"Build a design that empowers ordinary people to do the extraordinary."
"Learn better ways to promote design concepts to partners."
"Challenge my process and how I work." 
"Nurture my creative side." 
"Learn techniques to better understand end-users." 
"Build friendships and connections."
"Learn ways to collaborate with coworkers." 
"Practice, practice, practice."

These are just a few of the reasons that 26 designers, engineers, and product managers joined forces in Columbus, Ohio last week for our inaugural UX Bootcamp competition. Their mission was to learn user experience design and use their new skills for social good. Over four intensely-packed days, they crammed their brains with Cooper's design methodology, broke into three self-selected teams, and put those learnings into practice to solve a real-world challenge for the American Red Cross of Greater Columbus. Each team pitched a concept for a mobile application that would empower and inspire members of ClubRED (a young professional's volunteer group within the American Red Cross of Greater Columbus). Cooper donated $1000 to the nonprofit in the name of the winning team, ClubRED Connect.

The winning team (ClubRED Connect), our friends from the American Red Cross of Greater Columbus, and one oversized check.

Inside UX Bootcamp

It's called bootcamp for a reason. We asked our students to perform within a tight timeline, and they took on our challenge like champs. We were mighty impressed when teams showed up an hour before the workshop one morning to get a head start on their designs (can you say, "extra credit?"). Although it was an intensive course, the teams kept great attitudes throughout. In fact, at one point, all the groups decided to set aside competition to work together to gather and share research data, knowing everyone's work would be better as a result. And they bravely stood up in front of a panel of tough, Dancing-with-the-Stars-esque judges to pitch their concepts at the end of the four days. We heard things like, "My brain muscle got quite a workout!", "You took me on a scary journey, but I came out smiling," and "The transformation was unanimous."

The judges scored teams in four categories: how well their concept addressed user and business needs; perceived impact; "wow" factor; and presentation skills. (Photo: Paul J Hart)

UX Bootcamp In Pictures

Get a taste of what it was like to be immersed in our crazy UX Bootcamp world by checking our our photo set on Flickr, or this nifty video montage:

The Final Pitches: What Teams Designed In  Four Jam-Packed Days

Winning Team: ClubRED Connect

Concept:

ClubRED Connect gives volunteers the ability to turn existing social experiences into fundraising micro-events for the American Red Cross...with very little effort. Here's how it works: designate a location for friends to gather (Let's meet for happy hour!), take photos of interesting moments, share them with your friends via the app, and make a correlated donation to the nonprofit on the spot. Your friends are challenged to one-up your donation by sharing a "Red Cross Moment" of their own and making a contribution themselves. In this way, your small contribution is amplified by your friends, your friends' friends and more.

Presentation Deck: TeamClubREDConnect_Pitch.pdf

Snapshots of the design process:

Developing Scenarios (Photo: Paul J Hart)

Developing Framework (Photo: Paul J Hart)

Mock-up of concept (Photo: Paul J Hart)

Team: I+CBUS

Concept:

I+CBUS removes barriers to volunteerism by offering lightweight ways to get involved in your local Red Cross chapter. Participation can be as simple as pushing a button to donate, scheduling a time to donate blood, pass crisis information on to your social network, sign up to attend social events, or learn about other simple ways you can pitch in. The tool gives the American Red Cross an easy way to push needs, alerts and calls-to-action to the public, while giving volunteers a simple way to amplify their participation and have greater impact.

Snapshots of the design process:

Brainstorming (Photo: Paul J Hart)

Branding explorations

Concept illustrations (alert and user flow)

Team: Save the Day

Concept:

Recognizing that we are all motivated differently, the Save the Day app gives people the ability to help at times of crisis in a way that makes sense for their lifestyle, personality, and skills. Some people prefer to assist at the scene with blankets and food. Others feel most effective and valuable by rallying their friends to fundraise. Some are best at getting the word out to their networks. The Save the Day app maximizes participation by acknowledging that it takes all types of contributions to get through crisis, and lets individuals respond to events in their way.

Snapshots of the design process:

Brainstorming session (Photo: Paul J Hart)

Scenario exploration and app design

What's Next for UX Bootcamp

Creating a space for so many diverse, talented people to engage with one another, learn new skills, and apply them to a meaningful challenge was incredibly gratifying. As you can imagine, it just fueled our already passionate-desire to take the bootcamp to other places. We're solidifying the spot and nonprofit partner for the next UX Bootcamp adventure - stay tuned! (If you want to be notified directly of where we'll set up shop next, shoot us an email at CooperU@Cooper.com.

A special thanks to Kendra Shimmell for envisioning the UX Bootcamp and leading the curriculum development effort. We also want to acknowledge Constanza Miranda and Teresa Brazen for bringing their unique content ideas to the coursework. Kendra did a stellar job leading the workshop, with the support of co-instructors Teresa Brazen and Brian Stone. A special thanks to Brian for connecting us with our fantastic, engaged nonprofit partner. Speaking of which, we appreciate all the support the American Red Cross of Greater Columbus provided throughout, like having staff onsite throughout for questions and critique, and bringing in ClubRED volunteers for research interviews. And, last but not least, thanks to Sparkspace for providing a truly inspiring place to learn, teach, and play.

Grab the last seats for the Communication & Collaboration course. We geared this course for practitioners who want to take their effectiveness working within design groups and spread it to their larger product and stakeholder teams. We've packed years of experience as consultants into a fun, engaging two-day intensive. The class delivers lots of information with the intent of reframing the focus of your work and many hands-on exercises to get practice before applying your new skills back home.

Some topics include:

• Learn how adopting a new approach to engaging with others improves responsiveness, feedback and support for your work
• Practice new methods for collaborating with your teams which lead to more productive meetings and better working relationships
• Discover ways to empower your organization with tools which will focus work, improve cross-functional partnerships and support more strategic discussions

You'll leave excited and eager to bring this new approach to communicating and collaborating with others. In addition to the course materials you'll receive a sharp set of Communication and Collaboration Method cards to keep in your back pocket for when you need a refresher.

We've got less than 10 seats left, you can register now.

UX Bootcamp Midwest added 10 more spots!

The inaugural UX Bootcamp Midwest in partnership with Red Cross of Columbus filled so quickly we added 10 spots, increasing the class size to 30. Space is limited to ensure one-on-one attention.

Rock Health classes off to an exciting start

We're proud to be working with Rock Health's 2012 class of start-ups. We're delivering a lightning round of design classes and hosting regular office hours for deep collaboration. Two weeks in and we're really excited by the great ideas, super motivated teams, and new approaches to improving healthcare.

While in Moscow, Alan and Chris were interviewed by Igor and Anton Gladkoborodov, who are with edutainment blog Theory and Practice to talk about education and learning in the modern world.

Theory and Practice began the interview with two large questions.

Igor Gladkoborodov: In your blog you write a lot about the specifics of the post-industrial era. The new economy heavily influences all aspects of human life, and now we are entering an era of post-everything. I am most interested in the aspect of education, what can you say about the post-education era?

Anton Gladkoborodov: In the industrialized world, education was reduced mainly to the technology of working with a tool or a machine. Similarly, mental activity was usually reduced to a set of algorithms. Today, we need to raise another kind of worker, one that is more flexible and dynamic. However, modern education does not meet the requirements of modern times; it is still based on the principle of factories. What, in your opinion, needs to be done to education?

It’s a good, long conversation, and if you’re down with the Russian you can read the original at the Theory and Practice website. (Special thanks to our friends at Innova for providing the source translation for us.) Below we’ve excerpted some of the most interesting stuff, and arranged it so we don’t sound as jetlagged and meandering as we actually were.

There's nothing we like more than seeing our design work come to life. Last week, Cooper Principal Designer, Stefan Klocek went on stage at Practice Fusion Connect 11 to present a prototype of the company's new iPad app to a room of 1200 physicians. Cooper designed and developed the EMR prototype in close collaboration with Practice Fusion over the last few months.

The iPad app represents a first look at a tool that extends Practice Fusion's free electronic health record platform to a format that is portable and easy for the doctor to use while seeing a patient. The goal of the design is to make it easy to document an encounter, while keeping the focus on the patient, rather than the computer. By leveraging smart defaults, templates, voice recognition, and streamlined workflows, doctors will be able to quickly capture salient facts, make diagnoses, and rapidly order medications, labs and specialist referrals. For the large percentage of patients with common ailments, the iPad will allow charting with little or no typing, and provide a structured guide for the exam which ensures nothing falls through the cracks.

With 25 million health records, Practice Fusion is by far the largest electronic health record system in the country. Adding an iPad app to their offering will help more doctors make the transition from traditional paper-based record-keeping to a digital, cloud-based system that's available from anywhere. An increasing number of doctors are opting for a fully digital office, giving them the efficiency benefits of information technology along with the promise of more accurate diagnosis and personalized treatments.

Stefan presents the iPad prototype on stage, accompanied by Edwin Miller, VP of product management, and Alan Cooper.

The app makes it easy for doctors to familiarize themselves with each patient's condition. Patients are organized by appointment time and a summary view presents the most relevant items from the patient's medical history. A simple swipe reveals more detailed information or tools for quickly updating each record.

When meeting patients, doctors would like to focus on their needs, not keyboard typing. The app includes tools to make text entry fast and accurate, such as dictation and template features.

Credits: Stefan Klocek, Andreas Braendhaugen, Jayson McCauliff, Jenea Hayes, Raphael Guilleminot, Nick Myers, Doug LeMoine

Alan, Chris, Kendra, and Tamara joined Innova, Russia's premier game development studio, for design education sessions and industry events focusing on the future of gaming and technology in Russia and around the world.

Kendra led interaction design and design communication and collaboration sessions for Innova's designers and technologists. The team immediately began using their new skills, creating a road map to establish goal directed design throughout their organization.

We co-hosted sessions with members of the Russian design community focusing on the current state of design in Russia and the world and the future of interaction design and technology.

Now that we're back in San Francisco, we realize, after all the opinions, ideas and laughter were shared, we are as inspired as our newfound design friends in Moscow to continue developing world-class methods for user-centered design.

South by Southwest (SxSW) is an annual gathering of creative folks, technologists, musicians, and filmmakers in Austin, Texas. It's big, Texas-style fun with interesting folks from around, and we've got some grand plans for next year's event. This is where you come in.

How you can help

Proposals are judged in part by how much support they get from the community (i.e., you). We're pretty excited by our ideas, and you can declare your support by voting and/or commenting on the talks in SxSW's panel picker. We've listed the talks below, and each title is linked to the picker. Just click on the talks you like and vote em up. It's quick, and mostly painless. Thanks!

Software Alchemy and the Arc of Technology

Alan Cooper

An outspoken pioneer in the modern computing era, and best known as the “Father of Visual Basic” and inventor of “personas”, Cooper will share rare insights into the evolution of software and interaction design based on human goals and needs - and a new vision for meeting the personal and business needs of the upcoming era. In conversation with Silicon Valley legend and former DEMO producer Chris Shipley. An insider vision of how the process of software and interaction design has unfolded over the last 25 years, and how lessons learned from that process can be applied to a compelling business case based not on traditional manufacturing but on a model of software design - bringing effectiveness over efficiency.

Healing Healthcare: Notes from the Front Line

Susan Dybbs with Graham Hughes MD; SAS, Ryan Panchadsaram, Pipette; Maggie Breslin, Center for Innovation at Mayo Clinic

Communication breakdowns, system failures and expensive, often misguided procedures, are common and symptomatic of our unhealthy healthcare system - a system that will not be healed by a single solution. Many companies and organizations are trying to tackle the problems of this complex ecosystem. But who can be the beacon to guide the way? Who can provide the innovation and the infrastructure to get it done? While startups can design solutions outside the confines of timid regulated bureaucracies, large healthcare organizations have the influence and customer base to move the industry and alter regulations. This panel will explore the barriers to healthcare innovation as well as highlight how these barriers can be overcome. We will discuss how to use cross-sector alliances to seed innovation into reality, illustrate the importance of clinical trials and describe how to navigate the labyrinthine reimbursement system to bring products to market.

Building team chemistry in baseball & technology

Doug LeMoine with David Bairstow, Thomson Reuters

Making a great product isn’t really all that different than making a World Series run. In both cases, the organization must assemble the right mix of talent, motivation, independent spirit and willingness to be coached. The right combination of these qualities results in a team who moves faster, makes better decisions, gets to better outcomes, and has more fun. None of this is easy, but it’s do-able, and we’ve assembled some vivid examples of how to do it right (or wrong) from things we know well: design, finance, and baseball. We’re going to discuss the tools and practices that we use to ensure that our teams are talented and high-functioning, and we’ll draw inspiration from our own roles in assembling design teams at Cooper and in building mobile products at Thomson Reuters. What role do performance-enhancing drugs play in product development? Tune in to find out.

The Visual Interface is Now Your Brand

Nick Myers

Like it or not, the digital world has changed at a wicked pace and more and more interactions between companies and customers now happen via an interface. Careful consideration of the software's design is of paramount importance to any company wishing to grow their customer base or loyalty. At the center of this change sits the user experience, which has become a huge influence in how customers perceive a company's brand. Traditional marketing principles and practices aren’t effective in software. So how do you create an experience that is usable, desirable, and still stands out? Myers, an interface and brand specialist in design, marketing, and development for 16 years, will highlight the differences of software from other forms of media, you’ll gain insight for creating a truly unique experience that guides executives and teams, and can influence your company’s culture. You’ll learn new techniques such as defining the ideal experience, exploring first impressions with visual language studies, and designing signature interactions. These techniques build a memorable experience that’s hard for your competitors to mimic and your customers will fall in love with.

Zoom! Interfaces! Presentation!

Chris Noessel

One of the most exciting presentation techniques of the last several years at conferences like SxSW, TED, and others around the world is the zoom interface. And why not? They let your audience fly with you between the superstructure of the Big Idea and the telling detail. They turn motion into information. And they lay thoughts out to be seen, considered, and poked at. It’s a way of presenting that matches the way people think, and makes the presenter’s thinking more clear in the process. They advance thought. Chris Noessel has been giving such presentations using custom software since 2002 (notably with the Make It So series of presentations at SxSW), and now that commercial software is available to do much of the same thing, it’s time to see him lay bare the secrets and techniques.

Cultivating a Better Life with Design

Kendra Shimmell with Brian Stone, The Ohio State University; Alexa Andrzejewski, Foodspotting; Teresa Brazen, Adaptive Path; JooYoung OH, Ziba

How can we become more intentional about the design of our "everyday" environments and interactions in order to cultivate better relationships, experiences, and the direction of our lives? Great designers and innovators share an innate curiosity, carefully studying the world around them, taking cues from a variety of cultures and disciplines, to inform the design of great products and services. That same attention should be paid to the cultivation of our life experiences. How can we take our design practices and recycle them back into our personal and family lives? A better life by design. Our panelists will share their stories; their techniques for the careful cultivation of their life experiences. We'll show how to bring your personal and professional worlds together into a more symbiotic relationship. We’ll show that there are clear sets of tools and principles learned from our professional lives—and how to best apply these tools in your life.

No More Mr. Nice Guy: The Skeptic’s Role in Design

Suzy Thompson

In creative, collaborative environments, a great deal of time and energy are focused on keeping everyone working together harmoniously. Positivity and can-do attitudes are in, criticism and judgments are out. I call bullshit. With all this attention on getting along, we’ve lost sight of the vital role of critical thinking - leaving clients, users, and the integrity of our profession hanging in the balance. This session will turn a critical eye to the world of design to examine the dangers of today’s kum-ba-ya approach to collaboration, and dive deep into the crucial role that skepticism plays in successful design practices. Covering everything from the basics of why, how, and when to inject a healthy dose of skepticism into your design process, to advanced collaboration techniques for getting the most out of your most critical thinkers, this session promises that even if you walk in a believer, you’ll leave a skeptic.

Women's Wisdom for a Connected Century (interaction category)

Tamara Wayland with Christie Dames, TechTalk; Suzanne H. EL-Moursi, SapientNitro; Lauren Serota, Frog

How can smart, ambitious women use the lessons of feminine tradition to move a into world where the old rules, written and practiced largely by men mentoring men, have been redrafted by women mentoring women -- a natural reaction to a system that was so badly broken, it no longer worked for either sex? Learn how the lessons and role models of our grandmothers and other women of an earlier era can help us move into new techniques and visions of mentoring for the 21st century - both for women and men.

Women's Wisdom for a Connected Century (music category)

Tamara Wayland with Hesta Prynn, Hesta Prynn; Emily White, Whitesmith Entertainment; Ashley Capps, AC Entertainment

How can smart, ambitious women -- and men -- use the lessons of feminine tradition to move a into world where the old rules, written and practiced largely by men mentoring men, have been redrafted by women mentoring women -- a natural reaction to a system that was so badly broken, it no longer worked for either sex? Learn how the lessons and role models of our grandmothers and other women of an earlier era can help us move into new techniques and visions of mentoring for the 21st century - both for women and men.

This first week of August has been good fun from start to finish! Jim, Faith, and Rock Health agilely went from stories to a plan of action.

Alan's post on ideas, innovation, and creative teams reminded us of an interesting perspective on innovation from Clay Christensen and Art Markman about busting innovation myths.

We took a break to watch the Giants game with our amazing summer interns Mo and Brendan.

Today, Golden, Greg, and Jenea are doing their part at Device Design Day. Get some design goodness of your own at in the upcoming Visual Interface Design session August 15-16.

Other interesting scoops this week

User experience and the design of news at the BBC world service. Turn your typed missive into a hand-written letter (but hurry, less than two weeks left). Designers and the Myers-Briggs: How do you compare?. Good news for speakers: Um, uh, ah: verbal stumbles are not so bad. Feel much better now. Five lessons from a year of tablet UX research.

Last Thursday, designers at Cooper co-hosted San Francisco Service Design Drinks at our offices. We had a great time drinking and making stuff with local folks interested in the emerging practice of service design. Jamin Hegeman launched this city’s chapter a year ago, and the event was a testament to his efforts to expand the conversation.

Over 30 people joined us for an evening of service blueprinting, and drinking, of course. Cooper’s Susan Dybbs and myself led attendees through an exercise in which we focused on a recent dining experience. Each design team included someone who had worked in the food service industry, providing quick access to domain knowledge. Teams began the exercise by listing all the steps or actions of their experience. They then cataloged the restaurant’s staff and artifacts interacted with and the support systems that were less visible yet enabled the meal. Finally, each team presented their three most interesting reflections on the exercise.

Highlights included discussion of service recovery, and the ways in which experiences succeed or fail because of the staff’s ability to adjust in real-time. We talked about the seen qualities of a service supported by those unseen. We also discussed how services can go to great lengths to curate a certain experience yet come across as disingenuous when inconsistencies in execution emerge.

By deconstructing a single service into rough but simple terms and parsing all the pieces to co-create a visual model, we hope that the attendees left with a greater understanding of Service Design and blueprinting, and an appreciation for local brews. We’re all looking forward to attending next month’s event!

Kia ora. In an earlier blog post, I asked if Kiwis would be interested in a January Cooper U, and despite it being in the “dead zone” of the summer holidays, the answer was an enthusiastic, “Yes!” So, we’re happy to open registration for a Kiwi Cooper U Practicum between 10-13 January.

What’s been your proudest achievement in life? Think about this for a minute or two. The accomplishments that I hold most dear are those that have occurred mostly outside of my professional career. But are we missing opportunities as designers and developers to contribute directly to furthering social causes? Social psychologist Jennifer Aaker and social media innovator Robert Chatwani say that we are. Cooper is proud to host these two Bay Area thought leaders at an open studio event on Wednesday, November 17th, from 6 - 9 pm at our offices on 100 1st Street on the 26th floor.

Jennifer Aaker and marketing technologist, Andy Smith’s new book The Dragonfly Effect is a must-read for designers and developers. The book details how people using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube beat the odds, made a difference, and literally saved lives. It tells how a former nightclub owner made a way for some of the world’s poorest people to have clean water, how a girl’s lemonade stand inspired fundraising for breast cancer, and how Barack Obama connected with a younger generation to become the first African American president of the United States. It underscores the importance of connecting meaning with social media when trying to create infectious action.

The book begins with a very personal story: In 2007, a friend, Sameer Bhatia, was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML). His one chance of survival was to find a bone marrow donor but his odds were slim: 1 in 25,000. Sameer’s friends, led by Robert Chatwani, used social technology to find a match for Sameer. And that’s just the beginning of the story!

Please join us at Cooper’s studio to meet Robert and Jennifer and to find out more about The Dragonfly Effect and the excellent design principles that were invaluable for affecting change. RSVP to rsvp@cooper.com.

Jennifer Aaker

A social psychologist and marketer, Jennifer Aaker is the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Her research spans time, money and happiness. She focuses on questions such as: “What actually makes people happy, as opposed to what they think makes them happy?” “How can small acts create infectious action, and how can such effects be fueled by social media?” She is widely published in the leading scholarly journals in psychology and marketing, and her work has been featured in a variety of media including The Economist, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BusinessWeek, Forbes, CBS Money Watch, NPR, Science, Inc, and Cosmopolitan.

A sought-after teacher in the field of marketing, Professor Aaker teaches in many of Stanford’s Executive Education programs as well as MBA electives including Designing Happiness, How to Tell a Story, Building Innovative Brands and The Power of Social Technology. She has also taught at UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Columbia and is a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award, Citibank Best Teacher Award, George Robbins Best Teacher Award and both the Spence and Fletcher Jones Faculty Scholar Awards.

Robert Chatwani

Robert Chatwani leads Global Citizenship for eBay Inc., which covers a range of technology-driven social innovation across eBay and PayPal. Reporting to eBay’s CEO, he oversees the company’s global social impact and business goals across three areas: entrepreneurship, sustainable commerce, and communities. eBay’s platforms have enabled 25 million sellers around the world, powered the sale of over $100 billion in pre-owned goods, and raised more than $200 million for nonprofit organizations. Robert previously co-founded WorldofGood.com by eBay, the world’s largest marketplace for socially responsible shopping. Prior to eBay, Chatwani was the co-founder of MonkeyBin, an online consumer marketplace for trade and barter. Robert began his career with McKinsey & Company in Chicago and Washington DC, where he served a range of Fortune 500 clients and launched McKinsey’s Globalization practice. Chatwani received a bachelor’s degree in economics from DePaul University and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He was named to Time Magazine’s Top 100 Green Pioneers of 2009.