I spent last Saturday afternoon in San Francisco with a room-full of other interaction designers for Interaction 09 Redux. It was a great chance to see a few of the presentations from the Interaction 09 conference last month in Vancouver, and to mingle with my colleagues.As I get older and have more experience, I find I don't learn as much at these sort of events. It more just reiterates and reinforces things I already know. But that can be a good thing. And it can help me think about things I already know, but from a fresh perspective.
Such as it was on Saturday. Steve Portigal gave a condensed version of his workshop Well, we did all this research...now what? But the one thing I took away was something so simple, yet obvious in hindsight. When you are doing observational and ethnographic research, the observee is the boss. They are always right. Their knowledge, experience, feelings, work environment etc. is The Truth, and it is the truth that you seek. You are not there to fix things, or correct them, or show off how smart you are. You are there to learn about the world from their perspective.
He told an interesting anecdote about a person he was talking to about digital entertainment systems. The guy kept talking about "Tie Voh", mispronouncing the popular TV recording device. Steve did his best to continue the flow pronouncing it as the guy did. But then a product manager who was also observing corrected the man: "It's called Tee Voh." And that entirely deflated the conversation. Now the guy felt self-conscious, humiliated, and would no longer be giving his genuine, unfiltered perspective.
It's hard for someone smart driven, and with a strong teaching/mentoring impetus to slam on the brakes and let these things go. But in observational mode, you have to. You aren't there to show off your smarts, or retrain these people. You're there to understand how they think. Good stuff. I'll be sure to use it next time I'm in the field.
David, I felt the same way about attending the Interaction 09 redux. I'm a bit jaded after 23 years of emersion in the user experience world. It reminded me of the last time I attended the CHI conference in Vancouver in the 90's -- it was all great from a social standpoint but I wasn't learning anything new.
I'm now interested in gaming, interactive digital storytelling, information graphics and graphic design...these are my next challenges to learn (but may be old hat to those already skilled and familiar in these areas.)
Was great seeing you on Saturday. Keep me posted on your where abouts (e.g., Oracle?) --Kathleen