So in my last post I promised some words on why I haven’t been posting for awhile. I’ll keep this short, since blog meta chat is usually just painful.

For quite awhile I was writing mainly about UX stuff, design thoughts and speculations and what-ifs. But then I switched roles at work and started doing more programming. And the more programming I did the more I thought about programming, and the more I think about programming the less I analyze things from a UX angle. (I’ve come to the viewpoint that it’s possible to do both, but not at the same time. They require two such radically different ways of thinking — the spatial and holistic vs. the linear and analytical.)

It’s like when you’re writing fiction a lot, and you get ideas for stories constantly. But then you stop writing so much, maybe you get busy or whatever, and soon the story ideas no longer come. My point is, we think most about what we’re focused on, even when we’re not actively focusing on it.

So I hope to start posting some things that I build, like Life, and maybe some how-to’s as well. I have another Flash item that I’ll be sharing within the next couple of days. But right now I’m really just learning a lot (mainly ActionScript and Ruby on Rails), and having fun creating weird, out-there UI for the web.

Looks like I’m a programmer after all…

Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I guess this past month hasn’t brought a lot that’s new, at least not in my professional or creative lives. It’s largely been about wrapping up my information architecture rotation at work, and finishing some freelance programming work in my spare time.

Today was the first day of my new rotation as a [title yet to be determined]. Seriously, the job that I’m doing right now is so new in my department that they haven’t even decided on a final job title yet. Some of ones that I like are Interaction Developer, Design Engineer, and Design Technologist. All of which basically mean that I know how to code, and know something about design as well.

My personal thought is that the role might as well be called Design Translator. Because sometimes it seems like designers and developers really are speaking 2 different languages, and my job is to know as much of each one as I can, so that I can translate between the two and help them understand each other. That’s how I see it, anyway.

I’m pretty excited about trying out this role. I’ve always been drawn to interdisciplinary work — just look at both of my college majors for proof. Something about my brain really likes being able to look at something from multiple angles at once. And it’ll be nice to finally get to use some of my programming skills, and hopefully develop them even further by practice and by studying new technologies. I started working on a little project today, just basic HTML and CSS to get myself back into practice; but the day just flew by. I think that’s a good sign.

I think that my goals for this rotation are to learn Flex, to further develop my JavaScript / AJAX skills, and to become skilled at Illustrator and Flash. (I’m self-taught in Flash, but I’m sure there’s a lot that I still don’t know.)

I seem to be developing a habit of doing some kind of year-in-review post around the time of the Fall Equinox.

It’s interesting to read what I wrote last year, from the perspective of a year later. I mean wow, what a time of huge changes that was. I wonder if there will ever come a time when I’ll look back on the year past and think, “yeah I’m pretty much the same person I was then”. I don’t think it’s happened yet…

Anyways, onward to This Year in Sentence Fragments.

Work: 2 rotations down, 1 to go. Learning SO much. Figuring out what I want to do and how to best apply my talents, in the short-term. Thinking about the longer term too, but not doing anything about it yet. Am I a designer, a programmer, or both? Bought a car, which then got broken into. Relationship stuff. Performed with Spiral Song, took a break, then came back. Continuing to grow with largely the same friends. Moved from my city full of lovely old things and crime, to a small town full of lovely old things (and less crime). Not living with J anymore — an adjustment, but good. Sister’s wedding. Moved from focusing heavily on writing to visual art. Drawing class. Freelance work for AYSO. Trip to Missouri. Figuring things out.

Yeah, if I had to put it into one sentence, this might have been the year of Figuring Things Out. And also becoming more settled, although I still don’t really have roots.

From Part I: It’s the problem that you’re trying to address, and not the field of design into which it (primarily) falls, that makes a project important or not.

If this is true, that’s unfortunate in a way, because it means that I can’t be assured of doing meaningful work just by getting into the right field, or getting the right degree from the right school. It’s not so easy as all that. Every field has its frivolous aspects, which may still bring joy and definitely make money, but which aren’t as important to me; likewise, every field has its interesting problems.

If there’s no easy answer, then what is the answer? I can only share my own answer, which is necessarily personal to me.

First, what I can do is look at the types of problems I’m most interested in working on. Am I interested in figuring out how to convey important information in a clear and elegant way, or how to use words and images to spread a message and persuade? Am I interested in designing products that meet real needs and actually improve people’s lives? Am I interested in creating information environments that allow people to access and understand important data, or that bring people together and help them communicate? Am I interested in designing physical spaces that encourage community and that work with nature instead of against? All of these things are valuable, but I can’t do everything. I need to pick a direction of focus.

Second, once I pick a direction, I need more education. I need to be able to speak the lingo, to know the history and background, to have a toolbox of abilities upon which I can draw. I need to know current state, past states, and thoughts toward the future. I need to know people, places, and times. And most of all, I need practice and feedback, the kind that I can probably best get in a group of other people who are doing the same thing.

Third, once I get some education, I need to practice and practice and practice some more. I need to work, and to create, and to develop authority. I need to create a reputation for myself, and build respect so that people will listen to me. I need to become known. And practice, and practice, and practice some more.

And while I’m practicing and building my skills, I’m also observing, and noting problems that exist, and coming up with ideas. And while I’m doing that, I’m also trying to network and align myself with institutions and people that can support me and my work.

And then at some point, magic happens and the stars align, and I take a flying leap out onto the limb of a badly mixed metaphor and do something with it all. Something that really matters. Something that I know is the Point Of It All. (This is the point where my logic runs out, and I can only assume that I’ll know it when I see it. Hey, I never said I had it all figured out!)

This doesn’t sound rational, or easy, or glamorous. And worst of all to an impatient person like me, it sounds like it might take a damn long time.

Nonetheless. Nonetheless, the part of me that grew up believing in Big Stories, and believing that God had a purpose for every life, still believes. (Although I wouldn’t perhaps put it in quite the same words.) It’s not quite hip and cynical, I know, but somewhere buried in me is an incurable optimist, foolish enough to believe that I can do something that matters.

But not foolish enough to believe that it will fall into my lap without a damn lot of hard work. Which is okay, I’m good for that.

With this post, I’m inaugurating a new blog category: “Navel Gazing”. Like a good introvert, I tend to do a lot of that, and I thought I would share some of it with you.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about meaningful work, and about what that means to me, and how I can create meaningful work for myself. And I’ve been thinking about what Matters, by which I mean: solves a problem, helps people, or makes the world a better place in some way. These are the questions I’ve been wrestling with:

How much does design Matter, really?

And are there certain types of design that matter more than others?

I started out thinking that the answer was yes. That, since I’m so interested in this Whole Design Thing, maybe I just had to get into the right field and then I would be able to work on Things That Matter. I wrote this in my UX Week program while I was at that conference: “It seems like some types of design are pure nicety; others are beneficial but not essential; and others have the potential to impact real problems and make a huge difference.”

At that time I was thinking, maybe if I were an industrial designer, or a product designer, or an architect, maybe then I’d be able to work on Things That Matter and make a real difference.

And I was thinking especially that I needed to move away from interaction design, because how much does anything that happens on the Internet really matter in the grand scheme of things?

(Looking back, I’m tempted to turn that into a sarcastic statement. At the time, though, it really wasn’t at all.)

Then throughout the course of the conference, I was presented over and over again with examples of design that Mattered, that addressed real problems. In the keynotes, we learned about Charmr, Adaptive Path’s R&D project to redesign a medical device for diabetics. We got to hear about ClearRx, a redesign of prescription drug labeling to make it easier to understand and safer to use. And we saw a UI demo from One Laptop per Child, with its innovative new operating system created for schoolchildren in developing countries.

I was very impressed by all of these examples. And the thing about them that struck me the most was how they all came from different fields of design, from graphics design (ClearRx), to industrial & product design (Charmr), to interaction design (OLPC). And really, none of those projects was pure — they all drew on and mixed up all of those fields and more, to varying degrees.

The conclusion that I’ve come to, and where I’m at right now, is that it’s more the problem than the discipline that makes a design project Matter. It’s not an issue, in the broad view of things, what I end up calling myself, or even what my diploma says. Rather, it’s an issue of looking at the problems that are out there in the world, and looking at the skillset that I have and the skillset I could reasonably gain, and then applying the one to the other in order to try and fix some shit.

And we all know there’s a lot of broken shit that needs fixing.

(Stay tuned for Part II, in which I continue to gaze fixedly at my navel.)