that now live under the XD umbrella were combined way back in 1829 to form a total user experience designed with the single objective of inspiring penitence.  Prisoners were sentenced to solitary confinement, never seeing the face of another human, and subjected to complete silence.  But they had natural light in their cells, they were allowed outside regularly, and they were given work to develop valuable trade skills.  Think a monastic lifestyle absent the choice.

Ultimately the system failed, succumbing over time to the pressures of increased and improved functionality over the quality of the prisoner experience (sigh).  Turns out penitence XD is an expensive business.

But what would you do if you were facing this design challenge today? What role would technology, human factors, cognitive science, theatre, interactive design and all of the other available XD disciplines play in your overall strategy?

We’d love to hear your thoughts, and if it’s a topic that really interests you – some great additional reading is Jim Lewis’s article about rethinking prison design published in the NY Times.

Update from SXSW: Buster and Thor Get It

I know once you found out that Russ and I are at SXSW Interactive it put you on the edge of your seat, waiting for another batch of sketchnotes. Well, you’re just going to have to wait until next week for the full sketchnote reveal. Just a quick post about Day 1:

SXSW is gigantic. For example, Saturday morning I have to select from over 20 sessions happening between 9:30 and 10:30. With all of those options, choosing is difficult…and it’s more hit and miss than you might think. Landing in one that’s disappointing means you are missing something valuable somewhere else. Finding a home run session is huge, and that’s why I decided to write this post. If you’re considering presenting at a conference – take note:

Buster Benson of Health Month and Thor Muller of Get Satisfaction get it: they practiced what they preach in their session Gamechanging: Turn Your App into a Cooperative Game. Rather than just talk about game design for an hour, they designed a game into their session. Within minutes of the beginning of the session, around 500 people in ballroom 12AB of the Austin Convention Center were arranging themselves chronologically by birth date. Each month was a lifeboat, and we all had to find our boat and arrange ourselves chronologically by day or we’d drown. I found myself standing on a chair screaming “OCTOBER! OCTOBER IS HERE!” while two new friends stood by me holding up handmade signs reading the same thing. Five minutes later, October was complete, and so was every other month of the year. Five minutes, folks. 500 people arranged themselves in chronological order in five minutes.

What does 500 people organizing themselves chronologically by birth date look like?

This led into a discussion about an important aspect of designing collaborative games: emergent self-interest-based cooperation. Soon, they introduced a second challenge designed to demonstrate their next aspect of game design. This time, they offered bourbon to the winning team.

Buster and Thor ran out of time before they could run the third challenge, but it didn’t matter. They showed rather than told – and that’s so rare at a conference, I thought it deserved its own post. Not only is it good design, it takes guts to ask 500 people to change their carefully-chosen seats in a packed room. Bravo, fellas!

More next week after we recover. Unless perhaps one of us is blown away again in the meantime and moved to post. Fingers crossed!

We Are All Experience Designers

My wife Lisa has often asked me how best to describe what I do when others ask, and I don’t blame her for the frustration when my answer is different every time. Recently we’ve only half-joked that the best thing to do might just be to send people to the Wikipedia page for Experience Design and see if that does the trick. But actually, it’s simpler than that.

Recently we were having our cable service upgraded, and I wasn’t able to be home at the time they allotted for the repairman so it was just Lisa and my daughter. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the idea of a strange guy in the house with them while I wasn’t home. Lisa is not someone you’d want to mess with, so I was more afraid for any potential offender than for her.

Anyway, when I came home and asked how things went, Lis said it ended up being fine but she didn’t like hearing someone slamming around in the basement and wondering if he was legit or some crazed murderer with a stolen van and convincing coveralls. But instead of simply saying, “this sucks,” she thought about how to make it not suck. Her simple and elegant solution involved workers needing to present credentials before being let in that could then be cross-checked in real time with the head office via various devices. This included visual confirmation cues on smartphones, rolling codes, and other ideas, topped off with various additional ways of providing feedback and ensuring safety throughout and after the process (yes, she is that awesome). When she was finished I said, “OK, that’s what I do for a living.”

I have thought about how to simplify explaining the process, and I like the metaphor of having a dinner party. The host must decide what food to serve, what music to play, how many chairs to bring up from the basement, whether they’ll have everyone out on the back porch or in the dining room, what kind of drinks they’ll need to have on hand, contingencies for various happenings, and any number of additional things. They are designing an experience for their guests with the hope of eliciting a positive outcome, and there’s a lot that goes into it. Whether it’s a dinner party or an enterprise-wide intranet, the backbone is essentially the same.

1. Who’s coming to dinner? What are their preferences, likes, dislikes, backgrounds?
2. What will the weather be? Is it a weeknight or a weekend?
3. Maybe best to ask them what sounds like fun to them – games? Dancing? A movie? Or maybe just drinks out on the deck?
4. You’re not going to test out that recipe you’ve never tried before on them, right? So you prototype it first…have your significant other give it a test run, and then make some refinements or pick an old tried-and-true meal before the big event.
5. Once you’ve got the plan, you need to make all of the food, set everything up, and go about executing it.
6. During the event, you’re keeping tabs on how people react to the food, the ambience, and the entertainment and making adjustments and mental notes for next time.
7. Afterward, you’re eager for feedback and want to hear what worked and what didn’t, and that’s definitely going to influence your next party.

In the end, of course formal design training and experience will qualify you to work on the kinds of complex and enterprise-wide projects that professionals tackle. But every day, thoughtful folks from all walks of life all over the world practice the essence of experience design in a million little ways. It’s universal, it’s timeless, and it’s an incredibly rewarding way to make a living.

(Design) Thinking About Bernard L. Brock

Years ago in graduate school I had the honor to study with Bernard L. Brock, a profound critic and theorist who was passionate about rhetorical criticism — the process and methods for conducting comprehensive and systematic analyses of persuasive communication. Dr. Brock cultivated, in me and countless other students, a deep appreciation and disciplined approach for analyzing rhetorical acts, simple to complex, to evaluate their “dramatic” impact on our attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. Many of his students, friends and colleagues referred to him as Bernie. But, despite the fact that I felt a personal connection and sincere appreciation for his scholarly devotion and guidance as my advisor, I referred to him as Dr. Brock.

Dr. Brock is the reason why I devoted most of my mid-twenties seeking to understand the symbolic actions that drove the fatal struggle between the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People in Nigeria and the Royal Dutch Shell oil and gas company; or conducting a dramatistic analysis of news coverage surrounding the “500-year flood” (now one of many) to argue that the widespread use of the “unjust war” metaphor could ultimately impact our attitudes toward the environment; or applying experiential criticism as a lens to describe the  Grateful Dead concert experience and the profound lessons that Jerry and the band taught us about the power of community.

Some of Dr. Brock's Books & Those He Contributed To

Dr. Brock is the reason why I continue to share my passion for rhetorical criticism by mentoring students on the St. Joseph’s University speech team as they analyze and articulate answers to critical questions about The Onion’s deliberate use of political satire during the mournful days after 9/11; or David Horowitz’s controversial act to denounce reparations for slavery; or the socio-politico impact of the LA Gang Tours.

Dr. Brock would often repeat: Describe, Interpret, Evaluate… Describe, Interpret, Evaluate during our round table discussions about rhetorical criticism. As a lifetime scholar of Kenneth Burke, he favored the Burkeian approach as a theoretical framework through which to analyze communication as symbolic action. He believed that a dramatistic analysis of human motives and the forms of thought and expression, conveyed through language, could help us understand and respond strategically to the situations around us.

In many ways, Dr. Brock was a Design Thinker. Design is rhetoric – it is symbolic, motive-driven, representative and persuasive. It has consequences. It serves as a narrative of our social reality, is driven by our belief systems and spurs collective action. It demands our descriptive and interpretive judgments about its effectiveness so that we may respond accordingly. Rhetorical theories can serve as our lens and provide us with the language and structure to dig deeper and draw conclusions that go beyond the obvious – to make more informed decisions in the future based on a better understanding of its impact on the human condition.

Sadly, Dr. Brock passed away on March 31, 2006. It had been years since I last spoke to him and it wasn’t until years later when I had learned of his passing. I’ve thought of him often since my mid-twenties and always intended to express my sincere gratitude but life got in the way. Something I’ll always regret.

So, to Dr. Brock –thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your wisdom, your passion and your critical impulse. It was contagious and the experience design community can learn immensely from your thinking. I intend to help further that cause.