Design Research Conference 09: Lessons Learnt

Last weekend I was fortunate to attend the Design Research Conference in Chicago (that city of sausage links and thick-necked men, sleek city people clad in black, tall, reflective buildings, and a giant 3D bean-shaped mirror.)
It was by far the most ‘designy’ conference I’ve attended.  It was held at the Spertus Institute, a modern and [...]

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5 reasons I loved Mozilla’s design challenge

I was able to participate in Mozilla’s ‘Spring Design Challenge‘ along with my regular schoolwork this past semester, and it was definitely worth the effort.  The challenge consisted of addressing the following question: “What would a browser look like if the Web was all there was? No windows, no unnecessary trappings. Just the Web.”
Participants submitted [...]

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Drama & ducks at the IA Summit

I’ve just returned from a whirlwind trip to Memphis, TN for this year’s Information Architecture Summit (aka, IA Summit).  What a time!  I saw some Memphis, visited Graceland, saw the Peabody Ducks who live inside the Peabody Hotel…and experienced the IA Summit for the 1st time.   It was an action-packed weekend full of great [...]

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The future of browsing

Recently two student groups at the U of Michigan School of Information (Social Computing at the School of Information and the Student Organization for Computer-Human Interaction) held a browser ‘design jam.’  The point is to redesign, rethink, and envision the browser of the future.  The jam is a 3-part series, and the results will be [...]

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IDEA08 was a blast and a ball

October 7th and 8th, I attended the IDEA conference in Chicago. It was put on by the Information Architecture Institute and held at the impressive Harold Washington Library. The ornate gargoyle-like building decoration reminded me of the ghostbusters, one of my favorite childhood movies, and the ghostbusters theme song kept running through my [...]

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heading to IDEA 08

I didn’t get the scholarship to IDEA, but I’m going anyway!  When will I ever be a 4 hour trainride away again?  It’s going to be a fantastic time…I’ll go with my friend from school, Chris Hanrath, a German who used to work for one of the major sponsors of the event [sapient].
We’re going to [...]

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IDEA 08

I was notified of an opportunity to win a *scholarship* to the IDEA 08 conference in Chi-town.  Oh, excitement…I sent off a paragraph to the IAI folks explaining how this conference could augment my learnings.  Yes, I would even skip class and stay in a [hopefully clean] hostel.
(There was a time when a few friends [...]

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