Lots of emotions as the year winds down, with another one waiting just around the corner. Here’s some of what went down this past year.

• We welcomed Beth Toland to the team. Yeah!!!!!
• Steve is closing in on the last of the writing for Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights to be published by Rosenfeld Media in 2013.
• Our columns for interactions magazine included Content, the Once and Future King (with an associated quickies) and Never Eat Anything Raw.
• We looked at the naturalness (or not) in talking to strangers in this post and this one.
• We found perspectives on interviewing people, including a funny take on journalistic norms in in Birbigs’ short film, dark patterns in this article about conversation, Deborah Tannen on interrupting, Henry Thomas and the power of silence, rapport building at Safeway, and the hilarious BBC Radio series People Like Us
• We addressed user research best practices in Tips to Improve Your Interviewing Skills (with a ton of great stuff in the comments), Seventeen types of interviewing questions and Interviewing past the platitudes.
• We really got going with a series of posts called Curating Consumption (co-published on Johnny Holland until they shuttered), with this year’s posts here, here, here, here, here, here and (whew) here.
• We hit the road and took pictures this year, going to NYC (and again), Dublin (and more), LA, (SXSW, Lisbon (and more), Phoenix, Atlanta, Barcelona (and more), Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney (and more), and Ottawa.
• Observations like Stupid computers and our tolerance for them were inspiration for a strong editorial, Stick to the Knitting, in the Journal of Usability Studies
• We began collecting fieldwork War Stories and built up over 35 fantastic, real, dismaying, insightful, hilarious and frustrating stories from the experiences of fieldworkers. More stories still to come; meanwhile go to that link and just keep reading as they are great!
• We drew inspiration from Gotye, Richard Saul Wurman, and Kevin Kelly.
• Steve presented Championing Contextual Research in Your Organization (slides) as a UIE Virtual Seminar and at WebVisions Barcelona and WebVisions Chicago. This exploration informed (and was informed by) our own breakfast roundtable on the same topic.
• We did at a heap-load of other workshops and talks including the Phoenix Design Summit, UX Lisbon (including slides and sketchnotes for two talks), and CPSI. Steve spoke about Early-Stage User Research at General Assembly, Skill Building for Design Innovators at Service Design Melbourne (and at Carleton University in Ottawa), Qualitative Data Analysis for the University of Dundee, best practices for user research to the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s “Design Thinking for Business” class (and Academy of Art University in San Francisco) and led an Immersive Field Techniques workshop at UX Australia (sketchnotes here and here). Steve also presented We’ve done all this research, now what? at Mozilla and The Power of Bad Ideas as the closing keynote for UX Camp Ottawa
• Video are available for We’ve done all this research, now what? (from Mozilla), Skill Building for Design Innovators (from Service Design Melbourne), and Discover and act on insights about people from UX Lisbon.
• Core77 published Steve’s Power of Bad Ideas and we found even more bad ideas here and here. The exploration of Bad Ideas led to the aforementioned closing keynote at UX Camp Ottawa.
• Steve presented Yes My Iguana Loves to Cha-Cha about design, improv, and creativity at IDSA SV, Carleton University, Schwab’s “Brain Circus, and Silicon Valley ACM. Read a great writeup of the talk here.
• Earlier this year Steve helped organize the Interaction 12 Student Design Challenge. Check out the winners. Planning ahead to early 2013, Steve is involved in the challenge again and our participants are here.
• We considered packaging design as experience design, pondered the moral calculus of offsets and noticed financial pings.
• Some cool patterns in media projects included reframing the image-heavy web by removing text and going beyond the frames of existing content.
• Where was the umbrage this year? We held it in check, focusing only on Hertz.
• We reviewed disturbing but enlightening video projects that explore social norms, including handholding breaching experiment and Surveillance Camera Man.
• While the Omni project ended up going dormant, we published two thought-provoking interviews with brilliant women: Molly Wright Steenson: Shifting time and Lucy Kimbell: Expanding the visible and sayable.
• ChittahChattah turned 11, we shared a bit about the life at Portigal every week, and kept it up with lots and lots of ChittahChattah Quickies.

Journey through the past: 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

Elaine Ann, the CEO of Kaizor Innovation in Hong Kong tells a story about consciousness – both cultural and physical.

One of my most memorable research experiences was ten years ago in China. My Western client fainted in broad daylight in the middle of our Beijing field trip. We had completed field research work and were touring an exhibition. She just plopped on the floor without any previous sign that she had any health problems.

We called the ambulance and a white van came along. There was nothing on it – no ambulance emergency lights, no oxygen equipment, no CPR equipment, only a stretcher. Not knowing what was wrong with my client’s health, we (me, my colleagues and her co-workers) decided to take her to the hospital anyway.

Upon arriving at the hospital, we had to first pay for the ambulance fees in cash (this is China). Then the client was carried onto a hospital bed. I was caught in between cultures at that point as my client’s Western co-workers were dubious about the medical standards in Chinese hospitals and refused an injection from the doctor; while the Chinese doctor was quite annoyed by the Westerners’ attitude (reading their horrific facial expressions) and challenged them whether or not they really want to be helped after coming to the hospital. Meanwhile, I was trying to translate everything in both English and Mandarin, amidst all the chaos, trying to not offend either party (who couldn’t communicate directly with each other).

Finally, the client’s co-worker decided to take a risk with her boss’s health rather than risk it with the Chinese hospital, so we had to shuttle the client back to the hotel instead. (We then discovered that five-star hotels usually have English speaking travel doctors for emergencies – a handy tip for researchers doing field trips in China). In the hotel elevator, my client fainted a second time and we had to drag her off the elevator, along the corridors and into her room like a dead fish.

My client finally became conscious again and luckily we found out this was caused by a low blood sugar syndrome and happened all the time. All she needed was a candy. We had to decline her request to visit the Great Wall the next day. I really wouldn’t know how to carry her down from the Great Wall if she fainted on top of that, as it’s a defense wall designed to make it difficult for invaders to climb even in ancient times!

Seriously, I would have made the national news if my client died on our China research trip! Phew!

Mice as Stand-Ins in the Fight Against Disease [New York Times] – Looks like this has been happening in some measure for a while, but some new methods are increasing the usage. The most science-fiction thing you’ll read all week.

In what could be the ultimate in personalized medicine, animals bearing your disease, or part of your anatomy, can serve as your personal guinea pig, so to speak. Some researchers call them avatars, like the virtual characters in movies and online games. “The mice allow you the opportunity to test drugs to find out which ones will be efficacious without exposing the patient to toxicity,” said Colin Collins, a professor at the University of British Columbia.

Australia 2012 [Flickr] – My complete set of pictures from Australia earlier this month.

Chinese families’ worldly goods in Huang Qingjun’s pictures [BBC] – We’ve seen other projects like this, but the focus on China captures a material culture in transition.

Amid China’s tumultuous dash to become rich, one man’s photographs of families posing with their worldly goods will soon seem like records from a distant era. Huang Qingjun has spent nearly a decade travelling to remote parts of China to persuade people who have sometimes never been photographed to carry outside all their household possessions and pose for him. The results offer glimpses of the utilitarian lives of millions of ordinary Chinese who, at first glance, appear not to have been swept up by the same modernisation that has seen hundreds of millions of others leave for the cities. But seen more closely, they also show the enormous social change that has come in a generation. So the photo of an elderly couple of farmers outside their mud house reveals a satellite dish, DVD player and phone.

Four Big Things, a phrase dating from 1950s for most sought-after goods for newly married couples: sewing machine, bicycle, watch, radio. It’s since come to refer to whatever is most fashionable at the time. By 1980s the four big things were: TV, washing machine, rice cooker, fridge. Now, consumer goods flood China’s cities, it tends to be used to describe people’s aspirations for the latest thing.

Must-See Video: How a Woman With No Arms Dresses Herself. What Assistance Can Design Provide? [Core 77] – I love the reaction; that excitement of discovering how current solutions could be improved. Designers are so great at bringing that creativity and know-how to bear to make change for the good. But let’s remember, we don’t need videos to be posted by users to uncover what things aren’t working for them. Are designers waiting for broken products to appear in front of them so they can spontaneously improve them, or are they out there looking at current behaviors and solutions in order to proactively find opportunities. Designers: you don’t need the disabled (or anyone) to post their own videos, go and shoot your own!

I hope that more folks with disabilities make videos like this, not just to share with others what their particular trials are, but to enable us designers to improve upon the objects they use.

FILMography – a Tumblr with an incredible series of images where a printout of a still from a film is held up in the actual location where that scene was shot. It’s a “trick” I’ve seen before but mostly as a one-off; the breadth here is fascinating.

FILM + photography = FILMography.

Here we go with this week’s update

• I’m writing this in Newark Airport, halfway or so on my journey back to San Francisco from Barcelona. Great city, great conference, great time with friends and colleagues, old and new. I’ll post photos in the next few days (and some are already up on Flickr)
• For the past several weeks, when I’ve put together this anticipatory summary, I’ve referred to the large project we’re just about to start. And so once again, it’s Monday and I’m almost embarrassed to say it again. The sales cycle for this project will exceed the duration of the project itself, at this point.And we’re good to go! Hooray!
• I’ll be playing catch-up with a dozen or so phone or face-to-face networking meetings that were pushed out until after my return, which is essentially tomorrow.
• I just posted Diane’s War Story, and will have another one later this week, perhaps as early as tomorrow. Meanwhile, submit yours here!
• While the ink is barely dry on the Barcelona experience, I’m thinking ahead this week to UX Australia and even next year’s SXSW.
• Ten Years Gone: in July 2002, I blogged about IDSA 2002, Hippo Hardware, and discarding digital media.
• What we’re consuming: pintxos, Gaudi, VINCON.

Last week I went to Lisbon to speak at UX Lx (you can see my presentations and more here). We had a great time exploring the city on our own, and courtesy of our kindly hosts. I’ve got some images and observations here, and some more to come tomorrow.

This sign is advertising one of those small bright yellow cars that tourists drive around while a recording guides them from place to place. But here the promotional message is rather ribald. Is this reflective of the local culture and how English is used, or is it an attempt to adapt to visitor norms? My other triangulation point was the frequent t-shirts with rather forward sayings in English, worn by people that maybe didn’t know what they meant? I saw a slender woman jogging with a “Chubby Girls Cuddle Better.” A late-middle-aged man on the subway wore a shirt reading “Rock Out With Your Cock Out.” There was just something off about the wearer and the message, seeing my own culture coming back at me in a completely different way. Was this like Engrish, or something else?

Same idea. This is an advertisement for learning English, from the prestigious-sounding “Wall Street Institute” presumably targeting people who want to improve their careers. But FUCK (and the other side, SHIT) are the reference points for learning English. For sure, these are important words in business

The reliefs in the base of the statue of St. Anthony.

Friendly key dudes.

Do they sell each of those animals as meat?

Is this frog flashing a gang sign, or suggesting his availability for romance?

Funiculars traverse the steep hills.

Stunning architecture of the Oriente train station.

Nothing says sexy like toilet paper.

At the Vasco de Gama mall, this staircase used the same handrail as the escalator. As you approached it, you’d assume you were about to get on an escalator. But no, it’s stairs. Did some architect insist on symmetry with the design of the adjacent escalator?

Rossio train station.

It’s a crazy busy week for us, focusing on just a couple of big things

• Julie and Tamara are in LA with our client team for the rest of the week, interviewing consumers and professionals (we can’t say what type of professionals they are but from what we’ve learned about them in setting up the interviews, they are highly accomplished) – no doubt all the interviews will be utterly fascinating
• Steve is in Dublin, co-leading a two-day masterclass for the IxDA Student Design Challenge – we’ve got a really great agenda for the class with some special guests – and some really wonderful prizes (thank you generous sponsors!)

Another year is speeding towards its conclusion and we wanted to share our highlights for 2011.

• We are joined by inveterate sing-talker, Tamara Christensen! Hooray!
• Steve is writing The Art and Craft of User Research Interviewing: Diving Deep for Insight to be published by Rosenfeld Media in 2012.
• Julie and Steve wrote several columns for interactions magazine: What To Expect When You’re Not Expecting It, Elevator Pitch, and Kilroy Was Here.
• We got our umbrage on about a Braun customer survey, Newegg’s gobbledygook customer communications, HP’s TouchPad advertising, Kimpton’s attempts at personalization, Facebook’s anti-empathetic approach to redesigns, Netflix’s user-blindness, web security questions, breast cancer memes, and irrelevant and badly executed cross branding.
• We kicked off the Omni project, examined how people completed everyday tasks in previous eras of technology, gained mucho insight from Nicolas Nova and Adrian Hon, and completed an extensive secondary research slash cultural audit.
• We drew inspiration from Haruki Murakami and Neil Peart.
• Steve was interviewed about the future of reading and digital books for Digital Book World and about interviewing users for the User Experience podcast.
• We reflected on consumption in general and information specifically, flow states in user research, muffin signifiers, hearing protection and customer service, nerds, recycling, gendered design and marketing, silliness at 76 stations, and MacWorld.
• Steve spoke about Discovering and Acting on New Insights at Lift11 (video and slides), Improv in Brainstorming at APDF, Successful Collaboration (slides) at Frontiers of Interaction, Best Practices For Interviewing Users at SXSW (slides and audio), Culture, User Research and Design at OCAD (slides and audio), We’ve done all this research, now what? at UCB and CHI2011 (slides), Uncovering Innovation From The Outside In at the UIE Web Apps Masters Tour, and User Research Analysis in a UIE Virtual Seminar (buy). He also taught full-day workshops including Spinning Data Into Gold (slides) with Rosenfeld Media, and Immersive Field Research Techniques (podcast) at UI16, and We’ve Done All This Research, Now What? at Unfinished Business (slides) and UX Hong Kong (slides).
• Julie presented Finding the Right People for the Center for Design Research at the University of Kansas (slides);
  Tamara co-presented Big Ideas, Focused Action, Problem Solved at the Oklahoma Creativity Forum (slides)
• We offered a design and experience critique about the One Day For Design experiment.
• Steve shared photographic observations from Geneva, Hong Kong, Toronto, and Florence and Lucca.
• Julie and Steve were out and about in New York (Julie, Steve), Boston, and Portland.
• Our blog (the place for debating/defending the design of really really nichey products, it would seem) turned 10 (yes, 10!)
• We redesigned our business cards around the theme of What’s Your Story and started a blog series to explain the stories behind the new designs (collect all six!)
• Steve began co-chairing the IxDA12 Student Challenge
• We doubled our office space, taking over an adjacent space that opened up in our complex. Kitchen! Couch! We’re living large!
• Not to mention like a bajillion quickies!

Really nostalgic? Check out summaries from 2010, 2009 and 2008.

Our latest interactions column (written by Steve Portigal and Julie Norvaisas) Kilroy Was Here has just been published.

Reviled or celebrated, graffiti is ubiquitous in even the least-urban environments. With roots in the wall-scrawled slogans of ancient Greece, it is a physical yet ephemeral expression of the personality of a neighborhood. It allows us to see a colorful trail of inhabitants’ interactions with public spaces. Graffiti (or street art, or urban art) has been displayed in (and arguably corrupted by) art exhibitions, influenced fashion and pop culture, and generated revenue for municipalities and the paint-removal industry alike. Of course, it’s largely illegal. It’s everywhere, and we are grateful. Perhaps we are drawn to the element of danger that feeds street art, and the rebellion implicit in its enjoyment (probably the same reasons we loved the Fonz!)…We find ourselves considering the street art of one city, or neighborhood, or corner, as a whole, compared to what we know from other cities, neighborhoods, and corners. What elements make them visually distinct? What might these observations say about the culture or history of the location? How does one graffito fit into the larger context of surrounding graffiti? We can channel our inner visual anthropologist, uncovering signs not only of the times but also of the place.

Get the PDF here and let us know what you think. Do you follow street art? What do you like about it? Share your pictures with us!

And, here are some photos to supplement the article

Previous articles also available:

• Persona Non Grata
• Everybody’s Talkin’ At Me
• The Journey Is The Reward
• Hold Your Horses
• Living In The Overlap
• Some Different Approaches to Making Stuff
• Poets, Priests, and Politicians
• Interacting with Advertising
• Ships in the Night (Part I): Design Without Research?
• Ships in the Night (Part II): Research Without Design?
• We Are Living in a Sci-Fi World
• On Authenticity
• The Hard Work Lies Ahead (If You Want It)
• What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting It
• Elevator Pitch
• Never Eat Anything Raw
• Content, the Once and Future King

I’ve posted a bunch of pictures Flickr from our recent trip to Florence and Lucca, to speak at Frontiers of Interaction. Here’s some of my faves:

Also, see slides from my workshop Successful Collaboration – Keep Your Clients Happy.

• [from steve_portigal] Mobile Mandate: Tribute to Cultural Connectors [design mind] – [frogdesign's Kate Canales and Lauren Serota adventure in Zambia revealed some crucial truths about accessing other cultures. As much as I'm advocate for having my mind blown as an outsider, the importance of the bridge - the people who can help you make sense of it all - is paramount] As we traveled with her, she grew to truly understand why we were there and could see we were missing pieces. She found opportunities to fill those gaps, taking time to explain things to us and immerse us in the culture..We were reminded that if you are open to it, you can learn as much from insightful people like Lister as you can through days of fielding. More than that, she might have been our most powerful in-field synthesis tool. A sounding board for questions, validations, curiosities and stories. There's not much better than having multiple observations tied together in an understandable way by someone native to the culture.

I’ve posted about 150 photos to Flickr from our recent trip to Rome. Here’s a few favorites:

• Books Travellers Read in Mumbai Locals [Windy Skies] – This is Part I of my ongoing attempt to note the books my fellow travellers read in Mumbai local trains on their way to work and back. I ride the infamous Mumbai local train network to work each day, unconsciously observing my fellow passengers when I’m not squeezed breathless or pounded into submission in the surging crowds that bring a new meaning to the concept of pressure. While it is not always easy to move around once inside the train, it is sometimes possible to pull off a picture of the reader and his book. The readers will rarely look up from the books they’re reading. They don’t need to, tuned in as they are to approaching stations from years of travelling on the local train network.<br />
  (via Dina Mehta)
• Duncan Hines Brownie Husband – [Saturday Night Live] – "The perfect blend of rich fudge and emotional intimacy." Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. (via Design Observer)

• Topeka, KS changes its name (for a month) to Google, KS – I wrote about this sort of bombastic advertising in interactions (http://interactions.acm.org/content/?p=1231) referencing the dot-com era's Half, Oregon, and the classic Truth or Consequences, NM
• Toy Traveling – Travel Agency for Teddy bears and cuddly toys – [Productizing the" trend" of taking pictures of your stuffed animals on your vacation] Is your darling exceptional? Give him extraordinary present – trip to Prague – the beautiful heart of Europe. Except amazing experiences, he will bring back home many great photos and other presents. Do you collect stuffed toys, dolls or other fun “non-living” friends and you believe they also deserve rest and vacation or an outstanding experience in an interesting country? If you do, pack up its suitcase, wish it a nice trip and send it to the Czech Republic where your friend can enjoy the historic beauty of Prague as well as other services that will leave both you and your friend satisfied. Let it go on cool trips, group events and wellness therapy in the heart of Europe – done with respect to your friend and loving care. We are tolerant and unbiased. We will be happy to welcome all kinds of your toys regardless nationality, race, religion, sexual preferences, age or handicaps.
• A list of UX-related sessions at SXSW Interactive [Nick Finck] – There's a great deal happening at this event! Here's one attempt to filter (including our session on UX methods!)

Aka, a removable feast. Strong signs of cultural change as airline meals morph, evolve, and devolve. Compare my recent repast on United ($7 for the boxed snack set)

with the hot meal below, from a 1960s Braniff domestic flight.

It’s striking how much cultural norms and consumer expectations around hospitality in this context have changed – imagine handing that 1960s passenger the meal I got on my flight.

See more airline meals throughout the decades here.

It’s been a busy year and as we head into the home stretch, looking forward to 2010 (supposedly the year we make contact), we wanted to take a look back at the past 12 months and call out some of the highlights.

• Our blog, All This ChittahChattah, turned 8
• We conducted our own study (Reading Ahead) about the future of the book and digital reading, blogged at length about our process, posted an in-depth narrated presentation of findings and opportunities, tracked the cultural progression of the digital books issue, presented at the UC Berkeley Digital Futures speaker series (and subsequently at Blurb), conducted a design contest with Core77, and selected a handful of exciting winners
• We helped to launch REACH, a global network of small “design research” consultancies that can better serve clients across multiple markets
• We found good (or at least interesting) design exemplars in/at/from/by information-rich street signs, David Lee Roth and Runnin’ With the Devil, sour cream, NPR, the Forestry Service, real-life interfaces (and again), a farmer’s market, and a drink menu
• We were disappointed by user experiences that fell short, from AT&T, Yahoo!, car dashboards, and Land’s End
• We noticed workarounds for hotel rooms, parking lots, shopping carts, input devices, and loud guns
• We found some curious branding, storytelling, and other customer-facing strategies by Starbucks, M&Ms, Papa Murphy’s, parking garages, The Griddle Cafe, a range of business names (and again), the Santa Barbara Zoo, Verizon’s Hub, YouTube, municipal garbage, Old Navy, Columbus Foods after a devastating fire, KISS (and again), and Jewish delis
• We revisited themes, findings, or product launches from previous projects about IT professionals, safety gear, digital cameras, mobile telephones and saw our client MediaMaster shut down their service
• We bemoaned bad approaches to product development with personas (and again), surveys, and a shallow view of user-centeredness
• We continued to explore where, when, why, and how to use customer information in product development, including a provocative article by Don Norman, and a thoughtful piece by Robert Fabricant
• We found surprise and amusement in gendered home territories, grocery stores, pillows that preserve the shape of a baby’s head, retailing dead formats, license plates, and grassroots product development
• In the face of tremendous growth for Twitter, we considered some of the barriers to adoption as well as the opportunities still to be addressed
• Steve was invited backstage to designer-vibrator-purveyor JimmyJane and found their brand not fulfilling its cultural change (and world domination) business opportunity, a perspective later taken up by the New York Times
• We posited how the electric car industry can create a better story around their optimal use cases
• Steve led his workshop “Well, We’ve Done All This Research…Now What?” for sold-out groups at Interaction|09 and EPIC, as well as abbreviated versions at IxDA-SF, BayCHI (slides and audio here), Web 2.0, and Nokia
• Steve spoke to students from Pratt, SVA, Istanbul Technical University, and CCA’s Design MBA Innovation Studio
• Steve spoke about user research, design and innovation to the MEDEA Collaborative Media Initiative, the Istanbul Industrial Design Summit; about culture to the Chicago IxDA, the Amsterdam UX Cocktail Hour, and HFI; and about improv and creativity at the IDSA and the IxDA-NYC (see slides here and video here)
• Steve gave a webinar about Creating Authentic Product Experiences to the University of Oregon’s Contemporary Design class; we’re looking for future opportunities to give this webinar and even put together a trailer
• World travels lead to a comparison of election posters as well an an examination of toilet paper sizes
• Steve took pictures in Vancouver, LA, Santa Barbara, Amsterdam (some highlights here, here, here, here, and here), Belgium (some highlights here), Miami, London (highlights here), Istanbul (highlights here), and New York
• All This ChittahChattah is now on Twitter and portigal.com is available in a mobile version
• Steve’s chapter, Listen, Do You Want To Know A Secret? was published in Age of Conversation 2
• Steve wrote Take It from Consumers: Simpler Is Better (PDF here) for Photo Reporter Magazine, Let’s Embrace Open-Mindedness for Johnny Holland, The Cultures of Design for DMI Connect, Organizational Empathy, from Top to Bottom for Appliance Magazine, and on video, offered some quick advice to aspiring designers
• Steve was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, in an article about the adoption of e-book readers (thoughts, from the cutting-room floor, here)
• Steve contributed to William Lidwell and Gerry Manacsa’s book Deconstructing Product Design
• Steve published a second year of True Tales columns for interactions: Poets, Priests, and Politicians, Interacting With Advertising, Ships in the Night (Part I): Design Without Research?, Ships in the Night (Part II): Research Without Design?, We Are Living in a Sci-Fi World, and On Authenticity

Previously: Our 2008 review