Though I’ve been able to do my share of juggling, it’s finally time to bring on someone to help me out.

We’re looking for someone who has enough skills and experience to understand how static web sites work, with an emphasis on how screens appear in the browser and other devices, not necessarily how data or other content appears on the screen itself.

In other words, NASDAQ needs a contractor who can design and code static sites.

While a portfolio of some work is required, 3-5 years of formal experience is certainly not mandatory.

The position is ideally suited for someone interested in working in a mentoring relationship with me–I’ll do my best to include the candidate in UX activities, including research interviews, usability tests, and understanding the nuances of content’s relationship with design.

We’re also not looking for a polished Photoshop artist when we say we need visual design skills, but we hope someone can take existing PSDs and create new mockups based on prior work if necessary.

I don’t think I’m going unicorn hunting here–I think we have an opportunity for a person who is looking to get a good foothold on the inner workings of a corporate product team who can, with any luck, either be hired full time in a few months or move onto a mid-level UXer, designer, or general maker of digital things when the time is right.

The position is located onsite in downtown Manhattan and telecommuting isn’t an option (for now). I’m also working on the dress code for the candidate.

Qualifications:

If you’re interested or know someone who might be, email me a link to your portfolio or web site to christopher.avore@nasdaqomx.com.

If this isn’t clear or you have any questions, I’m happy to answer as best I can.

Whereas last month I ventured uptown to attend a lecture on Erving Goffman and technologically mediated social identities, this time I headed a few miles south to the Rutgers School of Communication and Information to attend another discussion tangentially relevant to my daily work responsibilities as a social interaction design strategist.

The School hosted Dr. Gustavo Mesch, a senior lecturer and former chair of the departments of sociology and anthropology at the University of Haifa in Israel, where he presented “Media Use and Social Capital: Results from a Longitudinal Study in Israel”.

As his research is still underway, Dr. Mesch discussed the patterns he is already witnessing throughout the initial months of his investigation.

The discussion focused on the results of a survey Dr. Mesch has been collecting that asks students to self-identify their use and engagement with social tools and the benefits derived from participating in these social interactions and social relationships—to some people those benefits are defined as social capital (others agree it’s the availability of otherwise inaccessible information or opportunity based on your social structures and your standing in those structures and not necessarily the fruit of those connections).

The study is comprised of survey questions asking the participants to rate their relationships with the people whom they send emails, exchange instant messages and for whom they leave comments on Facebook posts and blog articles. The survey asked questions about how the participants trusted the people they were involving themselves with, including prior to the computer-mediated exchanges if relevant.

Dr. Mesch’s concluded that the people using email and IM with people they identified as friends people they know well reported greater bonding. But on Facebook, various blogs, and also email, they reported greater bridging of weaker connections.  Greater study over time, however, was necessary to validate his findings.

As a dilettante hack who hasn’t attended a formal sociology class since the 1990s, I feel a bit insecure voicing questions about the material, the findings, and the decision-making involved in arriving at the presented conclusions, but nonetheless I have a few concerns regarding the study and what else could have been (or should be) investigated further. I should also note my reactions are based only on what was presented in the lecture.  I haven’t read nor am I aware of any published analysis of the research since much of it is still underway.

Questioning Facebook and Instant Messenger

For instance, there doesn’t seem to be much depth in claiming IM strengthens connections you already have and a social platform like Facebook bridges new connections between friends of friends. After all, most instant messaging tools require you know you you’re going to communicate with in one-to-one dialogue, or among groups of people with whom you likely are already connected. Rather than using closed-network tools such as IM, I would have liked to see how public networks influence participants’ perception of social capital and what they disclose to strong and weak ties.  From a personal standpoint, I would be quite interested in reading a similar study as Dr. Mensch’s analysis but investigating a system similar to Yammer, where there is already closure amongst networks but holes to be crossed via social tools).

Facebook also has problems as a tool to identify weak ties and their influence on a person’s social capital within his or her network. Facebook networks are by nature homophilous, particularly, I would venture, among teens who have yet to move from one region to another or who have changed multiple jobs over time. The study’s subject and the weak tie may not know each other, but it’s challenging to argue Facebook is bridging network holes—it’s simply introducing people within an existing social structure.

The trouble with Facebook continues because the study doesn’t identify how participants established their privacy settings and their motivations for applying those settings. As a result, we miss key understanding into how they perceive people they don’t know who know their friends.

I’m also having trouble understanding why Dr. Mesch elected to use blogs to mediate connections between people instead of other technical systems or platforms. But even if the study had its reasons for not using Twitter, Instagram, or even MySpace, the presentation doesn’t address other questions that could directly influence the conclusions. What are the topics discussed on the blog? How is traffic driven to these blogs? Are there already existing weak connections between the authors and the audience?

Questions of Trust

I also have my reservations with a few of the survey questions. Specifically, there were multiple questions that seemed to ask how participants expected to “trust” the people with whom they communicated via these tools.

My friend Thomas Vander Wal’s concerns with trust stem from using the word as a catch-all for other terms that more accurately portray how a person really feels about the pending interaction. When combining ‘trust’ as a catch-all term and understanding how it relates to social capital, we venture into murky waters where we may be find conclusions drawn on obfuscated testimony.

By retreating to ‘trust’ we strip out nuance and detail into the relationship between the study’s subject and the person with whom he or she communicates.  Is this ‘trusted’ person one of authority or influence? How does trust reflect the ability for the subject to access resources otherwise unavailable for someone else?

Often I refer to Nan Lin’s definition of trust when applied to social capital as:

Defined as confidence or expectation that an alter will take ego’s interests into account in exchanges. It represents faith that an event or action will or will not occur, and such faith is expected to be mutual in repeated exchanges (Lin 147)

But again we are left to fill in the blanks since the study doesn’t describe any analysis into what future interactions may have been reasonably predicted or what interests are mutual. Even simpler, the study doesn’t establish an agreed upon definition of trust across participants.

Questions of Motivation and Benefit

If the premise of social capital is an investment in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace (Lin 19), I would have expected the study to probe deeper into why the teenage participants were motivated to communicate via Facebook, IM, email, and blogs beyond conversation or collaborative co-working.

With a clearer understanding of why the teens were posting, we could then understand more articulate insight into the benefits as a result of communicating via social tools.

Javier Velasco’s presentation Posting Our Hearts Out: Understanding Online Self-Disclosure for Better Designs at the 2011 IA Summit explored the personal motivations of why people (Velasco’s research focused on experienced adults who publish intimate information in public spaces—a potentially significant difference than those participants in Dr. Mensch’s study) use social tools to communicate, including such benefits as reciprocity, impression formation, relationship maintenance & formation, and social influence. Those benefits, of course, all can shape social capital, but go unmentioned in the Mensch analysis (and likewise, are not referred to as influencing social capital in Velasco’s presentation either).

Similar to my trip to Columbia for the Goffman discussion, I left with more questions than when I arrived on campus, which, ultimately, is worth the price of admission.  Reacting to what I perceive are gaps in the analysis, or looking for where the study could be more clear or more direct, helps me attempt to articulate and clarify the ideas that previously have been locked in my head. Though I hope I’m not completely off base, sharing the ideas in this venue is a reflective practice, if not necessarily an accurate account of an academic experience (so please take a second if you find my arguments thin, uninformed, or unclear).

The next field trip is April 18, when I’ll visit the Princeton sociology department to attend Princeton Dialogues: The Entrepreneurial Group: Social Identities, Relations, and Collective Action by Martin Ruef.

Much of the programming followed themes of measuring value, understanding and interpreting analytics, and the career path of the practicing user experience designer or information architect (which presumably, if the sessions are any indication, will require far greater analysis of quantitative and qualitative data to maintain practicing status). Friday’s session alone opened with Nate Silver exploring how data should and shouldn’t be used, and Jared Spool closing the day questioning how user experience designers can be valued, and what is truly valuable.

But in addition to those themes, I also enjoyed sessions that strayed slightly from the data path, such as More than a Metaphor: Making Places with Information, which explored themes of place, space, and architecture in information architecture and design. Discussing theoretical concepts such as how information is understood over time and place, and the influence of context and environment is often heady stuff, and I thought that challenge was evident in the first two parts of the presentation, but Andrew Hinton succinctly connected themes of physical architectural design to the environments we as digital designers design every day, including the goals and challenges we often face on many projects.

I begrudgingly missed Dana Chisnell’s Rethinking User Research for the Social Web, as the topic resonates with much of my work today designing social interfaces. Fortunately, we already had dinner scheduled with a number of other conference attendees that evening, and with a mile walk back to the hotel I listened to Dana discuss her work and her approaches.

I also found much of Javier Velasco-Martin’s presentation Posting our Hearts Out: Understanding Online Self-Disclosure for Better Designs to be an intriguing analysis of his work into how people share personal, intimate messages using established mainstream social tools. Even his presentation was on theme as he shared much of his primary research findings mined while completing his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina.

My UX Show and Tell workshop was the following day and reaffirmed the event has a place at a global conference. This IA Summit workshop was a different experience than the three other conferences we have been fortunate enough to have been invited to (Interaction10, Interaction11, UX Russia), as it was actually conducted just like the usual workshops that occur monthly throughout the world. Four people showed their work ranging from an existing web site to a early-release Drupal service to high fidelity comps. A few people approached me after the workshop to let me know they enjoyed the laid back feel of the event when they were ready for a break from some of the sessions, but I’m debating whether the workshop should be run concurrently or distinct from the rest of the conference presentations.

Even though I had to leave the conference early, I still enjoyed the opportunity to meet colleagues I’ve only traded tweets with or read a blog post or two. And it’s safe to say there’s nothing like leaving the conference lunch to walk elsewhere with friends and just grab a drink in the sun (though when Aaron Irizarry’s daughters made an appearance it only made me miss my two girls even more).

Next year’s IA Summit will move to New Orleans, hands down one of my favorite towns and a place I’m confident will inspire designers to challenge and understand our surroundings, whether those surroundings be the data with which we work, how we engage with place and architecture, or our own community of practice.

Laisser les bons temps rouler!

I’ve found much of his perspective aligns in step with the long term paths of veteran user experience designers who step further away from artifact delivery and closer to recommending strategic design decisions based on UX methods and practices.

Perhaps more importantly is that in most instances, Martin, currently the dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, isn’t selling books or speaking time to UX practitioners or conferences, but to the people who will ultimately be depending on–and hiring–these problem solvers.

His March 2011 column, “Don’t Get Blinded By the Numbers” examines the critical interpretation of data and not just the analysis of such data. He recalls an example citing survey data that inferred detergent consumers weren’t sold on a product change that would yield significant production efficiencies and cost savings, yet comments suggested most consumers were simply indifferent and not against such a change to the product. He advocates for primary research into where the data comes from, citing ethnomethodological practices that are familiar to many user experience professionals (or at least on their radar if not yet in practice). By no means is he advocating making up research to meet an expected or desired outcome, but he warns strategic business decisions shouldn’t be founded on data that may not tell the whole story.

Martin nails it when he asserts:

This kind of approach requires completely new capabilities. The successful strategists of the future will have a holistic, empathetic understanding of customers and be able to convert somewhat murky insights into a creative business model that they can prototype and revise in real time. To do all that, they’ll have to be good communicators, comfortable with ambiguity and ready to abandon the quest for certain, single-point answers.

Though Martin never uses the words design (or as he’s frequently linked, ‘design thinking’), or user experience design, it’s clear such a summary refers to many of the skills, processes, and actions we as both strategists and practitioners continue to hone today. So while Martin advises us not to get blinded by the numbers, let’s also open our eyes by evaluating, questioning, whatever–the features, functionality and scope of the products we build, ideally before we build them. Those murky insights are the raw material we need to craft the experiences we’ll be expected to provide for years to come.

Such an exploration was a welcome extraction from a comfort zone of reading about cool tricks to try with new software or novel tactical approaches to designing whatever it was I happened to be paid to design.

But aside from a few 140-character conversations on Twitter or over drinks at conferences, it can be difficult to hear other interpretations of what can be complex material.

Likewise, I also realized I was really only having these conversations in my own close circle of colleagues and friends. I needed to branch out.

Branching out, in this instance, meant attending a New Pathways for the Social Sciences event hosted by the Institute for Social Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University.

Cornell University’s Trevor Pinch led a discussion titled “Goffman and Technology: Online Interaction and Material Peformativity” where he explored themes he recently published in his article “The Invisible Technologies of Goffman’s Sociology”, published in 2010 by Technology and Culture, and his research informing an upcoming book.

The event attracted about 30 students and faculty, and was open to the public as evidenced by letting me play Ivy Leaguer for a day, and consisted of about 50 minutes of lecture and another 20 minutes of question and answer.

I’ve read my share of Goffman and a few scholarly articles about his work so I had a good fundamental understanding of where he stood, and I also absorbed the Invisible Technologies article prior to the lecture, which allowed me to focus on the implications of the material and not just the material itself.

I didn’t have to travel uptown to make the leap applying many of Goffman’s observations to digital social interaction.  His famous observations and conclusions from the United Kingdom’s Shetland Islands hotel regarding the front of house/back of house staff at first glance seem to easily translate to our online and offline identities.

But the lecture examined concepts such as materiality and role distance in Goffman’s work that came to life in the discussion. Pinch referenced the swinging kitchen kickdoor as a technological solution to a situated material problem: that  “the two spaces [the kitchen and the dining room] must be bounded enough to permit participants to change their behavior accordingly as they enter or leave”. He then referenced modern restaurants where the kitchen is now exposed to the guests. I thought, mistakenly, that the discussion was going to continue down a path with the exposed kitchen as a metaphor for the blurring of offline and online identities and mental models of privacy, but the discussion led to the referencing Latour’s sociology of doors instead. Interesting, yes, but with my interests it was ultimately a lost opportunity.

There were similar instances where I was teased with where I thought discussions could lead but was taken down a different path. For example, Pinch also discussed his research investigating social behavior in the AcidPlanet.com web community, touching on themes of copresence and mediated asynchronous interaction (based primarily on reciprocation, peer norms and obligations).

As someone knee deep, hell, shoulders deep in developing social tools for communities of practice, I was genuinely excited when he discussed “scopic foccussing”—staging parts of content such as ranking and voting systems which he referred to as “doubly social” since these devices enroll users to participate, and the users ultimately determine the outcome.  But I was again left wanting more depth into the sociological underpinnings of the ranking, voting, & reputation systems Pinch mentioned.

Specifically, these tools seemed either rudimentary or susceptible to simply gaming the system to achieve an outcome, as many tools in the marketplace are today. When Pinch mentioned the R=R for voting reciprocation, I anticipated some criticism of such a model since it may lead to inauthentic conclusions. But instead the discussion shifted to how the system awards prizes to music tracks with the highest number of votes and most played.

The professor also touched on how AcidPlanet.com community members can create multiple profiles to suit different genres of music they uploaded, but did not discuss the ramifications of a social system enabling multiple profiles without verified user names or identies, though there were mentions of numerous trolls in the community. Could there be a relationship?

I realize looking back that it sounds as though I was disappointed in the event or that I was expecting it to be a more academic flavor of the tactical books I had been digesting a few years ago, but that’s not entirely the case. It’s also not any indictment to claim my interest in reputation and social behavior in communities is different than that of the professor’s work. I knew I was out of my element participating in such an event, and my expectations weren’t bound to the agenda at all (so by no means did I think this was a bait-and-switch).

But it was energizing, if not initially uncomfortable, to find myself challenged to think about these ideas without direct correlation to my work. This lecture won’t be the last time I take a few hours to leave what I know well to dig deeper into the harder questions.

As a user experience designer wrangling how activity streams, status updates, conversations, and other activity are displayed to the enterprise workforce, I can attest that what Mr. Roth calls attentional experience will ultimately be a critical product differentiator as we see more dashboards, content aggregators, activity streams and other collaboration platforms deployed.

I’m not sure it needs its own name though, particularly when he writes that a “business… [is] disadvantaged even if the individual user’s experience is fantastic.”  I think such a statement inadvertently reduces design (and UX) to merely decoration to provide a less-prioritized “sense of happiness”.

I’m sure we agree effective enterprise system design solves business needs and provides the information worker efficient, predictable steps to accomplish business tasks.  If a person interacting with the system loves the icons, color scheme, and transition fades but isn’t seeing business critical information, the design is a failure, pure and simple.

I’m also concerned that using yet another name in stakeholder meetings or even amongst the product teams can splinter alignment and lead us into more “define the damn thing” conversations that distract us from designing quality work. There are enough misconceptions over what the creative department delivers versus the user experience team and who owns what without further obfuscating expected roles and responsibilities.

But again I’m relieved to see Mr. Roth call attention to what so many software vendors have failed to do in their design process: prioritize what functionality is at the ready to solve business problems, instead of simply providing a laundry list of tools with no implied or suggested importance of one feature over another and no consideration for which task may be at hand.

As we  see more demand for social curation of content, updates by hundreds of connections, and multiple activities in a single action, understanding how to prioritize information can quickly distinguish companies from others more than just a checklist of features alone.

Note: this post was originally a comment on the Gartner blog post itself, but never appeared on the site.

I was honored to be invited to the conference to conduct a spin-off of my UX Show and Tell workshops. The audience participation proved once again what I’ve been seeing across the country and into Toronto and London: that there really is a pent-up demand for user experience designers, interaction designers, information architects, and others to pull back the curtain from their work and share the goods or ask for help.

But as my session didn’t occur until Sunday, I had plenty of time to catch up with old friends from DC, my recent colleagues in Philadelphia and New York, and to finally meet a number of people with whom I had either communicated but never met or simply didn’t know until our time together.

Though I took away a lot of important insight in the sessions and keynotes, my real appreciation of the time lies in the moments spent forging new relationships or re-galvanizing existing ones.

My personal highlight of the conference occurred Saturday morning, when my friend Jeff Parks asked if I could sit in on a low-key discussion about design research with a few other folks. It wasn’t until a few moments before the UX Workshop’s video cameras went live did I realize I’d be having such a discussion sitting next to Indi Young, Eric Reiss, Daniel Szuc, Steve Baty, and of course Jeff himself.

Our conversation (which will be posted to www.theuxworkshop.tv thanks to sponsorship by New Hampshire-based Mad*Pow) spanned numerous topics involving design research, such as knowing what to investigate and how to dig deep enough, convincing clients when you need more research or perhaps even less, and much more.

Not only was the discussion itself valuable, it also granted me the opportunity to finally meet some of that Mad*Pow team, including Amy Cueva and Megan Grocki. I had been aware of their stellar work for some time but had never crossed paths with any of their team in person.

My workshop was a success despite a curveball at the last second: though we were planning on a discussion-style format, we couldn’t get the room converted from a presentation-model layout to round-table in time, and because lunch required the round-tables we’d have about 45 minutes for Show and Tell (usually the workshops are about 2 hours or more).

Will Evans quickly volunteered to kick off the Show and Tell by discussing some of the deliverables originally appearing in his “Right Way to Wireframe” workshop held on Thursday of that week. Will’s work process quickly captivated the audience and also showed the crowd that discussing your work doesn’t have to be all that painful.

Other presentations followed, ranging from people looking for help with their design approach, to other folks who wanted to walk through prototypes of their work to get feedback.

I’ll be the first to admit there were some unique challenges to the Show and Tell, but fortunately with a bit of adjustments I’m convinced such a workshop has an important role in an international conference attended by practitioners of varying levels of experience and expertise.

Looking ahead, I want to continue to build the UX Show and Tell brand with more of the connections I established in Savannah, and I’m sure the natural partnership with the IxDA will provide such a fertile foundation for growth.

Professionally, I can’t wait to engage with this crew in the immediate future and beyond, in any capacity, be it on project work, over a few drinks socially, or again on the conference circuit.

From a professional perspective, I’m beginning a long-term consulting position as a UX Strategist with a major pharmaceutical company to help design a socially-rich enterprise intranet application.

The personal perspective is equally beneficial: I’m really excited to move my baby girl closer to my wife’s parents (my Mom lives in Indiana and my Dad is in Hilton Head, South Carolina) . In addition to my in-laws are numerous cousins, aunts, uncles, and my wife’s two brothers who I’m closer to than some of my friends. If it takes a village to raise a child, then I’ll trust this village of family moreso than the alternative.

So between the great work environment, both for this current gig and whatever comes next, not one but three rich UX communities, and the opportunity for my own family to be closer to more family, the decision really wasn’t that tough.

I’m also looking forward to expanding my network of user experience professionals to include New York City, Philadelphia, and New Jersey, and rest assured I’ll continue rebel rousing the UX community to share their work at UX Show and Tell workshops throughout the region.

But that doesn’t mean UX Show and Tell is leaving the Washington DC area. My friend and fellow UX designer John Douglass will pick up the flag and facilitate workshops in the area. He’s already accepting reservations for our next event on January 12, 2010.

I’ll certainly be back in DC soon, but I also can’t wait to see more of you in Philadelphia and New York for UX Show and Tell, and I encourage you to join me for for lunch on Sunday at Interaction 10 in Savannah, Georgia.

UX Show and Tell is an informal workshop that’s all about the work, where designers can share feedback and ideas on strategies, outcomes, and deliverables, and meet other practitioners in a focused but relaxed environment.

Show and Tell participants brought a number of unique deliverables, such as concept maps and task models of complex web sites,  a process chart detailing how, where and when to integrate UX in an Agile software development lifecycle, and interface design mockups of a scheduling application.

I started the workshop sharing a deck of documents I used to provide visual conclusions from a number of user interviews and observations I conducted for the Library of Congress.  As user research continues to grow in recognition and importance, I thought there could be some value to *showing* how users behave rather than simply describing behavior in a Word or Powerpoint report.

…participants should be able to share specific solutions if they’re aware of the problems in advance…

I was hoping that the group would bear with me since it was the first workshop.  And not surprisingly, there were bumps in the road, from logistical issues such as starting on time to ordering food, to procedural hiccups such as how and when questions should be asked so as not to derail or sidetrack a presentation.

Fortunately, I’ve already begun incorporating participant feedback into future Show and Tell workshops.

For instance,  I’ll ask participants to identify what they’d like to share or problems they need to address during the RSVP process so other participants may be able to help. While I don’t want to see the workshop be so targeted that one session will only be dedicated to wireframes or another exclusively committed to persona documentation, participants should be able to share specific solutions if they’re aware of the problems in advance.

By identifying an issue first, the group can provide more direct, concise feedback.

Moving forward, the workshop will also run more smoothly if each participant quickly says what they’re sharing and what issue they’re having or where they’re looking for feedback.  During the first session, a few conversations began to wander off course when feedback that was meant to be helpful wasn’t entirely appropriate to the project or the project’s audience. By identifying an issue first, the group can provide more direct, concise feedback.

I also see the benefit to posting what was presented on a wall or whiteboard so the group can take a closer look at the documents. The photograph above shows how a number of deliverables were spread out on a conference table which certainly worked, but won’t scale well or support electronic presentations without a projector.

If your organization would like to host a UX Show and Tell, it’s really easy.

At the suggestion of one of the participants, I created a Google spreadsheet to list who attended with contact information to help expand each other’s network of practitioners in the area, many of whom had never met before.

I’m already discussing new locations to host workshops, both in the immediate DC area and beyond. If your organization would like to host a UX Show and Tell, it’s really easy.  Just have space for about 8 to 10 people, a table and chairs, and now a whiteboard, and we’ll set up a date.

Over 45 minutes, we discussed an introduction to human factors, cognitive psychology, and interface design heuristics. And since Mr. Brown’s class is in the beginning stages of a web design project for a local business, we also used the time to focus on identifying audiences, task modeling and other discovery-themed processes.

Mr. Brown has done an exemplary job at recruiting phenomenal speakers to talk with his students–to the point that many of his speakers contact him requesting to speak (I fall into this camp).

His students certainly appear to enjoy a dialogue with practitioners who have real-world experience that they can immediately apply to their own schoolwork, and hopefully put to use for years to come.

Hopefully more high schools, community colleges, and universities will begin or continue to interact with the technology community to benefit their students.

But us practitioners cannot wait to be contacted.

Instead, we should introduce ourselves to those who could benefit from our experiences.  Yes, it’s personally rewarding. But more importantly, those experiences can shape the thought and actions of our future interns, colleagues, and partners.