The Informed Life

My guest today is Dr. Jeff Johnson. Jeff has been applying his background in psychology towards designing better human-computer interfaces for over forty years. He teaches computer science at The University of San Francisco, and has written several influential books on UI design. Among these, he co-authored with Kate Finn Desiging User Interfaces for an Aging Population, which is the focus of this conversation.

Listen to the full conversation

 Download episode 46

Show notes

• Jeff Johnson
• UI Wizards
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cromemco
• Xerox
• GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Dont’s and Dos by Jeff Johnson
• Designing With the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Guidelines by Jeff Johnson
• Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design by Austin Henderson and Jeff Johnson (My notes on Conceptual Models)
• Designing User Interfaces for an Aging Population: Towards Universal Design by Jeff Johnson and Kate Finn
•  Tesla Model S Interior
• Google Maps

Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

My guest today is Tanya Rabourn. Tanya is a design strategist and researcher based in Dubai. Her focus is on service innovation for social impact. In this conversation, we discuss the role of ethnographic research in understanding the people and cultures served by design.

Listen to the full conversation

 Download episode 45

Show notes

• Tanya Rabourn on LinkedIn
• United Arab Emirates (UAE)
• United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF)
• The University of Texas
• Mercy Corps
• Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
•  Service Design
• One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
• A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on power, technology, and domination by John Law

Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

My guest today is Alexis Lloyd. Alexis is VP of Product Design at Medium and co-founder of Ethical Futures Lab. Previously, she led design and innovation work at The New York Times, Axios, and Automattic. Alexis has been thinking about the future of media for a long time. In this conversation, we focus on the evolving ways we consume and produce media.

Listen to the full conversation

 Download episode 44

Show notes

• Alexis Lloyd
• @alexislloyd on Twitter
• Research & Development at The New York Times
• Axios
• John Maeda (MAEDASTUDIO)
• Automattic
• Medium
• Ethical Futures Lab
•  The future of news is not an article by Alexis Lloyd
• Ted Nelson
• Project Xanadu
• Quotebacks
•  Link to Text Fragment Chrome extension
• The Informed Life Episode 6: Beck Tench on Tinderbox
• Tinderbox
• Zettelkasten
• Roam Research
• DEVONthink
• Building a digital garden by Tom Citchlow
• Pinterest
• Are.na
• Dropbox Paper

Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

My guest today is Rob Haisfield. Rob is a behavioral product strategy and gamification consultant. He’s also an expert user of Roam, “a note-taking tool for networked thought.” In this conversation, we talk about Roam — what it is and how it can help you think more effectively.

Listen to the full conversation

 Download episode 43

Show notes

• Rob Haisfield
• @roberthaisfield on Twitter
• Rob Haisfield on LinkedIn
• Influence Insights, Rob’s consulting company
• Spark Wave
• Center for Advanced Hindsight
• Roam Research
• OneNote
• Rob’s public repository
• Spaced repetition
• Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
• DEVONthink
• GuidedTrack
• Rob Haisfield’s Tour of Roam Research (video)

Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

My guest today is Nataly Restrepo. Nataly is an industrial designer specialized in food design. She works as a food and beverage innovation consultant for restaurants and consumer goods, and is based in Mexico. In this conversation we explore food design and how designing for experiences calls for a holistic understanding.

Listen to the full conversation

 Download episode 42

Show notes

• Nataly Restrepo
• Nataly Restrepo on Instagram
• Nataly Restrepo on Linkedin
• Food Design Education on Instagram
• Food Design Education Facebook group
• CENTRO
• Marije Vogelzang
• Play-Doh

Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

My guest today is Arvind Venkataramani. Alongside Adam Menter, Arvind has been working on an open source toolkit to help people design secular rituals. In this conversation, we explore what rituals are and how being more intentional in their structure and use can improve our lives.

Listen to the full conversation

 Download episode 41

Show notes

• Arvind Venkataramani
• Adam Menter
• The Ritual Design Toolkit
• SonicRim
•  Graph of types of rituals
• U-Haul
• Virtual Memorial Guide
• Barn raising
• Anthony Giddens
• Burning Man
•  Ritual Design at Burning Man 2019 by Arvind Venkataramani

Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

My guest today is Heather Hedden. Heather is an information management consultant specialized in taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, metadata, and indexing. She’s the author of two books, including The Accidental Taxonomist, a guide to the discipline of taxonomy creation and management. In this conversation, we explore taxonomies and why they’re important for organizations.

Listen to the full conversation

 Download episode 40

Show notes

• Hedden Information Management
• Heather’s blog
•  Heather’s online taxonomy course
• The Accidental Taxonomist, 2nd Ed by Heather Hedden
• Cengage
• Roget’s Thesaurus
• American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
• International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• Web Ontology Language (OWL)
• Resource Description Framework (RDF)
• Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS)
•  Microsoft SharePoint

Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

My guest today is Stephen P. Anderson. Stephen is a design leader who is focused on workforce learning and organizational development. He and Karl Fast recently published Figure it Out, a new book about how we can transform information to increase understanding. This is also the subject of our conversation; I hope you find it valuable.

Show notes

• Stephen P. Anderson
• @stephenanderson on Twitter
• The Mighty Minds Club
• Figure It Out: Getting from Information to Understanding, by Stephen P. Anderson and Karl Fast
• Seductive Interaction Design: Creating Playful, Fun, and Effective User Experiences, by Stephen P. Anderson
• Mental Notes card deck by Stephen P. Anderson
• From Paths to Sandboxes by Stephen P. Anderson
• Scrabble
• The Information Architecture Conference
• Mural
• Miro
• Karl Fast
• Google Maps
• Business model canvas
• Polarity mapping
•  Photo of the Dragon spacecraft cockpit
• The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford (PDF)
• Hey.com

Disclosure: I received Stephen's book for free as a previous Rosenfeld Media/Two Waves author.

Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

My guest today is Andy Polaine. Andy is a service designer, consultant, educator, author, and podcaster. He’s co-author of the book Service Design: From Insight to Implementation and host of the Power of Ten podcast. In this conversation, we discuss service design, and how it helps organizations think more holistically about the experiences they enable.

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Show notes

• Andy Polaine
• Andy Polaine on Twitter
• Andy Polaine on LinkedIn
• Power of Ten podcast
• Service Design: From Insight to Implementation by Andy Polaine, Lavrans Lovlie, and Ben Reason
• Adobe Director (aka Macromedia Director, or Video Works)
• Antirom
• School of the Arts & Media, University of New South Wales
• Ben Reason
• Livework
• Lavrans Løvlie (in Norwegian)
• Chris Downs on LinkedIn
• Fjord
• Powers of Ten (film) by Charles and Ray Eames
• The Guide to Self-sufficiency by John Seymour
• Service blueprint
• Design for the Long Term by Andy Polaine
•  UK Government Digital Service (GDS)
• This is HCD network

Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.

My guest today is Audrey Crane. Audrey is a partner in DesignMap, a UX strategy and digital product design consultancy based in San Francisco. Audrey recently published a book called What CEOs Need to Know About Design, and in this conversation, we talk about the evolving role of design in organizations and why this book is needed now.

Listen to the full conversation

Show notes

• DesignMap
• TRS-80
• Ashton-Tate
• Apple
• Netscape
• Hugh Dubberly
• Dubberly Design Office
• Hypercard
• What CEOs Need to Know About Design: A Leader’s Guide to Working With Designers by Audrey Crane
• About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin, and Christopher Noessel
• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
• Learning GNU Emacs: A Guide to Unix Text Processing by James Elliott, Eric S. Raymond, Marc Loy, Debra Cameron, and Bill Rosenblatt
• Zoom
• Accenture
•  The Informed Life Episode 22: Andrea Mignolo on Designerly Ways of Being

Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links.