As Steve pointed out in a recent article on Boxes and Arrows the value in the book club is the opportunity to share experiences through face-to-face interactions with other UX professionals and enthusiasts:

UX Book Club is a fairly simple idea: get a group of people together, choose a book, and agree on meeting details. Go away and read the book. On the date set, come together and discuss the book. Talk about how you might use what you’ve read in your work; how your experiences run counter to the book; an example of how the book is spot on. Have a bloody good argument about it, then go have a drink and talk about it some more.

I started the Ottawa chapter of the UX Book Club a few weeks back and I hope this will provide an opportunity to share experiences and ideas with other professionals and organizations.

I brought about a dozen books to the initial meeting for others to review. The group decided on The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam . Coincidentally, Mr. Roam was recently announced as the keynote speaker for the 2010 Information Architecture Summit in Phoenix, Arizona.

Our next meeting will be at the umi cafe at 6:00pm on Thursday, November 26th to discuss The Back of the Napkin. Whether you’re a veteran of the field or simply interested in learning more, I hope that you’ll join us!

Please sign up on the Wiki and follow us on Twitter @uxbookottawa.

The night before he handed out hundreds of small rubber ducks to attendees. The next day when people saw a poor user experience he insisted that people throw the ducks at the big screen where his slides were displayed, as a sign of disgust! It was one of the most memorable presentations I’ve seen in years.

At the end of this year’s IA Summit in Memphis, Eric and I had a passionate conversation about the current state of the user experience communities (IA, UX, IxD, HCI). We continued our discussion this morning focusing on solutions rather than the circular, and I might add completely useless, online discussions about defining each discipline.

In our chat I noted a quote from The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid:

Did the focus on process, perhaps overlook the increasing demand for knowledge in modern organizations? We suspect it did. Consequently, looking at reengineering in the light of knowledge…may help reveal both the strengths (often hidden behind catcalls) and the weaknesses (equally hidden behind cheerleading) of reengineering.

Process is about following a set of steps to get to a specific end state. In order to learn how to do anything we begin by engaging other subject matter experts (books, blogs, conference presentations, podcasts, tweets, lectures, etc) and learn from their years of experience.

After we’ve tapped into everything they have to offer, what’s next? Many professionals lock themselves into a process they understand and subsequently turn away from other disciplines from which they could learn.

The only way to truly think outside the box, is to step away from what you think you know to be the best process and learn about how others approach problems, and in turn, create solutions.

As Eric noted at this year’s IA Summit, ROI: Speaking the Language of Business, the greatest leaders in politics, religion, and science all have one thing in common: they were/are brilliant communicators. Gandhi, Mother Theresa, J.F.K., Obama, and Einstein all had/have the capacity to communicate complex ideas to anyone in a context they understand.

My recommendation to the UX community is to stop debating about a specific process to a specific problem and begin to focus on the clients for whom we are helping. Provide them with greater context to the solutions we offer by providing solutions based on their mental model – not yours.

Quoting again from the Social Life of Information:

…is the current approach to technology design leading in the right direction, or may it again be focusing too tightly on an idealized view of information and how it – and individuals – work?

Put another way, take ten random friends from around the world and line them up with numbers 1-10 written on signs in front of them.

Then ask a friend to pick two numbers at random from 1-10. Let’s say they pick numbers 4 and 9. Have those friends step forward.

The remaining eight friends won’t be reading this blog post. Several of those people left in line are also illiterate with little to no access to educational resources for learning.

Adaptive Path has been doing some remarkable research in some of the poorest areas of India where illiteracy is the norm; resulting in the need to completely re-think the design of mobile devices.

An estimated 40% of India’s rural population is unable to read text or numeric information.

I was talking with Chris Palle today @chrispalle about next steps for me and how I would like to evolve the UX Workshop.

In the short term, I’d like to interview people new to our respective industries of IA, UX, IxD, and capture their ideas. After all, communities of practice can’t evolve if they don’t continue to look to those entering the industry.

Over the longer term, I would love to travel the world to do similar research that Adaptive Path has completed and then share those experiences as a presenter at conferences like UX Week and Idea.

MobilGlyph: Making Data Tangible from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Something’s happened in the last 18 years since Richard has started TED…we’ve kind of…climbed Maslow’s hierarchy a little bit so we’re now focused more and more on Human Centered Design. That really involves designing behaviors and personality into products, and I think you’re starting to see that and it’s making our job even more enjoyable.

David shares several examples of the designs IDEO has created using this philosophy, and how ubiquitous technology has become in our everyday lives. My favorite project shown is how the team at IDEO attempted to make the cubicle “more human”.

If you’re interested in learning more about ubiquitous computing, Adam Greenfields’ book Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing is an excellent resource on the subject.

Along with managing the creation of the 5-day work shop, I authored the section on Adult Learning Theory. While researching several concepts, I came across the Experiential Learning Theory proposed by David Kolb:

Experiential learning theory defines learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.”

In an essay from the book Managing as Designing entitled “Designing Learning”, co-author of the article Paul Eickmann notes:

“You know, for art students learning is not text driven.” This stood in dramatic contrast with management education, which is almost entirely organized around texts that deliver an authoritative scientific discourse. The scientific basis of the management curriculum was established in 1959 by an influential Carnegie Foundation report that sought to improve the intellectual respectability of management education by grounding it in three scientific disciplines: economics, mathematics, and behavioral science.

Education in the Arts focuses on approaches to learning as: Aesthetic, Demo-practice-production-critique, Recursive, Theory and Practice, Showing, Expression, Individualized, with a Diverse Faculty.

By comparison, Management Education focuses on the polar opposite elements: Scientific, Test driven, Discursive, Theory, Telling, Impression, Batched, with an Abstract Faculty.

Instead of holding stead-fast to our own perceptions, which have been formed largely through post-secondary and post-graudate curricula; perhaps we need to see the world through the eyes of those whose strengths have been shaped by the very educational institutions we hold in such high esteem.