Interaction 12 Recaps

The talks were humbling and inspiring; for a great encapsulation of every speaker’s topic, you should read the daily recaps on Johnny Holland by Vicky Teinaki and Louise Taylor (Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3). And in case you’re wondering if they really did transcribe all these talks themselves, I can personally assure you since I sat next to at least one of them at nearly every talk.

My personal favorites were talks by August de los Reyes, Ariel Waldman, Abi Jones, Amber Case, Andrew Hinton, Dr. Genevieve Bell and Kate Ertmann. Ariel’s in particular struck me as a refreshing combination of high concept and irreverent absurdity (although I heard Dan Saffer’s performance took those attributes to a new level).

Expect the Unexpected

As for unexpected surprises: during my talk on Digital Outcasts, a member tweeted my reference to the Grace app for autism. The app’s creator, Lisa Domican, actually lives in County Wicklow, a short distance away. Over a quick Twitter exchange, we arranged to meet in the Clarion IFSC hotel lobby and wound up chatting for nearly three hours. Lisa is a very smart, committed and passionate advocate. The entire design world really needs to hear her story of successfully modifying behavior through personalized niche construction.

Artifacts

For those who were unable to get to Dublin, I’m told that all sessions were recorded on video and will be made available by the IxDA. On a personal note, I have to share some really cool sketchnotes done during my talk. I’m honored to have been immortalized by such talented and very thoughtful folks. The links below point to their individual websites or Flickr accounts:

Chris Noessal from Cooper

Boon Chew from Sapient-Nitro

Eva-Lotta Lamm author of Sketchnotes (check out her entire Flickr set)

New Friends and Twitterers Worth Following

@amyhurst
@jean_marie
@graceapp
@designswinger
@gok8
@shaunkane
@neylao
@dhenchy
@justin_bacon
@arielwaldman
@sugaredeggs
@vickytnz
@interactionlove
@simon_norris
@aparatchik
@miemo
@kaeru
@uxjam
@mgrocki
@mojoguzzi
@megangrocki
@isometricshadow
@nuritps
@docbaty
@pivotdublin
@kathrynparkes
@uxrockabilly
@icecoldvideo
@ilarilaitinen
@coryannj
@samin
@inkblurt
@rogierbr
@arichardlaurent
@jukkapaulin
@evlottchen
@chrisnoessal
@boonych
@caseorganic
@mrwangkai

I’m on at 11:30am Thursday February 2, with a hopefully engaging 45-minute bit called Innovations in Accessibility: What We Can Learn from Digital Outcasts. Here’s the abstract:

Despite our growing potential to augment human capability through technology, the innovation curve sometimes leaves behind people who could most benefit. We’ll call this group the “digital outcasts” (a term introduced by researchers from the University of Sussex), and they ironically reside at the epicenter of today’s most exciting developments.

On a purely grass-roots level, digital outcasts are taking it upon themselves to improve and sustain their success in life. They are doing this through personally customized solutions that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Interestingly, their efforts then contribute mightily to the same technological landscape that originally neglected them. For such an important (and growing) demographic, this represents a cultural sea change of increasing significance.

Participants of this session will explore the significance of digital outcasts in the creation of such emerging technologies as mobile apps, video games, personalized robotics and virtual worlds. Emphasis will be placed on products and services in the health sector, with recent case studies spanning multiple therapeutic contexts: blindness/low vision, long-term rehabilitation, oncology, physical therapy, degenerative disease, cognitive disorders and opioid-free pain management. Practical examples will include such platforms as the iPad, Nintendo Wii, haptic interfaces, virtual prosthetics, text-to-speech functionality, eye-tracking, adaptive mobile devices and Second Life.

Regardless of channel – at some point in their lives, everyone gets older and must enter the digital looking glass. This presentation will emphasize the importance of embracing universal design principles throughout development cycles, thus creating ambient, barrier-free benefit to consumers of all abilities and backgrounds.

Hope to share a Guinness with those in attendance.

Despite my general disinterest in the New York Yankees, I have always admitted a sort of respect and admiration for shortstop Derek Jeter. Given the geographic market in which he resides, Jeter has consistently demonstrated a unique ability to “manage up” to the heavy expectations placed upon him as the team’s brand antenna. New York is a place where hyperbole serves as a universal commodity, yet Jeter brings the same focus to his conduct as he does to his smart, heads-up play. These are qualities that anyone could appreciate.

As Jeter approached the 2010 season, his status on the team was somewhat in flux. He was in the final year of his contract and beginning to show his age in the field. He was not the most highly-paid player in the league or even on his team; that honor was then attributed to Jeter’s teammate Alex Rodriguez. Leadership is not measured in dollars but by influence, however, and Jeter was widely considered the most indispensable embodiment of the Yankee mystique.

Jeter and Rodriguez are an interesting study in how two very different individuals can coexist on the same team. The mercurial Rodriguez is a once-in-a-generation talent whose very name seems to attract controversy. He has admitted to using illegal drugs to boost his performance; he has been repeatedly accused of infidelity; he has rebelled against accusations of selfishness; he is generally treated with disdain by opposing fans when the Yankees travel. His frequently brilliant play brings a flair for unfortunate dramatics. Think of a circus sideshow centering around one man, and you get the general idea.

In contrast, Jeter’s persona enables him to enjoy comparative shelter from this level of scrutiny. By all accounts, Jeter is a decent man and a noted philanthropist, quietly donating his time to multiple charities, prioritizing his on-field efforts to make the players around him better. Jeter is the rare modern athlete for whom money has never been the core issue, and unlike many of his contemporaries he chooses to rise above localized toxicity. A 2010 spring training scandal involving Rodriguez caused a swarm of reporters to circle Rodriguez’ locker. As Rodriguez squirmed, Jeter simply looked across the room and bemusedly shook his head. [1]

Similar characteristics among members of working groups provide a daily exercise for managers, who must balance individual skillsets with collective attitudes. Employers want people who smart and get things done, but they also have to coexist in a productive way minus dysfunctional politics. The best approach is in determining collaborations that center around an aligned moral compass, preferably one that is endorsed or promoted by the organization’s senior leadership. This is how innovation teams separate signal from noise to focus on the common good. To do otherwise creates risk of liability, not only through a lack of contribution but also by usurping good people’s time on the job.

Too many technology groups focus solely on a single area, such as device manufacturing or software platform development, and so they divert all hiring efforts towards resource capabilities to achieve the highest amount of production in the least amount of time. This often creates logistical challenges for managers, because it’s nearly impossible to quickly expand a team without at least some degree of pain. Any dialog regarding roles, goals, opportunities, threats, deliverables and revenue ultimately devolves to lower common denominators regarding behavior. As a result, the needs of the end user get lost and Digital Outcasts are further alienated.

Building a successful team means learning how and when to get out of your own way. It means keeping one eye on the prize at all times and ensuring that the principles which dictate a group’s actions are clearly understood. It’s easy for a manager to simply hope that her entire team will be made up of Derek Jeters who keep their head down, don’t say much and just do their jobs expertly, but this isn’t reality. You’re going to have a Derek Jeter, you’re going to have an Alex Rodriguez, and they’re going to have to work together.

Here’s a helpful tip: for all their complications, people like Alex Rodriguez are just as valuable to a team’s success as a Derek Jeter. Rodriguez is consistently cited as one of the most talented players the game has ever seen. The question is whether such a mercurial presence is worth spending the extra time and effort necessary to harness that talent’s potential. A true leader remembers that the same behavior that makes the department prima donnas so maddening might also be what makes them occasionally brilliant. Consistent attention to the topline goal mitigates all the drama, disappointment and delirium that occurs when your star player is witnessed leaving a supermodel’s apartment at 4 AM.

When Paul Hoffman was attacked by a swarm of bees at the age of five, his father took the opportunity to teach him how to play chess. Feverish, unable to move and generally in great discomfort, young Paul immediately took a liking to the game.

Within a year Paul was school district champion; by the time he reached the fifth grade, he was studying chess matches from the previous 130 years. His favorite pastime was reviewing move-by-move strategies by the old masters, such as the “sacrificial” technique employed by Adolf Anderssen when he famously beat Lionel Kieseritzky in 1851.

By the time Paul was 13 he had subscribed to Chess Life, a glossy magazine listing upcoming regional tournaments. During his first tourney he won four games without a loss and two draws. While he was there he learned of an upcoming simultaneous exhibition in New Haven the following weekend, featuring grandmaster Bent Larsen. In a “simul” (as they are called), a grandmaster plays several games at once against anyone who shows up.

Simuls can involve as many as 400 simultaneous games. The format is high-stress – the grandmaster walks briskly around the room, moving pieces on each board without breaking a stride. Underlings who participate in simuls rarely win; the goal, rather, is to force the grandmaster to stop and think before making her/his next move. Merely stopping a grandmaster’s train of thought is considered a moral victory for a simul participant.

Young Paul spent the entire week reviewing Larsen’s entire game history. One sequence in particular stuck out, one called a From’s Gambit. Larsen had executed this technique during his match against the Swedish master Sture Nyman. Paul exhaustively studied the move, which involves taking control of the board’s center squares without actually occupying them. Paul was convinced that if Nyman had not made one crucial mistake, he could have won the match.

The day of the simul, Paul’s sat in his seat with his heart pounding. Larsen predictably raced through the simul with a word or expression, never once acknowledging his competition by name or face. Paul replicated the match with Sture Nyman move by move, the exact same sequence, until the particular move he had studied all week finally arrive. At that moment, Paul felt the sickening yet exhilarating sensation one gets when they’re about to do something special. His entire arm went numb, as if injected with painkillers, and the tips of his fingers seared as he touched the chess piece in preparation for his move.

Paul’s fingers did not betray him. Drenched in sweat he made the move, sat back confidently and waited. Larsen continued his rounds. When the grandmaster finally arrived, he broke stride just as Paul had hoped. All time stopped as Larsen studied the board position for six entire seconds.

Larsen looked as his young competition and smiled. “That’s a better move than the move Nyman made,” he said, “but no matter. I will destroy you just as I destroyed him!” Within three turns of the room Paul was checkmated.

Paul’s ranking in the world of chess climbed, but he was still unsatisfied. The more he understood the game, the more he realized how little he really knew. Failure was a necessary component to his growth process, like the proverbial well that never runs dry but also expands in volume. It’s a viewpoint that could be deemed irretrievably dismal, this idea that increased knowledge will never completely satisfy our lack of capability. Although our field of vision grows rapidly, it ultimately reveals greater distances to be covered in the cognitive and physical spectrum of needs.

Advocacy for inclusive design takes many forms. There is the user-centric position: accommodating people with high levels of physical or cognitive challenge will improve products and services for all people. There is the legal perspective: accommodate people with disabilities or risk an expensive battle in court. The 2006 class-action lawsuit between the National Federation of the Blind and Target Corp falls into the latter category.

A third and perhaps more compelling argument is that failing to provide universal access is an error of economics. By disrupting access to online shopping experiences among those with disabilities, commercial retailers in effect close the door to potential business opportunities on both a local and global scale. From the data, people with disabilities represent a very strong economic market. Consider the following:

• The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 27 percent of the world population are over the age 45, at which point in life the incidence of disability begins to increase significantly (along with increased availability of discretionary income).
• According to the United States Department of Labor, the spending power of Americans with disabilities was estimated to be over 175 billion dollars annually.
• The Employers Forum on Disability in the United Kingdom estimated in 2005 that there were ten million adults with disabilities in the UK, with an estimated purchasing power of over 80 billion pounds sterling.
• According to the Conference Board of Canada, the combined annual disposable income of working age Canadians with disabilities was 25 billion Canadian dollars.
• A study by the Open Doors Organization estimated that people with disabilities spent 35 billion dollars in restaurants in 2003. American adults with disabilities currently spend an average of 13.6 billion dollars a year on tourism, representing 32 million trips annually.
• One in seven people on this planet have some form of disability, comprising 15% of the world’s population.

With this in mind, consider the hypothetical scenario where a commercial online retailer joins forces with a virtual enterprise provider to create a new form of marketplace. Just think of what could happen should Amazon decide to purchase a company such as Linden Lab, creators of Second Life. Such a merger would combine the Web’s strongest e-commerce model with the rich interactivity and community-building benefits currently enjoyed by participants of virtual worlds.

Online users shopping in a rich, immersive space would enjoy higher fidelity engagement and increased fellowship with like-minded peers. These interactions would spawn a transposition of virtual goods to the offline world, thus providing retail organizations the opportunity to take advantage of “planned serendipity” model — a model that Amazon has been successfully employing for over a decade. These small communities of interest could transform such commonplace actions as buying a book. A publisher could sponsor a virtual reading by a real life author in a decidedly borderless space, one unencumbered with such “book tour” formalities as transportation and lodging expenses for authors.

It’s an intriguing idea for a number of reasons, some specific to consumers with disabilities. We’ve already seen a slightly dovetailing path intertwining the interests of Web accessibility and virtual worlds. We may be seeing a legitimately commercial relevance finally being applied to the use of 3D online environments. For people with disabilities, virtual worlds already operate as a sort of online gathering space whose functionality directly impacts interpersonal reciprocity. Applying this social model to the retail sector simply makes good business sense.

Social networking has always been a sort of concentric framework originating from the self. A person who has 500 Facebook friends doesn’t necessarily view herself interacting with the entire network as a whole. Rather, people tend to operate from a vantage point starting with the self, then they follow a sequence of decreasing importance: “First me, then my friends, then the friends of my friends, etc.”

Now take this model to virtual worlds. Since communities tend to grow by ancillary association, virtual retail groups could be formed around common shopping interests. With a growing number of virtual world participants dotting the digital landscape, it only makes sense that a combining of retail and immersive experiences would bring great value to consumer marketers. Users of Second Life, particularly those with disabilities, strongly identify with their avatars and use them to draw a sense of empowerment and collectivism. With this confidence comes an emerging social vocabulary that instigates activity, improving the chance that a digitally designed product will compel a response.

User experience practitioners see this behavior all the time and call it social actability: the incentive a person feels when they take a defined, modal action and apply it to a different technological setting. One example is how an ATM represents an authentic banking experience, even when no personal interaction is made with an actual human bank teller. People with disabilities who use Second Life often assign this personalization to their avatars, which in turn provides the confidence necessary to interact with environments and other users. It’s technology that provides the vehicle, yes, but it’s social actability that removes psychological (as well as physiological) barriers to access. Without that sense of empathy, such interactions would otherwise be difficult or impossible.

There are no answers here, only questions. Could the future of e-commerce involve three-dimensional environments? Is the virtual landscape an emerging crucible of economic growth? Will product teams need to take gaming technologies into account when designing online shopping experiences? Will shoppers continue to place their trust in retail systems from the safety of their respective digital communities? And from the point of view for people with disabilities, perhaps the most important questions are if such a platform as ‘Amazon Life’ will enable user variability towards a greater functional model, and thus a better shopping experience? And if it does, will anyone care?

As most folks undoubtedly know, this week the world lost Steve Jobs after his quasi-secretive battle with pancreatic cancer. From a consumer standpoint, Jobs was arguably the most significant business figure of the past quarter century.

A number of technology and innovation pundits have already published lengthy blog posts detailing what Jobs meant to the world, with varying mixtures of objective accuracy and histrionic adulation. Inventor, innovator, entrepreneur, visionary, egomaniac, tyrant, blowhard … the labels swirl around like bits of paper on a windy day.

Your personal viewpoint of Jobs is likely bound to whatever degree an Apple product has influenced your life. For digital outcasts, that impact is significant because Jobs understood that successful inclusion means removing barriers to entry, not simply adding more features. He also recognized that the world “accessible” doesn’t solely refer to people with disabilities or other physical/cognitive challenges. Accessibility brings benefit to all users, regardless of individual competency.

An article in this week’s Wired Epicenter makes a very convincing case that Apple’s mission has resulted in better products and greater awareness for disenfranchised populations. However, the value proposition to consumers with disabilities is not recognized merely through any device on its own. According to researcher Daniel Danahoo, adoption among healthcare professionals is the magic glue:

[T]he potential of the iPad is not achieved by the iPad alone, nor by simply placing it in the hands of a child with autism. The potential of the device is realized by the way professionals like speech pathologists, educators, occupational therapists and early childhood development professionals apply their skills and knowledge to use the iPad to effectively support the development of children. The potential is realized by engaged parents working with those professionals to explore how the device best meets the individual needs of their child.

For me personally, I’m most impressed by the way Jobs course-corrected throughout the tenure of his long career. This is a man who was fired by his own board of directors, released his share of high-profile failures, endured ridicule when he shifted Apple’s focus from computers to content and still demanded A+ commitment to his vision. Beginning in 2001, he altered the entertainment business forever by recognizing that content distribution would render brick-and-mortar music stores obsolete.

All that said, I think the best take on Jobs’ legacy comes from Joel Spolsky, one of my personal heroes, because it’s as simple and intuitive as the products Jobs’ lifechild introduced to the world:

Steve Jobs didn’t give a hoot about the needs of nerdy computer geeks. He was trying to make a computer as simple as a toaster. Because he figured out that until you make computers as simple as toasters, you can’t make the world a better place. And, over the next 26 years, he stuck by that vision, and now, it has been realized. We have unbelievably powerful computers that you can put in your pocket and that anyone can figure out how to use. These supercomputers tell you exactly where you are on the planet and show you where that is on a map, and where the nearest sushi restaurant is and how good it is and whether it is open and you can touch a button and you’ll be speaking to someone who works at that sushi restaurant. Anyone can do this, and that’s why Steve Jobs changed the world.

To help celebrate its ten year anniversary, AbilityLinks invites everyone to attend a Business Leaders Breakfast on Thursday, October 13 2011. The program will feature industry leaders discussing their organizational strategies for including persons with disabilities, activating markets spanning employees, customers, hiring companies and job market analysts.

With a 54 million person demographic, people with disabilities represent a growing and significant segment of our population. Learn how reaching this overlooked consumer group makes good business sense across multiple commercial interests. Clay Broussard of PepsiCo will be delivering the Keynote, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Scott Hoesman, President of The Kaleidoscope Group.

Date and Time

Thursday, October 13, 2011
7:00 – 9:30 A.M (CST)

Location

Doubletree Hotel & Conference Center
2111 Butterfield Road
Downers Grove, IL 60515

Registration

Register online at the AbilityLinks website. Deadline to register is October 6.

Sponsorship Opportunities

Sponsorship opportunities are available for participating companies.

Accommodations

Requests for accommodations can be sent to Ken Skord, Director of Vocational Services at kskord@abilitylinks.org.

Companies Attending

• Advocate Health Care
• Anikto LLC
• Aspire
• Ball Horticultural
• Benedictine University
• Central DuPage Hospital
• City of Chicago Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities
• Clearbrook
• DeVry University
• DuPage Workforce Board
• Elmhurst College
• G & W Electric Company
• KPMG LLP
• Labcorp
• Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital
• McGraw-Hill
• National Van Lines
• Northern Trust
• OfficeMax
• PepsiCo
• Providence Bank
• Ray Graham Association
• RR Donnelley
• Sargent & Lundy
• Sikich
• The Kaleidoscope Group
• Thresholds
• USG Corporation

Below is an aggregate of opinions, not all mine necessarily, followed by a few links:

Google bailed too early. The company operates on a “fail fast” innovation model and sometimes doesn’t allow adequate time for mainstream adoption. Google moved the industry just enough that some are calling the early abandonment of GH a big mistake.

Consumer empowerment should have been emphasized more. The untethering of personal health records (PHR) was never going to be the final destination. GH should have been positioned as a conduit to channel health information from point to point, allowing consumers to populate their individual patient portals from a variety of sources.

Google missed an obvious point of entry. Some GH reps blamed insurance agencies for not releasing data, while others blamed health providers for not buying-in with enough enthusiasm. The real gap in GH was a failure to reach vertical tech groups, many of whom were already affiliated with hospitals/labs and had created robust API’s to interface with those systems.

Positioning was everything. GH established itself as a data repository and not much else. There still existed a need for someone to tie all this data together and create a workable, compliant distribution model.

PHR systems need to be marketed. PHR require patients, who won’t use a service unless it comes from an intermediary they trust. Patients rarely think about their health history until the day of their appointment. It’s not feasible to expect consumer behavior to change solely by dangling a technology carrot.

The future is unknown. Some think GH should go open-source. Some think Microsoft’s HealthVault now has an open door. Some think the healthcare industry should own the solution, some think health plans and providers should stay out of technology altogether. Everyone agrees that the opportunity is genuine and the need authentic.

Links about the End of Google Health

• Read more about the EMR perspective
• ReadWriteWeb gives their take from a technology perspective
• The Washington Post thinks it’s all about the financials

The genius of this skit is how Kaufman blurred the lines between performance art, comedy and group participation. Rather than simply performing a set skit with intended results, he made the audience reaction a symbiotic part of his act. In other words, the success of the “performance” relies on the negative feedback to his “mistakes.” His adaptability is what makes the routine successful, rather than adhering tightly to an original script.

This comes to mind because it’s a good way to describe project management. Leaders of project teams establish timelines, create elaborative gantt charts, assign roles & goals, set milestones and insist upon timely deliverables. Still, things go wrong and these setbacks must be managed. What if we don’t get client feedback by a certain date? What is someone calls in sick? What if the schedule slips? And so it goes.

Successful digital team leaders are defined by how they manage slippage. They account for reality, for entropy, for unexpected delays, for cars that break down and kids that get sent home from daycare with 100-degree fevers. Successful leaders insist on scalability because they know the scope will change; they don’t remain steadfast to a rigid schedule that endorses constraint over opportunity. And they recognize that communication is not only a matter of who, when, and why, but also how many.

Last week I gave a talk at Rutgers University on the current status of Web accessibility and digital inclusive design, where I made the somewhat controversial statement that “there are no standards.” My point was not literally that standards do not exist (I am well aware of WCAG 2.0, WAI-ARIA and W3C markup validation), because these guidelines are obviously critical in crafting accessible online content. It’s when new digital interactions move beyond the Web and embrace emerging platforms that we must adapt “the rules” to new contexts. Otherwise, innovation slows to a crawl or (even worse) moves forward without accessibility in mind.

Guidelines are just that — a roadmap for how to move an execution from the concept stage to deliverable output. The real work is in adapting a standard process methodology for the common good, especially with multiple stakeholders all defining key performance indicators from their uniquely individual perspectives. Strict process control becomes necessary only when common sense and team harmony are at risk of evaporating.

Successful project leaders recognize this variability and ensure that nimble work streams remain fluid. Think of it as an anchored buoy that allows ships to navigate unknown waters, retaining visibility no matter how choppy the current gets. Technical specifications, while written in granite, still require execution that relies on that organic and fluctuating criteria known as Human Nature.

As a conceptual baseline, I keep coming back to the late innovator and Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch. Pausch was 47 when he passed away, leaving behind a wife and three children. Most people know Pausch from his acclaimed Last Lecture in September 2007, a stirring message delivered to his students and colleagues just weeks after learning that pancreatic cancer would very soon take his life.

One of the most remarkable aspects about the speech is the humor and sincere gratification in which Pausch approached his condition. His appreciation for every waking moment was genuinely humbling to those of us who (rather selfishly) think we have “real problems” to deal with.

A brilliant instructor and much-loved colleague, Pausch is considered a pioneer in the field of computer science and virtual reality. He was a co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center, served as a consultant for Walt Disney Imagineering’s Virtual Reality Studio, and developed a computer program called Alice that allowed novices to create 3D animations using a drag-and-drop interface.

One of Pausch’s unique gifts was to continuously bridge technical and artistic disciplines, often for the purpose of creating digital experiences that retained elements of storytelling:

“In an era of ever-increasing specialization, Randy promoted interdisciplinary teams based upon mutual respect, building bridges between fine arts and computer science,” said Dan Siewiorek, head of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. “Randy’s legacy is his technology that made computer science accessible to the non-specialists.”

In the mid to late 90’s, I actually got to work on the Orlando implementation of DisneyQuest for Walt Disney Imagineering. All I remember is what an enormously huge undertaking that project was and how it absolutely encompassed my life, so I can’t say that I have fond memories of that time. Years later and much wiser, I now wish I had made more of an effort to truly appreciate what we were building. It was certainly ahead of its time, and I realize I should be thankful for the experience.

From a leadership standpoint, I continue to be amazed just how closely Pausch’s message mirrored some of the things my late grandfather used to say. The delivery was much different (Grandpa was a bit of a mumbler), but some of the lessons remain:

• Experience is what you get when you don’t like the outcome.
• When you run into a brick wall, it’s an opportunity to gauge how much you really want what’s behind it.
• If you work hard, you can be good at something. If you’re good at something, you become valuable.
• Complaining is useless. Get over it and work harder.
• When you get feedback, listen to it. They might be right.
• Luck resides at the intersection of opportunity and preparation.

Leadership is very much like this. The good leaders understand the subtleties of their responsibility, embrace these nuances with enthusiasm, and advance global imperatives as a motivating tactic to inspire their teams. Bad leaders blame others for their shortcomings, cause havoc among work groups, communicate poorly (or not at all) and lack vision for the “greater good.”

Good leaders understand that they’re not always right; they make the best decisions they can with the data they have at that time, and they’re willing to change if the team thinks something isn’t working. Bad leaders remain stubborn and inflexible, failing to sense when effort and intent have been irreversibly separated. Good leaders back it up; bad leaders cover their backs at the expense of others.

As a leader, I’ve been all of these at various times — often within the same day. I’d like to think I’m improving as I go, but you’d have to verify with my colleagues if that’s indeed the case. The lesson I think I’ve learned over my career is this: the moral compass of any leader is closely aligned with their priority structure, with the resulting outcome a mere manifestation of those value principles.

Introduced by researchers from the University of Sussex, the term “digital outcasts” describes users with disabilities who are left behind as technology advances. This proposed presentation will explore emerging technologies (mobile, gaming apps, virtual worlds, etc) as they apply to barrier-free digital products in the health and wellness sector. Practical examples will include iPad, Nintendo Wii, haptic interfaces, virtual prosthetics, adaptive therapies, text-to-speech functionality, iPhone games and Second Life.

You can reserve a seat at the CSUN conference website.

I’m also bringing my wife for a little vacation. So if you’re coming to CSUN 11, there’s a decent chance you could meet the person who actually chooses to spend her life with someone like me. This may, in fact, be of more interest to some than my actual presentation.

(You can read the full PDF of Prensky’s “digital natives vs. digital immigrants” paper online.)

There is another group to consider, that of the “Digital Outcasts.” These are people living with disabilities, experiencing long-term illnesses or undergoing rehabilitative therapies, who reside just behind the technology innovation curve. The term was coined by Gareth White of the University of Sussex, and the constituency it represents is the basis of Anikto’s advocacy theme for 2011.

Digital Niche Construction

Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, people with disabilities have cultivated a sort of “digital niche construction” in order to ensure their continued survival. Similar to how a beaver builds a dam or how a bird builds a nest, Digital Outcasts must alter their technological environment to remain relevant in the modern ecosystem. This interregnum is where a surprising amount of digital innovation is currently taking place.

Over the next several months, Anikto will be undergoing a series of activities to study and interpret the role of the Digital Outcast in a number of health-related scenarios. We are examining the use of the iPad as a therapeutic tool for those with traumatic brain injuries. We are seeking a way to create sustainable nutritional support in urban food deserts, using mobile devices. We are working with a group to advance technology in K-12 curriculum development. And we are observing the role of virtual communities among cancer patients and their caregivers.

Digital Outcasts are significant contributors to the innovation landscape; witness the examples of self-sufficiency that exist solely for people with cognitive disabilities, such as ProLoQuo2Go and the Grace app for iPhone. These are smart folks taking it upon themselves to improve their lot, niche construction in its purest form, executed by point of necessity. In the words of William Gibson, “The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

Upcoming 2011 Presentations on Digital Outcasts

• March 13 SXSW Interactive – Austin, TX
• March 16 CSUN Conference for People with Disabilities – San Diego, CA
• May 15-18 STC Technical Communications Summit – Sacramento, CA
• June 16-17 Learning Evolution and Entertainment Forum – Harrisburg, PA confirmed
• June 23 Usability Professionals’ Association – Atlanta GA
• July 8-10 World Future Society – Vancouver, BC

If you have ever used the now-buzzword “core competence” in your bizspeak Powerpoint slides (just after the requisite Seth Godin quote and just before the stock image of illuminated shaking hands), you can thank Prahalad for it. In 1961, Prahalad invented the term core competency to describe the quality of “focusing on what you know best.” His work on poverty and corporate responsibility earned him worldwide respect, mostly in his native India and in the United States. He pushed companies to be more inventive and ambitious in identifying expansion targets, while strongly endorsing lower-class consumers as a viable market.

Concerned about the skew of economic growth that favored upper class development in India, Prahalad wrote a book called The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits detailing successful business initiatives that also reduced poverty. One such example was e-Choupal, a project where a tobacco, food and hotel conglomerate provided computers to farmers so they could compare pricing of commodities in multiple markets. This raised incomes among individual farmers while reducing overhead costs across the enterprise.

According to today’s NY Times Magazine piece, Prahalad was a bit of a maverick, rejecting classical academia in the belief that “life is too short to work on inconsequential problems.” He made his living primarily by investigating big ideas, populating each with case studies and making them accessible to widely global audiences. Inspired by a 2005 Fast Company article, I wrote a blog piece about a classroom exercise Prahalad conducted for executive leadership trainees. Seeking to tell a story on the value of competition, Prahalad drew an historical metaphor between spunky upstart and incumbent powerhouse by referencing a Cortés/Montezuma battle from the 16th-century:

A master teacher, Prahalad lulls his students into thinking that they know the answers to his constant barrage of questions. Then, slowly, he removes the veil, allowing them to see that they are wrong. In an hour, the students go from confident blusterers to humbled novices. Only at the end does Prahalad guide them from utter confusion to a new level of understanding. “They have to go through the valley of death,” he says. It’s another of Prahalad’s core beliefs: Only when you are challenged, unsafe, out of your zone, can you find self-knowledge.

In revisiting C.K. Prahalad’s life and career, I connected very personally with these ideas as they pertain to my current status and upcoming goals. Much of my work life in 2010 centered around the concept of “innovation,” pertaining mostly to the cultivation of technology products for the life sciences market. It was quite a banner year in terms of my own ideological development, and I’m truly thankful for the opportunities and experiences that have been presented to me from all fronts.

As important as product design is in the course of innovation, however, there is an equally vital component: the ability to recognize one’s unique strengths and weaknesses as a utile skillset (a “core competency”) in the process of achieving a goal. It’s the same for companies as for individuals; one can reach a higher ideal in performance, or lose the plot completely due to myopic parochialism. It’s a tricky balance, answerable only to the self and to whom one serves, and I’m looking forward to expanding this range for the greater good in 2011.

To detail all the various insights would take several posts comprising many hours, yet doing so would offer inadequate justice to the fidelity of ideation that took place during those two exciting days. Rather, I’ve compiled an array of concepts, thoughts and statements in the form of live tweets and personal notes. To really get a sense of the dialog, you can review the entire #locUAB thread on Twitter.

The Case for Video Game Accessibility

• To understand diversified needs of users, one must comprehend the difference between temporary vs. permanent disability
• Input is the main challenge for accessible game design; cognitive feedback is the second
• Patience, dedication and passion will drive behavioral trends
• Lack of accessibility results in a risk of social exclusion
• The games industry has long taken a “burger & fries” approach to design decisions; the basic structure of the meal remains unchanged, while more extras and utensils are added in the name of “innovation”
• The myth of the average player includes a mostly male demographic, expanded array of hardware, huge video displays and enhanced dexterity
• Serious games seek to education or inform; use of games in the employment realm bring to mind issues relating to workplace software

Inclusive Design Concepts

• Polymorphic design seeks to provide solutions that can be accessed by people of differing abilities
• A “parallel universe” results when a person projects their understanding of a situation on others, in the expectation that their experience is transferable and thus most common
• The most inclusive games allow people with disabilities to play alongside able-bodied participants
• The next big challenge for games is “ambient intelligence” — where technologies are woven into the fabric of everyday life
• Devices such as the Kinect take a “Frankenstein” approach to developing accessible interfaces
• Someone who repeatedly fails at a task, due to no fault of their own, falls victim to “learn helplessness” — a bad attitude or tendency toward an activity or endeavor that stains future enthusiasm
• “Patternicity” is the tendency of the brain to assign a sense of order from random noise

Accessibility and Localization Project Management

• Project management is the discipline of addressing and navigating change, risk and opportunity
• Projects tend to come in batches and are best managed using an Agile (rather than Waterfall) approach in quick sprints
• Effort scales according to size and volume of content
• Security is a challenge; files can no longer be shared, and teams are increasingly working through virtualization networks
• Transparency is a priority among teams; there are no secrets anymore
• A solid content strategy is absolutely critical in developing any digital offering; this applies to games as well as non-game projects
• User experience for games is really about “emotional translation” — the term applies to translation but can be carried over to most UX-related project requirements

The Wisdom of Crowds

• Localization of games is more than simply translating text into another language; context is important
• The disambiguation of such terms as “board of education” is critical, especially if the intent is an actual wooden “board” rather than a committee
• Game context defines how terms are disambiguated — a “duck” is an animal when applied to a character and an action when applied to movement functionality
• Crowdsourcing during QA is difficult because a democracy often has trouble making firm decisions
• Crowdsourcing is more of a marketing endeavor than a technical project consideration

Quality Assurance and Tesing

• For QA, it’s not enough to be a gamer; you also have to know the target market and be able to communicate improvements to project teams
• True quality assurance and testing depends on one’s ability and tolerance for repetitive tasks
• Increasing the number of release platforms raises demands on project teams and makes challenges more acute
• A lack of context and failure to “know the game” introduces critical inconsistencies in user experience

Technology and Inclusive Design

• There are different levels of accessibility, from hardware devices and peripherals to software attributes (graphic design, interface programming, human-computer interaction, content development)
• There is evidence that speech synthesis technology will sound more natural and less robotic within the next five years
• Sound is an underutilized attribute — it involves time, exists over space, is amazingly high resolution and is great at conveying meaning

People to Follow on Twitter

• David Tejera – @Squallido
• Victor Alonso Lion – @valion
• Diana Díaz Montón – @maloria
• Wordlab – @wordlab_
• Jesper Juul – @jesperjuul
• dotSUB – @dotSUB
• Ana Ramírez – @Ana_Ram_87
• María Ferreiro – @calustra
• Curri Barcelo – @Currixan
• Herminia Herrandiz – @HHtranslator
• Nieves Gamonal – @surrealitybytes
• ML Magazine – @multilingualmag
• Álvaro García Barbón – @AlvaroBlink
• Jennifer Vela – @ligeis

Anikto’s presentation on Designing Virtual Experiences for Digital Outcasts is now available in multiple formats.

Virtual Worlds for Students with Disabilities

In Atlanta, the National Science Foundations is funding $1.5 million worth of research to The University of Georgia and Georgia Institute of Technology. Their intention is to increase the number of students with disabilities who are seeking degrees in technology, mathematics and the sciences.

Virtual classrooms are designed within Second Life to allow students the capability to interact with their instructors, without having to leave their homes. The virtual environment also provides a means for students to interact with material in an engaging way that stimulates participation and creativity.

Helping Adolescent Cancer Patients

From Stanford University, a collaborative project initiated by Mette Hoybye, PhD, a visiting scholar at the Center on Stress and Health, and Henrik Bennetsen, chief executive officer and co-founder of Katalabs, provides fellowship and education to cancer patients ages 13 to 24. The virtual world is called the BE Community and is built using the Sirikata technology platform. As Hoybye describes:

We are envisioning the BE community as a social learning space, where young patients can hang out and interact with others in a similar situation. We will provide structured learning interactions – in the form of games, videos, treatment and nutrition diaries, and visualization exercises – with the hope of improving young patients’ self-efficacy with respect to adhering to treatments and additionally with finding motivation to make good health behavior choices.

Hoybye goes on to emphasize the sense of empowerment felt by patients who take the initiative to research support resources online. Also of importance is how personal interaction with empathetic peers increases adherence to therapies during chemotherapy regimens and other appointments. Additional information can be found at the Center of Stress and Health at Stanford University.

Child with Autism Uses Xbox Motion Control

As gaming interfaces become increasingly haptic and gestural, all sorts of interesting use cases continue to emerge. Here is the story of a 4-year-old boy with autism named Kyle, who is making cognitive progress through the use of Xbox Kinect input controls:

[Kyles father] is thrilled when he experiences any breakthrough with Kyle, such as when they’re riding in a car and Kyle explains the difference between two objects or concepts, or explains his motivations, why he does or doesn’t want to do something. “You really pay special attention to any small signs of progress,” John wrote.

So the breakthrough with the Kinect was particularly touching, especially after having tried with the Wii, with less successful results. “We tried a couple of games, especially racing games like Mario Kart, but he’d just get stuck,” John told me. “But with Kinect he just put up his hand and knew where to go.”

These and other examples will be presented as case studies at the Accessing Higher Ground conference in Boulder, CO this week. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!