Jon Hung

A trend I have become skeptical about is designing donation systems as a means to receive badges and adornments (profile widgets). Recent events in Haiti have brought out huge humanitarian aid; Americans, despite being deep in a recession, are keeping pace with donations made during previous disasters. This is due in part to the creativity of humanitarian organizations in their donation campaigns that are leveraging technology and word of mouth to develop a new set of tools for motivating charity. We can now donate by text message, content providers have links to donate to the needy, and grassroots social networks spread messages about a cause at higher speeds than ever.

These are all great innovations. However, I am wary of a trend towards badges & other virtual assets to reward donors. For some donators, a badge prominently displayed on a social profile for all to acknowledge them as Mother Teresa reincarnated provides the requisite incentive that motivates giving to charity. (Fred Wilson sums up some of the reward systems that have benefited the Haitian crisis). I am equally skeptical towards people whose charity is motivated in this way, as I am towards designers who integrate these status symbols into their social systems. They are submitting to the deepest reaches of psychological egoism, tinting our actions with a self-serving spin, re-framing donation as an activity that demands acknowledgement and adoration by our peers and strangers. Social networking helps spread ideas, but when the main idea is that “I donated, I am awesome”, we are cheapening the act.

Is there a need for these symbols in the humanitarian space? Are organization failing to demonstrate that your money, charity, and actions are creating a better place, so they need to give you a virtual goodie to donate? Perhaps traditional donation methods that leverage the direness of the situation and empower the compassionate individual are failing and there is a need for these crappy incentives. I don’t think they are. Let us rely on the skills of the journalist, copywriter, photographer, and graphic designer to build bold and illustrative campaigns that draw attention to the situation on the ground & open the hearts of the reader.

I still believe in coming up with new ways, even social ways, to increase donations. But I think the pat-you-on-the-back badges is moving in the wrong direction. Here are some alternatives for low-cost incentives to motivate charitable action:
1) Phone call or letter written by someone you’ve helped
2) Unlocked premium content
3) Tax returns
4) Removing ads and banners

Services can also be re-designed to allow for donating in small amounts. (A creative re-use of Bank of America’s “Keep The Change” campaign is one example)

Although badges might be increasing donations, we are also increasing narcissism and the act of donating for self-interest. We should design for compassion, which unlike virtual assets, has lasting benefits for society.

The reason I have not written an entry in a while is that I’ve been focused on practicing design more and on producing content less. Design is a presentational trade, after all, and skilled designers don’t have to be concerned with creating the message, only in embellishing it. In the majority of cases, the content is provided for the artist. At the same time, superior design requires both style and substance, so I’m resolving to balance the two halves better in the New Year. My resolution: do my best to blog at least once a week for the rest of the year.

Yes I know we’re well in the New Year. But let me have my resolution, dammit! As I witnessed my pitiful blog gathering dust, I wanted to come back to the game with re-newed vigor and a total re-design. This New Year would be different, I claimed, only to watch January 1st (when all other people begin their blogging resolutions) float by. The pressure of that deadline relieved rather painlessly, I decided to refresh the blog theme, keep it simple, and start a week late. All of you rolling your eyes, give me a break, haven’t you ever resolved to write every day (or every week), only to break your promise with yourself?

Hey, there’s no reason to feel ashamed about it: we’re all human. To commemorate those of you who have ever made a resolution and not kept it, I present a list of resolutions I’ve tried to keep and failed.

• Grow my own herbs
• Keep better track of finances
• Write more letters
• Call my brother every day
• Stop playing video games
• Apply for more jobs
• Make a scrapbook from my travel photos
• Write the following blog posts:
  1. How to design and develop a navigational bar
  2. The correlation between money and happiness
  3. Freelancing in a recession
  4. User experience as an undergraduate
  5. how to: catch a bluff on the river in NLHE
• Finish that Novel
• Use only Manual Focus Lenses, shoot only in RAW
• Do pushups and situps everyday
• Quit smoking
• Practice piano

Some of these things I don’t even care to do anymore, a lot of them I’ve completed and thought little of it — no great moment of triumph or even satisfaction. Just goes to show you that New Years Resolutions and commitments can sometimes be based on the whims of the moment. Hopefully my list inspires you to not take yourself and your resolutions too seriously. If I did all of the items on my list, I’d be a lot more miserable. Structured, but miserable.

Last night I was lucky to have to finally take a peek inside the SF armory, a building I’m living blocks away from but never had the chance to visit. Did you know it’s now used to film, market, and produce BDSM porn? Here are some shots I took on a tour of kink.com

Despite being exciting, touring the Armory wasn’t the entire purpose of the night.  Erin Malone gave an outstanding presentation about designing social interfaces, an area she’s been working with since contributing to the launch of the Yahoo Pattern library, a valuable resource for UX professionals. Here’s a list of takeaways from the presentation:

• There were several connections between architecture and social design. Both create an ecosystem (one physical, the other virtual) which people act within and on.  The designer’s role is to “pave the cowpaths” – chart out the area with paths for its intended use.
• Because of the duplicity of names, users require more complex forms of identification besides name. This can be a picture, badges, biographical info, etc.
• talk like a human. Designing a social interface should be different than designing a bank transaction. No robo-speak allowed.
• Related to watching how you speak, designers should consider the difference between “me” and “you”.  In the world of social media, propriety of information is still a gray area which one should be sensitive to.
• Competition can be good, if you want to foster competition, otherwise people will game the system for no purpose besides being on top.
• Pay attention to the organic use of your social system, e.g. Friendster failure– fake profiles emerged because people wanted to create associations around things other than real people.
• Related to fake profiles, social media should refer to some social object, an “aboutness”.  Once a user creates a profile, then what?
• Important questions: What is going to be the behavioral norm? What about your power user? Your system has to accomodate the user who never adjusts anything from the defaults but also the user who wants to explore every last feature.
• Humans are unpredictable.

As it should be when listening to a provocative speaker, the session left me with more questions than answers.

lessons from Treasure Island Music Festival.

1. Get comfortable with other people’s smells, scents, looks and touches.  You’ll be “getting friendly” with your neighbors for hours at a time.  Hopefully they’re not complete strangers.
2. Chart out your personal space by dancing uncontrollably.  Creating ample wiggle room at the start of a set is essential to preventing claustrophobia.
3. have fun!  There were moments this weekend when people’s body odor and aggressiveness got to my head.  I was squished, de-hydrated and irratable.  Then I realized that people were there to have fun, not create a bad experience for other concert-goers.   Might as well join them.

Speaking of creating experiences, how could experience designers (event planners in this case) create a more enjoyable time for me and thousands of others?

I was stoked to get to meet designers and photographers at a AIGA networking event. Though the bar had poor circulation and gave the venue a stuffy atmosphere, the people were anything but. All very friendly and talented folk. Like me, some were looking for employment, only having contract or freelance work. Unlike me, they all had professional websites showcasing their work.

This is something I’ve been dreading doing for some time. I think it’s time to step it up. If I really want a job, I’ve got to crank it up a notch. I’ve been blogging for almost a year and have gone through about 3 re-designs. Though I’ve liked each one more than the last, I’ve never been fully satisfied (this one still needs some tweaks). I want to build something I’m really proud of, and shouldn’t be wasting my time doing anything less.

starting as soon as this weekend is over. Cause Friday night is no night to be coding.
-jon

I mean what does “experience” amount to besides knowing whose ass to kiss; I can figure that out!

And who needs experience, when I’ve graduated from an elite college with a diverse set of skills, a willingness to learn, and a no-fear attitude towards technology and social media.  Shouldn’t that get me the job?</sarcastic Gen Y rant>

I detect this cynicism out there, towards job postings, and towards companies who use “experience” as a barrier to entry-level candidates.  Hell, even I feel cynical from time to time, especially with all the doom and gloom out there.  It is easy to view work experience is a empty phrase because all it seems to amount to is a few bullet points on a resume.  Over the summer, I learned to dismiss some of my cynicism when I got to see exactly how experience translates in the workplace.  Allow me to play the devil’s advocate for a minute, because I believe experience IS valuable, though it might be illusive.

Employers look for certain qualities in an applicant, qualities that are primarily fostered by work experience.  Time at the workplace fosters organizational skills, for one thing. An experienced worker proves he or she can meet deadlines, keep orderly, and has enough interpersonal savvy and “organizational” knowledge knowledge to turn to the right people when there’s a problem to solve.  Not only does time at a job lead to understand other skilled professionals’ job roles, it also helps develop a self-knowledge of your own abilities.  This self-perception allows you to contribute to a team quickly, and helps the manager work with you effectively. And there’s no one a manager wants to hire more than someone who makes his/her job easier.  Lastly, work experience teaches us to handle ambiguity, and be an open-ended problem solver.  At school, we are taught to be rational, analytical and reflective, but the problems in a work environment are ill-defined and require thinking that is creative, uncertain, and action-oriented.

Look back at your past year; have you been illustrating these intangibles?  Are you demonstrating organizational skills, teamwork, and a rigorous problem solving style? No?  Well then, get back to work.

photo by Art Wolfe

I’m in a CreativeTechs webinar this morning with photographer, Art Wolfe.  He has an amazing presentation with stunning photos from around the world.  I noticed the photos with the most drama are those that are back-lit. It simplifies the subject and brings out the form. Great for making simple, bold statements.

btw, if you want to get better at Photoshop, illustrator, or using any Adobe software, CreativeTechs runs free classes almost every day, on a variety of subjects. I highly recommend them.

Any thoughts / comments welcome.  I haven’t gotten the typography right yet, and I’m not in love with the idea of business card as User Interface.

UPDATE: iPhone card idea mock-up below. Text un-readable. doh!

image by Brit.

If you have made resolutions to budget better, start accounting for one’s finances or even read bank statements regularly and failed, fear not. There’s an app for that. You need to try Mint.

• Mint has been hailed by UX pros.
• It was recently purchased by tax software-giant, Intuit.
• It’s a web application that  monitors and provides feedback about how you spend money.
• oh, and its 100% FREE

Have you tried it out yet?  Okay, leave this article, seriously. Go sign up and give it a whirl, then come back (or don’t) if you want to read the rest of what I have to say. More after the break.

Mint’s budgeting & accounting system is fun and easy to adopt.  It is unlike other accounting books, systems, and programs which are as enjoyable as monthly trips to the dentist.  Mint uses your bank statements to categorize and archive your activity automatically. Instead of laboriously managing statements and spreadsheets, you can spend time learning about your spending patterns through Mint’s system of interactive charts and pie graphs. MM…. pie graphs.

The makers of Mint realize that unless the system is simple or the program enjoyable, a person will not adopt it.  Habits dealing budgeting and finances are burdensome, even when there are financial incentives to get into those habits. For the first time ever, I want to be rigorous about my personal finances.  And not because I have excessive spending habits, but because it’s damned fun to do so.

Eating my burrito last night, I pondered about finances and the extent to which Mint was bettering them.  I saw a girl in line take out her wallet, and stare into its empty contents with a disgusted and slightly confused face.  I’ve been there before, you look into your wallet and it appears more empty than you believe it should be.  Looking at that girl’s expression, I realized that though Mint is a marvelous tool, the one thing it cannot do is track cash spending.  Once you pull money out of an ATM, it flies under the radar, leading to unconscious and irresponsible spending.

well, duh, Jon. How is an application going to track cash?

Hey, this is just an observation.  Perhaps Mint can do kick ass cash management, as well.  I believe the solution lies in the physical container: your wallet.  Cash can be accounted for the day we all have “smart wallets” in our pockets and purses.  These devices will come with a GPS tracker and a camera that reads bills.  Every time you open the wallet to pull out cash or credit, it records your GPS location and takes a photo of the cash in the wallet before money is taken out, and after. The uploaded data can tell you when and where your money was spent.  And, as an added bonus, the wallet can track down a thief if it gets stolen.

I guess its a problem if you’re dealing with cash transactions you WANT flying under the radar (hint: what businesses do transactions only in cash?). Too much Big Brother?

Photo by Christelle Despont

Packing my bags, getting ready to be back in the city I love. San Francisco, the city of freaks.

Well, I came here because this City is fantastic. I remember driving home from a court appearance in Oakland one afternoon and feeling my heart just swell looking at the City. Even though it’s damn cold and I had to throw away all my tank tops and open toed shoes, I had found a place where I could waive my freak flag. I had found a place where my liberal mouth was not met with mute horror but smiles and agreement. I had found a place where I could be as weird as I want to be, and believe me, I want to be weird, regularly.

via I Live Here