Lucky for us though, Canal+ Spain will premiere the film sometime in May. Take note of the date because this one’s definitely not worth missing. The amount of archive material these men had access to is astonishing and the way Jason Cohn’s script interweaves private and public aspects of their lives, pretty enlightening.

But, movie-aspects aside, this is a great opportunity to revisit the Eames’ work and, especially, their philosophy. El Pais’ Anatxu Zabalbeascoa did a pretty good job at grasping what this event was all about in her article a few weeks ago: Eames for times of crisis. Charles and Ray taught us that difficult times are a great opportunity to change things: to do more and better.

They injected some of this ‘good design is good business’ mantra in companies like Herman Miller, IBM and Polaroid but they also engrained this in future generations of designers. Like us. Many years after them. This is the main reason why we decided to do this event in the first place and share it with the people we respect. For those of you who came: thank you. This is the first time we do something like this. Hopefully it won’t be the last.

We’d also like to thank the great team behind us in this event: Pelayo and Marta. And Vitra Spain for their generosity.

Joseph Schumpeter argued in 1909 that small companies were more inventive. In 1942 he reversed himself. Big firms have more incentive to invest in new products, he decided, because they can sell them to more people and reap greater rewards more quickly. In a competitive market, inventions are quickly imitated, so a small inventor’s investment often fails to pay off [...]

Politicians should certainly stop demonising big firms and sentimentalising small ones: an economy needs both. But they should not allow their new-found appreciation of big companies to degenerate into a taste for picking national champions. Such firms typically gobble subsidies and crowd out smaller, more creative firms. Nor should they start tolerating monopolies. The key to promoting innovation (and productivity in general) lies in allowing vigorous new companies to grow big, and inefficient old ones to die. On that, Schumpeter never changed his mind.

Schumpeter column, The Economist

A few weeks ago we got together with Joaquín Torres of studio A-cero architects for a quick chat. Putting his public persona aside we found a man who is confident, humble and honest. He has a no BS approach that is quite disarming. Here are a few snippets from that conversation:

I couldn’t care less about architecture magazines. Of course it’d be great if El Croquis wrote about my work but, to be honest, I know it has less to do with the quality of my work and more with the fact that I’m not part of their clan. Early on I came to terms with the fact that publications like these –publications targeted to architects or designers- do nothing but feed our own egos. I’d rather appear in magazines that are less prestigious but reach the public we are interested in.

If nobody knows you exist, it doesn’t matter how good you are or how wonderful your work is. Knowing how to sell your work and the product you do is crucial. Unfortunately most of us architects believe we are beyond good and evil and that we don’t need this.

It’s the world you should aim for. I have learned from other spanish businessmen that Spain falls short in many ways. So we opened a branch in Dubai in part due to an architecture prize we won and following the advice of one of our client’s at La Finca. Since then, we have invested a lot of time and energy in making the studio international. We opened branches in Ho Chi Minh, in Bombay and tried in Santo Domingo and Sao Paulo, though we ended up closing these last two in the end.

I live in a state of chronic dissatisfaction. I always feel that we should do more and better. And I don’t give up until I get it. I have the advantage –or the disadvantage– of being overly critical of my work. I know when something is good and when something is not. I don’t need others to judge fairly the quality of my work.

I’m very demanding but I consider myself just. I have very clear ideas of what needs to be done and how to do it. I know how to value things that are done well and things that don’t work. And I’m not scared of saying it out loud and putting my finger on it. I think I have surrounded myself with a group of loyal collaborators because of it.

We think we have the monopoly on good taste but what we actually need to do is listen. The most important thing is to keep the client happy. In the end he’s the one who is going to live the house day in and day out.

We should put ourselves at the same level of our clients. If they talk to me about Mies van der Rohe then great, we can push the level up. If they don’t, then we should keep it simple. It depends. In the end, architecture is about the way we interact with space. And anyone can relate with that.

Internet is not the future, it’s the present. I guess I realized intuitively that having a solid online presence was critical. Social networks are very important to us. I invest at least two or three hours a day to answer comments on our blog, tweet and update our profile on Facebook. We have a communications team that oversees this full-time but in most cases I like doing this personally.

I never use computers. I just use them for social networks. I do sketches by hand. I stopped using AutoCAD years ago. Although we have a great team of draughtsmen in our studio who use the best and latest programs, I do corrections by hand.

We have an amazing client portfolio. I’m proud to say 99.9% of them are happy clients that do nothing but recommend us. A-cero‘s popularity is based on word of mouth. When people criticize my work I always ask them: Have you been there? Have you been in-situ? Have you talked to the client? Have you asked him why he’s so satisfied with our work?

There are three turning points in my career: designing my father’s house in Galicia, knowing when to say ‘no’ to clients and my friendship with Luis García Cereceda. I will always be in his debt. For his friendship for his faith in me and because career-wise the La Finca project opened up many doors and brought about many more projects. Not everybody is as lucky. I was and I made the most out of it.

You need much more than just talent to succeed. Yes, I’ve been lucky but the true recipe is to work, work, work. Work more than anybody else. And know how to sell. How to sell yourself.

Only two companies were featured in RTVE‘s (a Spanish national TV channel) coverage of FICOD (Spain’s most acclaimed forum for digital content) last night. We’re proud to say both of them are Vostok’s clients with whom we’ve been working and desigining together for some time now.

Are we bragging? You bet. It’s not every day that two products you did strategy and design for receive this kind of offline attention. We’re thrilled. Kudos to Filmin and Minube :)

You can watch it online here.

The location, the actor and the voice-over are made by Vostok. The script, the photography, the music and the editing are made by Riot Cinema. A special thanks goes to Luis Enrique Carrión. This man can do wonders with a Canon EOS 5D and a bit of light.

I would encourage you to read along side a great post by Arquinauta’s Karina Ibarra in UX Mag that covers extensively lessons learned, she now shares, when designing for kids. Especially kids 3 and under.

We wish Arquinauta’s team the best and hope to see such a beautifully-designed app used in many more languages.

So the news is that the IFC Center  will premiere Eames: Architect and Painter by directors Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey. PBS will air it in December as part of their American Masters series. From this interview (Part 1 and Part 2) I get the impression that the documentary will be really good. Cohn’s devotion to the project (he has spent five years working on it: fundraising, documenting and filming) and his passion for both the Eames’ work and work ethos gives me confidence. The fact that he’s a journalist with a design sensibility and not a designer with a journalist sensibility is also a good sign. It’s a subtle but important difference.

The difference between telling the story of two people that happened to do great design and were able to convey the value of it to non-designers, making “the best for the most for the least” and something more centered on doing an appraisal of their work and the value of their legacy. I’m not saying that a designer wouldn’t have done a great job, I’m just saying it’s a matter of focus.

Sometimes people who are not designers are good at explaining the value of certain design concepts in layman’s terms. Sometimes not. We’ll see.

Until then, here’s the trailer:

Honest design is what we try to pursue by logical thinking. An ideal form is derived naturally through the process of attempting to maximize the potential of client’s demand, material and its function. I realized that it was important to make ‘honest’ design by going back and forth and to be surrounded by different materials to be used in the experimental process. In architecture or interior, product and furniture design the attitude does not change. I try to maintain a similar philosophy.

Keiji Ashizawa

We stand by every single word.

Ashizawa Design Co. is based in Tokyo. For an overview of some of his work in interior design, architecture and furniture take a look at this image search.

But, as with all artificial restraints, temptation always ends up looming in. And following the trace of Murakami through Tokyo in this NYT article is what did it for me. (Side note: it’s great to see what the NYT design team can do when they don’t have to juggle with enormous amounts of content and ads):

Perhaps I will read 1Q84 after all. Just, you know, one more for old times sake.

I suggest reading the entire NYT piece, The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami, and if you’re interested in buying the paper edition of the book, watching this video of Alfred A. Knopf’s cover designer for 1Q84 for a sneak peek of what your money will be worth. Fun fact: “The title of “1Q84” is a joke: an Orwell reference that hinges on a multilingual pun. (In Japanese, the number 9 is pronounced like the English letter Q)”.

UPDATE 31/09/2011:
A beautiful signed and numbered (only 111 copies) limited edition of 1Q84 is now available. This project is a collaboration between Simon Rhodes, Kristen Harrison at The Curved House and designer Stefanie Posavec. Covers printed by Justin Knopp at Typoretum. Photos available here.

Jean Prouvé was once quoted saying: never design anything that cannot be made. Part designer, part architect he always conceived himself primarily as a craftsman, a builder. In Norman Foster‘s own words, in Prouvé’s work “technical imagination is placed at the service of function and economy”.

And that’s infinitely apparent when you understand the thought process behind his first attempts at prefabrication. How to produce furnishings and components that were simple to ship and easy to erect? How to create structures that were both solid and adaptable; temporary and long-lasting? Simple: modular design. His structures tended to be light, flexible, and even mobile, combining traditional building materials with aluminum and steel.

At the time, Mr. Prouvé was revolutionizing the concept of construction so he went back to the basics. He kew that if he was to create a new language, he first needed to devise an alphabet and that’s what he did, he created “L’alphabet des structures”. Because once you devise the basic elements of a system, it doesn’t matter what the future holds; you’ll know what to do, how to react.

Most of the problems we face as designers today aren’t new so it’s always refreshing and inspiring to see how others have tackled them before. And then it’s just a matter of learning, adapting and applying.

If you have a chance, Industrial Beauty (though I like the name in Spanish better, Belleza Fabricada), is an exhibition at Ivory Press Madrid of some of Prouvé’s most significant work, including drawings, sketches and furniture. It will be open until November 12th.

For an overview of some of his work, this Flickr compilation is a good start.

It seems as though they find –or at least prior to the earthquake they did– great pleasure in portraying themselves that way to the world. “We’re weird, we’re geeky but we’re awesome”. And few people have done as much to get that message accross than Morinosuke Kawaguchi. His first book, Geeky-Girly Innovation: A Japanese Subculturalist’s Guide to Technology and Design is an ode to that.

Happens to be that Mr. Kawaguchi will be in Madrid next week in the third edition of Asia Geek, an event organized by Casa Asia and Fundación Japón. We’ll be there so if you happen to drop by, come on over and say hi.

‘Til then, here’s his conference on TEDx Tokyo on…above all things, Japanese toilets, to keep you entertained.

1. Demonstrate from the top that high quality and attention to detail are prioritized and appreciated above everything else, including being the first to market, having the most features, or having the most aggressive prices. If you can get those as well, that’s great, but quality will not be sacrificed to do so.
2. Instill these values in your staff. If you can’t, hire a staff for which you can. Better yet, hire a staff for which you don’t need to.
3. Aggressively pursue simplification, elegance, craftsmanship, and the highest-class user experiences in the product line. Ruthlessly cut or hold features or entire products that aren’t good enough.
4. Make it pretty.

How not to bring good design to a platform?
Skip steps 1–3 above.

Marco Arment

Mark MacKay and María Munuera, former members of the Vostok crew and now merry autonomous soloists started Method of Action a few months ago. In their own words: “peer to peer education for people who want to get things done”. Their latest education tool is pretty fun. It’s called KernType and it’s one of many soon to come tools meant to help people become more familiarized with design notions.

We write about it because it’s a simple concept beautifully designed with a twist on the game-ification of learning (not new but always fun to watch when done right).

Things we like:

• The use of color. Neutral-coloured backgrounds allow color to be used more resourcefully.
• That you need to wait a few seconds to know what your score is. The more you wait, the higher your score, so waiting is not a drag.
• Small details like using lighter/darker shades or subtle lines here or there give a lot of texture to what is basically a pretty monochromatic website.
• You learn a bit about typography (the who’s, the what’s, the when’s).
• Learning is a game (missions are accomplished or failed, you need a certain score to ‘pass’ on to the next mission).

Overall a sweet entertainment for all those closeted O.C.D’ers out there. I would also suggest reading Mark’s post You’re already a good designer alongside it.

Looking forward to what’s next in production. If you want to learn more you can follow Method of Action on twitter.

There are three ways of funding Japan’s reconstruction (total damage amounts to 7% of country’s GDP): issuing government bonds, increase in taxes or expenditure shifting (spend less on non-essentials and more in affected areas). Much has been debated and the government has decided on government bonds (to be paid in ten years). Economist and former government economic adviser, Takatoshi Ito considers this to be a huge mistake. The main reason: Japan’s working-population is getting smaller and not necessarily richer. The burden of debt will bring about new problems in ten years. His proposal: make the baby-boom generation (today’s highest income profile sector and tomorrow’s retirees) share the burden along with the rest of the population. Don’t wait 10 years, do it today: increase VAT taxes, that way everybody pays.

Unfortunately Mr. Takatoshi Ito’s motion (and that of other economists as well) will remain unaddressed; taxes are infinitely unpopular.

Mr. Ito’s full talk at the Fundación Ramón Areces is available here.

Almost seven months have passed since 3/11. Time enough to erect a barrier separating what was from what will be. And it looks like Japan is making the most out of it.

The bittersweet reality of catastrophes is that, despite everything, they honor you with a precious gift: the opportunity to start over. Funnily enough, what comes across most strongly is their desire to start anew, create something that’s their own and not just an interpretation of other cultures. This documentary grasps a tiny tiny glimpse of that.

You can watch the complete series here.

It’s quite discouraging to see so many failed attempts at adapting a product as important to society as newspapers that we felt we needed to ask the guy to go to for this subject to share his thoughts on what has changed, what newspapers are doing to adapt and why their changes are so timid. We encourage you to watch the full-length interview in case you want more information or, like me, are just curious about the man. If not, here’s a good 4min compilation of snippets of the most important things we touched on.

On a side note… One of Vostok‘s dream jobs would be, without a doubt, to design an online newspaper. It would also be one of our worst job nightmares…You have to deal with infinite layers and inevitable complex structures, not to mention the frustration of having to play by the rules when you know the rules are no longer valid. It’s not an easy task. You can read a compilation of what our stance is when it comes to online news design here.

Agree? Not agree? Let us know what you think.

Hello Javier, I’ve always been passionate about interaction design. I have some notions and I’ve read many books but I don’t have any real experience so it’s hard for me to get hired as an interaction designer. I’ve thought studying a master on interaction design would help me. What do you think?

Interaction design is quite a young discipline and the entry gates are diffuse. Most of those who have been formally practicing it learnt the basics in a semi-selftaught manner. I myself have a background in sociology and new media communications but no formal training in design. All I know I learnt from colleagues, talks, books and articles. Well, and a lot of practice.

These days there are a few decent courses, degrees and masters on interaction design. The good ones are in northern European countries. Mediterranean countries are short of them; besides they usually lean towards the artsy-fashion side of design instead of focusing on what really matters.

So, what is my advice to those who want to enter the field but have no experience? Instead of putting 5000-15.000€ on a masters program, offer yourself as an unpaid intern for 6 months at a very good studio. Work part time there, learn from the experienced practitioners, get involved in whatever you can, get yourself inside meeting rooms and be quiet, listen, observe how designers use their tools, copy their work, ask many things and be helpful in whatever you can. Ask for advice on what to read and practice at home in the afternoons. Show your work to the senior fellows and ask them for guidance. Adopt one or two mentors (one for career issues and one for technical skills). Go have some drinks with them some time and again, listen more than you talk.

It is an investment, yes. You’ll be earning no money in 5 months. Live on a budget during these 6 months and it won’t cost you more than 10.000€. After that you’ll have experience and colleague recognition. Some great studio will be on your resumé, perhaps some nice work on your portfolio and if you are good, committed and sharp you may even get a full time job at that studio. You’ve sacrificed yourself and have demonstrated committment, a good boss will always value that.

If you want a copy, here’s the PDF.

The World as Design
Otl Aicher

Honesty and design. It’s a book about integrity, about what decisions should be made, when and why. My favorite book about design, it has really changed the way I see my profession.

The book is a series of essays written by Aicher relating to all sorts of things; from how the Eameses designed chairs to the morals behind choosing one color over another to paint a house façade. This book made me understand that there is a reason for everything and every design decision should have a reasoning behind it.

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School
Matthew Frederick

It’s a tiny book about the basics of architecture and therefore, about the basics of the relationship between people and space. It’s very interesting because it gives you good advice for whenever you need to think about information architecture in terms of environments, just as an urbanist would. Not what happens inside a page but how to receive a user, how to guide him, what should the paths look like. When to make “open spaces” and when to make aisles, etc.

Designing for People
Henry Dreyfuss

Dreyfuss designed many iconic objects we still use nowadays. He was also the first one to apply human factors to his designs. He stated that the characteristics of the human body should be taken into account when desiging something for human use. The idea was revolutionary and completely against the design of his time (the 50′s), which was much more worried about forms that would sell well.

On Designing for People he exposes his ideas along with some thoughts on how to run a studio, its processes and methodologies. A classic.

Universal Principles of Design
William Lidwell

A great compliation on design principles (behavioral, mostly). Each principle is carefully explained; on one side of the page with text, on the other with illustrations or diagrams. Perfect to learn the basics and see them in action; it conveys the message clearly using excellent examples.

It touches on many subjects, among them: how appearance influences people, how many options are optimal, how to order stuff… It’s a must for anybody who wants to understand how users make decisions.

The Psychology of Everyday Things
Donald Norman

A great introduction to cognitive psychology applied to design. Very good at helping understand how we relate to the objects that surround us and the things that go on in our minds. Norman introduces the concept of affordance, among many others, one of the few things I try to always keep in mind when designing.

The Industrial Design Reader
Carma Gorman

A compilation of readings (articles, essays, excerpts…) on design, architecture and the like. I’d say 80% is still applicable to interaction design no matter the year the texts were written (some are from 19th century and very valid).

It’s a good book to help remind us that, even before our times, great minds put a lot of time and effort into thinking how things should be made. It helps me keep focus and give foundations to what I do.

The Invisible Computer
Donald Norman

This book by Norman has a few extremely good chapters on how design (as user experience), technology and marketing interrelate in a project and the role each one should play. It provides you with (and helps you understand) the whole picture; how technological products are made and why most of the time we fail.

Information Architects
Richard Saul Wurman

Wurman coined the term “information architecture” and uses it in a slightly different way to what we are used to. We think of it as structures of webpages, he thought of it as what we now call “information design”. The book is a great compilation of examples by excellent designers on how to shape information in a way that conveys the message more efficiently (most of the times that means visually).

Ambient Findability
Peter Morville

Morville, one of the founding fathers of information architecture, wrote this excellent book about how information acquires new dimensions when leaving the realm of the traditional website. He talks about how GPS, RFID, sensors and many other technologies are creating new forms of data that make information more meaningful. To me, this book was a great introduction to the value of metadata, the internet of things and geoeverything.

Being Digital
Nicholas Negroponte

It’s the bible of the digital realm, a book that sheds light on the consequences of converting everything to ones and zeroes. Most of what he says on the book is stuff almost everyone knows now but back then: it was shocking. It should be a mandatory read for some policy makers even today.

Inside Steve’s Brain
Leander Kahney

Learn marketing, design, communication and product strategy from Steve Jobs. Who else could teach it better? The book is half biography half chronicle about Jobs and Apple. It goes deep into many issues in a very entertaining style. Some chapters are worth their weight in caviar. The book was last year’s Vostok present to our clients.

Designing Pleasurable Products
Patrick Jordan

Forget Donald Norman’s “Emotional Design”. If you want to know about emotional design then get this book. It’s entertaining and rigorous and it has everything you need to know about how emotions play a role in the way we choose and use products.

In Praise of Shadows
Junichiro Tanizaki

It’s japanese aesthetics in prose poetry. It speaks about organic materials, objects that age gracefully and the beauty of imperfection. It describes the secret pleasure of wabi-sabi.

Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
Leonard Koren

A great essay on wabi-sabi, that side of Japanese aesthetics that looks into the graceful decadence of materials, seductive imperfection, shadows, organic materials, wood, ceramics and beautiful rusty colors. To me, modernism is great but sometimes you just need a break, a good break, not one of those breaks that postmo hipster boys have in store.

Braun: 50 Jahre Produktinnovationen
Bernd Polster

Braun is the Apple of the 20th century. This book is a catalog of all the stuff produced by Braun during the past 50 years. You can see the influence of the Ulm School of Design, Dieter Rams, Hans Gugelot, Otl Aicher… And also learn through colorful examples how Oral-B ruined the best design driven company that’s ever existed. The book was a gift from my students some years ago and I go back to it when I need inspiration for use of color, layout, etc. Full disclosure: Dieter Rams is one of my prophets.

Digital Diagrams
Trevor Bounford

I lend this book to whoever asks me to recommend a book on information design that’s not just theory. Edward Tufte is fine but it may leave you clueless about how to start. This book will give you many examples and even Illustrator tips on how to visually display data. A great book to have around.

The Kitchen is for Cooking
Otl Aicher

Aicher had to redesign a kitchen. In the process he learnt so much about how everything works inside, an entire microuniverse, that he decided to write a book about all his findings. I consider it a great example on how to understand contexts of use, which are often wider and more complex than expected.

Typography
Otl Aicher

There are many books on typography and I confess that I’ve only read a few but, boy is this one good. It makes you feel a complete ingnorant. What’s wonderful about is that it makes you understand how people read so you can make design decisions on how to display your type. You have to read a good book on typography before you design anything intended to be read and this is probably one of the top books to aide you.

From Bauhaus to Our House
Tom Wolfe

Good modernists sometimes get so fed up with ourselves that we need a break. Wolfe’s book is a satirical essay on the modernist madness and all those “white shoe boxes” derived from the first Bauhaus buildings. Is there a modernist aesthetic and you just used it without being it a derivation of function? Perhaps you are modernist-sick. Go get the book.

Conversations with Jean Prouvé
Armelle Lavalou

A tiny but marvelous book on how an industrial designer thinks and works. In this book Prouvé is extremely honest and modest, a quality difficult to find in today’s designers. He was also a real innovator in materials, form and structure. The way the book is written is like having the master talking about himself in front of you.

Sistemas de Signos en la Comunicación Visual / Zeichensysteme Der Visuellen Kommunikation: Handbuch Fur Designer, Architekten, Planer, Organisatoren
Martin Krampen and Otl Aicher

The book is worth its price just for one chapter, the one where Aicher explains the difference between analytical and synthetic information. It’s the first thing I teach to my students every year. When you know that, you know 30% of everything a designer that works with information needs.

The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell

It’s a great collection of stories about how people behave unexpectedly in certain situations. Gladwell is very good at pop psychology facts that sometimes are good for understanding user patterns or for provoking them.

Designing Web Usability
Jakob Nielsen

An introductory classic. One of the books that started it all. Nielsen is not the guru he used to be but he deserves credit for this great compendium of applied human-computer interaction that kicked our profession in its initial days. The book was also great for convincing clients and “evangelizing”, if you ever want to use that word.

Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Steve Krugg

Krugg’s book is also an introductory classic; if Nielsen’s was about principles this one is about techniques. How to run a usability test without a white coat, how to report usability issues effectively, etc. Many examples and cartoons, easy to read (it took me less than 2 hours!). Very good for superbeginners who need to do usability tasks at their products. Also very good for those who’s job is not on the usability/design trench but need notions.

Le Corbusier Talks with Students
Le Corbusier

Designers usually pretend to know a lot about Le Corbusier but they usually know little more than a few modern-design villas with beautiful horizontal shapes without understanding the reasons behind such decisions on form. This book summarizes many of his thoughts on design and architecture. Since the book is a transcript from his talks, it feels very natural and close. You end up learning a few things about systems and contexts from a discipline that has many things in common with interaction design.

UPDATE (31 Jan, 2011)

The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand

Yes, a novel. Setting aside Rand’s political views, The Fountainhead is clearly a good story about honesty and values in creative work. The book is about an architect who fights the world to stay true to his beliefs on what a building should be. There is much about his views on architecture that matches what I consider good design. Also, all the character’s struggle to stay true to himself is a great teaching in a field where clients, peers and fashions have so much influence.

Read it when you feel you are senior enough, not too soon. And stay away from work when reading it. A summer vacation would be ideal.

Javier Cañada leads Vostok, a design and strategy studio that creates smart interactive products. You can follow him on twitter @javiercanada or at Vostok’s blog.

“A stop motion film? What do you mean, you don’t know what a stop motion film is?!  Jeez, man, I learned how to do one of those when I was 3!!  What kinda of stone-aged retarded world have you been living in?”

Pas a Pas is an interactive tool that helps children learn the concepts behind geometry, motion and interactivity. We post this video because it’s got ‘danish design’ (in the line of Bang&Olufsen 1970s Beomasters) written all over it. Funny how if you combine high-tech design with wood, the product immediately speaks scandinavian, no?

If you want to understand how the product works watch the whole video but if you just want the meat then forward to 2:25 min. Beware of these children ’cause they’re sure to take over the world!

hat tip: Ricardo Fernández

These are the eight members of Programa Vostok III (2010-2011)

Nicolás Alcalá
Marc Cercós
Hugo Cornejo
Ricardo Fernández
Gabriela Lendo
Irene Marqués
María Jesús Sierra
Bruno Teixidor

I’m really looking forward to begin classes. There is a great responsability in teaching and doing so the way I want to do it requires a lot of work and involvement.

He decidido volver a enseñar diseño de interacción.

Quiero volver a formar gente como creo que hay que hacerlo: sin prisas, enseñando con ejemplos, hablando, debatiendo y trabajando. Creo en la honestidad absoluta de enseñar ejemplos buenos y también errores, de hablar de lo que no funciona y de lo que sí, y también de invitar a gente mejor que uno mismo para que comparta sus formas de hacer. Quiero que mis alumnos practiquen, discutan, lean, salgan a la calle y observen para luego volver a practicar.

He estado dos años sin enseñar. No me sentía con ganas porque dudaba de muchas de las cosas que había enseñado antes. Tras dos años de trabajar muy duro he desterrado alguna creencia y he reforzado unas cuantas certezas. Primero pensé en organizar un curso de dos días, algo intensivo. Lo descarté porque realmente no sería capaz de transmitir todo lo que quiero transmitir. Si hay que enseñar diseño, hagámoslo bien.

En noviembre volveré a reunir a un grupo de 6 u 8 personas jóvenes que quieran crecer como diseñadores de interacción y que estén dispuestos a venir al estudio todas las tardes de los viernes durante 5 meses. Les enseñaré lo que sé, les haré trabajar duro y les trataré como si fueran mi proyecto más importante.

Empezaremos en noviembre. Dentro de poco tendré una web con todos los detalles: fechas, temario, precio, plazas) y podré empezar a seleccionar a los alumnos. Mientras tanto, si te interesa escríbeme a javier@vostok.es.

SUMMARY IN ENGLISH: I’m back to teaching interaction design. Starting this November I’ll repeat the Programa Vostok course I taught twice some years ago. It will be a 5 month course with classes every friday afternoon in Madrid. Classes will be in Spanish. Contact me if interested: javier@vostok.es

These are some of the principles we’ve applied here:

• Place the alert as close as possible to the spot where the decision has to be made.
• Add visual feedback that something important is going on (the message flashes) so it is noticeable.
• Change the form (size, color and text) of the confirmation element to make sure the user notices the alert

Here’s the full scene:

If we knew that not noticing the cards was too frequent we’d consider haing another step in the process just for filling the cards. But we are unsure about that and there is no easy way for knowing this (no, usability tests don’t work for that because users pay extra attention when observed). So instead of redesigning the process making it more effective and painful we went with this “user interface hack”.

View Larger Map

Very interesting!
BTW, the map is collaborative so anybody can add whatever he or she finds relevant.

(it’s funny that I spent almost 3 hours last night engaged in a talk just about this)

Parece que aún hay poca información sobre el profesorado, pues sólo veo 12 nombres (y muchas más asignaturas). El plan de estudios tiene buen aspecto, bastante completo, aunque con poquita carga de diseño de interacción dado que las especializaciones son Diseño Gráfico, de Interiores, de Producto y de Moda, un poco en la linea del IED.

Creo que hubiera sido bueno apostar más por el nuevo diseño de producto, con más énfasis en lo tecnológico y en la interacción persona-ordenador. Aún así hay que reconocer el mérito de sacar una titulación así adelante. Les deseo suerte!

As some of you know, the course took place during these last six months both in Madrid and Barcelona. Ariel Guersenzvaig, professor in Barcelona, wrote a post summarizing the experience. It’s worth a look if you are interested in the course and live around that city or plan to be there next year.

I have to say that I am very happy with the results for the Madrid crew too. We now have a group of six cosmonauts who have been trained in many issues, almost all of them on the list of subjects (esp-pdf) anounced and on many more.

This year we had some talks by invited people:

• Jesús Carreras gave us a workshop on Card Sorting.
• Ale Muñoz talked about data visualization.
• María Martínez did a pre-release private demo of iwannagothere.net and explained some of the design decisions behind it.
• Clarisa Doval talked about user dynamics in websites for dating.
• Nauzet Santana gave us an introduction to Robotics and Lego Mindstorms.

Pretty intense, yeah!

This is my second year teaching the course. Now I see that each course gets to be unique in its own way. Students are different (this year there was less homogeneity), I am motivated with different subjects and of course I get better at explaining some things compared to last year but some others get worse. I’d prefer some variability over making something scriptized and completely predictable. It’s more fun this way.

All 12 students (6 in Madrid and 6 in Barcelona) are now professionals who can face most of the usual tasks an interaction designer does on his professional life. They’ve seen many examples (good and bad) and they’ve done a lot of work by themselves. Even some of the projects they started may become reality soon (stay tuned to Projekt Bahnhof).

That makes a total of 17 great professionals who will always be part of Vostok. I feel very proud of them.

Congratulations, especially to the new ones!

1. There is a world out there, go reach it.
2. Your shit is someone else’s food (metaphorically speaking, ok?).
3. Own no more than 5 things you use, or else things will use you instead.
4. Leave your shit behind, it will serve others and make you more free.
5. If you reinterpret space and use it in non-conventional ways you are on advantage.
6. Courage is one of the most important things in life.
7. You can design your own life.
8. Do-ers are better than thinkers (in case you had to chose).
9. Conferences on a far away city are great for putting thoughts in order.
10. Web2.love is still the only strategic approach that makes sense when creating things.

I would love to see some more of these shared by other atendees. Please, let me know if you happen to post yours.