Comments on: Bill Buxton at UPA2007

By: JohnK

JohnK — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 15:06:47 +0000

I like the idea of “getting the right design” before “getting the design right”. Nice simply catchy slogan that expresses an important idea.

I also loved the joke. The only sad part is that only a limited audience will get it. In fact, even with the right audience you probably have to set the stage first so that they’ll understand which states/transitions are being talked about.

Seems like a hard problem to indicate transitions with sketches. You did a fabulous job of indicating transitions for the Preps ganging UI but my memory says you used some kind of movie to do it.

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:22:40 +0000

Bill Buxton commented on my blog! Bill Buxton commented on my blog!

Errrr.. ahem.

Thanks for the links, Bill.

As a Canadian, I thought the joke was hilarious. I would have found it funny no matter where you came from, but I know that there are some jokes that can only be told by “insiders”. The other question is whether those 5 respondents were Canadian or not…

If you’re still reading… I did hear some negative feedback about the talk. I think there are some companies or environments that are integrating usability and design at those early stages and they took offense to your generalization. However, the situation you describe is very true in my world, but I’d like a glimpse into these enlightened areas.

By: Bill Buxton

Bill Buxton — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:36:24 +0000

Thanks for the notes on the talk. It is nice to get feedback that the intended points got across. Regarding the home climate control studies that I spoke about, I thought that it might be useful to let you know where they can be found on-line:

http://www.billbuxton.com/rightDesign.pdf
http://www.billbuxton.com/UserSketches.pdf

As for the joke, here is the follow-up: on the plane home I read the stack of talk evaluations. On about 5 of them there were comments like, ‘.. but he made two jokes about Canada” or “I know Bill lived in Toronto for a while, but that does not give him the right to make jokes about Canada.”

Now I’m curious if knowing that I am Canadian, and continue to live in Canada despite working for Microsoft Research, might result in different reactions, i.e., that would make it Okay. Interesting perspective on political correctness that I clearly did not anticipate. I take it as a nice reminder (sketch?) of why it is important to keep cultural considerations in mind in design. Perhaps also another supporting (?) my other motto: These things are far too important to take seriously. As Einstein says, “Play is the most important part of research.”

All the best and thanks again.