Exciting news!

My article was recently published in User Experience, magazine of the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) . I wrote it about using mind-mapping to take notes during usability testing instead of typing notes (or writing super fast) in linear fashion.

I've been using this method for quite a while and prefer it over traditional note-taking. The publication process was tedious at best, and in fact, I didn't even know they decided to publish it until a reader in Canada contacted me to ask about the method.

Today the actual magazine arrived in the mail and my article is featured on the cover and (Mark is convinced) also referenced in a cartoon. It's not the New Yorker, but the editor did say it's published in six continents (come on, penguins in Antartica!) and has a reader base of over 6,000. Yay!

Click here to read the article.

Over the course of the last few months, I have been obsessed. Watching, reading, recording, and writing everything music. Movies, strictly documentaries, it seems. And, now, I think I have formulated something worth vocalizing here.

One of the films I watched recently, was I Need That Record!, about the death of the independent record store. The movie tied in many themes, but more often that not came back to the premise that business, way of life, and fast food culture played major parts in pushing out the small business(record store) owner. Actually, this tied in as well to the Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, about the recording of their 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. In that movie, as well, we see the constant push and pull between the artist wanting to create a deeper expression of the human experience, versus the constant corporate need for instant hit records, or God forbid, ROI.

Of course, this is nothing new, but at times I guess when you see figures placed in front of you, it opens your eyes even wider. The fact that music now more than ever is a plastic packaging of razor thin creativity sprinkled with tried and true regurgitated themes really got me wondering why…I mean, at some level I could understand people, for example, forgoing interesting cuisine for chain level safety and the ease/price of fast food in a struggling economy, but why music? Why are people so willing to accept such mediocre music, which can be such a highly personal form of art? And, often times, the more popular watered down stuff is more expensive? (see the way they raise prices now as artists sell more)

I always looked at purchasable music as the perfect confluence of all manners of art (and on a similar theme, computer games with the addition of programming). When I was young and I purchased an album (or tape, or CD), you received a complete work of many disciplines. A physical artifact (as described lovingly in the film), that contained artwork, often times provocative….poetry in form of printed lyrics…and a album of songs that worked towards a whole, often telling a story. As well, there was production and engineering that conveyed mood, and amazed you, as you struggled to grasp how these moments of expression were captured so clearly. You would sit, study the liner notes…wonder who those people were the band was thanking. Wonder what it would be like to contribute…Stare at the artwork, dream in the cover and be enchanted, horrified, thrilled, perplexed….And then journey through the songs…Side 1…The beginning of a journey…Side 2, another…Wondering, how the story would resume after intermission…Where we were headed…Knowing how much thought was put into the songs selected for the album..And their order…Nothing was by chance... Each with an opening…crescendo, ending….It laid the story of the artists at that time in their lives..And, as yours, the listener….Or, at least it once did…

Watch the movie discuss the way MBA's infiltrated the industry (and really, any industry where people consume), and reduced the art to, as quoted by the head of a major label, "pushing product"…There is no developing artists now: Labels spend more on marketing and music videos for one single than they do recording the whole album. And why? Why do people accept this?

The other day at work, as the work day dwindled, a few of us sat in the kitchen, and for one turn through, played the island game…You know the game… You are stranded, on an island, and you have to choose one album the rest of your life. It made me think all weekend... Can people now even answer that? Or would it be 20 iTunes songs….None connected…No stories to tell…No good with the bad…No, well, accepting that track 3 isn't as good, but it lays the groundwork for a refrain later in the album…No appreciating that a band may try other styles even though it may not be what genre their "hit" single was…No understanding or thinking at all anymore...

And with regard to the island game, I wondered, would your answer be different if others weren't listening? Is music now just a big DJ booth to constantly impress your friends? Songs just a disposable 10mb grain of media in a vast beach of faceless, 2 minute downloads?

Really, though, maybe it scared me a bit. Do we really need to wait till we are stranded on an island to realize that once there was a time we appreciated one cohesive album because it spoke to us? Or is that not what music is anymore?

Another year has come to an end. I'm fond of the idea of self-reflection and quantification, although that's not something I readily do. It can be disconcerting at best. Every year comes with its own challenges and this one has been no exception.

Thus, instead of reflecting on 2011, and bulleting best and worst of lists, I will look to 2012. I have special interest as of late in things outside my comfort zone, and wonder how close I can come to those particular edges. This may be because of 2011 and its earlier friends 2010 and 2008, so now that I think about it, this is a form of reflection. We are the products of the past, collective and individual. When early explorers drew up original maps of the world, they used the term “here be dragons” to denote uncharted locations they considered dangerous. Thus, this is my wish for you, "Internet." May 2012 be the year you explore your own edges and find your dragons. Who knows, you may see me there.

(Full disclosure: This happens to be the Year of the Dragon, but this post is completely coincidental!)

My dearest friends, my most cunning of enemies…

Thus ends Movember…

For the last 30 days, myself and a group of brave men at Viewpoints (and others, throughout the world) adorned a curious outcropping of bristle upon our lips to raise awareness (and greenbacks, in the parlance of mustachioed men gone past) for men's cancer research and eradication.

And, I must say, I felt quite saucey…I was compelled to wear the finest of suits, sip only the priciest of cognacs, and smother my hair with only the greasiest of greases. But now, alas, the time has come to return to my slovenly ways, so I leave you, now, cruel world, less one mustachioed gentleman. Thank you to all who contributed to the cause, it is surely quite worthy…

And to my mustache, I say, arividerchi…

We shall meet again…