Dear Ron: Any Advice for someone to escape the ‘telecommute’ career path?

I get this question quite frequently, so I thought it best to address it in its own post. Here is the question.

Any advice for someone with tons of experience as a designer and developer, but stuck in upstate NY with a dearth of telecommute opportunities?

Answer

The first thing I would tell you to do is to watch and read everything from Daniel Pink you can get your hands on. If you are like me and you just want the lazy route, atleast watch this video of a talk he gave at TED (embedded below).

I’m a big fan of Daniel and the things he has to say. Basically, he sums up the threat of telecommuting and how innovation and decision making will solve many problems. Anything that can be done by telecommute, WILL be done by that method. If it does not require decision making, it will be done by telecommute. It’s cheaper, easier, and faster. Many of the offshore development houses have an unlimited amount of resources they can throw on the project, so scalability is never an issue.

The key to success in this day and age is in design and decision making. Put yourself in the position to make decisions that directly affect the product’s success. Being a designer that can actually shape the product is the key to accelerating your career path. Make an impact and ensure it’s success.

Development is a great skill, but you only need to know enough to make good design decisions. The ability to work out a specific worker algorithm to accomplish a task is beyond the scope of your needs. If you are talking about web design, then development plays a much higher need. The ability to understand and incorporate web development into your designs will save you, your team, and the development team tons of wasted cycles.

Summary

Know enough development to propel your designs to the front of the pack. Concentrate on a specific part of design or interaction and own it. Become it.

Gizmodo posts about Courier: Microsoft’s new tablet?

UPDATE: The story hit engadget as well, but the story isn’t quite as positive. The comments are though, here’s the story.

I saw an interesting article on Gizmodo, ( http://gizmodo.com/536.. ) discussing some apparently new top secret laptop/tablet at Microsoft called Courier. The funniest thing is they mentioned what team it is, E&D, who is developing it, and who the head of the team is. Quite specific I think. I doubt if even half of it is true, but I must tell you. It is beautiful, … from the pictures of course.

As a Natural User Interface Designer working at Microsoft. I can tell you, this has piqued my interest. Things to note, they mention Multi-Touch and Stylus support.

I also particularly loved the comments. Quite surprising actually.

If this works exactly, and lives up to the video, as shown Ill buy it. and if they can beat Apple to the market, I’ll forget the iSlab (even as a mac user).

add mp3 capability, and why would i need a laptop at all?

I can see this being HUGE in schools. I know Drexel just replaced all their medical textbooks with iPod Touches (and I’m surprised to see nothing on Giz about it) but I’m sure if they knew this was on its way from Microsoft, they would have waited to see some prices.

Two Words, BAD ASS. I’ve been wanting to get a new laptop, but if this thing is truly on the horizon I’ll be saving up.

I love Apple and their products so much that I (Ed. pee)  apple juice, but this… this would have my money damn near instantly.

(All quotes taken from http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-first-details-of-microsofts-secret-tablet)

Does anyone else have any comments they would love to share? Or how about a Feature Wish List? Thinks that you absolutely MUST have or you will die a slow and painful death. I know I have my list of things I would want in a product like this, but I would like to compare mine to yours. So, Asus if you are reading, here are a few tidbits for you. :)

Infographic : User Interface Technology Adoption

User Interface Technology Adoption

This is an interesting graphic from Gartner ( http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=1089112 ). I also like the small excerpt.

Gesture recognition dominates the hype in human-computer interaction in 2009, as virtual worlds hit the Trough of Disillusionment. A wide range of emerging technologies are moving from the trigger toward the peak, indicating that innovation continues almost unabated during the current recession.

Multi-touch is here now, no matter what Apple says

There is a lot of random talk about multi-touch out right now due to Apple’s recent “leak” about their possible tablet. Talking to a few Apple fans I came to a realization: they had no idea that multi-touch was out right now. Absolutely clueless that Windows 7 supports MT (multi-touch) and that there is a very large array of hardware that you can purchase to take advantage of it. I was actually a little amazed, but not because of the simple fact they didn’t know about it. I was amazed because they seemed so versed in the subject, but had not even done a simple Google Search to look around.

MT has been around quite a long time. Bill Buxton’s very thorough page written on the subject gives a great history and is far better than I would want to replicate here. I will quote a great line from it though, as it definitely deserves it.

Multi-touch technologies have a long history. To put it in perspective, the original work undertaken by my team was done in 1984, the same year that the first Macintosh computer was released, and we were not the first. Furthermore, during the development of the iPhone, Apple was very much aware of the history of multi-touch, dating at least back to 1982, and the use of the pinch gesture, dating back to 1983.  – http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html

I highly recommend reading through his page.

I have tested, played with, and tortured just about every multi-touch piece of hardware out there and I can tell you that there are some stellar pieces of equipment floating around. The Touchsmart’s are very nice. I currently use one of those as well as a few other devices.

Here is the Official Touchsmart Page as well as some nice movies showcasing the technology and features.

Remember to install the Windows 7 Touch pack if you get one to really see some of the great things that you can do using ….. both hands, or one hand, or whatever!

The Windows 7 Touch Pack includes:

• Microsoft Surface Globe
• Microsoft Surface Collage
• Microsoft Surface Lagoon
• Microsoft Blackboard
• Microsoft Rebound
• Microsoft Garden Pond

If anyone has any user experience feedback about these products, feel free to drop me a line.