design jams

The following post was written by Maureen Hanratty, a 2009 graduate of the SI HCI program who now works as an Interaction Designer at Yahoo!

Happy new year's SI HCI-ers! Now that you've gotten settled into the flow of your winter semester, it's a good time to think about some goals, or resolutions, for these next few months. As a recent alum I'd like to offer some advice on what you can do with your time at SI to prepare yourself for job interviewing and entering the workforce. This was originally going to be a blog post about things I wish I had done in graduate school, but as I was drafting a list of the things I did right and wrong I actually had far more things I did right (how often does that happen?) So here are 4 things that that helped me land my job as an Interaction Designer at Yahoo!

1. Create a great portfolio site
I took a lot of time and care designing and writing copy for my portfolio (http://www.mhanratty.com) and the effort really paid off. My boss told me (more than once) that it was exactly what he was looking for in an interaction design portfolio. He was especially happy that I had examples of works in process and not just final deliverables. So take the time to design a build a portfolio that not only captures the projects you've completed at graduate school but also your point-of-view as a designer.

Five HCI students recently submitted entries to Mozilla's University Design Challenge. The object of the challenge was to address browsing history: “How can we make sense of this rich source of data and how do we best present this data to the user?”

After an initial brainstorming session, the students worked individually or in teams to create mockups, prototypes and concept videos. Mozilla has blogged about the design challenge results, and some of the Mozilla Labs team will be giving our students personalized feedback over the phone next week. Check out the Design Challenge submissions from SI:

Natalia Fisher - Snapshot History

Natalia's Snapshot History allows users to visually scan and search for specific words or phrases in their browser history by displaying searchable thumbnail screenshots and a time frame selector. Check out her mockups.

Tom Haynes - Timeline

Instead of showing web history as a one dimensional list, Tom's Timeline includes additional contextual information (like time of day, duration of visit, browsing path to the page, whether pages were opened in a new tab or a new window, etc) to help people re-find the pages they were looking for. See his mockup and video.

Katie McCurdy and Kiran Jagadeesh - Firefox Foresight

Firefox Foresight uses past user browsing behavior and patterns in order to predict which websites they are likely to visit at a given time, and in a given place.  The system will make suggestions to users via a sidebar notification and recommendation system. Check out Katie and Kiran's concept description and narrated storyboard.

Jose Jimenez - Mozilla's History Browsing
Jose's timeline helps users remember which sites they have visited by providing a sliding timeline at the top that can be used to navigate back and forth. Users will visually see the sites they have been to and be able to see the path in the which they got to any given site. See Jose's concept description and prototype.

Source: Flickr

Source: Flickr

Source: Flickr

We held the kickoff meeting for this fall's Mozilla Design Challenge last Thursday night up at Design Lab 1 (or DL1 as we say) on North campus. 26 SI students came to eat some pizza courtesy of Mozilla, sketch ideas relating to browsing history, and then work in small groups to further brainstorm, develop, and whiteboard ideas. The evening was super fun and stimulating, and it was a great chance for HCI types from different years to get to know one another a little better. Jeremy captured some great pictures throughout the evening - check them out on flickr.

Students will now work individually or in groups to develop their ideas a bit further; the next check-in point for the challenge will be on Thursday, October 8th in the DL1 at HCI show and tell. This will be a chance to show off progress and get some feedback from peers.

The challenge will officially end somewhere right around Halloween, and students will submit their designs at that point. The goal is to submit a short video explaining the concept, although some students might take it to the next level and create an animation or prototype. We are really looking forward to seeing what people come up with!

If you missed the first event but want to get on the email list for this challenge, just write sochi-officers@umich.edu.

Next thursday, HCI graduate students at the University of Michigan School of Information will continue their partnership with Mozilla by participating in this fall's Mozilla Labs' University Design Challenge. This challenge asks students to research and design solutions around browsing history: "How can we make sense of this rich source of data and how do we best present this data to the user?"

The School of Information is one of four schools from three countries that is taking part in this challenge, and each school will take a slightly different approach. In our initial event we'll introduce students to the challenge, brainstorm and whiteboard ideas, and share them with one another. Then students will have individually or in small groups take their idea to the next level; this might be a series of mock-ups, a video, or even a prototype.

Over the past year, Mozilla and the U of M School of Information have worked together to put on several design jam sessions; and several SI students have submitted their work to Mozilla for review by other design challenge participants and the Mozilla Labs team. These experiences have benefitted SI students in a few ways: they've gotten valuable supplemental design practice, they've made themselves more visible in the design and open source community, and they've had the very exciting opportunity to work closely with and receive feedback from members of the Mozilla Labs team.

The following students' mockups, prototypes and video examples are available online:

• The TabViz team, which originated in SI's Information Visualization class, won the 'Best in Class' award at Mozilla's 2009 Summer Design Challenge. Props to SI students Jakob Hilden, Liz Blankenship, and Kerry Kao.
• Katie McCurdy submitted a mock-up and prototype to the Spring Design Challenge to communicate her ideas about being able see elements of different websites at the same time.
• Maureen Hanratty and Ian Tadashi Moore submitted a flash animation to last fall's Design Challenge (link forthcoming).

For more information on next week's event and to RSVP, check out the facebook event. And check out older posts on the design jams and challenges SOCHI has held in the past year.

Team TabViz, Jakob Hilden, Liz Blankenship and Kerry Kao, have won the 'Best in Class: Innovation' prize at Mozilla's recent Summer Design Challenge.

The trio began this project as part of their Information Visualization class at the University of Michigan School of Information in 2009. Liz and Jakob have now graduated, and Kerry will soon also complete her M.S. in Information with a specialization in HCI in 2010.

Congratulations to the TabViz team! You make us proud!

A few weeks ago, SOCHI held a design jam with TechSmith to explore new ways to organize and share content on Screencast.com. Barb Hernandez, UX Manager at TechSmith, recently wrote a blog post on the Screencast.com blog summarizing the design jam and asking users for feedback regarding our ideas. There are also more pictures posted! Check it out here: http://blog.screencast.com/2009/03/u-of-m-school-of-information-d.html

SI HCI student Katie McCurdy was selected last month to participate in the Mozilla Spring Design Challenge. On her blog she wrote about a recent tutorial session on Open Source Design by Mozilla Director of Design Josh Slater.

Congratulations to the 4 SI students who were selected to participate in the Mozilla Labs Spring Design Challenge. Click on the links below to see the mockups that landed them in the second round of the challenge.

Source: Flickr

This week Barbara Hernandez, User Experience Manager at TechSmith, came to Design Lab 1 looking for new design ideas for their website Screencast.com. After discussing the design space (and eating some pizza) SI HCI students broke up into small groups and came up with ideas to improving the viewing, organizing, and sharing of content on the site. It was a real treat to hear Hernandez's, a UX expert, insightful feedback on the designs.

Come join us for a design jam with TechSmith, a Michigan-based software company (and the world’s leading provider of screen capture and recording software) that is seeking our help to come up with a better design for one of their products.

This event will be similar to the Zattoo Design Jam: working in small groups to brainstorm, sketch ideas, and iterate. Come with your ideas (details on the design challenge to be sent out soon) and ready to sketch! RSVP for the event here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=81254571232