• How to get to know your Audience
• Competitive Research
• Information Architecture for Mobile
• Visual Design for Mobile
• Mobile User Interface/Interaction Design
• User Input Beyond Touch (Sensors, Cameras, etc)
• Form/Data Entry Design
• Keeping information fresh
• Analysis and current trends for mobile devices
• Prototyping
• User testing
• Selling and marketing mobile apps

As part of the class, students will design their own app.

If you know any students or know anyone who has students, please let them know about the class. Details about the class can be found on the Course Schedule site under JRN-492 Section 740.
Thanks to Dr. Lucinda Davenport for allowing me to teach this and to Karl Gude for pushing me to do it. Here’s the offical ad being posted around the school:

Position of the body on the stage is one concept. Stage right (to the audience’s left) can be used to imply the past where stage left (the audience’s right) can be used to imply the future (much like gestures in those same directions). Standing further backstage has a more diminuitive prescence than standing on the front of the stage. Walking into the audience can bring that presence even closer and more personal.

In this next video, the amazing cellist Madeline Huberth speaks at TEDxUofM 2011 about her research on whether a musician’s ability to hear themselves impacts the quality of their performance. As we worked on her presentation, it became clear that she had two personas in the talk, Madeline-the-scientific-observer and Madeline-the-musician. In one role, she was an objective, outsider telling the story of her research. In the other, she was a musician absorbed in the beauty and the flow of the music. To subtly show this during the presentation, we gave her two completely different stage positions. As the musician, she’s seated with her instrument as she would be in an orchestra. All of her playing as well as her discussions of the music itself happens from that position. However, when she discusses the science of sound and the results of her research, she’s standing almost observing the space she just occupied as the musician.

While subtle and probably not directly noticed by many in the audience, I think it set off a nice extra touch of finese on a beautiful presentation. Enjoy!

Jameson is a PhD in MIT’s Engineering Systems Division with the support of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. His research focuses on using large behavioral data sets generated from the web (Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc.), cell phones, or any other means, to find emergent patterns in human behavior and dynamics.

He has done some fascinating work bringing thinking and visualization together. Two of my favorite examples are in this talk we worked on for TEDxUofM. First, he looks at his relationship with his girlfriend through the lens of chat, texts, and e-mails which leads to an onstage apology. He then looks at the types of cellphone usage over time as a method for thinking about urban planning.

So as you watch the video, pay attention not only to his great delivery and unique wit, but also to how he used visualization to think about the world differently.

Paul Courant, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, is Harold T. Shapiro Collegiate Professor of Public Policy, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Information and of Economics, and former Provost of the University of Michigan. As Provost he negotiated the book-scanning contract with Google, which advanced the University’s project to digitize the entire contents of its Library and enabled the creation of the HathiTrust Digital Library.

Yet this audience was not the typical policy wonks or academic journal reviewers. It was the general public, those directly involved with intellectual property every, yet with no knowledge of the related law or politics. His goal was to take them from apathy to caring about how the law and policy is impacting their lives, especially with the advent of new technology. Listen to how he adeptly navigates complex terminology and concepts while still bringing his audience along on the journey:

While I get many chances to run workshops on communications and coach speakers all over the world, I’m often privileged to work with a few who challenge and inspire me. In deference to the many other speakers that I coach, I rarely single any one particular speaker out since each one truly teaches me something new. However, every once and a while, one comes along that is so inspiring that she’s worth calling out publicly.

This last few weeks had one of those occasions. I was honored to be asked again to coach the speakers for TEDxLansing (my 4th TEDx event as speaker coach). As always, the topics were as varied as the needs of the speakers which are both parts I love about my job. However, this time I was given an opportunity unlike any I’ve known…to coach a stutterer, Sharon Emery, for a main stage, large audience presentation. As Sharon said in her talk, the stage is a place “where disfluent speakers are rarely invited to speak”. In fact, in all of the hundreds if not thousands of TED & TEDx presentations, we are not aware of one that featured a current stutterer.

Each speaker I coach has different needs. Some need help with their story. Some need help connecting with the audience. Some with determining their slides or visual aids. And others still with delivery or body language. While each is unique, there’s a pretty common set of needs, and Sharon was no different. We worked a bit on content and flow. We worked a bit on slide content. The feedback was pretty straight forward and Sharon was completely on top of it. She incorporated it early and was way ahead of the curve in preparation. When that happens, I relish the somewhat rare chance to be able to begin to work with the speaker on tone, phrasing, timing, inflection, and other vocal details. But Sharon stutters. How would I provide feedback like “think and speak to the phrase rather than the word” when the struggle was to vocalize a word at all, more or less worry about how that word fit with the one before or the one after? How do I suggest that a phrase needs more or less emphasis, more or less personality, or adjust the pacing when the stutter is random? Yet with her guidance and permission, I gave the same feedback I would give anybody else.

Sharon knocked it out of the park. While the other speakers that day set a high bar, she received universal acclaim and that all-too-rare, but well-deserved standing ovation!

Sharon’s talk was both very personal and completely universal. Certainly the primary topic was on stuttering and listening. For example, when talking about how people respond to her as a stutterer, she said “My real concern is the point where you stop reacting to me and start listening to me, and my deepest fear is that you never do.” which is probably a concern of almost every speaker that has tried to communicate a message. However, I think the most poignant section came at the end when she turned her focus back to fluent speakers saying:

“If you’re going to add your voice to the communication deluge, don’t abuse language by rendering it meaningless. Stutterers don’t waste their time on empty banter because it’s not worth the effort required to produce it. They have to be ready for when their voices are truly needed. Fluent speakers including all of you should be just as judicious…Make darn sure your words count for something.”

Now that’s something everyone, speaker or not, can learn!

Thanks Sharon for teaching me how to listen and reminding me about the power and importance of the words I use!

You can check out the video here from one of the audience members:

I’ll post the official video when it becomes available.

Executive 1: “I think what’s needed here is to take the 10,000 foot view”
Executive 2: “Well, at 30,000 feet we would see…”
Executive 3: “The real story doesn’t become clear until we step back to 100,000 feet”

Really? One would think that as much flying as business people tend to do, they might have an understanding of altitude. I suppose until recently few of us carry altimeters (they’re on some of our smart phones now, you know), so it might be kind of hard unless the pilot is announcing the altitude on takeoff or decent. Thankfully, flight instructor and owner of Great Lakes Air Ventures, Patrick Retzer, has offered to provide some clarity with photos from a recent flight over the capital of Michigan in Lansing.  One of the things that often get lost in these discussions is the detail and the beauty that can only be seen at ground level.  Yes, I know the point if that people want to take broader perspectives, but there is something grounding (pun intended) about taking in the world around us, which we never seem to take time to do.

Ground Level - 0 Feet - Capital State of Michigan

Once you take off though, patterns start to quickly emerge.  At 1,000 feet, details fade away, but structure and connections become almost immediately visible. 

1,000 Feet - Capital State of Michigan

At 3,000 feet, even the structure of the buildings begin to give way to see the larger transportation network not just connecting buildings, but connecting areas.  (Note that while the capital is still roughly centered in the picture, picking it out has become much more difficult). 

3,000 Feet - Lansing, Michigan

As we approach 5,000 feet, individual buildings, even as unique as the capital, have lost their distinction.  Smaller homes are just specks, but highways and geographic elements begin to take shape and show their relationships.

5,000 Feet - Lansing, Michigan

Finally, as we reach 10,000 feet, you can already start to see a slight curvature to the earth.  One community stretches into the next as our relationship to the broader community becomes more clear.  Impending weather patterns begin to emerge.

10,000 Feet - Lansing, Michigan

While certainly pictures from 30,000 and 100,000 feet would be even more dramatic, if you want a truly global perspective, the International Space Station’s lowest point is at well over 900,000 feet.  So, next time you go to use the metaphor of altitude hopefully you’ll remember these pictures and be able to align the height with the story you’re trying to tell.

Many thanks to Patrick for both the photos and the inspiration to finally write this post.

Ignite Toronto 2: Ryan Coleman – Designing for visual efficiency from Ignite Toronto on Vimeo.

You can also check out the slides from his presentation here: