eri on the interweb

I came across this video today made in 2008 by students from the IIT Institute of Design. It introduces design research and contextual inquiry and demonstrates what not to do when interviewing people. If your keen for tips on what makes or breaks a research session, its well worth watching.

I put my juvenile interviewing skills to use by asking my friend and UX pro Dori Miller why she is planning to swim a double crossing of the English Channel.  Thats right, Dori plans to swim to France and then back again and all for a good cause. Check out her answers to such probing questions as “Is peeing while you swim and getting that warm feeling the best thing that will happen to you on your epic challenge?” on her blog: Over the Bounding Main: Eriettas Top Ten Questions about Channel Swimming.

Dori is swimming to raise money for Parkinsons with Team Fox.

Stephen Page is the head of publishing house Faber and Faber. He was interviewed by Monica Attard on Radio National for Sunday Profile last week. This post summarises the interview.

The central question was how will publishing respond to e-books? Will it like newspapers loose market share? Will it struggle to find its feet in a new digital distribution mechanism like music? Page thinks that publishing, will learn from the experiences of the movie and music industries. He did not see e-books threatening publishing in the same way that the internet has threatened newspapers. Newspapers are a medium that deliver information quickly, which is something that the internet as a medium does better. But the physical book, Page argues, has an inherent advantage. A book has an aesthetic quality that cannot be compared to the experience of an e-book. People “furnish their house with them”, but people cannot fetishise an e-book. People do fetishise Apple products though. Page referred to the iPad as “a machine trying to do many things” but not a device suitable for the experience of reading a long narrative. The Kindle however, with its e-ink technology solves the problem of eye strain caused by luminous screens. Its devices like the Kindle that are more likely to grow the small channel of the e-book and offer another route to readers.

Philipp von Kiparski has a Bachelor of Arts in Information Design from the Stuttgart Media University, Germany. His degree was based out of the Faculty of Information and Communication. Philipp has just completed his second internship as an Experience Architect here in Australia, at Different. I thought it would be appropriate to kick off this interview series with a recent graduate of a course focussed on user centred design. This interview was recorded on 28 January 2010.

Erietta: Tell me about your current role and your areas of expertise?

Philipp: Theoretically I’m an Experience Architect and a junior version of that I guess and I think what my areas of expertise … mostly comprise of are user research … the gathering of the data and how to structure this gathering cause there’s actually quite a lot of theory involved in how to gather info for which kind of results you look for. For example a very experimental approach compared to reviewing a product that already exists; you have to adjust your techniques each time and of course you also have to adjust the guys you are actually interviewing.

The aim of the interview series UX Studies, is to look at and discuss the education paths people have taken to skill up for their career in the user experience field.

The idea for the series came about after friends, looking to change career focus, asked me about what they should study. Unfortunately for them, I am not the best person to ask, because, like some in the industry, I have no directly related formal qualifications.

I think it’s important that the disciplines, skills and theory behind user experience be clearly articulated for those looking to enter the field and for those, like me, already in the field looking to expand their knowledge base.

I hope too, that the professionals that cross paths with UX practioners such as developers and business analysts come across this series and find it of some use.

Interviews will be based on the following questions: