Rob Ingebretsen, part designer and part developer, speaks at Mix 2010 about lessons he has learned over his roughly 10 years of experience as a designer. A few of these include: Starting a project by creating a ‘mood board’. Having a theme to unify the functional and visual aspects of a design. Be better before you are new. Learn lots of techniques. Sweat the details. As well as to follow an iterative process of working hard, get feedback, and refining. Rob is one of two designers at Pixel Labs and runs a good design blog at NerdPlusArt.com.

Dwell magazine visits the design firm Smart Design and talks to Dan Formosa, and Richard Whitehall about the ‘intersection of Universal Design principals and the limitations of public bathrooms.’ The video presents an insightful yet humorous look into the use of public restrooms. Well worth a watch and if anything will provide a great topic for discussion amongst friends.

Gabriel Biller and Kristy Scovel from the IIT Institute of Design have created an excellent primer for those getting into the field of Ethnography. Their primer provides an overview of the practice, interview tips, as well as anecdotal stories from the field. While it is a little slow at the start, once it gets going, it is both educational and interesting. Definitely a must watch for those getting into the filed of Human Computer Interaction.

Alex Roman has created this beautiful piece that tries to “illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view”. The entire piece is computer generated and demonstrates a tremendous amount of skill. Alex used 3D Studio Max, Vray, AfterEffects, and Adobe Premiere in its creation. Alex also created the music which was done in Sonar & EWQLSO Gold Pro XP. Simply amazing!

Juhan Sonin gives a brief talk at O’Reilly Ignite about creating a practitioner’s guide to UI Design. The fast-paced talk speeds through many great tenets such as “Let Data Scream”, “Repeat Users Rock”, “Bitch Loud and Often”, and many more. For a more detailed look, check out his longer talk given at O’Reilly OScon, and also be sure to check out his ever-expanding website of publicly contributed design tenets.

Luke Wroblewski speaks at Mix ’09 about the best practices of web form design. Covering everything from flow, layout, error handling, help, buttons, and more… Luke covers everything you need to know to design great web forms. And of course at the end he encourages people to not use forms at all. Overall, Luke presents a great practical guide backed up with lots of research and maintains the audience’s attention with the use of lots of great visual examples of both good and bad form design. Check out his book Web Form Design at Amazon.com.

Doubling up on its bet on tablet PCs, Microsoft is working on the dual-screen Courier booklet. Using both pen and gesture based interaction methods, the technology incorporates many of the interaction models we’ve seen developed over the past 10 years. Most interestingly is the fact that it is the first piece of technology to emphasize the light-weight notebook form factor while utilizing two displays. The potential is imaginative as usual and it will be fun to see where this leads.

Scott Dadich, Creative Director at Wired magazine, talks about the design processes behind Wired at the IDEO Know How Talks. The in-depth descriptions of the cover creation process, font designs, infographics, etc… are fantastic and wonderfully juicy. “Details matter. Evolution, not revolution. Constraint is freedom.”

Aaron Forth, VP of Product at Mint.com, speaks at UX Week 2009 about the importance of user experience as it applies to managing personal finances with Mint.com. Aaron talks about tying the user experience to business objectives and how it influences everything from the people they hire hiring, creating their business model, and all aspects of Mint.com. Through several anecdotes Aaron talks about building the brand, building trust, and how the emotion of personal finances has a large impact on how Mint approaches design. A few of the most important factors have included the name, the light color tones, and framing the topic of finance in the light of ‘hope’. One of the most interesting insights was hearing how Mint.com chose to no longer support Internet Explorer 6.0 after discovering they were spending nearly 20% of their time working specifically to support it.

10/GUI, a project by R. Clayton Miller, demonstrates a proposed means of interacting with a desktop computer via a touch interface. Stepping out of the box of traditional approaches to designing peripheral devices, Clayton takes a leap forward in not only designing the hardware aspects but also rethinking the software aspects of the computer for use with the device. Overall the idea is intriguing and inspires further thought on touch interfaces for the desktop.

Adrian van Hooydonk, head of design at BMW, sits down an in an excellent interview with Tyler Brûlé of car magazine Monocle. The conversation leads down many threads including how BMW’s design thinking has changed recently, how they are always working to meet customer’s changing expectations, and the relationship between the drawing board and the driver. Big pushes for the company are happening in the way of being more environmentally friendly, meeting more of their owner’s needs and their lifestyle, and creating story narratives around vehicles as part of the design process.

Nadya Direkova, a Senior Information Architect at Avenue A Razorfish, talks about how to make web and software experiences more engaging by using techniques pulled from game design. Nadya offers examples such as reward systems, aesthetics, social systems, avatars, stats & missions, and many more. If you haven’t been exposed to this idea, the talk is a great overview and should compel you to explore the idea further. Get the slides here.

An oldie, but goodie, Bill Buxton of Microsoft Research, speaks at Stanford’s Human-Computer Interaction Seminar on topics discussed in his book Sketching User Experiences. A little more lengthy than his recent talk at Mix ’09, Bill goes into greater detail about the importance of sketching in design. He also provides examples of how sketching can be applied to the design process in a meaningful way.

Designer Thomas Meyerhoffer, who previously worked at companies including Apple and Porsche, is now making big waves in the surfing industry. The New York Times and Fast Company both provide a comprehensive background to the story, but as with all great design stories… best to hear the commentary from the designer himself.

Eddie Harber, product designer at the Apparel Innovation Team at Nike, gives a behind the scenes look at the Nike Pre-Cool Vest. Made from lots of recycled materials, the vest is designed to be filled with water, frozen, and worn prior to an athletic event or workout to keep the body’s core temperature cooler longer. It is great to see how such wonderful form is derived purely from function.

Microsoft’s Dane Storrusten directs this short concept video imagining a future where technology is invisible to end users but allows the full benefits of gestural recognition, context awareness, and more. The video is one of two videos produced by INVIVIA. Also check out August de los Reye’s slightly less intricate concept video for the home environment.

Industrial design and human factors legend Niels Diffrient talks at TED about his quest to design the perfect chair. In full director’s commentary, Niels shares how he redesigned a chair by looking at the human body in all aspects, including the user experience of using a chair.

Why can’t furniture fit like a suit?
- Niels Diffrient

Jeff Veen, a founding partner of Adaptive Path speaks at the Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco about data visualization and the future of Big Data. Jeff gives a brief history of information design and talks about the future of visualizing self-generated data to find stories important to individuals.

Bill Buxton Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and author of Sketching User Experiences, takes the first 30 minutes of the MIX ’09 keynote. One of my favoUrite speakers, Bill talks about the importance and power of sketching user experiences. Citing many examples, Bill stresses the importance of experience design in a bad economy and thinking about the transitions between states and not simply the states themselves.

These things are far too important to take seriously.
- Bill Buxton

Released in February, Peter Arnell, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Arnell Group, defended the latest rebranding effort for Tropicana. It’s recent 20% drop in sales after the rebranding has lead hit Pepsi-co in the wallet and the company is now reverting back to its previous design. Read more on AdAge.com.