(Episode 3)

Here at Cooper, we find that looking at the world from the perspective of users and their goals makes us notice a lot of bad interactions in our daily lives. Being solution-minded designers, we can’t help but pick up a whiteboard marker to scribble out a better idea. (Just ask our partners and friends—we really can’t help ourselves).

This sort of thing makes a fun thought exercise, so we thought we’d share it with you as a series of narrated slide shows we’ve called “The Drawing Board.” These aren’t meant to be slick, highly-produced demos—just some ideas we’ve thrown up on the board to stimulate thought and discussion. So…enjoy. Discuss. Design.

(Episode 1)

Here at Cooper, we find that looking at the world from the perspective of users and their goals makes us notice a lot of bad interactions in our daily lives. Being solution-minded designers, we can’t help but pick up a whiteboard marker to scribble out a better idea. (Just ask our spouses and friends—we really can’t help ourselves).

This sort of thing makes a fun thought exercise, so we thought we’d share it with you as a series of narrated slide shows we’ve called “The Drawing Board.” These aren’t meant to be slick, highly-produced demos—just some ideas we’ve thrown up on the board to stimulate thought and discussion. So…enjoy. Discuss. Design.

Everyone daily involves friends into decision-making processes. This or That (ToT) is a mobile application that leverages on social network in order to empower users in making more informed every-day decisions and improve the shopping experience.

ToT participants can describe topics that they are interested in and assign to each of them group of friends whose opinion is valuable is valuable on that particular topic. Later on, This or That users can create a survey on their mobile phone or PC to poll their friends on a particular decision that they are about to make. While creating a new survey, a user can involve own opinion leaders which can instantly support the decision-making twittering their preference.

This or That is supported by a dynamic reputation and trust system that changes according to the vote feedbacks and quality comments that every participant sends. Each interaction is evaluated both by participants and by the application algorithms in order to establish an expertise ranking for each topic.

Team
Federico Casalegno, David Boardman, Brian McMurray, Steve Pomeroy, Jason Terhorst, Carl Yu, Lauren Silberman.

In collaboration with Telefonica - Investigacion y Desarrollo (tid.es)

"Built For Conversation: The Interaction Design of Social Media Networks"

Social Media Networks, because they are built on the collective participation of individuals, can only be effectively guided by means of a researched and learned examination of social psychology. It is the interaction designer's job to understand how social media ecosystems are likely to evolve, given the interaction of the application constraints with users -- each of which with their own goals, prejudices, social ties, needs for sociality and irrational decision-making.

Design choices affecting application design, functions, and features can only steer individual and aggregate participation within the social network. This talk will begin with the basics of social psychology as it pertains to social media and networking sites and give a brief overview of identity creation in the context of social networking theory.

We will discuss design patterns in social media site architecture and their impact on human behavior, and why interaction designers engaged in building social networking ecosystems must leverage sociology, social network analysis, and behavioral economics to ensure their social media site is Built for Conversation. Time permitting I will discuss two case studies - why social media/networking functionality failed on Kayak.com, and why it succeeded on Gather.com -- lessons learned the hard way.

ABOUT WILL EVANS
Will Evans is founder and Principal User Experience Architect forSemantic Foundry with 14 years industry experience in informationarchitecture user experience design. His experience includes directinginteraction design and information architecture for AIR Worldwide, UXarchitect for web 2.0 social networking site Gather.com, and UXarchitect responsible for information architecture and interactiondesign for Kayak.com. He has worked at enterprise technology companiesLotus/IBM (where he was the senior information architect), and Curl,a DARPA-funded MIT project at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science.Most recently, Will has lead redesign projects incorporating socialmedia, crowdsourcing and social networking for startups and Fortune100 companies.

Will holds masters degrees in business administration, human-computerinteraction and cognitive psychology. His interests and studies havefocused on design, information architecture, human factors andinformation visualization. He earned his undergraduate degree inmathematics and philosophy.

"Tap is the New Click"

Even though the technology has been around for decades, only now are we starting to see mass production and adoption of touchscreen and gestural devices for the public. Jeff Han's influential 2006 TED demonstration of his multitouch system, followed by the launches of Nintendo's Wii, Apple's iPhone, and Microsoft Surface, have announced a new era of interaction design, one where gestures in space and touches on a screen will be as prominent as pointing and clicking.

But how do you create products for this new paradigm? While most of us know how to design desktop and web applications, what do you need to know to design for interactive gestures?

This introduction to designing gestural interfaces will cover the basics: usability and ergonomics; a brief history of the technology; some elemental patterns of use; prototyping and documenting; and how to communicate that a gestural interface is present to users.

ABOUT DAN SAFFER
Dan Saffer is an experience design director for Adaptive Path. An international speaker and author, his writing on design has appeared in BusinessWeek and many online publications. His acclaimed book Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices has been called "a bookshelf must-have for anyone thinking of creating new designs" and has been translated into several languages. His new book on interactive gestures will be published by O'Reilly in October 2008.

Dan is a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). He received his Master of Design in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University.