Joe Lamantia.com

I’m for­tu­nate to have oppor­tu­ni­ties to share work and ideas with the inter­na­tional design com­mu­nity through reg­u­lar speak­ing engage­ments. This is a col­lec­tion of pre­sen­ta­tions, work­shops, and tuto­ri­als I’ve deliv­ered at design and tech­nol­ogy events over the past few years. The top­ics cov­ered range widely, but the uni­fy­ing con­cern is under­stand­ing and improv­ing expe­ri­ence design: at all lev­els of scale and com­plex­ity, for the full range of media and audi­ences, within con­sumer and enter­prise settings.

For those who pre­fer lis­ten­ing, links to inter­views I’ve recorded on some of these same top­ics are gath­ered below.

Under­stand­ing Frame­works IA Sum­mit Work­shop
The Next Wave of AR: Explor­ing Social Aug­mented Expe­ri­ences Where 2.0
Design­ing Infor­ma­tion Expe­ri­ences Janus Boye Con­fer­ence
Learn­ing From Games, Euro­pean IA Sum­mit
Killzone.com, a Mas­sively Social Online Game, Keynote, Nether­lands Fes­ti­val of Games 2009
Lessons In Design­ing Infor­ma­tion Retrieval Expe­ri­ences, Enter­prise Search Sum­mit 2009
Beyond Find­abil­ity Work­shop, 2009 Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture Sum­mit
Evo­lu­tion of a Social Game Expe­ri­ence & Com­mu­nity Archi­tec­ture, Keynote, 3^rd Ital­ian IA Sum­mit
Frame­works are the Future, 2008 Euro­pean Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture Sum­mit
Effec­tive IA For Enter­prise Por­tals, 2008 Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture Sum­mit
The DIY Future: When Every­one Designs Social Media, BlogTalk 2008
Future Expe­ri­ence, Keynote, Ital­ian Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture Sum­mit 2007
Per­spec­tives on Ethics, EuroIA Sum­mit 2007
Lessons from Fail­ure, 2007 Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture Sum­mit
Exec­u­tive Dash­boards, 2005 Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture Summit

Design Prin­ci­ples for Social Aug­mented Real­ity: The Next Wave of AR

My slides for a panel on the social expe­ri­ence of aug­mented real­ity at the Where 2.0 con­fer­ence.  Here I’m con­tend­ing that cur­rent inter­ac­tion design pat­terns and con­cepts that shape most aug­mented real­ity expe­ri­ences are in effect anti-social (tech­ni­cally they show low ‘social matu­rity’), and act as a bar­rier to the adop­tion and evo­lu­tion of the medium.  I sug­gest design prin­ci­ples that will help cre­ate expe­ri­ences that inte­grate with the com­plex­ity or social dynam­ics in the real­time / real­world set­tings for AR.

Design For Goals

The pre­sen­ta­tion por­tion of a half-day tuto­r­ial / work­shop Design For Goals deliv­ered at the JBoye 09 Con­fer­ence. The struc­ture for this tuto­r­ial is part method review (on how to under­stand people’s goals in a struc­tured way), and part shar­ing of re-usable pat­terns found after research­ing goals. Since the con­text of ori­gin for both the goals and pat­terns was com­plex inter­na­tional finance, some trans­la­tion of the raw mate­ri­als and exam­ples and the syn­the­sized pat­terns into a realm closer to home for ordi­nary peo­ple is likely in order. As you’re going through the slides, I sug­gest using your own activ­i­ties that involve infor­ma­tion find­ing and mak­ing sub­stan­tial finan­cial deci­sions as a reference.

Search Me: Design­ing Infor­ma­tion Retrieval Experiences

My pre­sen­ta­tion at the 2009 Enter­prise Search Sum­mit in NY.  This case study reviews the meth­ods and insights that emerged from an 18-month effort to coör­di­nate and enhance the scat­tered user expe­ri­ences of a suite of infor­ma­tion retrieval tools sold as ser­vices by a major invest­ment rat­ings agency. The ses­sion shares a method for under­stand­ing audi­ence needs in diverse infor­ma­tion access con­texts; reviews a col­lec­tion of infor­ma­tion retrieval pat­terns, looks at con­cep­tual design meth­ods for user expe­ri­ences, and reviews a set of longer term pat­terns in cus­tomer behav­ior called life­cy­cles, and con­sid­ers the impact of orga­ni­za­tional and cul­tural fac­tors on design decisions.

Design­ing Frame­works For Inter­ac­tion and User Expe­ri­ence: IA Sum­mit Work­shop Presentation

My pre­sen­ta­tion from the full-day Beyond Find­abil­ity work­shop deliv­ered at the 2009 IA Sum­mit. This set of mate­ri­als addresses some of the most impor­tant ques­tions for prac­ti­tion­ers con­sid­er­ing a framework-based approach to design: why frame­works mat­ter for user expe­ri­ence and inter­ac­tion design, what frame­works are use­ful for, and how you can work with them effec­tively.   Also a review of the pro­found shifts chang­ing the struc­tural makeup of the dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment, the con­texts and bound­aries of the expe­ri­ences, and the role of pro­fes­sional designers.

The Archi­tec­ture of Fun: Mas­sively Social On-line Games

My keynote from the Ital­ian IA Sum­mit, dis­cussing Killzone.com as a lead­ing exam­ple of the next gen­er­a­tion of Mas­sively Social On-line Games.

“What form will the next gen­er­a­tion of inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ences take? The exact nature of the future is always unknown. But now that every­thing is ’social’, and games are a fully legit­i­mate cul­tural phe­nom­e­non more prof­itable and more pop­u­lar than Hol­ly­wood films, we can expect to see the emer­gence of expe­ri­ences that com­bine aspects of games and social media in new ways.”

Frame­works Are the Future

Mate­ri­als for my pre­sen­ta­tion Frame­works are the Future of Design.

“The Web is shift­ing to a DIY [Do It Your­self] model of user expe­ri­ence cre­ation, one where peo­ple assem­ble indi­vid­ual com­bi­na­tions of con­tent gath­ered form else­where for expres­sive, func­tional, and (many) other pur­poses. The rapid growth of wid­gets, the resur­gence of enter­prise por­tals, the spread of iden­tity plat­forms from social net­work des­ti­na­tions to blog­ging ser­vices, and the rapid increase in the num­ber of pub­lic APIs syn­di­cat­ing func­tion­al­ity and data, are all exam­ples of the DIY shift. For design pro­fes­sion­als, the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of DIY future is co-creation: the par­tic­i­pa­tion of a broad spec­trum of peo­ple in cre­at­ing expe­ri­ences. In this new world, the role of design­ers is to define the tools co-creators use to assem­ble expe­ri­ences for them­selves and oth­ers. These tools will increas­ingly take the form of design frame­works that define the mod­u­lar com­po­nents of famil­iar struc­tures such as social net­works, func­tional appli­ca­tions, col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­forms, per­son­al­ized dash­boards, and man­age­ment consoles.”

Effec­tive IA For Enter­prise Portals

“Por­tal design efforts often quickly come to a point where their ini­tial infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture is unable to effec­tively accom­mo­date change and growth in types of users, con­tent, or func­tion­al­ity, thereby low­er­ing the qual­ity of the over­all user expe­ri­ence. This case study style pre­sen­ta­tion will demon­strate how a frame­work of stan­dard­ized infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture build­ing blocks solved these recur­ring prob­lems of growth and change for a series of busi­ness intel­li­gence and enter­prise appli­ca­tion por­tals. In a nar­ra­tive and visual review of the evo­lu­tion of a suite of enter­prise por­tals con­structed for a major global cor­po­ra­tion, par­tic­i­pants will see how the build­ing blocks pro­vided a con­sis­tent and sta­ble frame­work for the design, expan­sion, and even­tual inte­gra­tion of the user expe­ri­ences of nearly a dozen dis­tinct por­tal design efforts.”

The DIY Future: What Hap­pens When Every­one Is a Designer?

My slides from Blogtalk 2008, dis­cussing the shift in design roles and how pro­fes­sional design­ers can respond.

“The ero­sion of tra­di­tional bar­ri­ers to cre­ation marks the onset of the DIY Future, when every­one is a poten­tial designer (or archi­tect, or engi­neer, or author) of inte­grated expe­ri­ences — the hybrid con­structs that com­bine prod­ucts, ser­vices, con­cepts, net­works, and infor­ma­tion in sup­port of evolv­ing func­tional and emo­tional pur­suits.  The cul­tural and tech­no­log­i­cal shifts that com­prise the oncom­ing DIY Future promise sub­stan­tial changes to the envi­ron­ments and audi­ences that design pro­fes­sion­als cre­ate for, as well as the role of design­ers, and the ways that pro­fes­sion­als and ama­teurs alike will design.  One inevitable aspect con­se­quence will be greater com­plex­ity for all involved in the design of inte­grated expe­ri­ences.  The poten­tial rise of new eco­nomic and pro­duc­tion mod­els is another.

The time is right to begin explor­ing aspects of the DIY Future, espe­cially its pro­found impli­ca­tions for infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture and user expe­ri­ence design.  Using the designer’s pow­er­ful fusion of ana­lyt­i­cal per­spec­tive and cre­ative vision, we can bal­ance spec­u­la­tive futur­ism with an under­stand­ing of con­crete prob­lems — such as grow­ing eth­i­cal chal­lenges and how to resolve them — from the present day.”

Video of the pre­sen­ta­tion “The DIY Future” from Ustream.tv. The res­o­lu­tion is low (it was shot with a web­cam) but the audio is good.

More videos of BlogTalk ses­sions here.

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Con­flict: Design For the Inte­grated Expe­ri­ences of the Future

“What does the future of design hold? Greater eth­i­cal chal­lenges. In the com­ing world of inte­grated expe­ri­ences, design will face increas­ing eth­i­cal dilem­mas born of the con­flicts between broader, diverse groups of users in social media; new hybrids such as the SPIME which bridges the phys­i­cal and vir­tual envi­ron­ments simul­ta­ne­ously, and the DIY shift that changes the role of design­ers from cre­ators of ele­gant point solu­tions, to the authors of ele­gant sys­tems and frame­works used by oth­ers for their own expres­sive and func­tional pur­poses. To bet­ter pre­pare design­ers for the increased com­plex­ity, con­nect­ed­ness, and aware­ness included in the com­ing future, here are some prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions for eas­ily address­ing con­flict dur­ing the design of inte­grated expe­ri­ences, by using known and famil­iar expe­ri­ence design meth­ods and techniques.

It Seemed Like the Thing To Do At the Time: Social Sys­tems and Failure

The full ver­sion of my pre­sen­ta­tion on state of mind, self-definition, and par­al­lels between indi­vid­ual and soci­etal responses to fail­ure, from the 2007 IA Summit.

Interviews

Radio Johnny on Aug­mented Reality

Radio Johnny  pub­lished an inter­view recorded shortly before the New Year, dis­cussing aug­mented real­ity, why it’s of inter­est for Expe­ri­ence Design, and some of the areas of likely devel­op­ment we’ll see in AR in the near future.

Listen to the show

Show Time: 25 min­utes 38 seconds

Ubiq­ui­tous Com­put­ing and User Experience

The pod­cast of a group dis­cus­sion on ubiq­ui­tous com­put­ing that includes Steve Baty, Will Evans, Matthew Milan, John Tir­mandi, Joe Sokohl, Todd Zaki War­fel.  We share exam­ples, ideas, and ques­tions about the inter­sec­tion of user expe­ri­ence and ubiq­ui­tous com­put­ing. Orga­nized and recorded by  Jeff Parks for Boxes and Arrows.

I hope you enjoy lis­ten­ing as much as we enjoyed record­ing it.

Ethics and Design: Social Media and Conflict

The first of two inter­views talk­ing about ethics, design, social media, and con­flict, recorded by Jeff Parks of I.A. Con­sul­tants and the Box­e­san­dAr­rows pod­cast. Play and down­load the inter­view here. Sub­scribe to the iTunes and feed­burner feeds for the I.A. Pod­cast here.

Ethics and Design: Using Psy­chol­ogy to Design For Conflict

The sec­ond of a two-part inter­view series dis­cussing ethics, design, social media, and con­flict, recorded by Jeff Parks of I.A. Con­sul­tants and the Box­e­san­dAr­rows pod­cast.
Play and down­load the inter­view here.
Sub­scribe to the iTunes and feed­burner feeds for the I.A. Pod­cast here.