What does it mean to “make tech speak human”? With the emergence of new technologies like touch and gesture, technology needs to learn how humans use those methods to communicate with our world. Let’s look at gesture, for example. When we talk we use our hands to emphasize and illustrate what we are trying to communicate. Other people understand what we are trying to say by watching our hands. In other words, gestures have a language that we use to communicate to our world. When we teach tech to speak human, we help translate what people need, expect, and understand so that the technology is easy and natural for them to use.

When the focus is on what the technology can most easily detect, the gestures people have to make feel foreign and silly. When it comes to usable products, this is a tremendous barrier. Remember The Clapper? Part of what made it so amusing were the ridiculous commercials aimed at the elderly and smarmy, but the real issue is clapping as you are falling asleep is counter-intuitive and goofy. It was successful as a novelty, but didn’t manage to become indispensable. In the same way, gestural interfaces that make you do grandiose moves are fun in a game context (where it’s ok to step out of your comfort zone), but not when you’re trying to change the channel on your TV. Those big gestures feel like yelling, and when I’m on my couch watching TV, I’m more interested in feeling calm and tuning out. If the gestures feel foreign or goofy to me, I’m going to have a hard time remembering them and a harder time seeing how this product fits into my life.

To “make tech speak human” is to translate these expectations and needs into an interface that communicates in a language people understand. A great gesture set is easy to remember, feels comfortable, and makes the user forget life could exist without it. Natural, like a conversation.

Kicker Studio marked our 3rd Anniversary on August 8, 2011. To celebrate, we hosted the Second Annual Device Design Day at the San Francisco Art Institute, Jody’s alma matter. It was a great success thanks to inspiring speakers and involved attendees.

Couldn’t make it? Don’t worry, we’ve posted videos of the talks for you to share and enjoy. And be sure to join us next year for our 3rd Device Design Day.

Liz Bacon, founder of Devise, talked about Extraordinary Design Considerations for Medical Devices.

Robert Brunner, Ammunition Group, talked about the importance of creating Ideas, Not Objects.

Charles Goran, T-Mobile, talked about Bringing the Sidekick Back.

Karen Kaushansky, Jawbone, talked about Designing Talking Devices.

Mike Kruzeniski, Windows Mobile, talked about the history of Graphic Design and the Elements of Interactive Style.

Branko Luckic, founder of NON-OBJECT, talked about a NON-OBJECT way of thinking of devices.

Jody Medich, co-founder of Kicker Studio, talked about Making Tech Tactile with a preview of Kicker’s Tactile Touchscreen Reader.

Dan Saffer, co-founder and alum of Kicker Studio, got the day going with a talk about Design in the Post-PC Era.

Cori Schauer, NASA, talked about the history of NASA’s Johnson Space Center’s Mission Control Center.

Leila Takayama, of Willow Garage, talked about Personal Robotic Devices.

We are unable to provide video of Leila’s talk at this time due to permission rights with research participants. However, she has provided us a copy of the slides which we are happy to share by request.

Kicker Studio marked our 3rd Anniversary on August 8, 2011. To celebrate, we hosted the Second Annual Device Design Day at the San Francisco Art Institute, Jody’s alma matter. It was a great success thanks to inspiring speakers and involved attendees.

In order to continue the conversation about people, devices, design, and the future, we’ve asked the speakers to share their slides with you. We will continue to post them to our blog and to Device Design Day as they become available. We will also be posting videos from the event, so stay tuned.

Dan Saffer, co-founder and alum of Kicker Studio, got the day going with a talk about Design in the Post-PC Era.

 
Liz Bacon, Devise, presented Extrodinary Design Considerations for Medical Devices.

Charles Goran, TMobile, talked about Bringing the Sidekick Back.

Karen Kaushansky, Jawbone, discussed Designing Talking Devices.

And Kicker Co-Founder and Principal, Jody Medich talked about the importance of physical interface, and Making Technology Tactile.

In honor of Device Design Day 2011, we’ve partnered with Core 77 to profile our exciting line up of speakers, and ask them our  Six Questions. For our eighth interview of the series — now only a few says from D3 — we’ve talked with Robert Brunner.

After graduating in industrial design from San Jose State University in 1981, Robert co-founded the design consultancy Lunar. Subsequently, he was hired as Director of Industrial Design for Apple Computer where he served for 7 years. In 1996, he was appointed partner in the international firm Pentagram, helping lead the San Francisco office. In 2006, Brunner launched the start-up Fuego, a new concept in outdoor grilling. In 2007, Robert founded Ammunition, focusing on the overlap between product design, brand and experience. Around the same time, he helped launch the Beats by Dr. Dre brand of headphones with Interscope chairman Jimmy Iovine and hip hop icon Dr. Dre.

Robert has received numerous awards for his work in product design from prestigious organizations such as IDSA, Red Dot, Good Design, and iF. His work is also included in the Museum of Modern Art product collections in New York and San Francisco. In 2008, Robert co-authored the book Do you matter? How great design will make people love your company along with Success Built to Last author Stewart Emery. He has also taught advanced product design at Stanford University.

He’ll be speaking at D3 about the notion of “Ideas, Not Objects,” and the importance of creating products that embody this principle.

What is the most cherished product in your life? Why?

This is hard to answer. I really don’t have a lot of things that I could describe as cherished. I have lots of things I like, and they tend to move in and out of “cherished” status. My Jasper Morrison “Low Pad” chairs are a long term love. Or my Eames benches that serve as coffee tables in my living room. But I guess my current cherish is my Audi S5. Love the car. Great merging of emotional/functional design, performance and sensitive detail. Above all I love the sound. It makes me feel great every time I drive it.

What’s the one product you wish you’d designed, and why?

Again, tough question. Lots of great things where I wish I’d thought of it or participated in its development. If I had to pick one I’d say the Olivetti Divisumma 18 calculator by Mario Bellini. Really obscure (today) and old school, I know. But it was always an inspirational piece for me. Great marriage of form, function, material, use and manufacturing. Google it. Totally cool.

What excites you about being a designer? Why do you keep doing it?

For as long as I can remember, I have always been about making things. Well before college, I was building things. Always fooling around creating something new in the garage. Being a designer affords me to fuel that passion on a day-to-day basis. Today, it’s not just about the objects, but also about building ideas, businesses and creating markets. But I inherited my father’s inventive side and my mother’s artistic side. So I really had no choice.

When do you first remember thinking of yourself as a designer?

I really did not know what it meant until design school. I original studied engineering because it was what my dad did, and again, because I wanted to make stuff. But not until I stumbled into it on a trip to the art building did I know the industrial design profession existed. In retrospect, I was a designer back in 5th grade as I built bikes in my garage. I just didn’t know it then.

What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned, and who taught it to you?

The most important lesson I have learned is that it’s not worth doing it unless its done right. This has been taught to my by the experience school of failed efforts and disappointments. Managing compromise is always part of the game in bringing things to market. But I’ve learned what the boundary conditions are of what it is that makes something great, and to fight hard not to cross them. At least then I can sleep at night.

What are 5 things all designers should know?

1. Perseverance. It’s hard to make great stuff. Never say die (for as long as you can).

2. Responsibility. You are driving things that will affect a lot of people, from your development partners and your clients, to the people who use the things you create. Don’t let it scare you or cause you to freeze up, but always be cognizant of the impact of your decisions.

3. How to communicate. Most designers do not know how to do this. Learn to write and speak well about your work. It will serve you for a long time and can be the difference maker.

4. Empathy. Learn how to put yourself in other’s shoes and see the situation and opportunities you’d miss from your eyes. It will make you very valuable

5. How to enjoy the journey. You have one of the best jobs in the world. It’s a long, wild ride, so have fun with it and don’t dwell too much on what went wrong. Keep your feet moving.

Don’t miss Robert’s presentation “Ideas, Not Objects” at Device Design Day,  This Friday, August 5th in San Francisco.

In honor of Device Design Day 2011, we’ve partnered with Core 77 to profile our exciting line up of speakers, and ask them our  Six Questions. For our seventh interview of the series, we’ve talked with Leila Takayama.

Leila  joined Willow Garage in January 2009 as a Research Scientist in the area of human-robot interaction. With a background in Cognitive Science, Psychology, and Human-Computer Interaction, her current focus is understanding human encounters with robots in terms of how they perceive, understand and interact with robots. Among other things, she is working on teaching the robots some manners.

She’ll be speaking at D3 about the challenges of designing for personal robotics.

1. What is the most cherished product in your life? Why?

My coffee mug from New Zealand. This was a gift that was given to me to celebrate the publication of my first research paper when as an undergrad at UC Berkeley. My friend and co-author who gave me the mug is from New Zealand. I’m from Hawaii so we bonded over all things Pacific Islander.

She showed me how research is actually done, letting me learn by doing. She was extremely supportive and patient with me, even though she had no historical evidence that I’d actually be able to become a scientist. This was not a time efficient way for her to work on her dissertation, but she took the time out to mentor me through the research process anyway.

This mug is not only a very functional part of my research routine, holding the hot drinks that keep me going, but it’s also a sentimental reminder of what it was like that first time we had a success in getting to share our research findings with the rest of the world. It happens to have a nice fit for my hands, feels substantial without being too heavy and has survived many years of my clumsiness.

2. What’s the one product you wish you’d designed, and why?

I wish I’d designed the AeroPress. I’ve been using this beautifully simple coffee maker for many years now. It’s self-powered, quiet, easily washable, durable and doesn’t let me make bad coffee.

3. What excites you about being a social scientist? Why do you keep doing it?

I love learning about people and the seemingly nonsensical things they do, especially when encountering new technologies. I like to be able to prove myself wrong (as often happens with human-robot interaction experiments) and to really test out ideas.

I keep doing it because it satisfies my own curiosity about people and technologies. Also, publishing research allows me to share new knowledge with others, who can use that knowledge to make more informed decisions about theories (in academia) and make better products (in industry) that are more useful, more engaging and make more sense to people.

4. When do you first remember thinking of yourself as a scientist?

The first time I really felt like a scientist was when our first research manuscript was accepted for publication.

5. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned, and who taught it to you?

When you’re torn between a set of options and have to choose one, try this:

* Pick your top two options
* Get a coin
* Assign one option to “heads” and the other option to “tails”
* Flip the coin; the side that lands face up is your decision
* Pause for a moment and see how you feel about your decision
- If your heart sinks, change your decision to the other side
- If you feel relief, stick with that decision

James Landay (Computer Science professor at University of Washington) taught me this trick for making difficult decisions. There are some decisions that just cannot be rationalized with long pro vs. con lists. It has been useful for me in so many circumstances that I’ve started giving friends, family, and students this advice, too.

6. What are 5 things all designers should know?

1. People respond to many interactive technologies in ways that they respond to people, even when they won’t admit it or can’t recognize it. (See: The Media Equation)

2. There is often a gap between how people reflectively talk about an interactive product and what they actually do in the moment of interacting with that product. Know which of those matters to you.

3. What is perceived can be more important what is objectively true when it comes to how people embrace and engage with interactive objects.

4. It really does not take much for an interactive product to seem like it has its own agency and apparent intentions. (See: Heider & Simmel demonstrations)

5. Under promise and over deliver on user expectations.

Don’t miss Leila’s presentation “Personal Robotic Devices” at Device Design Day,  August 5th in San Francisco.

In honor of Device Design Day 2011, we’ve partnered with Core 77 to profile our exciting line up of speakers, and ask them our  Six Questions. For our sixth interview of the series, we’ve talked with Charles Goran.

Charles Goran has over 25 years of experience designing and delivering user experiences for devices, games, the Web, TV and everything in-between. He has lead award winning design and development on projects for companies like Apple, Microsoft, Motorola, AT&T, 3COM and T-Mobile. Charles is currently helping lead UX for T-Mobile USA and recently helped deliver the new Sidekick 4G.

He’ll be speaking at D3 about the challenges of evolving and reinventing existing products.

1. What is the most cherished product in your life? Why?

My mobile device. It brings my music and entertainment with me wherever I am. It connects me to the people I care about. It keeps me informed. It is my most personal possession.

2. What’s the one product you wish you’d designed, and why?

The Alessi juice squeezer. It was designed by Philipe Starck. It is an elegant solution to the juicing problem. It makes me smile and brightens my day.

3. What excites you about being a designer? Why do you keep doing it?

Solving problems in an endlessly changing technological landscape, helping write the narrative of mobile interaction, bringing delight and ease into people’s experiences.

4. When do you first remember thinking of yourself as a designer?

I went to school for fine art and majored in painting. There is a degree of problem solving that happens when you start breaking down a canvas for composition and form, but it’s more inwardly directed. I remember really thinking of myself as a designer when I started thinking about solving other people’s problems and removing my personal need for self-expression from the solutions. There is a certain purity and striving for truth in design, that can be very rewarding. Good design can be held to account for tangible impact.

5. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned, and who taught it to you?

Care that your name is attached to your work, regardless of size or scope. Have an opinion, a passionate reason why you have selected a particular design or direction. There is no such thing as a small or insignificant design project. Ask yourself, “Is this the best I can do?” and be honest.

6. What are 5 things all designers should know?

1. Care that your name is attached to your work
Everything you touch has your name on it. Take ownership. There is no such thing as a small, or insignificant design challenge. They are what we make of them.

2. Have an opinion
Have a passionate reason why you have selected a particular design or direction. If you are challenged on a design idea, or asked to change something the worst thing you can say is “ah, OK.” Be invested, temper your passion with the understanding that great design often comes thru collaboration.

3. Provide solutions that consider the audience, the content and the business goals, not your personal aesthetic or agenda.
Your primary concern should be right-fitting the solution to the problem. Your personal design aesthetic is minimally important.

4. Designing is problem solving
Consider as many facets to the problem as you can. Define the problem before you design the solution. Spend more time defining the problem and the solution will manifest itself. Be open to the fact that the right solution may not have a user interaction, or manifestation at all. “I know, what if we got rid of the need for that login screen…”

5. Have a priority and focus to your design solutions. What is the number one thing you are solving for? What are the secondary cases?
This process is fundamental to a positive user experience.

Don’t miss Charles’s presentation “Bringing the Sidekick Back” at Device Design Day,  August 5th in San Francisco.

In honor of Device Design Day 2011, we’ve partnered with Core 77 to profile our exciting line up of speakers, and ask them our  Six Questions. For our fifth interview of the series, we’ve talked with Karen Kaushansky.

Karen Kaushansky is a Principal Interaction Designer at Jawbone where she creates rich interactive experiences for Jawbone devices. Karen is formerly of Microsoft/Tellme and is a 14 year veteran of the speech recognition industry. Over the years, her work has spanned from traditional phone-based speech recognition applications, to voice biometrics, to multimodal experiences which included Ford’s in-car Traffic, Directions and Information Services , and Microsoft’s speech-integrated mobile phone applications.

Now, Karen works with the team at Jawbone to create products and services for the mobile lifestyle unparalleled in their innovation, ease-of-use and sophistication of design.  Jawbone is the creator of an award-winning, best-selling line of intelligent Bluetooth headsets (Jawbone ERA & ICON),  and of JAMBOX, the first intelligent wireless speaker and speakerphone.

Karen lives in San Francisco with her husband and Goldendoodle Mac, is an ice hockey player and is looking to hire.

She’ll be sharing lessons  at D3 learned from creating audio experiences for various Jawbone products and design guidelines that can be applied to any consumer device that offers feedback to its users.

1. What is the most cherished product in your life? Why?

I have family heirlooms that I cherish, for example a sterling silver enamel ring passed on from my grandmother. But I interpreted this a little to mean: something I use all the time or can’t live without. I can tell you that I use my good old fashion alarm clock every day. It’s plugged in so I know it will work reliably to wake me up each morning and then it’s one button to turn on the alarm. I know people use their smartphones as alarms but it’s like 4 to 6 steps to turn on the alarm. This device has one, ok maybe two, functions—tell time and wake me up—and it does it really, really well.

I also have a working 8-track cassette player. It’s a great reminder of how, when technology advances, sometimes the user interaction is an afterthought. With a vinyl record, I could choose which song to listen to based on where I put the needle while with the 8-track it’s really hard to go to a particular song.

2. What’s the one product you wish you’d designed, and why?

As a dog owner, I wish I had invented those Chuckit! ball launchers. It solves a real problem—avoiding slobbery dirty hands when throwing the ball for your dog, especially when another dog stole your ball.

What’s been really interesting to me are products or devices that change user behavior. One example is the Wii—making family time in the living room active. Recently I started using a Windows Phone 7 which is a very socially oriented phone. The people tile on the main screen shows photos of your contacts, and they are updated constantly. Well I found myself starting to take pictures of my friends just to have them in the rotation. I hadn’t done that before.

3. What excites you about being a designer? Why do you keep doing it?

I get excited designing those kind of experiences—the ones that change the way people relate and interact to devices and then to each other. It’s part problem solving and part creating experiences that become seamlessly integrated into people’s lives.

I was with my Mom recently and she had just bought one of those high end one-pod coffee makers. Well I watched her struggle for 3 days straight; each day she put in a pod, thought she was doing everything right, and ended up with coffee grounds all over the counter—no joke. I looked at the machine and tried to decipher the blinking lights and little icons and thought wow—they must have done little or no user testing on this. For me, it’s taking a problem space and digging into the details of how to make things work so easily or seamlessly that it’s easy to forget someone had to spend the time designing it.

I also believe that problem solving begets innovation, and innovation begets more problems; which keeps us designers in business!

4. When do you first remember thinking of yourself as a designer?

I was a Voice User Interface Designer in the speech recognition industry for years. I finally thought of myself as a designer when I figured out how best to describe what I did. People would ask and I’d say “You know those automated speech recognition systems you get when you call an airline or your bank…” and without fail they would jump in “Oh man I hate those things,” or “Ack! Whenever I hear one I just press zero over and over again,” and I’d reply “Well, I work on making them better.”

5. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned, and who taught it to you?

Pick your battles and know when to compromise: I learned the hard way by some really tough clients and an awesome mentor. I thought I needed to defend my design because well, I’m the designer, but you have to be willing to compromise. Clients often have more of the background or institutional knowledge that you don’t, and you have to know how to work together.

6. What are 5 things all designers should know?

1. Always ask, “Where’s the brief?” Know the problem you are trying to solve.
2. Invest in people. Make time. Build relationships with engineers, PMs, clients, QA, whomever…
3. Keep building your design toolbox. Find inspiration everywhere.
4. Be an active listener. Put yourself in their shoes to understand their motivation.
5. Design in context. Know your users.

Don’t miss Karen’s presentation “ Designing Talking Devices” at Device Design Day,  August 5th in San Francisco.

In honor of Device Design Day 2011, we’ve partnered with Core 77 to profile our exciting line up of speakers, and ask them our  Six Questions. For our fourth interview of the series, we’ve talked with interaction designer Elizabeth Bacon.

Liz began her career at Cooper, where she got her “post-grad” education in interaction design while working across a variety of domains. She then was a “Human Factors Design Engineer” for over five years in the Cardiac Rhythm Management Division of St. Jude Medical, a Fortune 100 company. She designed multiple products around the clinical systems that handle implanted pacemakers and defibrillators, and formalized a process that blended interaction design methods with traditional human factors engineering approaches. Liz has been running her own design consultancy, Devise, for the past several years. She’s also a Director Emeritus of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). On the personal side, she loves to draw, write poetry and race cars, although not usually at the same time.

She’ll be speaking at D3 about the collaborative design process and considerations in designing medical devices.

1. What is the most cherished product in your life? Why?

My life’s most cherished product is a 3,018 pound one: my 2006 Porsche Cayman S. This beautiful Arctic Silver Metallic piece of design & engineering magnificence brings me more joy than anything else in my life that doesn’t have a beating heart. At times, I sometimes imagine that she really does have a heart, and once she became mine (about a year ago now) I quickly gave her a name, Cherie. I’ve always loved driving for the simultaneous involvement and release of the experience, but only started practicing the competitive performance driving sport of autocross about 7 years ago. I had made a vow to myself when I was 9 years old that I would drive a Porsche some day, so Cherie’s arrival into my life was truly the fulfillment of a life-long dream. I started going to the race track with her in 2010 for non-competitive driving events, where the increased speeds added a new level of development to my already intense focus on improving my car handling skills. When the tach needle is pushing into the red at 120+ miles per hour in the back straight at Portland International Raceway and I’m approaching the zone for hard braking & heel-and-toe downshifting coming in a few seconds, I’m wholly existing in a flow state where few memories are formed but I feel completely in touch with every atom of the car sliding through space…that is a cherished feeling unlike any other in my life.

2. What’s the one product you wish you’d designed, and why?

I wish I’d designed the Livescribe Pulse smartpen. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a pen with a built-in microphone & speaker that also has a camera in its tip; when used with specially-coded paper it allows for the synchronization of your written marks and recorded audio so that it can play back the sound associated in time with your written marks. All that data is synced to your computer, becoming a text-string searchable record of written notes, plus the sessions can be shared with other people either privately or publicly.

The out-of-box experience of this tool was a sheer delight. The onboarding process resulted, at one point, in this almost psychedelic little video playing across the small LED panel that’s on the side of the pen. It’s a pure genius product. It also has some amazing little features. For example, if you draw a set of nine lines and then box them in, the pen recognizes the shape as a piano keyboard and you can tap the rectangles to play notes on it.

However, I also wish that I’d designed this product because I would have done some things differently. The first-gen model that I have is completely round, and it’s fallen off tables more often than I can count. (At least it has kept on ticking!) And the desktop software is overly modal and hard to navigate and the sharing features feel like they were shoe-horned in at the last minute. So in essence, it’s a brilliant tool that could have been designed just that much better for pure user experience delight.

3. What excites you about being a designer? Why do you keep doing it?

I love working at the intersection of human and technology concerns that are the territory of an interaction design practitioner. Being able to meet and trying to understand people from all walks of life (whether they’re a nurse, cable technician, or low-income single mother who wants her kindergartener to head to college) is a thrill and motivates me to do my best work. Interaction design is not the place for a hungry ego: we don’t design for ourselves (almost never, at least) but rather the target users of the product or service at hand. And we rarely get any recognition for the depth and breadth of our efforts, so that really can’t be a strong motivating factor in this field.

Then, solving wicked problems is where I get the bulk of my designer jollies. When I’m in the middle of a conceptual design phase and the issues that need to be addressed only seem to multiply the more I study the matter, my subconscious gets involved to the point where I might have dreams that I’m a digital object moving through fields of data. The flow states and mental breakthroughs in this working space provide me with a kind of rush that helps keep me motivated and coming back for more.

4. When do you first remember thinking of yourself as a designer?

All my childhood, I loved tinker toys, Capsela sets, legos and problem-solving type of activities. But I had no clue there was a professional path as a designer beckoning. When I was a junior at Stanford University, I studied literature at the Nouvelle Sorbonne in Paris and got involved with a sculptor with whom I invented a novel triangular binder system for which we received a French Design Patent. But I still didn’t realize I was a designer! It wasn’t until a couple years after college that I was considering pursuing a PhD in philosophy or going to art school that the lightning bolt struck me: I could unite my analytical & creative sides in the practice of design.

This major epiphany was when I fully embraced my destiny as a designer, although I didn’t know what field I wanted to specialize in. It would be another 18 months before the field of interaction design materialized on my horizon when I got a call from a recruiter about this firm called Cooper Interaction Design. And then I drank the kool-aid, and thus verily it was writ….

5. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned, and who taught it to you?

This one’s a deep question and at this moment in time I’m not inclined to make it totally designer-centric. What comes to mind for me is that only you can make yourself happy. And I’ve only learned this lesson after repeated encounters with the thought; it’s been presented to me by people I’ve encountered all through my life: From my amazing 5th grade teacher in Beijing, China, Mr. Ogilvy to my first boyfriend back in high school, my excellent boss at St. Jude Medical who couldn’t protect the group from a really bad reorg to the Buddhist meditator Tara Brach who wrote Radical Acceptance.

It’s a lesson I suppose is applicable to designers because all too often we don’t practice our craft in the ultimate, ideal work situation that’s going to deliver a smooth and unblemished path towards the perfect product release. Projects are cross-disciplinary, many decisions are compromises and we need to evangelize and advocate for our efforts at many steps along the way. Our validation cannot be expected to come from outside. Happiness is only achievable through an inner strength and equilibrium that can manifest joy in the face of whatever obstacles may present themselves. As a friend put it to me recently with credit to his grandmother: “You need to turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones.”

6. What are 5 things all designers should know?

My vision of what unites the fields of user experience design and the practices of all the fields that lie under this rubric are that they’re arranged around a spectrum of three key skills: understanding, definition and communication. All designers need strong abilities to understand the world, truly getting their heads around people and technology and domains and constraints. All designers need strong abilities to define solutions, whether that involves creating models, scenarios, frameworks, hierarchies, architectures or all of the above. All designers need strong abilities to communicate their understandings and solutions, involving visual and written artifacts as well as spoken exchanges, from in-person dialogs all the way to public speaking & presenting.

Beyond these three core skills, all designers should have empathy for their fellow humans. Sure, you can be a crank or misanthrope in your heart of hearts but when it comes time to practice your craft, you have to care about other people. Finally, all designers should know how to refill their internal well of creativity with activities that sustain the mind, body and soul—whether that’s racing cars, cooking, running, reading to your children or what-have-you.

Don’t miss Liz’s presentation “ Extraordinary Design Considerations for Medical Devices” at Device Design Day,  August 5th in San Francisco.

While we love the work that we do for clients at Kicker Studio, we also enjoy exploring technology through our own concept projects.  Last year we blogged the design process behind our tea project, and we recently made a video to explain our final concept.

Announcing the Kicker Tea Tumbler. Our latest concept project tackles an everyday task that’s intentionally low tech – making the perfect cup of tea. Our tumbler consists of a teapot, infuser, and heater combined into one device. It uses a physical interface that subtly incorporates technology to help the user make a perfect cup of tea, while preserving the analog experience.

We looked at tea making. We realize it’s low tech for a reason. It’s not about digital displays — it’s about sight, smell, touch, and taste. But it’s also precise. Savvy tea makers use additional technology such as heaters, thermometers, and timers to entice the persnickety tea leaves to the perfect cup of tea. We asked ourselves, how could we incorporate these features in a way that respects the sensory experience of making tea?

We researched the tea-making process, the technical requirements for the perfect cup of tea, and the typical workarounds to get there. We learned what to make easier for the average loose leaf drinker, and how to improve the process without taking away control.

See how we did it:

We weaved technology into the device like a material. We avoided buttons, knobs, and screens and instead developed a physical interface. The industrial design of the Tea Tumbler reflects traditional tea pots, using natural materials and glass that highlight the sensory experience, while the user’s physical interaction with the tumbler activates the heater and timer at the moments the tea maker needs them. The shape of the device its self, an hourglass, provides a clear mental model of how to make it work. The Kicker Tea Tumbler gives a technology kick to the art of making tea.

See how it works:

To read more about how we developed the concept, visit our case study, or download PDFs about the process and design.

In honor of Device Design Day 2011, we’ve partnered with Core 77 to profile our exciting line up of speakers, and ask them our  Six Questions. For our third interview of the series, we’ve talked with Mike Kruzeniski, a Design Lead on the Windows Phone team at Microsoft.

Photo by Matt Cottam

Before joining Microsoft, Mike worked at the Design Strategic Projects studio at Nokia Design in Los Angeles. His focus has been on pushing the boundaries of mobile experience, exploring the language and cultural roles of user interface, and methods for taking product concepts to production.

He’ll be speaking at D3 about the aesthetics of digital design, and the new elements that make up a modern interactive experience.

1. What is the most cherished product in your life? Why?

This is one of those questions that you feel like you’re supposed to have an answer to, but nothing comes strongly to mind. Maybe I’m stuck on the word “cherished.” I do have a lot of products that I really like. Some that I might even say I love, in that way the word love gets thrown around design. I love my Prius. I love watches, Alessi and Nixon in particular. I have a lot of shoes…but love my Converse All-Stars and John Fluevog’s the most. I have a pair of classic Tom Ford sunglasses that I love. I love my Eames furniture. I have a large collection of mobile phones, and as far as products go, I spend more time with my phone and PC than anything (and maybe anyone) else. I just bought a new camera and so far that relationship is off to a very good start. But, I don’t think of any of these things as “cherished.” The emotional connection with them isn’t strong enough to deserve that. Maybe that’s being too literal with the question, but all of these things can be replaced. They will be replaced, eventually.

When I think about the objects in my life that I do actually feel a sense of “cherishing” for, there are two, but they aren’t really products. The first is a painting that my wife and I bought together on our first vacation, in Bangkok. We met the artist and ended up drinking all night with him and his friends, despite neither us being able to speak Thai, or them English. The second is the ring that I proposed to my wife with, which I folded out of paper. Yes, paper. Both of these objects have great stories surrounding them and make me happy just thinking about them—and always will. Both are fragile, by their nature won’t last, and are the only things in my apartment that I would actually feel a strong sense of loss for if they were damaged or lost. Both represent a lot more to me than just what they physically are. There is no newer or better version of those objects. And unlike a lot of other things their impermanence only increases their value, at least to me.

As a product designer though, that sort of sentimentalism and interest in stories often finds its way in to my approach toward design. I’ve always been interested in experiences where meaning unfolds, and products that aren’t “done” but leave opportunities for a relationship and a story to take place. I’m still not sure it’s something that can really be designed in, but it’s worth trying.

2. What’s the one product you wish you’d designed, and why?

The Nokia 3310 and Twitter. What I like about both of them is that they reduced emerging trends of their time (mobile communication and social networking) to an almost absolute clarity and simplicity.

Though the 3310 wasn’t actually my first mobile phone, I tend to remember it that way. At least it was my first mobile phone that really felt right. Like all technologies in their early stages, mobile phones had mainly been comprised of complicated experiences and were sold on feature specs. But the 3310 was an impressively clear expression of what a mobile product should and could be. It was the kind of product that was so pleasant to use that you form some emotional attachment to it. It was one of the best selling phones ever, it was inexpensive, and was very early in the mobile market, so it was the first mobile phone for A LOT of people. I imagine that most of them probably look back on that product with a smile as well.

Similarly, Twitter took existing communication, interaction and networking concepts and reduced them to a very clear and simple experience. I respect their focus and how they’ve confidently avoided layering on extra features over the years. I really admire how they’ve grown around the the behaviors of their users but also elegantly guided users where they’ve evolved the experience. I love their approach to openness and how they’ve built Twitter to feel more like a platform than a product. I think that Twitter has become the most important evolution of communication since the mobile phone.

And their brand is just fun.

Both products are/were simple, focused, meaningful, have a sense of humor, well-made, beautifully designed and accessible. These are all attributes that admire and hope to bring to my own work.

3. What excites you about being a designer? Why do you keep doing it?

From the very beginning when I was just learning what design was, I’ve always liked the way design influenced my way of looking at and understanding the world. Once you learn it, you can’t turn it off. Everything is at once a problem and an opportunity. I like the always optimistic mindset that design provides when approaching problems. I like the constant questioning and I like the attitude that most designers have of wanting to make everything around them better. I like the opportunities that design continues to bring: I feel like every project I find myself working on is more exciting than the last. As I grow, the opportunities for influence and impact in my work increases. And as a discipline, I feel like design is continually finding its way in to more interesting industries and settings. Our collective influence and impact is increasing. Of course design itself can’t fix everything, but I do think that there is a role for designers in any of the hardest societal and industrial problems. The boundaries of what design is and does is always expanding. That’s exciting.

4. When do you first remember thinking of yourself as a designer?

I took to the idea of being “a designer” very quickly in school. Design wasn’t a profession that I had ever heard of growing up, but I went to Emily Carr University (an Art and Design school in Vancouver) right after high chool. My love for painting, sculpture and drawing led me there. But as much as I loved art, I didn’t believe that I’d ever make a profession out of it. I didn’t really know what I was going to do at Emily Carr. In the second semester of my first year though, I stumbled upon an introduction to Industrial Design class. I had to beg my way into the class since I had missed the sign-up date. When that didn’t work, I showed up to the class anyway and eventually the Prof let me stay. As a kid, I was never very fond of math, but I always loved physics. So, the combination of applied problem solving, making and aesthetic discourse in design struck a chord immediately. At the same time came this almost painfully naive realization that EVERYTHING around me had—in varying degrees of success—been designed by someone somewhere. It was fun to explain that to friends and family, and even more fun learning to see that there were opportunities to improve and invent things everywhere. I think that’s what eventually led me to the Interaction Design space. For products at the time, it seemed to me like the biggest problem that needed solving.

5. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned, and who taught it to you?

I first studied industrial design, then went to Umeå in Sweden to study interaction design. In between my two years at Umeå I took an internship at Microsoft. My first love for design came very firmly through the perspective of industrial design and products. Though I was really excited about interaction design, as a design discipline it still wasn’t really clear what it was and I definitely had some trouble with the idea of not being an industrial designer anymore. During that summer at Microsoft I was really starting to struggle with what direction to take as a designer: Basically, was I an industrial designer or an interaction designer? Microsoft arranges mentors for their interns, and mine happened to be Horace Luke, who is now the Chief Innovation Officer at HTC. I remember explaining my career dilemma to Horace one day, and him asking me very simply: “What’s wrong with just being a designer?” At first it was hard to believe that it could be that simple, but soon after, it melted down all mental blocks I had that defined or separated those disciplines. Discussions around concretely defining design disciplines started to seem like a waste of time. It’s pretty clear that most great designers don’t care about those divisions, and are happy to play in any space that catches their interest. That idea has guided my outlook on most things since then—first in trying to bridge interaction and industrial design, then graphic design. And more recently, working for Albert Shum at Windows Phone, we spend a lot of time thinking about Design in close relation to business and engineering. I’ve been very lucky to have a few managers now that are very open minded about what design is, and are always looking for ways to expand what we do. In a few years, I’m not sure that I will really even define myself as a designer anymore.

6. What are 5 things all designers should know?

1. How to tell a great story
2. How to influence, inspire, and lead others
3. How to manage projects
4. How to critique, ask questions, and brainstorm
5. The basics: form, shape, composition, hierarchy, grids, color, type…

Don’t miss Mike’s presentation “The Elements of Interactive Style” at Device Design Day,  August 5th in San Francisco.