Design Thinking Digest

The last blog post at Design Thinking Digest

This will be my last post at Design Thinking Digest. For those that remember the more fruitful days of this blog this should come as no surprise--but it felt like a bookend was appropriate. DTD has been an experiment and online journey for me; it's had a relatively modest amount of posting—around 250 posts over the past five years and around 120,000 page views.

Around 500 folks read this blog on a regular basis--certainly breaking no social media records but nonetheless an audience that I knew well and that was very important to me. Over the last 16 months my role in Microsoft had changed from a public role to one that was a more private and inward looking one. There were simply more things I was working on that I couldn't talk about than I could and the forums of Facebook and Twitter became a more personal way to keep up with folks. The ‘long’ format of a blog simply wasn’t a medium I could take advantage of over the past year.

But things have changed. I now have a new role that has a much more public component to it and an audience that while not unfamiliar or new to me, certainly has a new pivot.

Now seems like the time to start something new and that's exactly what's going to happen over at my new blog entitled 21st Century Storytelling.

DTD won't go away right away. I'll be migrating most of my stories over to my new blog and eventually when you come to www.designthinkingdigest.com it will take you to my new blog. I hope you'll join me there and drop in to say hello again. I promise that I'll do my best to tell share new things with a fresh perspective and make sure the time you spend there is worth it. Thank you. Please join me on my next journey at 21st Century Storytelling.

 

7 lessons designers can learn from film director John Hughes

Here are some links to a shorter version of a talk I did at Design Thinking Dallas. This talk is a version I did for TEDx Penn Quarter which happened on July 11, 2010. It’s far from one of my best presentations in terms of this content—but it’s the only publically available one with video.

This particular TEDx event was put on in large part with with Cynergy as a benefactor. It was a fantastic event in Washington DC and I really enjoyed the TEDx format—although the speaking format is absolutely harder than it looks. As with all TED events this is really a story versus a presentation. I’ve embedded both below for you.

Here’s a link to the presentation.

Bernard ted x_pennquarter_071110

View more presentations from chrisbernard.

How the lessons of Industrial Light & Magic may portend the future for interactive designers

You don’t necessarily need to be a master of Flash, Silverlight or even HTML to be considered a ‘Web’ or ‘Interactive’ designer…yet. But I’ve often speculated that those days are coming to a close. I wonder how much longer they will last?

Designers will often say it’s not about the tools, and it’s not—but it is about craft and many of the most successful designers realize that to truly master their craft they must have an understanding of the underlying technology and principles that will ultimately bring their vision to life. We see this clearly in the Web and in design with folks like Jeremy Keith and Joshua Davis and companies like 37 Signals but if you spend a bit of time on the IXDA discussion list or any of the professional organizations or conferences that cater to interactive design it seems as if a majority of designers are doing everything they can to ensure they don’t need get out of their comfort zone of wireframes, Photoshop comps and design artifacts that no one really bothers to look at.

History is littered with far too many examples of industries and trends that happened so quickly that entire disciplines were rendered economically worthless almost over night.

One company that painfully survived this transition was George Lucas’ special effects house Industrial Light & Magic. This transition is discussed briefly today on IO9.com in The Genesis Effect, the Liquid Metal Terminator, Davy Jones and Jurassic Park’s dinos: How ILM transformed movies, and it’s worth a read to understand how challenging the transition from analog to digital modeling was.

In the world of devices, apps and HTML 5 I’m just wondering how long some of these archaic practices are going to hold out and I’m also wondering if higher education programs are truly preparing designers for entering a world where understanding the difference between managed and unmanaged code or what a MVC framework is might not be such a bad thing to know—even as a designer.

Connecting MIX to SxSW

In a little over four hours and experiment is going to occur. 6 energetic souls that have been in Austin since Thursday, March 11th are going to brave a trip to Vegas for two more days of technology and innovation. The big idea? That YOU get to experience this journey with them and through them through the ‘Catch MIX if You Can’ project. From Windows 7 to Windows Phone to new announcements around IE there has never been a time when one company enables designers developers and consumers to innovate, live and share their lives and ideas on their own terms across the Web, devices, browsers and computers. Journey along with the following folks to learn what all the fuss is about on Twitter. You should find that if your an enthusiast, designer, developer, entrepreneur or just naturally curious that all of these folks will tell you a great story about stuff you DIDN’T see at SxSW.

@calilewis, @giovanni, @hulljon, @emilylewis, @nathansmith, @kirkballou, @stephenanderson

The Microsoft Party at SxSW, Monday, March 15th

This is the event you don’t want to miss at SxSW, in fact the first 500 folks get something that everyone at SxSW needs. : )

MIX and SxSW, why I love March

Some people love the Fall. For me I’ve always been partial to Spring. It’s when the snow melts, things turn green and everything heats up.

This is also true of technology and for the last three years for me personally it’s because March has anchored to key events in my life, SxSW and MIX.

SxSW Interactive is the geek meet-up that conquers them all. It’s hard to tally up all the fantastic things that happen at this event. From the large presence that Microsoft has there to all the friends and competitors I see there (and it may sound surprising but we actually all get along pretty well).

SxSW is almost over but for the folks that know it well Monday is when things reach a fever pitch and this is no less true this year as SxSW has a record number of attendees.

MIX, Microsoft’s annual design event also has a record number of attendees and with recent Windows Phone 7 Series announcements there are great new opportunities for folks that want to make great experiences on devices that go beyond the confines of the browser and the laptop/desktop paradigm. Want to learn more about this? Stay tuned.

A new LOOK for Twitter

I’m sort of a weird bird in that I’m often a power user of Twitter and love tools like Seesmic Desktop and Tweetdeck but will then shut down and take a social media vacation for weeks at a time. For those of you that have struggled to explain to your Facebook friends, relatives and other technology luddites just what the heck Twitter is the world became a better place for you today with the announcement of Seesmic Look.

Seesmic takes the idea of Twitter and does a few great things.

It proves out the value of Twitter’s business model and how power an API services business can be.

It provides a clear monetization strategy for social media with it’s channels implementation.

It provides an ambient and highly entertaining introduction into the Twittersphere that people can enjoy without even having a Twitter account.

It showcases how apps can create beautiful and emotional experiences that can support, augment and transcend what’s possible with the Standards-based Web alone.

Learn more and download at http://seesmic.com/look.

The next generation of the PhizzPop Design Challenge

One of the events that most dear to my hear during my Microsoft tenure has been our annual PhizzPop Design Challenge. Among the designers and partners I work with it’s been one of our most popular events.

This year PhizzPop actually ran into a few challenge that we needed to address this year.

1.) We had a rule where a team could only enter the event once. Sort of like Survivor, if you were on Season One you couldn’t be on Season Two.

2.) The event was complex to put on and participate in, teams had to pull their strongest talent off the line for a week. If they won a regional event they had to do it all over again. Those that won got the glory at a signature event but were often too exhausted to enjoy it. That and the cost of basically mounting a tour in six cities across North America was a big challenge in this economy.

3.) We wanted PhizzPop to evolve into something more authentic and usable, folks put a lot of time in to this event and often winning solutions never quite get off the ground or go anywhere the way they would for a real customer.

4.) Finally, and this one is sort of nit-picky, many of us always wanted PhizzPop to function more in the realm of a ‘Grand Challenge’. Many of us thought that means we should have a bigger prize and cause that folks could get behind. We’d come close last year with a few events, like supporting Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid in Chicago or focusing on sustainability in Austin but we wanted a national event that was open to everyone.

I’m happy to say that’s exactly what we’re doing with PhizzPop this year.

1.) Anyone in the US can enter.

2.) We’ve got a real challenge for a real client, Boys and Girl’s Club of America.

3.) Participation is virtual

4.) We’ve got a serious prize to get some of the best talent in the business to participate.

5.) We’ve got a great set of partners with The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, the judging body for the Webby Awards.

So, what are you waiting for? Go register at www.phizzpop.com

PS For those of you that are curious about PhizzPop not being at SXSW for 2010 rest assured that we’ll provide updates on the PhizzPop during SxSW and be at SxSW in full force. Look for updates at www.sxsw.com for official events that Microsoft will be hosting or participating in.

Feed Problems?

A few subscribers have told me they are having feed problems on the site. I’m looking into this and should have it resolved shortly.

Design Thinking Digest Updates

Those of you that still maintain subscriptions to this blog—last count there are about 1000 of you, may be curious as to the future of this blog based on the paucity of posts over the past 6 months. Much of my time over the last six months has been focused on collaborating on a book (www.dynamic-prototyping.com) and that task, plus a day job has taken it’s toll on this blog.

As that book is now in production I expect to return to regular blogging in January and pick up where we left off with conversations about business value, innovation and productivity in the enterprise.

Happy New Year!

Dynamic Prototyping With SketchFlow in Expression Blend

One of the things I’ve been quietly working on over the past months has been a book that details some significant new features available in Microsoft’s Expression Blend tool called SketchFlow.

Let us know what you think. You can learn more about the new features and the book at www.dynamic-prototyping.com