Preston Smalley

CHI is returning to San Jose for their 25th anniversary and I’ll be attending for the fourth time. While the conference at times is more academic than I would like there are always some good sessions.

Here’s what I’m most excited about:

• Mon 8:30 - 10:30AM: Opening Plenary speaker, Bill Moggridge, who will hopefully talk more about the topics in his recent book, Designing Interactions.
• Tues 2:30 - 4PM: Richard Anderson’s session on “Moving UX into a Position of Corporate Influence: Whose Advice Really Works?” which will focus on real-world advice from UX leaders. A colleague of mine, Justin Miller, will represent eBay.
• Tues 7 - 10PM: eBay and PayPal’s cocktail party at the Tech Museum. You can get to know our User Experience team and mingle with other design professionals. If you’d like an invite to the event, just let me know.
• Wed 9 - 1PM: Marti Hearst, Corey Chandler, and I will present “Faceted Metadata for Information Architecture and Search” which covers best practices of how to design a faceted search interface. We’ll reflect on Flamenco, eBay Express, and other competitive research we’ve done.
• Thurs 9 - 10:30AM: Jeremy Ashley, Oracle, will moderate a discussion on management techniques for maximizing the impact of User Experience teams. We’ll hear from leaders at SAP (Daniela Busse) and Cisco.

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Ross Mayfield pointed out a great new framework that Charlene Li at Forrester recently released called the Participation Ladder. It assigns quantitatively how many people in the US online population are mapped to various social engagement levels on websites.

I’m actually quite surprised at how active the online population (creators & critics) is portrayed in this study.

I would have expected the data to more closely resemble Bradley Horowitz’s Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers model. In it he hypothesizes that 1% of people are Creators, 10% Synthesizers, and the remainder Consumers:

It does make sense that online participation and creation is on the rise. Now, thanks to Charlene and Forrester we have the quantitative data to back it up. Finally, this ladder provides a roadmap for moving users up to more productive levels.

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I attended the Wilson Learning workshop on Building Relationship Versatility last week, facilitated by Suzy Hillard. A key concept to the workshop is focused on understanding the people you interact with most so that you can better adapt your social style to their needs.

Here are the four social styles they’ve identified:

• Analytical - thorough, focused on high quality, deliberate
• Driver - focus on results & business, direct, clear, concise
• Amiable - values people & team, support org over long-term
• Expressive - enthusiastic, feeds off energy of others

The four types are based upon two axises which identify tendency to Ask vs. Tell and to focus more on the Task or on the People involved. As part of the workshop your co-workers submit a questionnaire which identifies your Social Style. By understanding yourself better and by guessing the social styles of others you work with, you can develop more effective working relationships with them.

I’ve already found it useful and would guess that if you like assessments which identify how you interact with others (e.g. Myers-Briggs, Six Styles of Leadership) then you’ll probably like this one as well.

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34, originally uploaded by rajsid.

A few weeks ago eBay’s user experience design team went to Nestldown off Hwy 17 for an offsite centered around effective use of personas. One huge challenge of using personas at eBay is the massive customer base of ours which essentially mimics much of the Internet. We are pioneering how a design team might scale this concept over an array of product offerings and customer demographics which is quite exciting. If others have similar experiences to share, I’d love to hear about.

In between sessions we enjoyed the blooming tulips and held a photography contest (see eBayUED tag). Above is one of the winning photos taken by Raj.

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The following is a bit of detour from my normal subjects but as a parent myself I felt it was important to share with folks.

About 6 weeks ago a study was released by Environment California Research & Policy Center which identified that Bisphenol A, a developmental, neural, and reproductive toxicant, leaches from clear polycarbonate plastic.

That plastic is used commonly in consumer products and by all major brands of clear plastic baby bottles (e.g. Avent, Dr. Brown, EvenFlo, Gerber and Playtex). The EU Food Safety Authority found that babies fed from polycarbonate bottles can consume 13 µg/kg/day which many scientists believe is outside the allowable range.

Bisphenol A has been shown to cause diabetes, obiesity and reproductive defects. Most of these effects cannot be measured for 15-30 years and so by the time we know there is a problem it may be too late for many of my child’s generation. What’s scary is that the following behaviors common to raising a baby, increases the leaching of Bisphenol A from the plastic:

• Heating (e.g. microwaving a bottle)
• Repeated Washing (e.g. daily washing of bottles)
• Exposure to Acidic or Basic foods/liquids (e.g. Gerber Baby Food)

My wife and I took steps to investigate this further and then evaluated all products that our baby is exposed to. Below is what we learned. You can decide for yourself if you want to believe this new evidence and take action. We decided to play it safe and switch a number of the products we use with our baby.

Steps you can take:

• Look for plastics labeled #1, #2, or #5 in the recycling triangle. Avoid #3 and #7. (e.g. avoid crystal clear bottles/cups by Avent & Dr. Brown and baby food in #7 plastic)
• Look for “PVC-free” on the labels of soft plastic toys and teethers.
• Choose metal feeding utensils and enamel or ceramic plates.
• Use glass to heat food or liquid in the microwave. You should not heat food in plastic containers or on plastic dishware, or heat liquids in plastic baby bottles.

Safer Products:

• Glass Baby Bottles (Evenflo 8oz from Radiant Life, BornFree 5oz)
• Drop-ins Bottles (okay since the water is heated safely and plastic is used only once)
• Fogged Plastic Sippy Cups (e.g. Avent Magic Trainer, BornFree Trainer Cups)

What about my Nalgene bottle?

You’ll want to avoid polycarbonate (PC) bottles with #7 plastic. Fortunately Nalgene also makes a polyethylene (also known as HDPE) water bottle which is safer. It is a more opaque milky plastic identified by the #2 recycling symbol.

Want to learn more?

• Toxic Baby Bottles Study [5MB PDF - Feb 2007]
• SF Chronicle: Replace Bisphenal A or a child’s health? [Jan 2007]
• Yahoo! Answers: Are my bottles going to give my baby cancer? [Mar 2007]
• Smart Plastics Guide [PDF - Oct 2005]
• Bisphenol A Free Portal
• Old friend and fellow concerned parent, Omar Shahine on the subject with suggested product replacement ideas [Sept 2006]

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I’m a bit disturbed by the fact that in just one day, the quota for H-1B visas in the United States was filled for 2008. What brought this fact home was later that same week I had to pass on a job applicant (already located in California) that did not have current H-1B status–leaving me unable to hire a qualified candidate for my team.

While Congress continues to try and protect our native workforce with legistration that severly limits the issuing of H-1B visas, I’m afraid it is not having the desired effect. From my perspective on the design industry, there are not enough workers in the US (or at least California) to fill the open positions. Therefore this law is protecting no-one.

The reality is that I have to find a way to get the work done on my team, I have no choice but to try and expand the amount of work I outsource to vendors offshore. Therefore no only is the work is no longer being done in the US but Congress is also not collecting payroll taxes on that work (since it is paid via expense money to an offshore company).

The restrictive H-1B laws seem to be a lose-lose situation for the US.

Update 8/22/07: The NY Times today ran a great story on how the best solution to the “reverse brain drain” is to grant high-tech workers permanent visas (or green cards).

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A couple year’s back I commented about the booming job market for interaction designers in the Bay Area. As I try and build out my design team, I’m now acutely aware that the job market is not only as hot as it was in late 2005, it’s actually hotter.

As you can tell from the above chart, the demand for Interaction Designers has actually reached an all time high since I started tracking this in 2003 at 113 open positions in March 2007. The shear number of open positions means that the supply is unable to meet the demand–causing designers to move between companies but no real progress.

Therefore if you’re a great designer and have always wanted to move to California, let me know… or contact any of the many firms seeking people like you. As a design community, I’d love to meet this demand and show the world what can be accomplished.

Update 4/19: David on Signal vs. Noise spotted a similar rise in competition for talent. His take on it is based on the rise of Recruiting Spam, which I frankly am also growing annoyed with as well.

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One of my favorite designers, Sarah Culberson, made her blogosphere debut today where she reflects on her experience at SxSW. Here are some excerpts I found interesting:

•  “It is better to be flamboyant failure than mediocre success.” Jeffrey Zeldman on being fearless with design. Lots more great quotes from Sarah’s notes.
•  Lots of great advice from a panel on creating a “Kickass Design Team” including providing direct mentorship/coaching, importance of outsourcing and junior designers, and feeding execs great UE questions. Love it.
• How designers can add value in big companies by helping them get Unstuck.

Thanks Sarah and Welcome.

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