Method

IEEE is the world’s largest professional association for the advancement of technology, bringing innovators and leaders together with the goal of “advancing technology for humanity.” Their flagship magazine, IEEE Spectrum, is an award-winning source for technology news and analysis and is highly regarded by the science and engineering professions.

Today, IEEE Spectrum announces the relaunch of their website, designed by Method. The website is responsive and allows visitors to view and browse the site on multiple devices – whether they are viewing on TV, desktop monitor, laptop, or tablet. Viewers are offered enhanced ways to explore and discover IEEE Spectrum’s vast library of content, as well as a revamped reading experience, making IEEE Spectrum a recognized destination for leading technology content.

Additionally, we developed a new identity for IEEE Spectrum, which represents the brand’s namesake, “Spectrum,” while also communicating their formative voice in the technology industries.

Read the full case study behind Method’s approach to designing IEEE Spectrum’s new brand identity and website.

Read about all of the enhancements IEEE Spectrum has rolled out in this article about the details on the redesign.

We’re particularly excited about the new digital magazine as it positions IEEE Spectrum as a content leader in the science and engineering fields. Check out some of our favorite articles on the new website, on whichever device you prefer!

What Robots Can Learn from Art, and What Artists Can Learn From Robots
Hacking Pacemakers
Smart Paper makes Traceable Money Possible

Image courtesy of Engadget

London is gearing up for this year’s exciting Digital Shoreditch Festival, set for May 20th-26th. In preparation for the week-long celebration, voting has opened to decide which sessions will be featured in the conference’s amazing lineup.

Method Principal David Eveleigh-Evans has proposed a talk on Designing For A Just-in-Time World, and we need your help to get us on stage at DS13!

From the social graph through to the Internet of Things, we now have the ability to map and understand people’s behaviors in the digital and physical world better than ever before. This wealth of real-time user data introduces new opportunities to design unique experiences that can tailor products and services in context and at the point of interaction to individuals.

In an environment where there is constant feedback between people and the brands, products, and services they use, how can brands stay relevant while remaining true to what they stand for?

In this talk, David will explain how the experience is likely to become the only constant in a rapidly changing world. Help us get to Digital Shoreditch and support our session! Voting is open until February 22nd.

Vote for Designing For A Just-In-Time World here!

Connecting is a short documentary by Basset & Partners and Microsoft, exploring how our lives have shifted and will continue to shift in a more connected world. It features interviews with Method alumni, Raphael Grignani and Robert Murdock; along with designers from Twitter, Arduino, Frog, Stamen, Microsoft, and Nokia.

Discussing the components of interactive experiences and analyzing the societal and cultural impact of the coming new forms of technologies, the documentary beautifully epitomizes the current status of this hyper-connected world and how the growing relationship between technology and humans will ultimately change global behavior.

Basset & Partners sums up, “as the role of software is catapulting forward, Interaction Design is seen to be not only increasing in importance dramatically, but also expected to play a leading role in shaping the coming ‘Internet of things.’ Ultimately, when the digital and physical worlds become one, humans along with technology are potentially on the path to becoming a ‘super organism’ capable of influencing and enabling a broad spectrum of new behaviors in the world.”

Today, Co.Design featured Connecting and included their own list of takeaways from the film’s discussion:

1. Our phones demand too much attention, detracting from our real experiences.
2. Analog metaphors are making less sense on digital devices.
3. We’re waiting for new paradigms in experiencing media like text on screens.
4. UX is a living, somewhat unpredictable thing. All experiences need to be fluid and flexible now.
5. You shouldn’t just try to understand a product. You should try to understand its connected network.
6. An “Internet of things”–countless connected sensors–is coming (and here).
7. All of our information feeds into something larger than ourselves, a “superorganism” or “colony” of digital information.
8. The hive mind got so big that greater Internet thought is now manifesting locally (think Egypt’s uprising or Occupy Wall Street).

Let us know what you think – how will the role of Interaction Design change and grow in this increasingly hyper-connected world? How do you design a product to answer to our evolving communities, and changing problems?

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is at the forefront of the government’s health IT efforts. As a resource to the entire healthcare system, the ONC supports the adoption of health information technology and promotion of nationwide health information exchange to improve health care.

In October, the ONC and the the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) challenged designers to take on the Blue Button medical record. Originally developed by the VA in order to give veterans and their families access to their health records, the current Blue Button is plain-text, which looks like a receipt. Aside from feeling impersonal, if a patient has a lot of medical information, the current system can quickly look confusing and become difficult to decipher.

Designers everywhere were challenged to design a digital version that is more usable and meaningful to patients, their families, and others who take care of them.

A small team of Method designers and strategists took the challenge! Together, they re-imagined the Blue Button:

The Approach
Our approach has been guided by a belief that information is only powerful when it is accessible, both in how it is presented and received. This is why we chose to explore the design from a multi-platform perspective starting with mobile then extending it out to tablet and web. The visual design is characterized by a minimal, high-contrast color palate making the content come forward. A restrained use of symbols and other graphics lets typography and scale determine hierarchy reducing clutter and making information easier on the eye.

To see more images, visit the Method team’s Blue Button page.

As the Project Lead and Interaction Design Lead on the project, Melissa Martin, explains why she wanted to get involved with the Blue Button challenge:

“I have a personal interest in design for healthcare and wellness,” she said. “Design has been the driving force behind many products and services that have effectively changed how we interact with each other and the world at large. I think it’s extremely important that the same level of thinking, creativity and deep consideration be given to other sectors of our society, particularly healthcare, energy management and social services. However, many non-profits and social service organizations simply to not have access to quality design services because of budget constraints and/or location. That is why initiatives like Challenge.gov are so exciting, because they help remove those barriers – opening the door for innovative, ingenious and creative solutions that are needed for a healthy, productive and sustainable society.”

Visit the Method team’s Blue Button page. Leave a comment and let the team know what you think of their submission!

The Interaction13 program is finally live!

Organized by the Interaction Design Association, IxDA13 is a 4-day event designed to explore how interaction designers can continue to evolve their craft and enhance social collaborations in order to drive important innovation.

This year’s lineup is packed with stellar  panels and workshop sessions, including two presentations by Method team members: Martina Schell, Interaction Design Lead, and Adam Little, Sr. Interaction Designer!

A little more about Martina and Adam’s presentations:

Lean Startup In Design Consulting: Lessons Learned Presentation with Martina Schell and Johanna Kollmann
As fast, user-centered development gains acceptance, many startups have successfully adopted a Lean Startup philosophy. But, why is it that many agencies and their clients still struggle to apply this methodology to larger-scale projects? What can – and should – consulting firms learn and embrace from startups? In this presentation, Martina Schell from Method and Johanna Kollman from Sidekick Studios will discuss the evolution of a product development philosophy for clients and agencies. Drawing from their experience leading UX and product design at startups, in-house, and now at consultancies, they will explore how they have applied Lean Startup methodologies in a consulting context. Are interaction designer and product people who apply Lean Startup the next big thing in consulting, or is it just another buzzword? Expect war stories and hear personal anecdotes about what has or hasn’t worked, and judge for yourself.

Realism in Design: Communicating Authentic Experiences for the Real World Presentation with Adam Little
This presentation will interest everyone who is tired of concept videos that feel like TV ads, future visions that are dated the moment they go online, and product scenarios that resemble life with the Brady Bunch. It will address the value and technique for communicating future products and services that are firmly grounded in real life situations. Drawing on examples from outside of the design world, we will see how artists and film makers have used the spirit of realism to create lasting works that are authentic and truthful. Interaction Designers, who are often tasked with designing product visions and intangible services, must embrace realism in the same way to create relevant stories and natural atmospheres that effortlessly and accurately communicate the experiences and benefits of tomorrow’s systems, particularly as they play out in the lives of real people. The examples (both good and bad) and techniques discussed will go beyond the power of storytelling, or why Lorem Ipsum should be avoided, so that we can understand why and how designers can produce work that foregoes features and decoration in favor of something more meaningful. This approach will help designers simultaneously answers the questions “how does this product work” and “why does this product exist”, and may even save time and money by leveraging low-fi aesthetics and keeping production to a minimum.

Register for Interaction13 today. We hope to see you in Toronto!

Held globally, the TED conference is famous for bringing together top thinkers and artists around critical topics and fascinating themes.

Method is honored to have helped develop TED.com, opening up the conference’s acclaimed lectures and performances to a worldwide audience. From the very beginning of our work with TED, Method was inspired by the remarkable content presented in TEDTalk videos, which became a key feature in our design of the TED.com homepage.

Since launch, the site has become one of the most popular video sites on the web. In the first year, page views soared to 46 million. This week, TED celebrates one billion TEDTalk views!

To honor this milestone, TED and Mashable have curated TEDTalk playlists from notable members of the TED community. To get into the spirit, we made a list of the TEDTalks that have inspired, entertained, and educated our team.

What are some of your favorite TEDTalks? Let us know in the comments below or tweet us @method_inc

Method’s Top 20 TEDTalks

Rodney Mullen: Pop an ollie and innovate!
Picked by: Patrick Ashmun, Client Services Coordinator

JJ Abrams: the mystery box
Picked by: Carolyn Weiss, Lead, Client Services; Ben Fullerton, Director, Interaction Design

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity
Picked by: Marc Shillum, Principal; Kaisha Hom, Designer; Mehera O’Brien, Director, Interaction Design

“When I was running a school, I showed this to all my students during the phase of the quarter at which they feel most insecure. Many of them thanked me after, saying they felt reassured and inspired again.” - Mehera

Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability
Picked by: Mehera O’Brien, Director, Interaction Design

Bobby McFerrin plays… the audience!
Picked by: Jeremy Juel, Interaction Designer

Hans Rosling: Stats that reshape your worldview
Picked by: Mark Roudebush, Interaction Design Lead

Kevin Kelly: The next 5,000 days of the web
Picked by: Reuben Steiger, Principal

“As one of the high-priests of early Internet culture, he calmly compares the Web to a brain in quantitative terms. About 5 minutes into the talk (given in 2007) he drops the epic quote: ‘So, in total, the Internet is roughly the size of ONE human brain. But your brains isn’t doubling in size every 2 years.’” – Reuben

Aimee Mullins: It’s not fair having 12 pairs of legs
Picked by: Grace Kim, Senior Interaction Designer

Alan Kay shares a powerful idea about ideas
Picked by: Ben Fullerton, Director, Interaction Design

Burt Rutan sees the future of space
Picked by: Ben Fullerton, Director, Interaction Design

Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice
Picked by: Alexander Grunsteidl, Director, Interaction Design

“I read the book, but liked him actually talking about it in his own voice. Plus, his dressing style is representative of the spirit of TED. These ideas deeply affect my thinking about Interaction Design. Also, this is 2005 in the middle of the years we will look back to as having profound impact on how we act on and interact with our world enabled by broadband, wifi, iPhone, YouTube, Facebook, etc. etc. all emerging within a short timespan.” - Alexander

Nigel Marsh: How to make work-life balance work
Picked by: Derek Kim, Designer

Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are
Picked by: Melissa Martin, Senior Interaction Designer

Dan Barber: How I fell in love with a fish
Picked by James Lee, Insights

Brian Cox: Why we need the explorers
Picked by: Tomi Lähdesmäki, Design Lead

“Space is awesome, science is awesome and Brian Cox is awesome.” - Tomi

JR’s TED Prize wish: Use art to turn the world inside out
Picked by James Lee, Insights

Roger Ebert: Remaking my voice
Nikki Roddy, Marketing Associate

Marco Tempest: The magic of truth and lies (and iPods)
Picked by: Reuben Steiger, Principal

Reggie Watts disorients you in the most entertaining way
Picked by: Alis Cambol, Lead Interaction Designer

“Nobody has talked for this long and actually said nothing in the end, in the history of TED Talks.” - Alis

Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders
Picked by: Kate Butchart, Client Services Lead

Countless designers seem to be whining about Apple’s incessant deployment of visual metaphors. As designers, we like to clean, harmonize, remove bumps in curves, straighten lines, literally organize the life out of everything.

One has only to look at ebay’s new logo to know it is within the capabilities of every designer to remove the heart and soul of anything in the name of formal structure. Designers talk a lot about user-centered design, or design for human factors, maybe more so since Bill Moggridge died. It seems that Interaction Design has matured more in this matter than Visual Design.

If Visual Design was more Human Centered, we would realize that vernacular, metaphor, inference and observation are crucial elements of communication and understanding. We would realize that we live in a world where local relevance is as important as global consistency, and that applying swiss to every system could be akin to facism. We’d see that there other kinds of design, many, that are not swiss in heritage.

Design which is interested in the vernacular, admires rough edges, seeks the peculiarities that make something more human. We’d acknowledge that there are many design frameworks that admire the idiosyncratic rather than forcing homogeny. We would realize that the foundational insight for the Apple Brand at Xerox Parc is that computer systems can look more like something we know, rather than like lines of code and commands of a native system.

As designers, we need to become more interested in the world around us and take inspiration from what we observe. We need to open our eyes, our minds and our toolsets. By doing this, we may move skeuomorphism beyond kitsch towards defining a new vernacular.

[image from Associated Press]

On Saturday, the world lost design legend Bill Moggridge to his battle with cancer. We at Method are heartbroken. For a special few here, Bill was a colleague and friend, but he was and remains an inspiration to all of us. Inventor of the first laptop computer and founder of the interaction design field, Bill had a profound impact on our world.

Fittingly, there are already a number of remarkable tributes to Bill online, including articles by our friends at Fast Company and The LA Times. The Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum–which Bill had directed since 2010–created this beautiful video.

For our own tribute, a few of us at Method would like to share our memories of Bill and his influence:

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“Throughout my career, Bill remained a touchstone for what I imagined interaction designers should be. Not just in terms of what we do as a discipline, but in how we should behave toward both the people we design for and the people we design with. Whenever I talked to him – whether it was when he visited live|work for his book, Designing Interactions, or my very first day at IDEO where he sat down and spent time with me talking about my journey as a designer to date, or the moment when we spoke about my brief time at Twitter and I introduced him to Evan Williams for an interview in his book, Designing Media – I was reminded of how important it was to remain warm, and humble, and generous regardless of what you feel your achievements have been. It is simply impossible to teach interaction design without making constant reference to him and his work. ”Uncle Bill” was and will remain a person for us all to aspire to.” – Ben Fullerton, Director, Interaction Design

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“I stopped Bill on the steps of the Cooper Hewitt. He didn’t know me, yet he picked up on my accent and spent ten minutes talking with me, a stranger, about life the universe and everything. It was as if I had known him forever.”  - Marc Shillum, Principal

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“So much has already been said about Bill Moggridge’s impact on the design community and what we do for a living, but I’m astounded when I think of the larger impact he’s made on the world. Bill changed how we create. His influence on design education, his conscious and explicit focus on creating with an ‘empathetic eye,’ changed design forever, and directly resulted in more comfort, safety, satisfaction and pure joy in the form of products and services than anyone could have imagined. His legacy is greater than a single invention or technology. He has gifted the creators with a process of seeing and designing our own ideas through a superior lens.” – Mark Roudebush, Interaction Design Lead

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“I don’t think I’m being over sentimental when I say that none of us here at Method would be doing what we do, the way that we do it, if it hadn’t been for Bill Moggridge. He has been the single biggest influence on my professional life. In my early teens, I read an article about him and his incredible work. It was because of that article that I knew I wanted to be a designer. Through my early product design education, it was Bill and IDEO that gave me the version of design that I knew I wanted to emulate. Studying computer-related design at the RCA, it was Bill’s work in forming ‘Interaction Design’ that gave context and meaning to our studies. I was then lucky enough to work with him during my internship at IDEO SF in 1999. I have never been so star struck as I was the day I saw him eating lunch in the same building. Soon I learned that Bill was not just someone to idolize professionally; he was the warmest, most open, most generous, thoughtful and inspiring man I have ever met. I also got to know him through his support in the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. My proudest career achievement is having Bill write a paragraph about my work in Service Design in his book, Designing Interactions. - Chris Downs, Principal

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For more information on Bill Moggridge.

When I began writing Brands as Patterns in late 2010, I hadn’t fully realized the potential of the argument.

What I had foreseen was the convergence of interaction design with brand thinking and how that was going to change the business of building brands forever. What I hadn’t foreseen is that that same convergence has the potential to change the face of designing for interaction as well.

It occurred to me after this week’s verdict on the Apple – Samsung patent lawsuit that this goes beyond vilifying copycat design and begins to challenge the underpinning of all design for interaction.

It is, of course, somewhat ironic, that a discipline that was founded upon recognizing and notating the common patterns of users and is responsible for creating the standardized building blocks of design has produced one of the most hotly contended intellectual property battles.

The outcome of this verdict could mean that any designer of interface or behaviors could be financially liable for whether the function or behavior they’re designing is unique, or appropriated from a commonly held usage pattern.

Of course it is the declared goal of interaction design to make use easier, and building upon commonly held usage patterns had been the primary way this was achieved.

Some of the patents being protected—the bounce back behavior, the unlock gesture, pinch and zoom—have quickly become the standard way we all have come to understand touch interfaces. It seems incredulous to design a plethora of permutations as to how a user may perform these standard tasks. But, if you think about it, this is exactly what has happened in the physical world. A pin tumbler lock is pretty much the standard for physical locks and was patented in in the 1800′s by Linus Yale. Yet if you look at your key ring, there must be at least three kinds of keys that all have different behaviors, and that does not take into account numeric combinations, electronic key cards, or biometrics.

Traditionally the choice for any competitive brand, when faced with patent issues, is to license, innovate, or avoid. And because it would be hard to imagine someone like Apple licensing its core patents to the competition, the only real choice is to innovate.

This brings about an interesting conundrum: are we really going to reinvent standard interactions to create differentiation? And do we then pass on this inherent complexity to the user?

But, therein lies the opportunity. By creating a set of behaviors, functions and organizing principles that is unique and protectable, you create a stickiness within the interface that a user grows attached to. They begin to organize their systems through your tools, create value through your functionality, access and respond to your behaviors. Much in the same way that it is easy to become accustomed to the handling of a particular car, users become accustomed to the handling of the interface.

This is the true power behind brands as patterns. Branding has moved away from the tails of planes or the logo on a business card that can only signify the breed of the company. Branding has become the way you use something, the way you interact with a company, and the way you experience their products. So far, it is as protectable by law as a logo, a trade mark, or a slogan.

So, there are 2 implications for the interaction design community to consider:

1. If this thought presents a fundamental challenge to the very core of the discipline and blocks best practices, the user will ultimately suffer. Future users may be unable to convert between interfaces and will have remaster even the simplest of tasks. The adoption of standards solves this massive problem. Imagine the web without http; measurement without standard weights or distances, or currency conversion without a centralized rates. The standard patterns of interaction are only shared between designers with an adhoc agreement to create better experiences for all users.

To protect standardization in the future, we must create a legal entity that would hold the global decisions on which interactions are kept as common and which are created into Brand IP. This would represent the Standards of Common Interaction if you will.

2. If this thought embodies the true spirit of innovation and presents the opportunity to fuel innovation for the coming centuries. It’s clear that we must all begin the race towards creating more ‘brand owned’ experiences and interactions in earnest.

Ultimately, we must delight and engage the user in the uniqueness of the product or service as it relates to the ownable pattern of the brand. To do this, we have work ahead of us.

Melissa Martin is a Senior Interaction Designer out of Method’s San Francisco studio. This post originally appeared on her blog, MLSSAMRTN, which explores her thoughts on interaction design, UX strategy, graphic design, design research, and education.

As designers, we have a multitude of tools available to do our jobs. Each of these tools facilitates the bridge between thinking and making, and we can start to favor certain tools over others. This habit can eventually lock us into a particular way of working, even if we’re not accomplishing what we need to.

I recently found myself in this rut and thought I’d share how I got myself out and the lessons learned along the way.

When I first started my career as an interaction designer, clients and developers typically required my designs be heavily documented with annotated wireframes. With the intention of saving myself time, I designed directly in Omnigraffle or InDesign. As I waded through ever-growing documents every time a change was made, my process became increasingly tedious and time consuming. My documents became increasingly complicated, and my creativity, resourcefulness, and motivation began to suffer due to the stagnation created by sitting in front of a mammoth wireframe document day after day. Moving forward, I needed to identify tools (and a process) that would reduce iterating within the detailed design documentation but would make our transition into creating this easier and less time consuming.

So this past year, I decided to make non-screen based tools a stronger part of my process to test how much I can accomplish before moving into the computer. I wanted to move beyond the mouse and engage with a tactile medium that allowed more hands-on manipulation of materials to explore and communicate concepts. I wanted to see how I could push the use of hand-based tools – pencils, pens, markers and paper – in designing interactive products and services. I over came my initial hesitation to change by viewing it as an opportunity to not only use a medium I love, but also challenge myself and my team to work nimbly with minimal materials.

Starting with the basics, we focused on roughly sketching out ideas on paper, usually around a particular mental model, question or set of user goals We forced ourselves to stay within the medium for as long as possible before moving into the computer. The more we drew, we discovered more and more ways to stretch the medium to explore and communicate ideas. In one recent project, designing an e-learning platform, my team and I started with very rough, messy sketches using sharpies and legal sized paper.

As we solidified ideas, our sketches became more refined and colorful. After two weeks, we created a set of formal drawings that we then cut into modular components for a paper prototyping exercise with the client. The exercise helped us (and the client) begin to see how various components fit together creating a system that was bigger than the sum of its parts. And more importantly, how the information within them talked to each other and formed a cohesive experience for the student. The drawings also encouraged the client to do some sketching of their own, which led to a rich conversation, breaking down the client-agency barrier and allowing us to all work together to solve a common problem. The client enjoyed working in the format so much he requested a set of the drawings to take back with him and use with his product team.

In another project for a TV platform, we started experimenting with origami as a medium to communicate physical attributes and behaviors of the system. It was not only fun but got us thinking about the experience of using the product in 3 dimensions rather than a set of pages. Where a previous static wireframe failed to communicate this concept, a piece of paper sculpture triumphed instantly with the client.

Another positive effect the switch to hand-based tools has enabled is that Interaction Designers have been working even more closely, and consistently, with the Visual Designers. Our process has benefited tremendously from this because it allows our strongest concepts to be translated more quickly into higher fidelity comps and even prototypes. This has reduced our need to rev within wireframes and allows Interaction Designers to refine interaction logic and behavior while taking visual design into more consideration, something that is hard to do in wireframes.

Sketching early, and for longer, in the process might sound like a no-brainer, but it’s amazing how easy this step can be brushed aside or abandoned in lieu of the latest (and usually considered the fastest) tool. Moving away from familiar habits is of course uncomfortable and scary at first. What if I waste a bunch of time using something that leads me nowhere? What if the client doesn’t respond to hand drawn sketches? What if they perceive it as not “real work”? These and many other questions haunted me, but I had to trust that there would be valid lessons to learn even in failure.

Overall, I continue to find real value in the mind-body connection that occurs when you put pen to paper. My thinking thinking processes are more active and open when there is a feedback loop traveling between the my mind, arm, fingers, pen and paper. Drawing also forces us to break down a concept into its simplest form, preparing us to effectively communicate the idea with quickness and clarity. If it takes you 15 minutes to describe an idea or how something works, it’s probably too complicated and you should go back to the drawing board (no pun intended).

Moving forward, hand-based tools continue to strongly influence our process as well as our relationships with client. They have help our team to explore more ideas quicker, reduced time creating documentation and increased collaboration internally and with our clients. So go ahead, buy that shiny new rainbow pack of sharpies, fancy drawing pens and pencils and draw to your heart’s content.

Draw, scribble, doodle, cut, fold and most of all, have fun.