Category: I care about…

The decade of user experience (redux)

I originally posted this piece on the Round Two website (the precursor to Flock) in April of last year, and it appears that I now have some corroboration from the Association for Computing Machinery. Of course I never finished the follow up post, but Andreas Pfeiffer seems to have hit the mark.

As a full time user experience architect and user advocate, it is my job to make technology more accessible, usable and more pleasurable to use. I do this work because I enjoy it and find it immensely important and fulfilling.

I know that the cultural artifacts that I produce (in the form of web interfaces) immediately affect the lives of people who touch my work. And if I don’t do my job well, they’re liable to experience frustration, annoyances or other less-than-positive feelings. Since I have utter control over whatever ends up on the screen (or output thru a screen reader), I have a duty and responsibility to make wise and measured choices so that those less-than-positive feelings never arise and instead are countered by feelings of empowerment, amusement and satisfaction.

It has occurred to me more and more over the last few months that my work is not at all unique, but a larger, more pervasive trend towards user-centered design. While there are still immense opportunities for taking improving the design of interfaces (both web and application-based), I believe that we are ushering in a decade of design innovation dedicated to improving user experience.

In my next post, I will discuss the four emerging families of user experience design and what they mean for web, application and workflow design.

I want a Tails topbar

Calvin Yu has done a great job with his Tails extension and I’d like to see something similar in Flock — but much fuller featured. How about a microformat vaccuum cleaner thingamahoogie that sucks up all the mFs it finds, indexes them with Lucene and then spits them back out in a Greasemonkey-created address book or calendar? Eh eh? Any takers?

Open source & patent reform

My buddy Steven M. Nipper followed up on his previous tip with a link to various recaps of the USPTO’s Feb 16’s open source meeting on the prior art database and community review patent projects. Snippets:

…The meeting then turned to the suggestion for a “Community Patent Review�? system, whereby patent applications could essentially be “peer reviewed�? by the public before being granted. The first speaker on this topic was Mr. Marc Ehrlich, an attorney with the Patent Portfolio Management/Intellectual Property Licensing department at IBM. Mr Ehrlich had a number of slides showing how such an online system might actually look in practice. His proposed system consisted of three basic parts:

  • Access – Make it easier to access applications. Add a subscription-based alert system to notify potential reviewers when a new application in their area of expertise becomes available.
  • Review – The basic platform for public review. Components include education, indexing, links, discussion, and some sort of reputation scoring system so that examiners would have some idea of the track record of folks doing the public review (similar to E-Bay’s scoring system).
  • Feedback – Find a simpler way to submit data to examiners.

Mr. Ehrlich determined that the system must also support easy ways to identify the responder (the one submitting the data to the examiner), make structured comments (in addition to just indicating any prior art found) and a way to determine if the examiner in a given case actually used the data that was provided. He then identified some of the potential challenges facing the implementation of this kind of system, the main ones being:

  • Flooding – the danger of the USPTO being overwhelmed by submissions from the public
  • Gaming – bad actors using the system to intentionally obstruct otherwise valid applications
  • Willful infringement dangers – overcoming the reluctance many developers feel about looking at any patent data whatever for fear of becoming liable to later charges of “wilful infringment�? against a patent (more on this topic later)

At this point, one of this meeting attendees, an actual patent examiner, made the admission that he sometimes did use Slashdot in trying to locate prior art, but that it was difficult and time-consuming due to “all the anti-patent noise�?.

· · ·

Professor Noveck brought up what was perhaps one of the most important reminders of the entire meeting, that being that the constitutional goal of the patent system was ultimately to spread information, not restrict it’s dissemination, and that any system must put those priorities first.

· · ·

Steve Stites writes:

Professor Beth Noveck of NY Law School made the exceptional proposal. She outlined a set of reforms based on the way that Open Source works. She proposed that the Patent Office publicize proposed patents (which they do now to a certain extent) and that the public and the Patent Office engage in a peer review process. The peer review process that she proposed is very similar to the way that academics and Open Source handle new ideas. There is a public discussion of the new idea with a person’s contribution to the discussion being weighted somewhat by the Open Source equivalent of academic prestige. From this discussion the Patent Office would gain valuable insight into prior art, triviality, overly broad patents, etc. which are of great importance is deciding whether or not to grant patents. From an Open Source viewpoint all the Patent Office would have to do is publish pending patent proposals on Slashdot and participate in the fireworks.

From the viewpoint of the Patent Office the problem with Beth’s proposal is that it is completely illegal. It was a Patent Office examiner sitting in the audience who brought up Slashdot:

“The next comment was from a patent examiner in the audience (of which there were quite a few). He said that he thought Slashdot was already a very valuable site for examiners to find prior art when reviewing applications. He thought the moderation system of Slashdot should be considered as a useful model to build on.”

This same patent examiner continued by emphasizing that he could not legally participate in the Slashdot discussions that happened to be of use to him.

Another Patent Office problem with Beth’s idea is the lack of beaurocratic structure in the peer review process. Beth addressed this problem by injecting prestige in the process to give the people participating in the peer review what seems to be beaurocratic rank.

· · ·

Finally, (there’s a lot of good stuff in there, so if you get a chance, definitely skim it over), I came across an actual project that sounds similar to my own Community Marks concept called Community Patents… the big difference being that Community Patents go in the complete opposite direction of my proposal for community ownership. Anyway, here’s their speil:

The patent system needs our help. The United States Patent Office is actively seeking ways to bring greater expertise to bear on the review of patent applications and ensure that only worthwhile inventions receive the patent monopoly. Currently, underpaid and overwhelmed examiners struggle under the backlog of applications. Under pressure to expedite review, patents for unmerited inventions are approved.

Sponsored by IBM, the Community Patent Project seeks to create a peer review system for patents that exploits network technology to enable innovation experts to inform the patent examination procedure. In every field of scientific endeavor, peer review is a critical quality control mechanism to improve innovation. Throughout the public sector both peer review and citizen consultation are either legally mandated or practiced as a way to inform policymaking.

The Community Patent Project aims to design and pilot an online system for peer review of patents. The Community Patent system will support a network of experts to advise the Patent Office on prior art as well as to assist with patentability determinations. By using social software, such as social reputation, collaborative filtering and information visualization tools, we can apply the “wisdom of the crowd�? – or, more accurately the wisdom of the experts – to complex social and scientific problems. This could make it easier to protect the inventor’s investment while safeguarding the marketplace of ideas.

So there you go. As the seven millionth patent was recently granted, it’s clear that our intellectual property system needs an overhaul — not to make it more repressive or draconian, but to enforce fair limitations on the retention of IP (if retention is really a good idea at all) while also continuing to enable inventors the chance to benefit from their work (abolishing software patents is a long way off, so we’ve got to find compromises in the meantime that are not economically devastating for the individual — if individuals can even afford patents anymore).

If the original patent system was created to promote “industrial and technological progress in the United States and strengthen the national economy”, there is indeed much work that needs to be done to reform the notion and value placed on ““. As Friedman has pointed out, as the world flattens, the competitive advantage will be in the speed of innovation and in the validity and inclusivity of ideas advanced. Open source is a means to that end, but if any civilization is encumbered or held back by its legal institutions, it won’t matter how much brawn ya got, the next generation will be determined by the speed with which civilizations are able to enact their ideas, not how well they’re able to protect them. So um, at least in the US, you might expect the end to an era in the next 10-15 years. Mebbe. Heh.

GYM Camp

Mashup Camp, brought to you by MSFTSo it’s like this, enterprise mashups, say whaaaaaat?

Makin’ me moola wit yo mashups baby — only if it’s DRM’d, TM’d, (C)’d or licensable. Hey money don’t grow on trees and mashups don’t either. Nor do the APIs, hey hey hey.

…or do they? Hrmm…

So so so, who’s gunna have the lowest pay-to-play mashable API stack? Dunno, but is that the best future you can come up with?

I got an idea; I got a stance (I mean, uh, I can git positional).

I’ll pay you z-z-zero for that information you’re already publishing. Toss that data into a format that I can read and parse and hey, no extra cost to you, eh? Pretty nifty. And cheap as hell.

Ok, so I’m bummed I wasn’t able to make it out to MuchoMashup Camp for reasons having to do with the current dayjob, but I gotta give David and Dave credit for their buzzworthy success. I think I’m supposed to play it nice or something, so I’ll just post some key snippets and agree with Andy.

For many, that more productive place was the “Monetization and business models” of mashups session. At least 65 swarmed into the room for approximately 90 minutes of talk about how to make money with the custom applications.

For example, one laid out the modus operandi of the sessions: “Whoever comes are the right people. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whenever it starts is the right time. When it’s over, it’s over.”

This whole event was organized in two months, and it came off Monday–with another day of sessions, demonstrations and networking to go Tuesday–with no visible hitches. Even the Wi-Fi worked.

Perhaps the reason behind MashupCamp’s success lies in the exasperation most attendees feel these days with traditional conferences.

MashupCamp–a new kind of get-together – page 2 | CNET News.com

My Open Source

Takes one to know one: your privilege blinds you

This growing up stuff, yeah, it’s um.

Yeah.

So what I want to talk about is this nagging feeling I’ve picked up today — today and maybe the last two weeks. The one that tells me that I’m not in kindergarten anymore; where it’s not just each other’s shovels and Tonka trucks that we’re fighting over, but where you’ll get kicked out of the sandbox for being something that everyone else is not, or, more inanely, for standing up for someone else who has been or cumulatively feels kicked out of the sandbox (whether deliberately or through implicit crowding to the edges) by the so-called predominants.

And yes, that perennial topic‘s been on my mind lately, and I’m not going to kid myself by thinking that I have any kind of solutions for the exclusivity politics of technology and engineering (specifically as it relates to minority genders in open source, or in general), but this gender exclusivity shit really bugs the hell out of me and I’ll tell you why. Or just ramble about something else. I dunno, you figure it out.

Not so long ago, I had a dream. Nay, a vision; a vision for what this work — my work — was supposed to all be about. Fill me up with enough Martin Luther King Jr and Amelia Earhart and pre-Bush Colin Powell and Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman and on and on and what do you expect? American education is pathologically filled with stories that champion the plight of the underenabled individual, that offers that inspire hope and optimism, and above all, regurgitate the parable of the scamp and his fits of hard work, of courage, of raw determination — finally landing tremendous success and making it big; being popular, celebrated, probably with a blonde trophy as a thanks-for-coming award. This story illustrates our most dear and unquestionable ; it is the foundation on which we’ve substantiated our participation in wars; it contributes to our desire and perceived righteousness in democracy around the world; it is the belief that all peoples deserve a chance to be great — to share in the greatest of opportunities that life has to offer — to attain what one might never believe possible solely leveraging his wits and sweat-stained perseverance.

Somehow, in the American Dream, everyone’s a winner — yes, even you Timmy!

This is what I grew up on, like Cocoa Puffs or Lucky Charms or Golden Grahams for breakfast every morning with skim milk from robot cows. This was part of the routine, what was given, told, lectured. Consumed. Kachug kachug. Strikes me: it’s funny how the kids who broke the rules were kept after for detention.

Yep, the American Dream is shared — is attainable — by everyone. Ho ho ho.

It’s funny how the kid, trusting and determined, well-meaning and ready to take on the world (right after he finished his homework) was the one who nearly didn’t graduate because of an overly politically-minded principal couldn’t stand for tolerance in his high school.

· · ·

“No pinball! Sit down! Don’t contradict me. Pinball pinball pinball!”

· · ·

It’s funny that you never knew what to do with those kids who couldn’t get along in math, or who didn’t show up for class on time, or didn’t speak or sit up just right, for whom homework competed with their after-school job that paid for tomorrow’s school lunch, who wore all black, who didn’t play your games, who listened to loud music, who threatened your reputation… s’funny how they were the ones who were punished and held back; the ones you stuck in remedial lessons in the basement of Building 2 with the rats and the rest of the dredges of society.

It’s funny that they were still spoon-fed the same American Dream docudrama ballfield pat-your-ass wholesomeness when you stuck them in English class so they would know, yes, they would comprehend, that there was still hope for them. Even if you didn’t hold it out for them.

And yeah, I’m dwelling a bit, taking this all back to high school and all — but I can see the dichotomy so clearly now, nothing’s changed — but hey, that’s not just what this is all about. Nor need it be about anyone in particular this day in history, right this second (and if you think this is about you, you’re either thinking too hard or need to take a long look in the mirror, because what I’m saying pertains to me .. go find your own blog on which to ruminate).

· · ·

The question is posed to you, Mr Joe, sitting in row five, third seat in, squarely in the middle of class: “What kind of society do you want to be a part of, Mr Joe?”

You look up from your doodles, hoping that you were invisible, that you were cloaked in an impenetrable shield that had just enough oxygen for you so everyone else would just faint away.

“Well, Mr Joe? The class is waiting; what kind of society do you want to be a part of?”

· · ·

And oh I know where I’ve been, and from where I’ve come. Suburbia. Middle class & white: suburbia. I know I’ve grown up with a great deal of privilege — without pain, sickness; without death, without tragedy. The worst I’ve had was 7 stitches from a freak accident at boy scout camp. For fuck’s sake, I’m a white male — moderately attractive, educated. Living in the United States. No dear readers, it doesn’t get much easier for us. Hell, when I’m vice president, I hope I can get away with shooting a man too, just to say that I did it in front of the whole world and got away with it. Because, well, that’s what we’re growing up with — that what the kids are being fed.

“You are what you eat” — remember that one? Real jewel there. You think I’m full of shit? You think I’m full of lies? You think that I see all the privileges that I take for granted? Oh wait, that’s a contradiction.

You think this is the society that I wanted? You think that this is the society that I want? That I continue to want when I wake up every morning? That I really want to keep building out, reinforcing and extending the existing hegemony, keeping the power all locked up in the privileged kids’ parents’ lockboxes and shotgun cabinets?

Going clean seems to have lead to the discovery of contamination deep deep in the coils of our collective psyche. I’m full of lies, false truths, blasphemy, misogyny, ignorance, intolerance, greed, distrust, hatred — pure venom, man, a pure vile toxin. And I’m sick sick sick of it. Sick sick sick by it. I gotta get it out. Gotta get it out, but it’s not just me. It’s gotta be sucked out of our culture like a lethal venom. Sucked out from the marrow of our society.

If it doesn’t start changing here, if it doesn’t start changing now — now as we’re building out the most powerful, interconnected communications network the human species has ever known, there is no god, ungod or interworldly savior that will be able to help us. So it’s gotta start here.

· · ·

“Well? We’re all waiting for you: what kind of society do you want to be a part of? Hmm?”

A modest release; an update on the camps

Been sitting on a number of posts that I don’t know I’ll ever get out, but I need to spread these few things.

Flock 0.5.11.7+First, modest Flock update in the wild (0.5.11). Jesse’s got the details on this updated developer preview. Go get it and tell me what you think!

Andrew Fèrriere -- the host of Wine CampSpent yesterday and some of today scoping out the venue for Wine Camp with Miss Rogue (that’s Andrew Fèrriere over there — the proprietor of the Wine Camp venue: Fèrriere Vineyards). Had some revelations about how the event should happen — and started planning the thing in earnest using Backpack. Will have details later this week.

In other news, Mashup Camp is tomorrow, the first-ever trademarked decendent of Bar Camp! Oh, and not only is there a signup list for The Son of Mashup Camp already, but the “Bar Camp of Mashup Camp” — Mucho Camp — will be taking place at the birthplace of the original Bar Camp — at SocialText‘s offices. So if you didn’t make it onto the Mashup Camp list, definitely show your inclination and then drop by Mucho Camp.

What else? Well, Boxes and Arrows has a great article about the formation of Bar Camp. A great read.

Then we’ve got Bar Camp LA and Bar Camp Dehli coming up March 4-5.

Bar Camp Austin needs posters (yes, Whurley, I’ll do them!) I expect those of you heading to SXSW to make the pilgrimage to this stellar event (trust me, nothing can prepare you for what’s in store…)!

And finally, Enric needs help planning and promoting his Indie Film Camp.

RIAA says “EFF You iPod rippers!”

EFF the RIAAMan oh man oh man.

Man oh man!

Seriously, could the RIAA make it any easier for us?

Listen fellas, yeah, youze guys with the stogies up in your crystal palace puffin away and chucklin’ to each other about how you’re going to ‘crush’ those ‘infringers’… Yeah, seriously, ya know what, we’re sick of being abused by you. We’re sick of being fed your garbage — of the idea that you think that you control everything and can dictate the rules of my use of your “product” long after I’ve bought and paid for it.

Look, I dunno what planet you guys think you’re on and what legal system is going to end up supporting your stilted worldview, but it doesn’t even matter. Because you’re irrelevant. You’re meaningless. What you’re doing is like a slow train wreck euthanasia; we’re all watching you pen your own demise, over months and months of screwing your best customers. I mean — it’s so painfully clear to us! Why is this not obvious to you?

Oh oh, okay, I know — you’re saying “well, we can afford to be the bad guys and get everyone’s hate-ons directed as us because we’ve got players in bed with us that could smite you without even thinking about it.”

And you know what, while that’s true, you’re still not getting it. Because I’m just one paucitous individual. Get rid of me, two will fall in line to replace me. Take them out, four more. And on and on. That’s what you don’t get. And when you start screwing with people who own iPods, holy crap!, you’re unleashing a wrath far more powerful than the DOJ or your own fatcat legal hegemons: the MySpaceXangaLiveJournalOrkut kids and their parents.

So don’t say we didn’t warn you. Since, yeah, it’ll be our eyes that you’ll be staring up into questioningly as you realize that you’ve taken yourself out.

Out of Towner V: Scott Kveton redux

Scott KvetonScott’s coming back to town for OSBC and wants to meet up to discuss the work we’ve been doing on creating a new open source foundation as well as a new open-identity/open-auth project that might actually kick start Rhyzomatic and create a vehicle for an independent identity system… (yes yes, there are already a million solutions out there but we’re hoping to figure out an open source approach to get them all to play nice with each other).

So, tonight, February 13 at 8pm; the Argent Hotel in San Francisco. Totally last minute, but if you’re in for some hot and fast brainstorming on these issues — and to welcome our out-of-towner guest — be there!

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Hey, uh… Google?

Two-FaceSo first you get props for telling the government to go eff itself and then you go and basically give the government an awesome loophole to circumvent the fourth amendment.

Brilliant!

No really — you do realize what you’ve done here with Google Desktop, right? By storing in plain text all the contents of someone’s harddrive on your servers, the government now no longer needs a search warrant to go after that data… they only need a subpeona for your servers. If it’s my data, I don’t even need to be notified!

And this is exactly the point that the EFF has made. I mean, hey, props for taking on the government, but history’s proven that no matter how big you are, you’re still not bigger than the government — regardless of your stock price, but dude, they are the ones who enforce the legal system that makes it possible for you to exist. Don’t fuggit that.

And yeah yeah, I know you’ve built in a means for getting my data off your servers, but the fact that it’ll take 60 days seems a bit… worrisome… as well:

If you cancel your Google Account or uninstall Google Desktop, the files indexed in the Search Across Computers feature will no longer be accessible through Google Desktop and may remain on our servers for up to 60 days before being deleted.

I mean, that’s kind of like leaving your credit card receipts and wallet at your ex-girlfriend’s place and not being able to make sure that indeed she’s not using it for nefarious purposes (or sharing it with her new boyfriend who’s in the FBI) for two months. Except my ex-girlfriends don’t tend to keep my data in a vault behind some Fort Knoxian security systems. But I digress.

Seriously dudes, ‘sup wit dat? You’re reaaaaaally startin’ to freak me out.

USPTO to hold open source meeting

My buddy Steven M. Nipper tipped me off to a meeting being held Feb 16 by the USPTO to further work begun in December, to ensure that patent examiners have improved access to all available prior art relating to software code during the patent examination process.

Unforunately I won’t be able to make it to Virginia in time, but if you’re interested and in the area, it might be good to have some small-time representatives there to vouch for the little guy! They’re limiting attendence to 220, so sign up ASAP.