Signposts is back after a brief hiatus. We've got some good ones this week.

Amazing video of Bach's Cantana 147 played in a forest, on a giant wooden xylophone, with gravity and a little wooden ball.

Stone tables in Japan serve as warning of the risk of tsunamis across generations.

Updates to iOS enable fascinating visuals and frightening implications.

Our friends at Mule got recognized in the New Yorker for their 'Unsuck It' device.

What The Telephone's Unbeatable Functionality Teaches Us About Innovation.

Beautiful use of animation in pictures reminds us a little of the portriats in a famous movie.

Is this Play? No, it's sad!

Sticky note templates for web and mobile design

Inspiring art project in New Orleans asks a simple question, and the neighborhood responds.

Google Mapmaker allows users to edit maps.

Reconnecting dormant social ties can surprise you.

The release of the latest iPad has me once again thinking about its role in childrens' media consumption. (I wrote last year that my kids weren't getting one. Uhhhh, yeah. I'll just pretend that we haven't basically monopolized the Amsterdam studio iPad for the past three months.)

Recently, Henning and I did a research project on an iPod Touch pilot program at the International School of The Hague, where my children attend. We were curious and wanted to explore what is proving to be a divisive topic: the continuous use of consumer electronic devices among children.

As a parent, I am concerned about the amount of time my kids spend in front of screens. The 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation Report didn't make me feel much better about it. The resulting statistics apparently shocked the researchers themselves: children 8 to 18 years of age spend an average -- an average! -- of 7.5 hours a day consuming electronic media. If you count multi-tasking, the figure hits nearly 11 hours. The New York Times had it right: their article about the report was titled "If Your Kids Are Awake, They're Probably Online."

School used to be a respite from this screen media assault. With the release of the iPod Touch, and now with iPads, personal devices are entering learning environments. "So what?" you might say, “Computers have been in school for years.” The interesting aspect of these devices is that they are truly personal tech - and, unlike computers, can, more or less, be used anywhere. Like it or not, ubiquitous computing is here, and readily available for our youngest members of society. We wanted to find out whether giving kids their own screens in class would become part of the problem or part of the solution.

The pilot program at the International School is being conducted in Year 6, with about 60 students aged 10 to 11 years. Each child has his or her own iPod Touch, which are docked in the classroom at the beginning and end of the day; the students do not, at the moment, take them home. 

We observed the use of the devices in the classroom and interviewed teachers, administrators and students. Some of our observations surprised us, others seemed obvious. We also identified opportunities and made recommendations about their continued use.

Observations

Students obey the usage rules.
This one was fairly surprising to me, as well as reassuring. Like any parent with electronics in the house, I've put fierce rules in place to prevent the 'wake and bake' game-playing on the DS/iPad/iPhone/laptop. (Yes, I am making that analogy.) This addictive type of usage simply wasn't happening in the classroom: when teachers asked the kids to put them down, they put them down. Once the novelty of using them in a classroom setting has dissipated, the students don't go out of their way to be on the devices, which leads to the next point.

Kids choose the best tool for the job.
One of the things I like best about working at Adaptive Path is how much we work out ideas on whiteboards and paper. (Where would I be without my Moleskine?) At the school, each table looked a lot like my desk: markers, pencils, erasers, rulers, and a stack of desktop whiteboards with dry erase markers. 

When kids had math exercises in which they had the choice of using the devices, some would work out the problems on the desktop whiteboards, or on a sheet of paper with pencils, while others would be doing calculations on the iPods. Students didn't seem motivated to use the devices just for the sake of using the devices.

Marginal student engagement.
The kids that seem to benefit the most in the classes we observed were 1) the children who had been least exposed to English (English as an Additional Language students), and 2) the students who were least engaged with traditional methods and materials. As this is an international school, the language issue counts for a lot: students speak more than 60 different languages at home, and fewer than 25 percent of the students are native English language speakers (there were only one or two in all the classes we observed). EAL students help each other, and use translation tools on the devices.

One teacher told me a story about a less-than-engaged student. He noticed that when typed into a computer, the boy's writing actually changed as opposed to when he was writing on paper: on the computer, his thoughts were more sophisticated and developed. This same child is also more engaged in the device usage. Another teacher mentioned increased engagement among similar students who would previously be drifting in class. As a result, some exercises, such as building a flowchart on the devices, take far less time than they did on paper - for the whole class.

Opportunities and recommendations

A curated package of apps for teachers.
There is a 'paradox of choice' situation in the App Store. There are now around 350,000 applications available for the iPhone, and there aren't many easy ways to figure out what's good. Teachers weren't sure whether they were using the right software, or whether there were loads of better apps out there that they didn't know about. They would love if someone who had an idea of their school and curriculum could curate a package of apps based on their needs. 

Balancing a controlled app environment.
The students' treatment of the iPod as a work tool was informed by 1) the devices being kept at school, and 2) teachers' control of the apps. Students could not install their own apps. The benefit of this is that it keeps the apps limited to educationally relevant ones.

One thing that could be improved is student involvement in app selection. The teachers are already great about taking cues from the kids: when students suggest interesting apps or uses, the teachers listen and check it out. A student panel for app selection is a possibility; it would allow students to evaluate and think critically about apps. I think this would be even more interesting and empowering than just straight up allowing kids to install their own apps. This is a topic that will only become more critical as schools move to iPads, a device that seems more likely to be taken home than to be docked at school.

A tool for creative thinking.
I am constantly trying to find ways for my own kids to engage in non-prescriptive, open-ended play. Think of a huge tub of random Lego pieces rather than a Lego Star Wars X-Wing Fighter kit where if you lose two pieces, you're toast. Or, even better, the crazy stuff kids do with the giant boxes that electronics or appliances come shipped in. Now *that's* open-ended play.

In school, personal devices and tablets could have good potential for this type of non-prescriptive exploration. The school probably doesn't want to hear that I would love kids to take apart their devices and hack them. Short of that, it would be interesting to create ways for kids really test the parameters of the device: maybe projects in which the brief is to find a brand new way to use the devices. Or combining them with Arduino to create physical interactions. Or a project in which students design -- and maybe even build -- their own apps. 

Conclusion

So where does this leave schools, where school-issued devices could further contribute to the time spent online? The key is finding balance; helping kids make the distinction between productive time online and wasteful time online. As schools switch to more comprehensive personal devices such as iPads and other tablets, responsibility will also shift to parents when it comes to monitoring usage time on school-provided devices. Given many parents’ track records when it comes to this issue (that Kaiser report again!) this arrangement could be problematic.

Finally, we need to prepare students for device planned obsolescence. In an essay about education that appeared in The New York Times, Kevin Kelly said, “Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it.” As interfaces change and shift at increasing speeds, raising kids who can adapt to these changes is critical. 

In the meantime, kids can use open-ended projects to wrap their heads around the way these devices work. In the end, innovative and inventive thought comes from designing the game, not just playing it.

"Ya Keynote, that blue leather textured, black outlined polygon is *exactly* what I wanted." @adamschwabe

We've all seen it. We all hate it. And too few of us know we can do something about it. Here's how to change the default shape style in Keynote:

1. Select a master slide and draw a shape with the new default style you want.

2. Under the Format menu, you'll see Advanced. This is where the good stuff is. Select Define Shape for Current Master. Every new shape you draw on a slide based on that master slide will have the new style. Choose Define Shape for All Masters to make that style the default everywhere.

You can do the same thing with text. Just create a new text box in your master slide and choose Define as Text Placeholder.

I've just changed your life.

Start a project off with this, and I think you can expect significantly better solutions from your team.

Charles leads Google's Social UX team, and before that, the Google Mobile UX team and before that, he was the co-lead of IDEO's Software Experience Design Practice.

Both days of the program were mostly filled with case-studies, except for the bookend keynotes by Martin Belam, Claire Rowland & Chris Browne, Marianne Sweeny and me. Below are my observations, written down as extremes on different scales.

From Sketches to Post-mortems

Krzysztof Trzewiczek presented his early work on a site where interested citizens could gather and download open data from the Polish government. He walked the audience through his navigation scheme and interaction options, and then asked us for input on what he just showed. It was an honest attempt at gathering feedback in an early stage, but I am not sure if a plenary conference presentation is the best way to take the next step.

The collaborative presentation about Playmobile.pl (about the telephone operator Play, not the Playmobil figurines) by the client and their agency K2, was better suited for the event. The entire lifecycle of the project, as well as the ways they cooperated and helped each other fine-tune the scope of each phase of the project was insightful and a great showcase of client-agency collaboration.

From Research to Implementation

Agnieszka Szóstek showed us how to do early design research and co-design the right way, with an overview of exercises to extract useful information from experts and users. What struck me most (and in a positive way!) was the use of low-fidelity tools: the intermediate deliverables of the research sessions were simple diagrams, skecthes and hand-drawn tables. I was glad to hear her submission to the CHI conference that was based on this work (she convinced the client to do the work "by the book" to ensure it was publishable), was rewarded with excellent review scores.

On the other end of a project, after all the work is done, you can look back at the process. Like the Play case study, the redesign of Filmweb was presented by the client and the agency, and they walked us through approaches, restyles, user feedback in discussion fora ("where are my reviews"), and resulting usage statistics. A solid case study, but with little surprises.

From Hardware to Software

Good use of glasses with a built-in eye-tracking camera was shown in the case study that evaluated ticket machines for public transport. Even though some of the findings would have been discovered by a good heuristic review, it's always good to see the red dots do their panic dance when the user is confused. And, once again, this case study should be an indicator for the makers of the hardware that the physical arrangement of buttons, slots, and printer should be be optimized (or made flexible).

An interesting piece of software that was shown by Hubert Anyzewski from UseLab was the so-called TalentGame that allows children to play a game while measuring the skills that they could use later on in their career. Activities ranged from determining the skills to be measured, to creating a complete virtual world and configurable characters. It was also good to see the EU funds projects like this.

From tech to marketing

UX covers a broad range of fields, and information architects will have to work with professionals from all of them. It was good to see both technology-driven presentations such as Thomas Kopacz' "Quo Vadis IT" and the e-marketing focus in  "Engage & Have Fun" by Maciej Kaliciński. Especially that last one was, not unsurprisingly, visually attractive as it featured videoclips showing how the marketing concepts for FMCG brands like Knorr and Dove were brought to life.

From Personal Histories to Recent Events

The opening and closing sessions of both days were delivered by international, invited speakers. Martin Belam, lead UX & IA at the Guardian, delivered the opening keynote by sharing his personal history as an Information Architect, from organizing his own record collection, via structuring those of his employers (from record stores to the BBC and Sony), to his current work at the Guardian. His "5 lessons from an Information Architecture career" contain worthwhile advice for any UX practitioner.

Opening Day 2 was Marianne Sweeny who, I can safely say, knows a lot about search engines and how to design so they index your work in the most optimized way. Her presentation included many aspects of this field and included recent case studies and changes in indexing algorithms, complete with the industry's names for the changes (such as "Mayday" for an update in May 2010 and "Farmer" for an update that decreased the page rank for content farms). She predicted that in the near future, the search engines will start looking beyond the content on a page, but at the placement of that content in the layout of the page, possibly supported by microformats and the use of semantic tags in HTML.

From Old to New

Claire Rowland and Chris Browne from Fjord London showed us the context of their EU-supported, "internet-of-things" themed Smarcos project. They covered plenty of good examples about device-service relationships, interoperability and smart platforms, and how designers can keep the user in control. This is definitely the way that a lot of future UX work will go; reading up on this topic (a mix of service design and ubiquitous computing) is mandatory for UX practitioners.

And, finally, my own presentation was a like the old wedding custom: "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue": I repeated the explanation of the relationship between Information Architecture and User Experience that I presented at the first Italian IA Summit in 2006, using the T-model to show the overlap.

After that, I showed how UX practitioners worldwide organize themselves, and help each other in advancing the field. I encouraged all attendees (and all those reading this) to consider themselves UX practitioners and share their thoughts, ideas, questions and progress with fellow practitioners.

From Sights to Seeing Double

Outside of the beautiful venue, Galeria Zachęta, and the next-door Sofitel Victoria hotel, I managed to explore the city center a bit. It's a weird feeling walking around in what looks like a really old city, but was basically rebuilt from scratch after being bombed in 1945:

Two pictures of Warsaw city center; just after the bombing and a recent one

On more than one occasion, I ended up in the lovely BrowArmia microbrewery and pub where food, beer, vodka and pleasant company made for good memories of Poland.

All in all, it was great to see the Polish IA community get together and share case studies. During the Q&A after my session, someone suggested that next year we should invite more business types to this type of event and that might indeed be the next step for our community. 

When we launched the new adaptivepath.com, they didn't make the cut, but we wanted you to have access to them. There's still some good stuff here! So, for your edification, or background listening while you clean your desk, here are six of them, free of charge:

• Showing the Value of UX: Connecting User Experience and Business Value
• Design Strategy on a Shoestring: Tips and Tricks from the Trenches
• How to Be a UX Team of One
• Lightning Fast Collaboration with Simple Tools: Facilitating with Sticky Notes
• Attracting and Retaining New Users: Sparking a Crush
• Tools and Methods for Learning, Navigating and Making a Name for Yourself in the UX Landscape
• Mobile Experience: What Web Designers Need to Know

So it feels appropriate to kick off sharing videos from this year's MX event with a 15-minute story of a very real challenge from Typekit CEO Jeff Veen—Designing for Disaster.

Jeff's team at Typekit faced their biggest challenge and opportunity when the Typekit system faced the significant traffic brought on by a successful customer. Here how he cleared a path for the right people to bring together a great solution. It all started one morning when…

Photo by Maria Cordell

The weather has been gorgeous the last few days, so needless to say we're all positively giddy in the head to be here.

Photo by Maria Cordell

The surrounding neighborhood is incredible, but the insides of our studio are absolutely splendid as well. Our new space, originally a sugar warehouse built in the 1920s, has an open floor plan with soaring two-story ceilings above a main common area, exposed steel beams, and plenty of natural light. There's a delightful warmth to the way sound echoes through and interacts with the space, and we're finding that the most valuable aspect of our new studio is how it helps us reconnect with one another.

Photo by Maria Cordell

Connectedness via Ambient Awareness

Despite the many communication tools at our disposal for staying connected remotely, from email to chat to text messaging to Skype to FaceTime, there's still no satisfactory substitute for being co-located with your fellow team. The direct benefits are clear, such as being able to collaborate in the same project room and rapidly create and critique sketches without the friction of photographing or scanning, but the indirect benefits are perhaps even more important. Being in a well-designed space surrounded by the people you work with leads to an ambient awareness of each other's goings-on, resulting in a heightened sense of connection.

Through our everyday interactions with it, our new space supports an emergent property that leaves everyone knowledgable of where we all are and what we're doing. The way sound echoes through our new wide-open studio, you are constantly catching the hum of distant conversations, laughter, footsteps, even important things like the coffee grinder. The space thrums with our activity and we definitely feel more in-tune with one another as a result.

The Ambient Acoustic Spaghetti Western Awarenessing Connectivity System

Photo by Dane Petersen

The second floor of our studio has two wooden walkways that span the common area. They make quite a racket when you walk across them, especially if you're wearing cowboy boots. The sounds of your footfalls echo throughout the space, and so crossing the walkway is a bit like starring in your own personal spaghetti western, the way the boots are all reverbed out walking across the hardwood floor. In fact, everything in our new studio's got that big reverb sound.

Now, humans are incredibly talented when it comes to sensing, as well as making sense of, their physical surroundings. I've noticed lately, that as people cross these walkways and star in their own personal spaghetti westerns, that I am able to key in on subtle distinctions in the sound. I can often tell which direction someone is walking, and even who they are, without even looking.

Most interesting of all, however, is that based on the force of someone's steps and the cadence of their strides, I can actually tell what kind of mood they're in. Are they stressed and in a rush? Are they prancing out for a coffee break at the Ferry Building? Or are they fussing about in response to a no good very bad day?

The Ambient Richness of Our Physical, Social World

We live in an age of tweets, wall posts, status updates and location checkins. While these tools give us an incredible capacity for keeping in touch with people beyond our physical proximity, they are ham-fisted and inelegant compared to the complex mechanisms humans possess for sensing and making meaning of their physical and social surroundings. Despite the magic allowed by the digital social revolution, the human interactions currently supported by these technologies are primitive compared to what is possible in the physical world, and none possess the ambient richness of something even as simple as a footstep.

Our world is full of ambient information, full of social cues, that are produced with no intentional effort, and are simply the incidental products of our everyday interactions with our physical surroundings. As a human I am a talented agent armed with an incredible interpretative capacity, and so when I hear you perform your own personal spaghetti western I can instantly and effortlessly make meaning out of this incidental information.

Leveraging Our Tacit Human Strengths

Computing has barely scratched the surface as to how to effectively leverage the extended capabilities of human perception. As Mark Weiser of PARC wrote nearly twenty years ago in The Computer for the 21st Century:

"There is more information available at our fingertips during a walk in the woods than in any computer system, yet people find a walk among trees relaxing and computers frustrating. Machines that fit the human environment, instead of forcing humans to enter theirs, will make using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods."

While not quite a walk in the woods, the dynamic acoustics of our new San Francisco studio are a delightful reminder that I am a creature that lives in a richly physical environment. People are wickedly talented at sensing the world and deriving meaning from their surroundings, and while the complexities of this world are compounded when you introduce a social element, our sociobiological capabilities are similarly upped in such a situation.

If a simple change in physical space can have such a profound effect on our ambient sense of connectedness with one another, what are the design implications for digital social platforms?

Indeed, I look forward to the next generation of mobile cloud-based ambient acoustic spaghetti western awarenessing connectivity like button plus one socializeningation networks.

Khoi Vinh recently wrote an interesting post about what he called Multiple User Account Disorder. This is when you inadvertently create multiple user accounts, often with different email addresses, for the same service.

Almost everyone I know has done this, particularly because of the prevalence of free primary email addresses and the continually increasing number of services that require user accounts and logins.

Once upon a time I would just close or abandon one account, and start using the other. I would simply lose access to, at worst, purchase history - which provided useful information, but is hardly consequential going forward. This is an increasingly tricky issue because accounts are no longer linked just to just inconsequential data; they are now the primary form of access for your purchases themselves.

I learned this the hard way a few weeks ago with my Amazon account. It turns out  that Amazon allows you to create duplicate accounts using the same email address. So I had the same email address with two different passwords resulting in two separate accounts. I only discovered this when registering a Kindle, and flying into a panic when I saw only two purchased books. (I had dozens of purchased Amazon books even before getting the Kindle.)

The worst part? I was unable to consolidate the two accounts. Rather, a customer service rep worked around it by refunding me for those two purchased books, and told me to make sure to always enter in the correct password. She could then close out the 'secondary' account if I wanted (after I would fill out a form).

So why have a system in which you can create two different accounts for one email address? According to the customer service rep that I spoke to, she assumes it's a legacy issue involving multiple family members using the same email address. I argued that I had accidentally done it when I was trying to change my password at one point, so I wasn't understanding how it's a fully intentional process. Either way, I didn't get a great answer.

I find it especially interesting that Amazon doesn't seem to have its act together when it comes to this legacy issue, particularly because customers can now have potentially thousands of books tied to an Amazon account, as well as access to Amazon's new Cloud Drive service. Make a false move and you could potentially split your library (old purchases vs. your purchases going forward) if you are logged in with the wrong information. (By the way,  I did check: the login process still allows you to "Create a new account with this email address.")

I agree with Vinh that the ideal way of dealing with issues like this -- for Amazon, Apple, etc. -- would be to have a super easy way for customers to consolidate accounts. I just want my media in one place. (sigh.)

What do you guys think? Have you ever had multiple accounts that you've had to wrangle?

As I write this post, I am looking out on the bay, watching cars drive across the Bay Bridge and people loading onto the Marin ferry.

I can see the "Port of San Francisco" sign and the Ferry Building watchtower. This new space is AWESOME!

Friday was our last day at 363 Brannan Street. Although I am sad to leave South Park, our friends and all the local haunts, after seven years in the same office, we are thrilled to be in a new space. 

We are going to need some help breaking it in. Pier One, Bay Two was previously inhabited by a Financial Services organization, we've managed to rid the space of the nautical themed furnishings, but now we need to add life to the space and truly make it our own.

I hope you will help us do just that. We have a full kitchen and kick ass party space. And we're already talking about the events (and parties!) we can host here. So stay tuned for more about how you can help us make Pier One, Bay Two truly feel like Adaptive Path's home!

Our new address: 
Adaptive Path
Pier One, Bay Two
San Francisco, CA 94111