Reflection from Buddhist Geeks Conference 11

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Nikki Chau

I just got back from the first ever Buddhist Geeks Conference held at University of the West in Rosemead, a suburb of L.A.

It’s four minutes past midnight, and in 6 hours I will be on the road, in everybody’s least favorite jam: traffic. I really shouldn’t be up blogging, but, 1) I just had a big bowl of pho, 2) Hokai told us to (you don’t say no to Hokai), and 3) I want to capture a few things while they’re fresh on my mind before I procrastinate and *think* about writing but actually never do.

What are those things? In no particular order, they are:

Nerd/Geek culture and Buddhism
The concept of being a Buddhist
Getting in on the ground floor

Nerd/Geek culture and Buddhism

The two groups, or sub-cultures, I frequent the most are Design/Technology and Yoga/Buddhist. To break it down further, in the Design/Tech world, I feel most comfortable in the Internet culture of memes, web 2.0, and startups. In the Yoga/Buddhist world, I’m a mutt with a Vipassana bent. Without telling you my practice history, suffice it to say that I have been following Shinzen Young’s teaching closely for about 5 years.

I don’t, or at least didn’t, think there’d be a group of people who are so interested, informed, and invested in both of these worlds, that I could meet up and banter with. I know they are out there, but they are far and few in between. There are two others in the Seattle area that I’ve found who fit the bill: David Tolmie (@dtolmie) and Rommel de Leon (@c4chaos), and the three of us made the trek to Buddhist Geeks together. But really, that’s 3 of us, in a metropolitan area of 600,000+ people. That’s roughly 0.000005% of the population.

I even have two separate Twitter accounts, @yogageekgirl for all yoga and spiritual related stuff, and @dragonc for all occasions, including my life, technology, entrepreneurialship, design, rock climbing, soccer, etc. I have two blogs, one at nikkichau.com and one at nikkiyoga.com, and I actually had a hard time deciding where to publish this post (#firstworldproblems).

When asked why, I often say that it’s to not inundate one group of people with something that they at least don’t care about and at worst offended by. (Insert your duality, non-duality jokes here.)

At Buddhist Geeks 11, however, my system fell apart, because the conference was a collision of the circles that I’ve drawn apart. It was now a Venn Diagram. David asked me what Twitter account I would be tweeting from, and I said I didn’t know. My confusion reached its height when Rohan Gunatillake mentioned the Satipatthana Sutta *and* Y Combinator in his talk. Mind. blown.

To demonstrate this to you, I sent a tweet earlier tonight asking if it would be obnoxious to have a shirt that says “Meditation, it works, bitches” in the same spirit as xkcd’s “Science, it works, bitches“. I tweeted as @yogageekgirl, and in hindsight, I should have tweeted from @dragonc. I should have known that some of my followers on @yogageekgirl would object to my use of “bitches”, but I was afraid that some of my followers on @dragonc would roll their eyes at the idea that meditation works (it does, bitches).

The results were what you might expect, from Works For Me (abbreviated, of course), to, “Omg so offensive and not yogic!”

In any case, being at the Buddhist Geeks conference, I felt… relief. I still had to figure out whom I was talking to, to some degree, but I felt more free talking about Ceiling Cat and Double Rainbows in the same sentence as dharma, and that, is a really great feeling. It’s like when Diane Musho Hamilton said, “It’s good I can say karmic in this room without explaining or apologizing.”

I’m thinking of that scene in X-Men, First Class, when the mutants found each other and realized that they didn’t have to hide who they are, or a part of who they are, and that they did belong to something.

The concept of being a Buddhist

I have never considered myself to be a Buddhist, and it’s possible I’m simply in denial. I’ve listened to Joseph Goldstein’s “Abiding in Mindfulness” in the past year in my car commuting to and from work until the CDs scratched up. Rommel and I once played a game where he asked me to identify when Shinzen Young said what in his 20-hour lecture: The Science of Enlightenment.

I’m not saying that listening to some MP3s is analogous to doing or putting anything to practice, and I have, as Robert Frost would say, miles to go before I sleep (or wake). I’m saying that I’m highly influenced by the teaching of the Buddha, and I’m committed to not merely treat it as intellectual entertainment, but train and put it to good use. Does this make me a Buddhist? Well, if walks like a duck…

I think I’m afraid of calling myself a Buddhist because I don’t want to be thought of as being religious, or rather, a religious fundamentalist. I’m deathly afraid of being clumped with the dogma of the church, of the temple, or the mosque.

One of the most impressionable things I’ve ever read is Voltaire’s Priere a Dieu, Prayer to God, where he asks God that “those who cover themselves in a white robe to say we must love God do not hate those who say the same thing under a black coat.” “que ceux qui couvrent leur robe d’une toile blanche pour dire qu’il faut t’aimer ne détestent pas ceux qui disent la même chose sous un manteau de laine noire”.

I’m quite aware that religions, at their roots, teach the same thing, for us to love one another. But I’d rather not be associated with their antics, with their ways about doing it. I’d rather be Godless and try to live as a sane, decent human. Besides, I worshipped Alanis Morisette plenty in my teenage angst in the 90s already.

But back to Buddhism, is it a religion? Am I a Buddhist? If I went to a Buddhist Conference, does that turn me into one? Does it out me from the Buddhist closet? Needless to say, I had my reservations about going. But, I saw that Shinzen Young was going to be there, and it was going to be my chance of finally meeting him in person (or, meatspace), so I thought, what the heck. And I’m really glad I did.

Have I resolved my Atheist-Buddist Complex? I don’t know. But I do know that tomorrow, I’ll be more comfortable telling people how I spent my weekend, maybe while blasting Nina Simone, “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh Lord, don’t let me be misunderstood.”

It’s good to get in on the ground floor

This is what Shinzen Young said in his opening keynote when he was referring to the beginning of the convergence of Buddhist thoughts and scientific discovery. For me, this also means that it’s good to get in on the ground floor of the Buddhist Geeks Conference.

The conference was impeccably planned and executed. The organizers, the volunteers, everything worked like clockwork. The whole thing was seamless. Even the “Time Machine could not complete backup” message that popped up in the middle of Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s closing keynote seemed serendipitously, or suspiciously, planned.

Jonathan Ive once said, “We try to solve very complicated problems without letting people know how complicated the problem was.” The Buddhist Geeks team seemed to have embodied that spirit in hosting us. Major kudos to them.

I appreciated the small and intimate size of the conference. There were only about 160 or so of us. It was possible, if you were really motivated, to talk to everybody, or nearly everybody. There was a distinct lack of commercialism, which was a breath of fresh air. There was a small room where you could buy Buddhist type books, sure, but it wasn’t blatantly in your face. You didn’t have to walk through lines of “new, specialized, temperature-sensitive zafu”, or “jade mala beads blessed by the priests in the lost mountains of the Himalayas” to get to the auditorium.

This conference is fantastic, and I do hope Vince and Co do it again, and again and again and again. And yet, I already mourn the seemingly-inevitable exhibition hall that one might see at a Yoga Journal conference, where “superstar spiritual teachers” came with an entourage and didn’t stand in the same coffee line as you talking about where they grew up.

Hey, I’m no fool. I’m just a girl standing (sitting?) next to another girl chasing after a dollar like most of us. (Well, maybe I am a fool after all). I’m all for capitalism and investment and sponsors and whatever it takes to get something like this going long and strong (TWSS).

I’m saying that it is nice to witness the first incarnation of the conference, because one of these days, it just might well be held at the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco, where thousands and thousands of people will come, and we will look back and say, remember when this rock band used to play in a coffee shop in the burb to an audience of five? Yeah, those were the days.

In the meantime, did I say I’m glad I went? Yes, only 50 times, Nikki. Hey, it’s almost 3 a.m., and I’ve been listening to people argue about Vajrayana and Mahamudra and Tantra and whether we should or should not mention the E word the past two days, give me a break.

What I would say is the most important thing I got out of the weekend is renewed vigor to practice. Once in a while, I need a kick in the pants, something to rouse my practice, and I’m really starting to understand why the third jewel is the Sangha. If nothing else, they keep you accountable, they keep you going.

When asked if the audience could hear no other teachings, what three things should they hear, Shinzen Young said, “Practice practice practice.” To that I say, Amen. How’s that for cross fertilization of Buddhism? (And now I want to go play FarmVille.)

P.S. next time, let’s do some hacking, like this! Hey, maybe like a Buddhist Geeks “B Combinator” Hackathon? (Hugh would approve.)

As I get older I’m less squeamish about talking about creativity in spiritual terms, rather than just “because it’s cool and sexy” terms. – Hugh MacLeod

Signal and Noise and Apple Subscription Plan

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Nikki Chau

There’ve been a plethora of reaction and analysis of the Apple subscription plan, from pros and cons to anywhere along that spectrum.

I don’t know enough—or as much as the tech pundits do—to dissect, slice, dice, julienne, and fry all the possible implications. I am for sure worried about the common concerns, like not being able to read all the Kindle books I’ve bought, or not being able to stream Netflix on my iPad or iPhone.

Until that happens, I’ve taken the sideline to see how things unfold as the tech world scrambles over itself.

I do have one curiosity, though, about how this affects “the average user”. As much as I’ve tried to put myself in the shoes of an average user, I have a hunch I’m not one, or at least in Apple’s eye. One night, I captured a picture of my parents sitting on the couch, my mom playing on her iPhone, and my dad browsing for news on an iPad, and it dawned on me that they might be considered more “average” than me.

My mom and dad on their iPhone and iPad

After all, they’re not going to jailbreak and root anything. They’re not going to try to run Android as a dual boot. They just need to be able to turn their devices on and off, and send a picture, a message, or read the news. While I am trying to squeeze all the features out of my devices, demanding and constantly asking “What more can you do for me?”, I don’t think it’s the same for my parents. They don’t think of their devices as something to hack and do surgery on.

What do these devices mean for an average user? Specifically, how do they read news and magazines? Curious about this, I went to the App Store and looked up what I consider the quintessential average user—busy moms and busy women who still want to stay current with all the trends, tips and tricks for that much promised Best Life—Oprah fans.

Here are some comments about the Oprah Magazine app for February 2011:

“I have subscribed to O Magazine since the beginning 10 years ago. I love this new app! I have the January and February issue on my IPad. I have one suggestion. Make the app a subscription price instead of $3.99 per issue. I now trying to decide to cancel my magazine subscription or download monthly to my iPad.”

“Give us an annual subscription price and I’d gladly sign up and go green. A reluctant 4 stars for a 5 star app.”

“It could be 5 stars if new issues was [sic] and “in-app” purchase rather than purchase one app every month. “

“Please please please make make this a subscription and load it into one app.”

What I see here is a clear desire to have content from a trusted source in the easiest way possible: one app, one subscription. As I mentioned, I have no idea how this will pan out, and for the sakes of all my Kindle books, I hope Gruber’s right: “You’ll seldom go wrong betting on Apple doing something that’s good for Apple and good for its users — no matter what the ramifications for everyone else.”

The Trouble with User Experience Design

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Nikki Chau

I am–for most professional intents and purposes–a User Experience Designer. That’s the job title on my business card and LinkedIn profile. That’s how I’m introduced. I go to UX conferences, I read UX books, go to UX Happy Hours, and generally have a good time with UX people. Some days it feels as if I eat, sleep, dream, and soak in UX bath salts.

Yet, I’ve always had trouble with the term “User Experience”, and especially the implication that one can design a specific experience for someone else. It inevitably conjures up images of Winston Smith’s primal urges and the dystopian question whether androids dream of electric sheep.

Take a deep breath, sit back. Grab your favorite drink, and let me take you through a roundabout way of explaining why I feel this way. The TL;DR version will be at the end.

In my night job, I teach yoga. Last night, in my Intro to Yoga class I introduced a concept called svadhyaya, translated from Sanskrit as self-study, self-inquiry, or self-reflection. (For fellow etymology nerds out there, sva = self, dhyaya is from the verb dhyai, “to contemplate, to call to mind”.)

“So, self-study, like, spiritually?”, a student asked.

“Possibly”, I replied, “What about noticing where your feet and knees and shoulders are? And how you’re breathing right now?” Being aware of where you are in space and what you’re doing is also a fine way to self-reflect. This habit, with practice, and over time, can show up elsewhere outside the yoga mat. You’ll start to notice when you’re slumping at our desk, or that your breath shortens when someone cuts us off in traffic.

If being aware of where your toes are turns out to be useful in other parts of your life, great. ”But, I don’t pretend to know how you should reflect spiritually. That is your personal experience.” I told her.

I see a lot of yoga teachers talking about feelings and emotions with their students, and I’m not that brave. It’s not my business to tell someone how to “feel”. If I suggest that you ought to feel divine bliss in a yoga pose, and you’re actually in pain and feeling shitty, both of us are imposing someone else’s reality on ourselves, and how fun is that?

In other words, my user experience is not your user experience.

The only thing I can do when I teach yoga is to make sure the surface is even, the floor is clean, and you feel safe, so that you can confidently work on getting strong and flexible or whatever it is that you need from yoga.

Similarly, in design, it’s my business to do everything I can to create, provide and fine-tune all the factors necessary for a functional and beautiful product. It’s my job to make sure that my design is useful and understandable and all these things.

But, as Kim Goodwin, author of Designing for the Digital Age said:

Since each person brings her own attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions to any situation, no designer can determine exactly what experience someone has.” – pg 5, Designing for the Digital Age.

We don’t have to look to far to see evidence of this. For some people, the iPhone and iOS devices provide a superior user experience. For others, it’s Android. For yet some others, it’s Windows Phone. I love my Mac to a disturbing degree, but I’m sure there are those who will enrage at the sight of the glowing fruit that I love to fondle.

For a non techy example (and for you foodies): while I love a juicy Portabella sandwich, a boyfriend I once had won’t touch a fork that’s been in the same zipcode as a mushroom.

I think of myself as an Interaction Designer, but I don’t mind (so much, anymore) when I get called a User Experience Designer. I get that we need a word to rally around and to communicate, and there’s no reason to be pedantic about the semantics. I’ve come to fully accept it. But, I’m also aware that the user experience is likely never going to be 100% my own doing.

TL;DR: We can’t really design an “experience”, since everyone’s experience is based on their attitudes, behaviors, perceptions, and choice of fruit. The best we can do is to set up the environment in which a person’s experience can be optimized.

“It is interesting reading your reactions. Your five predecessors were, by design, based on a similar predication: a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the One.

While the others experienced this in a general way, your experience is far more specific. Vis-à-vis: love.”

The Clock is Tickin’

Posted on October 17, 2010 by Nikki Chau

I’ve been playing Brandon Flowers’ CD Flamingo over and over and over, and then over again, every day for the past… however many days it’s been since it came out.

I like a lot of the songs on the album, and I go through phases with my favorite. My current one is “The Clock Was Tickin’” (it was Magdalena for two weeks before that). The beat’s not bad, but what I really dig is the lyrics.

And the weeks fly by and the years roll on
They say patience is a virtue but the doctor says she don’t have long
You stood up and tried your damndest not to listen
But that clock up on the wall was tickin’

When they told you to clear the room, that’s when it hit you
You watched as the caravan took your sweetheart away
The arguments and fights and money troubles seem so worthless
As the kids throw yellow roses on her grave

And the weeks fly by and the years roll on
The house is quiet now and everything inside it seems to know she’s gone
There’s a picture of you both sixteen years old just kissing
And that clock up on the wall was tickin’ – Brandon Flowers

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the time I have, specifically the time I have with my parents. Some time last week I had the thought that I need to record down everything about my parents, who they are, what they did, and what their dreams were before they had me. What were they like? When my parents are gone, how will I keep the link with my roots? I wonder if that’s the question children of immigrants face at some point?

Michael Hawley once commented to me, “You’re as American as apple pie.” That may be so, but a part of me is still as Vietnamese as… um… pho bo vien? Anyway, as I get older, I want to get to know my parents more, not as the archetype of father and mother, but for who they are.

I’ve also had a lot of thoughts about the pace of my life and the time that I spend with my parents. I would say that I’m a recovering type A, but I haven’t recovered enough. I don’t know if I would call myself “overworked”, per se. I love what I do, and I’ve got an obsessive personality type to throw myself at things, sometimes to my own demise, like staying up too late, waking up too early, and overcommitting. I want to do it all.

I read somewhere about “the rocker test”, where, when making a decision, think about when you’re 80 and sitting on your rocker on your porch, what will you regret the most? I liked the rocker test concept when I read about it, but I confess, as a mere intellectual concept to entertain. I suspect if I were to put it to the test, I would have to give up a couple (a lot) of things I’ve already built up the habit for, and maybe I just don’t have the guts to admit it to myself yet, because I would have to come clean with myself. Being honest with oneself is the hardest.

Anyway, I’ve gotten off track. The point is, today, I spent a good chunk of it with my parents, and I’m grateful that they’re still healthy and able to enjoy a gorgeous Autumn day with me.

My parents and me, October 2010.

Tool Time vs. Goal Time, or, the Fallacy of the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Ad

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Nikki Chau

No doubt you’ve seen the video ad for Microsoft Windows Phone 7 (if not, you can watch it on YouTube).

Now, this is not a post about the quality of the Windows Phone 7, or any other phone for that matter. It’s a post about the confusion between the concept of tool time and goal time.

Tool time is the time that, if dragged out longer, does not improve the quality of the experience. It’s an inverse relationship. Goal time, on the other hand, describes a positive relationship between time spent doing something and the quality or outcome of that activity.

Here’s a concrete example. You’re thinking of buying a new phone. You go to, oh, let’s say your nearest most favoritest phone store. You play with the phones. You take pictures, you compare the camera quality. You read every review you can get your hands on. You talk to all your friends about what they like or don’t like about their phone. That’s goal time. The more time you spend doing this, the more informed your decision will be.

You’ve settled on a phone. You go back to the store. It’s the Holidays shopping season. The line is out the door. They have a new temp person working. The computer has weird quirks. The lady at the top of the line is trying to find her check book. You’ve waited for this moment. You’ve done your due diligence. You can’t wait to tear open the package to play with your new phone. If the line went any slower, it would go in reverse. You’re ready to scream. Now, that’s tool time.

This is a real life example, but we can easily translate this to online. Whatever you’re buying, the time it takes for you to browse around, to decide on the right item, etc. all that is goal time. That’s why sites have reviews and items that you might also be interested in, and what other people have also bought, etc. All of that is geared towards helping you make a decision, and well… buy something, spend money, and then spend even more money. Tool time is the check out process. You may not mind spend ing 45 minutes browsing around, reading reviews and checking out alternative products, but I would bet that a 45-minute check-out process is something that belongs in eCommerce hell.

Why am I talking about this?

The Windows Phone 7 ad seems to imply (to me at least) that the people burying their nose in other kinds of phones, risking their lives and neglecting their sex lives, are doing so because of tool time, whereas the Windows Phone 7 is “designed to get you in and out and back to life.”

Let’s first give credit where credit is due, the ad got something right. It hits home for… possibly all of us. Who here hasn’t crossed the street with their face in their phone, trusting with full faith that every driver on the road is sane, sober and obeys traffic lights? Who here hasn’t slept with their phone and looked at it first thing in the morning?

I won’t talk about our addiction to our mobile devices here, that’s another post, but I’m going to say this: not every instance where someone is “forgetting about life” is due to how hard, or easy, it is to use their phone. It could be that they’re playing Angry Birds and thisclose to getting three stars on every level. Just… one… more… try….

In fact, I’m going to go as far as saying that when someone’s immersed in something, a mobile device, a book, a movie, they’re enjoying it, they’re lost in it. (Not bad, not good, just is). Maybe, just maybe, they’re not thinking about “getting back to life.” (Again, I’m not suggesting what they ought to do here.)

From a User Experience Design angle, if someone is so hooked by what you’ve created, to the point where a hot woman standing by in a silk lace teddy wants some action, and they don’t want any, well… you done did good! I mean, how many other things could possibly be capturing the guy’s attention here? Very few. I’m going to bet that one of them is not… oh, finding out how many email messages he has.

Again, like that iPhone 4 customer in that awesome video said, I don’t care what phone is better or worse, for what purpose and for whom (and that’s an entirely different discussion). A phone is a personal choice, and it’s become borderline deranged how some of us have gotten worked up over it. Root your Android, enjoy your tactile keyboard, and let me have my geebees. (I may tell you your phone is inferior, but that’s only because I like bantering.) Besides, we’re fighting the wrong fight anyway.

All I’m saying is, don’t confuse the time you spend doing something and the quality of the tool. For a more in depth discussion of tool time and goal time, check out Jared Spool’s article: Dividing User Time between Tool and Goal. Really.

Now this, is what I call Quality Time

With Great Power – The Responsibility of Doing User Experience Design

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Nikki Chau

UX is kind of a big deal these days (and not just in Japan), but it has gone a long way since the early days, like… five years ago. It’s a Good Thing, and along with that comes some responsibility.

But first let me give you the backstory for context.

The UX in Me: A Long Time Ago

I became interested in doing User Experience Design during my sophomore year in college. Only, it wasn’t called User Experience Design then. It was Usability Engineering, and User Centered Design, and Value-Sensitive Design, and Library Science.

I majored in Informatics at the UW iSchool, and I totally digged (pronounced /dig gid/) it. I was one of those _really_ annoying and overly enthusiastic kids that would sit in front of the class and go to the professor’s office after class to talk about things like “models of information search behaviors in antiquity”, or something similar reeking of fancy academic speak.

I knew that the other kids talked about me with their eyes rolled in the back of their heads, but I didn’t care (a lot). I drank the Kool-Aid big time, and I was also protected by the bliss of already being an outsider in high school, realizing early on that being popular and cool was not my game to win.

When I finished college, I wanted more than anything to do two things: 1) run off to Thailand to bartend at a dive resort and rock climb, and 2) do User Research for social technologies. 1) wasn’t really an option, at least not while my parents were still paying for my expenses, and 2) was due to an internship I had at Microsoft Research doing participatory design and studying mobile and social patterns.

Getting Jaded

I ended up at Boeing where I worked in the Usability Engineering group and got a taste of, among other things, how inconsequential doing UE was, at least in that context. Don’t get me wrong, there was a ton of good work going on, and I learned how to fit Usability in a larger corporate software development methodology and cycle. But boy, I lost faith fast in how much good I could do in the world with my choice of profession. In other words, I got jaded.

I thought long and hard, and longer and harder, about what I wanted to do in life. I started doing Business Analysis, because BAs get to gather and write requirements and create functional specs, and those specs get read by software developers and they build the code, which become the software, which gets used by the user.

I liked the idea that that’s how I’d make a difference in the world. I was all over it. I read books, I went to seminars. I wanted to be the best requirements gatherer I could be. I wanted to be the T.S. Eliot of functional specs. But, I gradually discovered how requirements gathering was awkward for me. It went against a lot of the things that I had learned and personally believe in when it comes to making software. As the guys from 37 Signals say, there’s nothing “functional” about a functional spec.

Once again, I lost steam. Once again, I dreamt about bartending and rock climbing and teaching yoga on the coasts of Thailand.

ZOMG, UX is Back!

Five years have passed since I graduated with an Informatics degree, thinking I could improve the usability of software for the average user out there and wouldn’t it be great. During those years, I gave up and rediscovered that notion, just to give it up again.

And now, UX is en vogue. I have a theory that this is partly thanks to Steve Jobs, who’s proven that good and thoughtful design actually makes money! I remember doing Usability Engineering and being told, “Thanks for the lovely report, but it’s too late, and we have no time or money”. I remember being told “the user is a four-letter word”, and that “that touchy feely stuff doesn’t pay the bills.”

How time has changed.

The other day, I was reading this article about User Experience in Forbes, (yes, Forbes!!!): Why Apple Will Hold Its Tablet Hegemony With iPad

What is Apple’s “secret” to success? What Apple has delivered in the iPad and has consistently delivered in all of their products is a “user experience.” Somewhere around 1967, our culture began to focus on experiences, not attributes, and ever since then marketers have made millions selling books on branding, emotional branding, rethinking design, conventions of experience, et cetera. Yet, technology companies fall into the same old trap of touting attributes (GB, RAM, 4G, et cetera) instead of theexperience.

If the competition just tries to compete with Apple on functions, they will not be well served. The tablet category is just beginning. Apple has emerged as the clear mind-share leader and the only way to compete is to focus on user experience (usefulness, simplicity, elegance, consistency) not the product attributes.

Where was this article when I was a 24-year-old trying to justify my existence in the professional world?

Consider another article from MondayNote by Jean-Louis Gassée: The OS Doesn’t Matter

Windows will live on — in a PC industry now at a plateau. But otherwise, in the high-growth Cloud and smartphone segments, it’s a Unix/Linux world. We need to look elsewhere to find the differences that matter.

The technical challenges have migrated to two areas: UI (User Interface, or the more poetic—and more accurate—UX, for User Experience) and programming tools.

Now that all “system functions” are similar, the game for hardware and software makers is to convince the user that his/her experience will be smooth and intuitive. Your device will walk on water (with the programmer right under the surface), catch you as you fall, make sure you don’t get your feet wet.

Great, so now the bar is “your device will walk on water”? Can I just have a minute to put some hot air in my head and get some “I told you so” vindication first?

No, really, in all honesty, I’m glad it has worked out this way for the UX profession. Actually, I’m grateful. Grateful that I am in a field that’s getting recognition, which means I get to have a job, which means I get to go to work tomorrow doing something I believe in. I’m grateful that I get to get worked up over first-world-problems, such as, “look at how this form assaults your senses.”

And Now the Dirty Word: Responsibility

So now that I’ve boasted about UX as some kind of Double Rainbow, allow me to bring up the sticks: what I’ve learned about the responsibility of being a UX Designer.

Play Nice

Though I didn’t always enjoy doing other types of work: Business Analysis, Project Management, Product Management, etc., the one thing that I got was experiencing first-hand the challenges of those roles, and I’ve come to sympathize with them. UX Designers can occasionally (and understandably) run into conflict with other roles on their project, and I’m glad I have some perspectives on what they do.

As someone who’s classically trained (uh, whatever that means… to me it means I followed a structured curriculum from people with lots of acronyms after their names) in methods of User Research and Interaction Design, there have been times when I was ready to hurt something, even a cute fluffy animal, when I attended user interviews or acceptance testing.

“Oh my god, for the sakes of everything that’s holy, don’t … do… it!” I would silently think when I hear one leading question after another.

I’ve realized, though, that my findings from user research mean nothing, my wireframes and brilliant UX Guidelines are totally useless if there are no developers coding and breathing life into them. I wouldn’t get to put my headphones on and obsess over the taxonomy of a system if I didn’t have a PM worrying about allocating time and money for the project. I wouldn’t even have a job if I didn’t have someone out there courting clients, selling work for me to do. In other words, I can do no good without all these people. So what if their universe doesn’t include the difference between Utility Navigation and Content Navigation?

UX is not more better than any other roles on a project, and I’ve learned to not get too smug. Or, to get smug, and get over it.

Clarify and Eduhmuhcate

I don’t know what the right word to use here is: Educate sounds heavy, Evangelize sounds corporatey (not to mention… uh… churchy?). But, I hope you’ll know what I mean when I’m done.

UX is still new for a lot of people and organization. You can’t just show up and say, “Who wants some UX?” To make things worse, there’s a bunch of *stuff* that goes into what we call UX. In fact, I’m willing to bet you right now that what’s in my mind is not exactly the same as what’s in your mind about UX. It is this fact that makes things so fascinating and frustrating.

UX could mean Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Usability Engineering, Content Management. UX could mean for some people styling CSS, creating viral videos, and configuring a content management system (it’s not). UX could mean Personas, Wireframes, Scenarios, User Research, Interviewing, Contextual Inquiry, Participatory Design, Prototyping, Dreaming About Unicorns and Rainbows, etc. Are you getting dizzy yet?

(Also, UX for some people is bullshit. Please say a prayer for them.)

My point is, I’ve learned to ask first, “What do you mean by UX?”, and “What is your expectation of how I can help?” If someone wants me to create a Flash or Silverlight spinning ad, I know I’m the wrong tree for them to bark up.

My second point is, I’ve found it really useful to keep educating myself, and then others, especially with being as clear as possible the difference between the techniques, which is different from the goal, and why/when/how to do what for what purposes. The more people that I explain UX to, the more people who can 1) explain UX to other people and generate more work, and 2) the more we can play nice with one another.

Congregate

Before I started doing my Yoga teacher training, before I started taking up meditation seriously, before I ventured into learning Buddhist philosophy, I didn’t know what a sangha was. I didn’t pay much attention to other people doing the same thing I was. Don’t get me wrong, I went to UPA and CHI meetings. I went to InfoCamp and MindCamp and I signed up for all the UX user groups listservs. But I didn’t really think to have… for lack of better words, UX homies.

I mean, I recognized the importance of being part of professional groups, but it was for … you know, resume-building purposes. I didn’t think of people in the field as my support group, or cheap therapy, or, just anyone fun to have a drink with. (And while I’m airing my dirty laundry, when I came into the field, I had a feeling that everyone was older and boring. Who else would get together to knit and talk about indexing? Not me! )

Back to sangha. Sangha is a Pali word roughly meaning “community”, specifically a community of people working towards the same vision. In the Buddhist context, that vision is liberation. Once I realized that I could not meditate on my own without a teacher, I went for help. Then I discovered the benefit of talking to people going through the same experience, having the same struggle, and discovering similar insights.

I took what I learned from that into the UX world. I’d go to workshops not just to learn about the topic at hand, but get to know the participants. I’d seek out prominent people in the field and see what they’re up to. As I get older, I’ve come to see that obsessing over taxonomy and classification is not *that* insane to do on a Saturday night. Either I’m getting more boring, or those things are getting more exciting. Or both.

Regardless, I’m working on building my own UX sangha. Whether we’re rigorously debating the merits of tabs as navigation, or just letting our hair down and wondering what the heck Design Thinking is, we’re bonding, and hopefully supporting each other in this still-nascent field.

To the Future

‘O let not Time deceive you

Posted on September 23, 2010 by Nikki Chau

Last night, I hung out with my friend Shannon who used to live in Seattle but decided to run off and marry an Italian boy and now calls Milan home (I know, I hate her too.)

Shannon is one of my kindred souls. People used to joke that she was the Irish version of me, or that I was an Asian of her. We are both loud, giggly, always on the go, and blonde (well, she’s the real deal, and I’m a fake (although my boyfriend once told me, “Are you sure your roots aren’t really blond?”)).

We used to climb mountains, rock walls, and trees together. We used to stay up way too late with cocktails and wine, going all over Fremont and ending up at my place, looking over the Ballard bridge and the Olympic mountains, talking about boys and life, and more boys.

When Shannon moved away, I knew it was the end of an era, but it honestly really didn’t hit me until last night. We found ourselves in Fremont again, standing in front of the High Dive. The streets are still here, the bars are still here, but we’re no longer the young twentysomething girls we used to be. Oh, we’re still us, for sure, but we’re both at a different place in life. And I mean that literally, with her living half way around the world.

When we said goodbye, a tinge of some kind of emotion came over me. I don’t know what it was, really. Not totally sadness. It’s hard to describe, but it was this feeling of knowing that we will only see each other a handful amount of times in our lifetime from here on out. This is totally different from before, when we said goodbye, we’d know that we’ll see each other again soon enough, especially when we lived 20 blocks away on Greenwood Avenue. We thought our time together was limitless.

Shannon's idea of breakfast before heading up for a day of hard climbing

Tonight, I overheard a conversation between my parents and a friend of theirs visiting from out of town. They were talking about the last time they saw each other, and when the next reunion will be. For them, I can only imagine that they, too, know their time together is short, even shorter than Shannon’s and mine.

I used to go running a lot around Volunteer Park and Lakeview Cemetery, where Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee are buried. More and more, I appreciate the Paul Bowles quote written on Brandon’s tombstone:

“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, perhaps not even that.

How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.” — Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky.

As I left my yoga studio and looked up at the sky tonight, the full moon was trying to break through the thick Pacific Northwest clouds. Besides than the urge to howl and thump my chest, I smiled at it. It sounds really cheesy, especially in a blog. Oh well, you had to be there. Happy Autumn Equinox.

Shannon having a rare quiet moment on my balcony, probably watching the sun setting over the Olympics

Seven Days Without Twitter

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Nikki Chau

This time last year, I went on my first meditation retreat. It was a 10-day Vipassana silent retreat, which my boyfriend calls “meditation boot camp”, because I couldn’t bring anything: no books, no journal, no phone, no computer, no facebook, no twitter. I couldn’t even talk or make eye contact with my fellow retreat goers.

“You’re not gonna last a day,” he supportively predicted. I laughed because he knows me too well. I am a child of the internets/multitasking age. I’m a child that grew up with the radio on, the TV blaring, I’m on the phone, on IM, and doing my homework at the same time. I’m the generation where ADD, diagnosed or not, is a common disorder.

On top of that, the temperament, or constitution in the Indian Ayurvedic system, I was born with is characteristic of the wind: airy and fast-moving. Working with the ADD tendency is hard enough, it’s even harder in a culture such as ours, where everyone and everything seems to be all about distraction (for example: a cable news screen would have stock ticker at the bottom of the screen, weather, traffic on top, headline news running across, and four political commentators in separate locations on the main screen, and a tweet stream on the side).

In other words, I’m SOL when it comes to cultivating any ability to concentrate and focus for long periods of time. And yet, focus and concentration is the very thing I’m working on as a dedicated meditator.

Now what?

So, I’ve decided to give myself some bitter medicine. I’ve decided to go without Twitter and Facebook for a while. How long of a while? Well, I lasted seven days this first round. The first day was the hardest, when I would go and justthisclose to opening TweetDeck, when I’d stop myself. I do realize that there are many many useful uses for Twitter. I’d use it if I were stuck in storm in the middle of nowhere. I’d use it if I were at a conference and looking for fellow conference goers.

I had very many normal, ordinary uses for Twitter this past week, like asking for recommendations for places to eat and stay when I was in Portland, Oregon, or wondering if an event I was going to was cancelled or not. I made do without Twitter, however, in keeping with my vow.

So, I’ll be keeping track of my experience, and no doubt write about it here.

Where Has All The Attention Gone?

Posted on July 12, 2010 by Nikki Chau

I’m frantically typing, though I have been silently composing this post in my head for a few hours, and that’s exactly the thing I want to write about.

You see, I’m at this conference today. Because I have poor long-distance eyesight, I normally sit close to the stage. Today I was out chatting for too long before the whole thing started, so I sat in the back, the very back, and on the outer edge. You could say that I got a bird-eye view of the whole audience.

What I witnessed over the whole day made me think really hard about myself and my attention span, or lack thereof. I saw people, smart, awesome, fun, engaging, intelligent people, with their laptops open, emailing for a few seconds, IMing, then back to a Word doc, then to a Facebook page, then on to Amazon, then looking up to look at the speaker, then back to email again. Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. It was like watching my boyfriend during the season opener of football, where he’s going from channel to channel to channel, checking out all the action. I was dizzy just watching it all.

Maybe it’s always been like this. Maybe I’ve always been like this. But holy bananas, today was the first time it really hit me hard. I know the pattern all too well: I do it too. Every other second I’m on another web page, another application, another thought. I concluded long ago that I have the attention span of a cockroach on speed when I started meditating seriously. During my 10-day Vipassana meditation course, I sat for 14 hours a day, 13 hours and 59 minutes of which I thought about everything under the sun, whatever randomness popped into my head is what I hopped on to.

I’m just… in this general state of bewilderment right now, not because of what I saw other people do, but because I just saw what *I* do. I used to be extremely proud of the fact that I can do several hundred things at a time, but now, I’m not so sure. Why can’t I just sit and pay attention to one thing? I closed my laptop and put my phone on Airplane mode, just to save me from myself, and every other minute, I had to fight off the urges to revert that decision. Several times, I lost.

And when I had nothing to “do”, per se, other than focus on the speakers and what they were saying, I wanted to eat. I probably ate way more than I needed to. Why? I don’t know exactly, but possibly because of the anxiety of not doing all those other things, like checking my work email, and tweet, and write this blog, and … thinking about all the things I gotta do, should do, wanna do, etc.

How have I gotten this way? Where has my attention span gone?

Nikki Chau

"and if, in this wide world, I come to die, then it’s certain to be from sheer joy that I live." – Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Category Archives: Perspectives