[tiptaptopika]

week 149 -151

I was mainly concentrating on launching SAAM and re-designing the advanced camera user flow with the Skinvision developers during the last three weeks. During the opening weekend at the Vechtclub XL I also visited Kars and spent the afternoon redesigning a board game during a condensed version of the Hubbub Game Design Workshop.

SAAM

We are inching towards launching the product and there has been some great feedback from the audience during the first public presentation at the Cross Media Café in Hilversum. Our presentation was featured on Emerce.

People keep mentioning a project by Videodock from 2010 which had a similar concept and approach to link the Twitter conversation with Uitzending Gemist. We are aware of the similarities with the "Meest Besproken TV" concept but also think that there are some fundamental differences on how we approach our venture conceptually and technically. For example we are also focusing on the live aspect of broadcast TV and any other public live event. Most of all I am surprised how some people don't seem to value how we try to democratise broadcast TV concepts in the Netherlands and rather get offended when somebody shows persistence and gets shit done. Really, let's move on.

At the moment we are still polishing the product website for the upcoming launch. Be patient we are almost ready to launch. To round everything up we also recored a product video and made team portrait photos last week.

In order to prepare for legal questions we have started to work with Ot van Daalen from Digital Defence who supports us in writing up our privacy policy and legal terms.

Skinvision

We are picking up on adjusting the user flow for analysing pictures with looking at all the output and user actions that are required to review and re-design the advanced camera and image analysis.

In general we are focussing on developing consistent interaction patterns, improving usability and improving navigation through the app.

As start I wrote up guidelines for the general approach of these reviews.

Skinvision wants to excel at:

Consumer trust in e-health solutions

Ease of use

Finding melanomas without a health practitioner

While Improving:

Monitoring lesions

Eliminating human error

Making chores related to skin healthiness easy                        

Without compromising:

Insecurity about a high risk ratings inside the app

Relationship with health practitioner

But we can compromise on:

Personalisation

Local services

environment related features

People expect our app to work similar to other image capturing apps they are using. Even though we have built an highly specialised app we need to take manifested user expectations into account. 

Because the camera and analysis function should match the mental model of the user we are looking at apps like Instagram and the iPhone camera.

Assumptions

In general the current App was found to be reasonably useful for analysing lesions. People are impressed with the results they get from taking a single foto. Saving moles and naming them breaks the flow. You are 7 steps away from taking another picture if you save an image or have just taken an image.

Recommendations

App needs to feel more effective by allowing to take multiple pictures in a row

App needs to get out of the way when you want to see results

Easy saving and batch naming

Easy direct feedback about results

Upgrading analysis function needs to revised 

I am now doing research into the mental model of the user and comparing our mixpanel metrics with the assumptions we are making to improve the user flow. We will conclude the process with drawing new wireframes and finalising the designs for implementation after some testing with a small user group.

HVA CMD

I am teaching the Models & Processes course this semester and we have been experimenting with UX patterns for the Pebble watch. This has been rewarding and frustrating at the same time. There has been quite some attention for wearables and a fair share of vaporware on design portals lately but there is a lot of groundwork to be done by the design community when it comes to design and UX patterns that are solid and really advance the platform.

[tiptaptopika]

week 148

I am back for some time now from an active vacation in Sweden and things were picking up with such a fast pace that the weeknotes were a little left behind. Here are some impressions of our 10 day canoe trip if you are curious. I can recommend this kind of adventure to everybody who is looking for serene nature and emptiness, which I found really energising and refreshing.

Now to my ongoing projects. The period before the holidays was pretty hectic and crammed.

Looking back at a couple of intense weeks where I travelled to Dubai three times in order to finalise the proposal and project scope for a government service tender that I collaborated on with a local agency. After initial research into the existing offline and online services we developed the personas and the customer journey and the customer needs. To scope the design efforts in more detail we got our hands dirty with creating a detailed prototype with the currently available content. We were looking closely at the best practices of the GOV.UK team for design and content strategy. I am impressed how the GOV.UK efforts translate into a clear and concise strategy and drew a lot of inspiration from their methods. We delivered an animated prototype of the service website that is still being reviewed and discussed by the client. Now we are scoping the project in more detail to agree on the clients requirements and third party involvement.

The challenge in this project is to deliver a platform that scales across mobile and web to eliminate the dreadful online experience that is currently offered. 

SAAM

We have spent more time on the content of the product page with the SAAM project team and are also looking into the possibilities launching the platform soon and acquire new clients. The identity is coming together and we are about to launch our product with the NPO. We conducted a soft launch with Zomergasten and the current test rounds look very promising. 

SKINVISION

We are in the middle of a big design project for a connected health platform and several clinical trials that should be embedded with that service. We are also looking for a senior type female product manager that has ambitions to lead a design team and wants to bring the product to new marktes. Pease get in touch if you can recommend somebody.

OPEN COOP

It was particularly great to come back to this vibrant place after a long vacation. I am really happy how stable everything is running and falls into place with the new people on board.

@kaeru @alper was een leuke lunch. dank jullie wel! mooi vastgelegd :)

— Alexander Zeh (@dmos)

4 september 2014

One of the highlights during my work week recently was visiting Kars and Alper for a cosy lunch meeting in Utrecht to finally check out the Hubbub studio in Utrecht at the Vechtclub XL with my motor.

[tiptaptopika]

week 132

A couple of quick notes about last week, which started with a pitch for an institution in the UAE. I will share more details about this gig in case our design is selected and will be implemented.

With the SAAM team we have been busy developing the business model for the NMM platform and are polishing the design for the product launch website.

Starting this august I will join the Skinvision team in Amsterdam for a full day a week as a designer. Currently the team is looking for a senior female product owner who will be working closely with me and the R&D team. If you can recommend anybody in the Amsterdam area please introduce them to me.

Last friday I visited the dev/haag meetup for a presentation about the iterations of the Skinvision camera app. I am planning to use the presentation as an outline for a longer portfolio post.

[tiptaptopika]

week 130-131

Next to my current projects I started to contribute to the European research project GiantSteps . Being the only non-musician among seasoned musicians I learned a lot about approaches to live music improvisation during an instrument building workshop at Steim that was hosted by Kristina Anderson. The other participants were Daniel Brandt, Sylvain GARCIA aka LE K  and Danny de Graan. Sylvain already produces his own controller software for the iPad touchAble due to his frustration with currently available interfaces.

We discussed several controller setups for live performances and prototyped configurations of physical controls with a lot of hot glue and household equipment. 

My dear friends at Hubbub released their Standing app with a bang at Mediamatic which I could only join remotely.

@alper I stood 2 minutes and 34 seconds for Bed Peace with @getstanding @opencoop http://t.co/rPAyUU8Ayj 29/05/14 21:32

Laura and me also visited the Quantified Reality presentations of this years Sandberg@Mediafonds masterclass and went to the last 4Dsound concert of this season.

Skinvision

The regional campaign www.checkjemoedervlek.nl was launched in Eindhoven.

We are starting a Living Lab with people that download the SkinVision App partnering with all stakeholders in the melanoma health cycle (hospitals, dermatologists, GPs, health prevention, corporates, health insurers).

Key objective is to implement the SkinVision App within the melanoma health process and get most value out of it for all partners involved.

Skinvision also received a lot of national and regional press attention in the Netherlands that resulted in ranking #1 in the Dutch App store.

We are still working on a new camera design that uses invisible triggers to take photos seemingly automatically when the right conditions are met. Currently we are tweaking the feedback and test directly on the iPhone.

[tiptaptopika]

week 129

Last week Dutch Cowboys published an article about the successful clinical trials with the Skinvision app. Next to working on an extended diagnostic platform the team is currently also iterating on a new camera design that will make it easier for people to snap pictures of their moles. Durin this sprint the close collaboration with the iOS developers resulted in improving ease of use and consistent picture quality. We are now getting the details of the design right before publishing to the app store.

The NMM project keeps advancing with a steady pace with the implementation of a CMS for maintaining stream meta data. We have been discussing the requirements for a product page and possible business models for that product .

On Thursday I went to see the Jazz-Department Conservatorium session in the Bimhuis. We saw an excellent performance of the Liya Grigoryan Trio that was accompanied by the scenic view and an upcoming thunderstorm. Liya's beautiful compositions are influenced by classic and Armenian folk music.

[tiptaptopika]

week 128

The last month was a mix of vacation and wrapping up several projects hence the less frequent updates on this blog. 

I spent a full week with my family not doing much except reading at the pool. Laura and me recently also visited Berlin where we caught up with Alper and went to see the current Ai Wei Wei retrospective at the Gropius Bau among other things, like having lunch at the DCA kantine.

Last week I divided my time between design iterations for the News Console branding, product strategy for the NMM project and design iterations for a prototype of the Skinvision online platform.

On Friday I gave a quick presentation about the Open-Tv project at the Bits of Freedom offices with Vincent and Catalina.

The project is also on view in the 20th Century exhibition at the Amsterdam Museum, St. Luciënsteeg 27, Amsterdam.

[tiptaptopika]

week 120 & 121

The past two weeks were focused on shipping the NMM project and presenting our results to the NPO. We have devised a marketing plan and a new name for the public launch. 

We did a presentation for all the project stakeholders of the NPO and reviewed the functionality of the application. We further discussed the roadmap for implementation and the public launch of the project.

All stakeholders expressed their support and keen interest in collaborating further and integrating the service with their own innovation agenda.

We also finalised the report towards the Mediafonds and started to design the product webpage and a planning for future collaborations with editorial team of several dutch broadcast editorial teams.

[tiptaptopika]

week 118 & 119

We are iterating on the core functionality of the NMM prototype. 

After user tests with the editors of Tegenlicht we are refining the interface for the live setting and simplified the filter settings for the timeline.

Also spent some time on design research for the Skinvision application that will back up the product changes in the near future.

On Friday Peter hosted his going away party at the Open Coop, he is heading to New York to join Lua. 

[tiptaptopika]

week 116 & 117

The last two weeks were mostly focused around user testing for NMM and short design sprints in order to implement the results of the testing rounds. 

We are now concentrating on getting the details of the interactive elements right by iterating on all dynamic visual feedback and cues that are key to the experience.

I recently started collaborating with Digital Thinking Network in order to help them develop their flagship product News Console further and to develop a coherent branding and visual language for their communication.

For the annual workshop weeks at my son's school, themed as a recycle festival, I volunteered to supervise building big structures with vegetable and fruit crates and all kinds of other stuff in the schoolyard. All I needed to contribute was a lot of tape, ty-raps and some guidance in establishing patterns for building and connecting elements. During three afternoons the kids figured out how to build a rather tall tower, which was stable enough to withstand a hoard of kids during school breaks for a week and even a couple of nights of rain. For me working with kids is always an incredible rewarding experience because it is refreshing to see how fast they can reframe their imagination and alter their perspectives in order to solve a creative task with minimal instructions.

[tiptaptopika]

week 115

Last week I took some days off from work in Amsterdam to spend some time with my family in Germany during the official school holiday.

Finished Hooked by Nir Eyal and reading Designing for Behavior Change by Stephen Wendel.

Took a ride on the Rock parcours in Germany and in the brand new S-class that has all kind of extras and a hideous massive display dashboard with rather tame graphics and controls. Quite a missed opportunity in my opinion but caters to their target group that must be 60+ at least.

Started to catch up on this happened Amsterdam videos and we are aiming to have everything online in two weeks.

Last Friday was also the opening of the 3D PRINT CANAL HOUSE by DUS.

During the weekend Laura and me visited the 4D sound system again for a mindblowing set of Biosphere and did a tour of three Amsterdam museums, more or less churches, Onze lieve heer op Zolder, Oude Kerk and Nieuwe Kerk.  

[tiptaptopika]

week 114

Last week started with busy day including a general members meeting at the Coop and the final round of the Apps voor Ouders challenge. Pieter Hilhorst congratulated us with a cheque and a jury gave advise for future business opportunities with open data sources.

Tuesday I have spent a full day in design review meetings and requirement mapping for the NewsMemeMachine with Dagan and Arjan.

In the evening we had a This happened Amsterdam dinner with Paul Skinner and Lotte enjoying a pretty decent Korean BBQ and discussing the future of the local chapter. Paul is moving to New York and we are looking for somebody to take his place.

The Skinvision application hit the app store with an updated archive functionality and I am handing out upgrade codes to testers, let me know if you like to share your professional opinion about the application.

We rounded up our week on Friday at the Open Coop with informal presentations where our neighbours Fiber, Peter Robinett and me delivered a quick keynote about our previous and current projects.

Presentation afternoon at @opencoop Drop by If you're in the area. Also a bit about @FiberFestival later on. pic.twitter.com/ZsBURwLQuO

— Jarl Schulp (@jarlschulp) 

February 21, 2014

[tiptaptopika]

week 110-113

The last four weeks left little time for me to reflect, this quick post sums up what was going on.

I really enjoyed organising This happened IXD14 together with Ianus and Pieter. It was an experimental edition with more seats for the audience and two speakers from Germany that were visiting for the conference. We had a splendid evening with a good balance of speakers and a really great atmosphere.

Marie de Vos - STBY – talked about improving travelers’ experience of train platforms.

Christian Eckert & Andreas Wegner - icon incar – talked about designing a next-generation automotive interface.

Pieter Jan Pieters – OWOW – talked about The Social Project

Luna Maurer – Studio Moniker – talked about the ever-growing animation film Your Line or Mine

Following the conference program on Saturday I can conclude that my tolerance for the average academic or "professional" keynote delivery is really low since I started organising This happened. The format of 10 minutes presentation and 10 m in Q&A is a lot more entertaining in my opinion. Then again the conversation with Scott McLoud stood out for me and was really enjoyable.

Visiting the Stedelijk I tried out Moniker's "Your line or mine" and watched people using the installation for a while and it is incredible to see how much engagement they generate with this setup.

Newsmememachine

More stakeholder meetings in Hilversum, this time with the Tegenlicht editors at the VPRO

Design and user stories 

Benchmarking and testing

Research 2nd screen applications

Skinvision

Finalised scenario prototypes for in depth interviews with health practitioners.

Testing and deploying the iPhone app with a complete archive re-design.

Analysation of mixpanel key metrics. 

[tiptaptopika]

week 109

IXD 14 is approaching fast and we have almost completed the line up for our This happened partner edition. The first two speakers have been added to the event listing and we are waiting for conformation of our two other special guests. We have made the organisation a little bit more difficult because we are trying to get designers that are visiting for the conference next to local speakers. 

Roughly this is going on with the other projects:

Newsmememachine

Full day of technical stakeholder meetings, requirement mapping and validation of our project objectives with the NPO and the complete team in Hilversum.

Skinvision

Planning and prioritising design and implementation sprints and roughing out sketches for scenario prototypes.

Open Coop

Planning our next general members meeting, sorting out the new alarm installation and setting the agenda for 2014 and 2015.

[tiptaptopika]

week 108

We are two weeks into the new year already and it has been a while since I posted an update about my activities and projects. First of all I want to look back at two public non-related events that really inspired me.

Last weekend legendary Berlin based techno producer Lucy finished the first artist in residency working with the 4DSOUND system. He concocted an amazing performance that explored the concept of echoing the bodily noises from a yoga practitioner. With this system an array of speaker columns and programmable controls allow a musician to play with sound spatiality and staging in unprecedented ways. During the Q&A Lucy really succeeded to explain his approach and creative process, if you are interested there is a Dutch review on VICE about the performance. Amsterdam really has become a tat more exciting since there will be more residencies with Biosphere, Pantha Du Prince and Vladislav Delay in the forthcoming months.

Just before the end of 2013 I have visited the 30C3 between Christmas and New Years Eve in Hamburg which is a the annual congress of the Chaos Computer Club. It was great participating and hanging out with the Bits of Freedom crew while meeting old and new friends in Hamburg. The event focuses on hard and software security and for the first time had curated categories like Hardware & Making, Art & Beauty, Science & Engineering, Security & Safety, Politics, Ethics & Society. To give you an idea the Glenn Greenwald keynote about his work with Edward Snowden was often interrupted by massive applause.

A few lectures really stood out for me. Jacob Applebaum delivered two keynotes, one about his work on TOR and another talk "To Protect And Infect, Part 2" about the recent Spiegel publication of NSA documents. Both are worth watching but the latter is simply mind-blowing and inspired me to finally start encrypting my emails and hardware.

No Neutral Ground in a Burning World by Quinn Norton and Eleanor Saitta was interesting and to relevant in essence but it was a great pity that the delivery failed and the talk did not grasp the audience. Alper gave a similar lecture for Hackdeoverheid and in my opinion gets the point across more intensely. You can find all the other keynotes here.

After a splendid start into 2014 the last two weeks have been divided between negotiations, planning new work but also reflecting on past projects, initiatives and my responsibilities as chairman of the Open Coop. 

The Open Coop is in great shape but there are still challenges when it comes to democratic decision making and internal communication. The diversity of people has increased quite a bit over the past year and we have some amazing new members that all seem to feel right at home in our special work environment. In order to increase collaboration we have started to organise internal Pecha Kucha style presentation which help us to get to know each other even better. The next edition is planned for the 21st of February, PM me if you are curious and want to join us. 

I will continue to work as a design consultant for Skinvision on a part time basis and will stay involved in setting their product and design strategy. During the next three months we will focus on improving their web service and the mobile apps but also on R&D for new services and collaboration with international not-for-profit medical research groups.

The NewsMemeMachine project is slowly landing inside the NPO and we are planning to launch somewhere in march. Last week we prepared the technology stakeholder meetings and worked on the first platform specific mockups and on the interaction design of the application. I am really glad that Arjan from Miracle Things joined our team as developer and that we have Laura as project manager. 

For now I will continue teaching a course during the next semester at the HVA one day a week. It is save to say that even though the majority of the students lack talent it is great to work with the couple of motivated and hard working students while practicing my didactic skills.

Also This happened will be back in February during the IXD14 conference and we will announce the event soon.

[tiptaptopika]

week 97 & 98

The Self Building Building team was invited by Matthijs Bouw (One Architecture) to the New Institute where we got to present our project next famous archtiect Ben van Berkel to a panel of economists and entrepreneurs. We also gave a similar lecture at Stichting B.a.d. in Rotterdam.

I also started teaching an interaction design graduate course at the Technical University Amsterdam on day a week. My goal is to inspire a way of thinking that transcends the average students horizon when it comes to the design profession and self guided learning. Next to participation frameworks, social search and findability patterns I also briefly discussed Christopher Alexander's "A pattern language" in class to stimulate more lateral thinking about design patterns. Christopher Alexander's is available for free on a rather outdated and badly designed website.

Surprisingly Jyri is still the only hands on reference framework about Social Objects. Quite a dilemma, I am inclined to to push the envelope a bit with these students by introducing Ian Bogost's Object Lessons, though a philosophical discourse around objects might be a bit to fluffy and abstract for my students.

[tiptaptopika]

week 95 & 96

I am wrapping up two weeks with a lot of meetings that are setting the strategy for the related projects, with all people in place there will hopefully be a lot more making than meeting during the last months of the year.

This happened

We decided to to team up with all dutch event organisers to plan an edition for the coming IXD 14. Really looking forward to this collaboration.

Open Coop

We have installed the new signage system designed by Tony with the lovely typface Amsterdam Energie by Jasper van den Berg.

Our new neighbours at the Open Coop, Fiber held a Coded Matters event with interesting talks and great performances. It was also a great opportunity to spend some time with Ben who visited Amsterdam for a short visit.

Self Building Building

Our team had a strategic meeting with the research director from the Waag Frank Krezin discussing how our project would fit into their agenda for the next two years. 

Skinvision

We had branding and product development strategy meetings that are synthesised into requirements which we are using to validate the design iterations.

[tiptaptopika]

week 94

We had a great This Happened Amsterdam edition at the Brakke Grond. I really enjoyed the talk by Lieven about his Hydrogen Airship because of his intense delivery. Here is a nice write-up of the evening by Iskander.

Tuesday I spent a full day of validating the designs and finishing the detailed design of the interactive elements for the Skinvision Archive that will be launched after the next sprint.

Every autumn a quick visit to Cinekid is a must if you are a designer and living in Amsterdam. My favourite this year was Weather Worlds by Theo and Emily.  

On Thursday I was invited by Michelle Kasprzak to join an expert meeting at the V2 lab in their innovation research series. Michelle and Boris Debackere moderated a discussion around creativity and innovation. The other participants were Brendan Cormier, Sacha van Tongeren, Malkit Shoshan, Diane Ragsdale and Kitty Leering.

This group interview will be published by V2 and I am interested to see how they boil down our inspired conversation. The mix of people greatly contributed to the debate which we informally continued at the spectacular dinner afterwards.

In the evening we visited the Stelarc lecture at the Nieuwe Institute. Stelarc is an eccentric artist who explores body modifications, suspensions and exoskeletons since the 80's.

The talk was not for the faint at heart, this artist has no inhibitions to break ethical or medical conventions with his work. I was glad to hear that Stelarc is not a fan of the singularity movement, for him it is a rather simplistic model of the future that has nothing to do with his eccentric artistic practice. He is no futurist, he merely explores speculative possibilities and describes his work as an seductive act rather than preaching utopian or dystopian scenarios.

On Friday I took my time in Rotterdam to explore the Biodesign exhibition at the New Institute and visited the Food festival at the Musempark where DUS and Arne had their contributions to future food scenarios on display.

I rounded of the afternoon with a visit to the Boiimans, Witte de With and Tent with all having rather intriguing exhibitions on display.