“When we mean to build, we first survey the plot, then draw the model.”

Odd, I said to myself. That’s exactly what we do at Image, Space, Object; use narratives and models to inform the design process for small teams working on highly collaborative and iterative projects. And that, in turn, reminded me of an image that Hugh Dubberly sent to me after the last ISO Conference that highlights the relationship between stories and models:

Okay, maybe Shakespeare was speaking about physically surveying the plot (more in space than time), but the idea is very similar. Look at the situation. Model it. Reassess. Replot. Remodel. Present.

This August 6-9 at RMCAD will mark the 6th Image Space Object conference. I have been lucky to serve as a speaker and studio mentor for all six, and believe that, even with all the conferences and workshops I’ve attended, it is the most engaging and unusual.

There are some fabulous speakers at the conference (and it tends to be very much the same crew each year). This year, in addition to the organizers Mike and Kathy McCoy and Fred Murrell, studio mentors include Hugh Dubberly of the Dubberly Design Office (who has been at ISO each year, I believe), Rick Robinson (Founder of eLab and formerly at Sapient), Chris Conley (from IIT and Gravity Tank), and Tucker Viemeister (director of the Lab at Rockwell Group). New this year at ISO is Shelley Evenson of Carnegie Mellon, and I’m very much looking forward to meeting her.

But, what makes ISO different from other conferences is that the participants, errr, participate. As Mike McCoy is fond of saying, this is more of a graduate seminar than a series of lectures. Each attendee works together with their team and their studio mentors to build an original solution to a vexing (but entertaining) design problem. The challenge forces the team to work together in a multidisciplinary way to devise and present their solution.

We’re calling this year’s conference “Tools for Transformation”, and that’s exactly what it offers those who take part. Tools for collaboration, ideation, and expression, with a focus on rapid, low-fidelity, down and dirty prototypes. The entire conference is limited to just 40 participants, so it is truly a unique opportunity to get in and get your hands dirty.

Here is how Rick Griffith of Matter described his experience at last years conference:

Find our more at imagespaceobject.com.

The title of this article is Story-Centered Design, but what it really concerns is taking an integrated, holistic approach to developing solutions, especially in collaborative problem solving. It is a truism to say we’re working in an increasingly collaborative age, and it may be overstating the case somewhat (people have always worked collaboratively). What is true is that the partners in our collaboration have expanded to include not only designers and sponsoring organizations but also various audiences and potential audiences, and many of our tools are increasingly complex; by focusing on the human aspects of our work, we improve the value of what we create.

Design is a process of problem solving; addressing complex design issues requires the ability to understand the problem in as comprehensive a manner as possible in order to create the best possible solution. A story-centered approach, in conjunction with other user-centered design techniques (including research and prototyping), can help to create superior outcomes by encouraging a whole systems approach to understanding.

Stories are how people communicate; this is as true in design and business as in our personal lives. From developing the initial vision for a project through implementing the solution, any complex project requires consideration of numerous points of view. Ultimately, the best solution is the one that most elegantly and simply addresses the needs and desires of the various audiences, and narrative approaches provide an effective tool in helping to define, share, and develop that solution.

A story-based approach to design combines narrative techniques, modeling, and prototyping and applies them to business strategy, marketing, and innovation challenges. One advantage is that the approach does not require technical knowledge from team members, and all are encouraged to participate; it delivers rapid responses and focuses on behavioral needs and desires.

Project teams develop narratives for a number of reasons; stories help in defining a shared vision within the team, communicating that vision to stakeholders inside and outside the team, and testing and iterating the vision through the development process. Each project requires an individualized approach, but elements of storytelling are used regularly in a variety of projects, including product development, architecture, and interaction design.

More and more, our goal as designers is to provide the space where people can tell their own stories, or find elements of their own lives in the stories that we tell. Doing this validates and gives value to their lives.

Ultimately, the goal is to deliver value, and value is best understood in terms of individual experience.

What is a Story?

As used in the context of this discourse, the definition of a story may vary slightly from traditional concepts. Stories are made up of core elements, including plot, theme, character, and structure.

Plot is a vital element in many stories, perhaps even in most stories. When most people think of story, they think in terms of plot. An important consideration regarding storytelling in the art and design space is that plot often becomes a secondary or even tertiary consideration. It can be hard to figure out the point-to-point precisely because there are so many points of entry and exit, and so many different paths that can be traversed through the story, whatever it turns out to be. In these cases there are other elements intrinsic to the story that become of primary importance, including theme, structure, and character.

One way to think of this is that in the world of art and design, the plot is incomplete; it’s always a work in progress. The audience becomes a character in the story and is responsible for the way it works out over time. We need to think more of narrative architecture and less about point-to-point definition. Themes, structures, and characters are put in place and allowed to define some of the details; stories, when used in a forward-looking situation, like prototyping and modeling or even architecture, need to provide a framework where the visitor is engaged and encouraged to tell their own story. And that story becomes the starting point for future modification and revision.

Consider the structure of pop songs; the verses and choruses repeat and build on each other, but never close off the imagination of the listener. Or in games, where the player is the story – the variations repeat in thousands of different ways. In an article on game design Henry Jenkins of MIT speaks about the importance of spatial stories.

His point of reference in this is the work of Michel de Certeau (The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, 1988), who wrote that all stories derive from a single source, which is the hero’s quest – stories developed in order to allow people to understand their landscape. Jenkins also quotes the urban planner Kevin Lynch from The Image of the City, where he says “a landscape whose every rock tells a story may make difficult the creation of fresh stories.”

Jenkins explores a gap between two camps of game theorists, the narratologists (exemplified by Brenda Laurel), and ludologists, such as Jasper Juul. Ludology is a neologism based on the Greek word “ludus” meaning ‘to play’. To risk oversimplification, the narratologists focus on the story while the ludologists believe it is the spontaneity of the game that is paramount. The ludologists raise a very good point; you don’t want to wait for a story from a ball before you catch it. Beyond this, there is always a risk when creating an interactive story of taking the reader out of the moment.

Games serve as an effective model for story in art and design because if a narrative architecture is to be successful in allowing the reader to become the author (or at least a co-author or agent), we have to create as much immediacy as possible. Language always mediates, and can often sit in the way of experience. This relates to Malcolm Gladwell’s conception, as he wrote in his book ‘Blink’, of rapid cognition, or as a friend of mine calls it, muscle memory. The challenge is to build a structure that encourages immediate, emotional engagement while still shaping the story.

Open-ended stories repeat, in a ritualistic fashion. Gertrude Stein said it isn’t a question of repetition, but insistence. She said that stories are “very like a frog hopping he cannot ever hop exactly the same distance or the same way of hopping at every hop. A bird’s singing is perhaps the nearest thing to repetition but it you listen they too vary their insistence.” Stories have annunciation, repetition, and revision. Sometime they become shared memes of our culture, other times they become nothing more than truisms, needing to be updated and revitalized in order to reconnect to our experience.

The designer Kathy McCoy talks about tribes, the groups to which we are identified or self-identify. A particular design can tell a very different story to a different group of individuals, depending on any number of factors ranging from language to cultural morays to behaviors. And that story may lead to other and unintended connections beyond those intended by the originator. Creating a framework in which this can be explored can add value to the product in unexpected ways.

Story in Art and Architecture

Sometimes a story is an arrangement of images, as Sergei Eisenstein discussed in his works on cinematic montage. In Battleship Potemkin he used over 1,300 separate cuts in creating the Odessa Steps sequence of the movie. The movie was built, in true Soviet collectivist style. The story is built through a series of individual images, with actors who weren’t really even actors, with revolutionary editing unlike anything done to that date, and very different from the plot-based development employed by D.W. Griffith and others in the American film industry.

When we build a story in design or art or architecture, we aren’t able to control the order in which these images come together for the viewer. The experience is one that builds over time, based on varying degrees of exposure, but what is ultimately created is a sort of narrative architecture rather than a plot. When Walter Gropius started the Bauhaus, he had an idea of a way of building that would break down the barriers between artists and craftsmen, but he didn’t know exactly what form this would take as he built his school and workshop.

Narrative in the visual arts is also something that has come back into style since the heyday of the abstract expressionists.Today, I don’t think many people would stand behind this quote from Clive Bell, which he wrote in support of the abstract expressionists non-objective paintings:

“The representative element in a work of art may or may not be harmful, but it is always irrelevant. For to appreciate a work of art, we must bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its affairs and ideas, no familiarity with its emotions.”

To me, the thought of appreciating a work of art without bringing my life into it reeks of a particular kind of fascism. Not that my experience, my story, is paramount, but it shouldn’t be discounted completely either. And even if I tried, I can’t believe it is possible or preferable, if only to gain some understanding from the otherness, the strangeness of the experience as different from mine.

One artist who suffered through being attacked, at times quite viciously, by the proponents of abstract expressionism was Ben Shahn. Shahn, who was one of the most successful muralists working in America during the great depression and went on to create a brilliant body of work, never gave up the use of narrative in his paintings, though over the course of his career he became less concerned with the political meaning inherent in his art and increasingly more concerned with the expressing the situation of the individual in art.

Shahn wrote a great book, collected from lectures he gave at Yale University in the 50s called “The Shape of Content”, where he made the following proposition: “form is the shape of content.” Or more specifically, “form is the visual shape of content.” There are stories, whether implicit or explicit, contained in every image, every sculpture, every building.

Contrast this with a statement by the great designer, Paul Rand, who said that “Art is primarily a question of form, not content.” Can we bring together these two, apparently contradictory, comments without lapsing into some form of cognitive dissonance? Or, is it as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposite ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”?

Why Use Story-Centered Design?

Here are some basic principles why story and narrative are worthwhile points of discussion for designers:

First, and at the very least, stories are effective tools for designers and artists as a descriptive tool used to place work in context and build an argument for its validity. This story can come from a variety of different angles; illustrating a backstory or historical perspective for instance, or a meta-story regarding social context, or it could tell the story of the vision of the artist or designer. These are pretty traditional uses of story. Also, stories can be used to expand on traditional tools in the designers toolkit by providing a collaborative team a shared vision to work for by defining goal and mission without overly restricting the approach to problem solving.

Second, there are a number of ways in which narrative approaches extend on and enhance the process of user-centered or participatory design. Over the past 15 or 20 years this has been a remarkably influential and well-documented movement (for instance, the work of Ideo). In my work with interaction design, I’ve been an avid adopter of many techniques brought forward by participatory design, including rapid prototyping and ethnographic research, and believe there is tremendous value in these approaches. Some techniques, for instance, scenario or experience modeling, are very closely related to storytelling, in that they create a model of how a particular person could (and hopefully would) interact with the system or object in the process of being designed.

And finally, there is an emerging opportunity to use storytelling techniques in the creation of new design solutions. The game design industry is beginning to explore some similar ideas, where game players can begin to move beyond agency (where the player’s impact is structured within a fairly limited range of options) to more focus on authorship, where the range of outcomes is much broader. The movement from agency to authorship rests on a continuum, and in the case of design process there is always going to be some sort of framework on which the story is based.

Storytelling is not the only approach to understanding or communicating design issues, but is one tool to be used in conjunction with others. In particular, Crafting stories, and particular types of stories, can help to expand our dialog regarding design issues, and help us to avoid some of the reductiveness that seems to fill much of the design space.

We live in a world where there is a tremendous amount of interconnectedness between various disciplines. Designers need to be aware of politics and business and cultures. Ultimately, it is a question of value, and values. More than ever, we need to be concerned with value of what we communicate to the individual and to the world in which we live. Design is problem solving, but the problem always comes in a context. As designers we need to work to see that the context is as comprehensive as possible; even when presented with a very specific issue, it is incumbent on us to connect to the larger framework of the world in which we live.

Story provides a structure through which multiple individuals can bring their own experiences and beliefs to bear on a shared experience, enhancing it and growing it over time. And in doing so build communities in ways that don’t oversimplify or reduce our experiences into a homogenized mediocrity. We are looking for excellence, and from all those engaged in the process, including designers, businesses and the public. Now is the age when everyone creates.

Yesterday I posted this video on the buckfifty.org website - to my mind it’s a document of a time in Denver, the early 1990s, when the downtown area was still pretty deserted. My buddy Ray and I used to do performance art around town under the moniker of Two Significant Guys; our general mantra was that “you are only as successful as you pretend to be.” This was the era of Bush the first, so it seemed appropriate. It’s interesting that we spoke so much about change – I guess we were before our time.

So, in this video the Two Significant Guys encourage the feeding of kids while speaking of the importance of family values. We also eat mexican food and report on the implosion of buildings, including the Truckers Terminal and Montgomery Wards. Recorded in Denver in 1991 and 1992 with Hugh Graham and Ray Schelgunov under the direction and camera of Mike Reddick.

I added a new post to buckfifty.org today that’s pretty fascinating. It includes a slideshow of rejection letters from a scrapbook that jhh and I found in our basement back when we lived at 29th and Wyandot here in Highland.

The author of the scrapbook was Mary E. Horlbeck, a writer who lived in Edgewater during the 1930s. Between 1933 and 1937 she created this book of 138 rejection letters she received from magazines and newspapers for short stories she had written. She did eventually publish some stories, but not until after this scrapbook was full. It’s a remarkable expression of the dedication of a writer to getting published during the great depression.

Scrapbooks provide a fascinating glimpse into the past; in fact, Jessica Helfand has published a book on the topic (Scrapbooks, published by Yale University Press). Although this scrapbook doesn’t have the design sensibility of some of those that Helfand includes in her book (Anne Sexton’s scrapbook, for instance) Mary Horlbeck’s scrapbook is still charming and insightful.

1.

Denver is a square, proud, prompt little place, surrounded by immensity.
–Demas Barnes (Denver visitor, 1865)

Denver is the unlikeliest of cities; there’s no port, no access to an ocean or a major river, nowhere to get to (easily) between here and there. Compared to other urban centers, it came late to the party, and unnaturally, forced on an unwilling landscape. Started by claimjumpers and promoted with false claims of easy money, there was never any gold at the confluence, but there was an opportunity to set up a transportation hub in one of the less explored and exploited regions of the country.

In the first two years, 100,000 people came through looking to find a fortune; by 1864, the city had less than 5,000 residents and was practically destroyed by flood and fire. For those still here, isolated in “this god-forsaken place,” it may as well have been the end of the world. It was touch and go until the railroad came in in 1870, setting off one of the first of Denver’s booms.

Maybe it was the boom and bust cycles, or the latecomer status, or the distance from centers of culture, but for much of the city’s history it’s been better known as a place to go through, rather than a place to stay.

2.

You may thank your stars that you left this country when you did, for it is deader than it ever was. The fact is I am getting damn sick of this God-forsaken place.
–Silas Soule (1861)

One hundred twenty years later, in the late 1980s, the oil bust wreaked havoc on the Denver’s economy; people were jumping ship for wherever they could make a living, and mostly anywhere was better than here. Downtown was sleepy and lonely (especially after hours), and the skyscrapers that had been built in the 70s emptied out as fast as they went up. The good news? Parking was plentiful and free.

One of the many odd jobs I had at that time involved emptying the offices (cubicles and desks mostly) from the Arco Tower on 17th Street in Downtown. For weeks, we loaded the furniture on carts and rolled them onto semi-trailers destined for warehouses in Texas. The wealth (and jobs) that had been imported left town when times turned tough.

Looking at the empty storefronts in the Arco Tower, my buddy Ray and I proposed to the property manager that we install a series of temporary artworks that would show the space off while also having a sense of humor. Our proposal? Cows. Denver, we thought, should embrace its traditions, and engage in a fun dialogue to encourage people to come back downtown.

It sounded good to us. But not to the property manager. Anything but cows, he said.

3.

…the rare beauty of the accidental location, the grandeur of the region, the charms of the climate, and the enormous permanent resources of the country became fixed in the minds of the people…
–Jerome Smiley, History of Denver (1900)

From its founding 150 years ago, Denver’s residents have described the city with a combination of self-deprecation and boisterous civic boosterism, sometimes with more than a touch of defensiveness. But along the way, something has changed, and there is a bit of self-confidence that doesn’t seem so out of place; there’s a willingness to embrace both the city’s frontier roots and its urban existence.

Denver is no longer so oddly placed in the middle of the frontier. The world has changed. Denver was an accidental city, but now it has grown to become a metropolitan center. Maybe now we can look back with some pride and just a little bit of nostalgia for our cowtown past.

–
Note: This post is co-published with a new project we kicked off this week in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the city of Denver. Called buckfifty.org, we intend to publish 150 expressions of the history, culture, and community of Denver over the course of the next six months (or so). And potentially drink some whisky along the way too. We are looking for submissions, please visit buckfifty.org if you are interested in participating.

I often find myself offering up an ‘elevator pitch’ to people I meet and, given their typical response, I think it’s fair to say that if I happened to be riding up with Steve Jobs at One Infinite Loop, I’d be out of a job before I reached the fourth floor. Or maybe not, Jobs is known as being fairly design savvy. But it’s a tough one to explain at a cocktail party.

Fortunately for me and my livelihood, there is an increasing awareness of how design strategy can help to inform business decisions. Quite a bit of my work is focused on interaction design (websites, social networking, publishing strategy, etc.), so it tends to come through the communications, marketing, or information technology groups at organizations.

Most of the folks in these groups understand the basic concepts of ‘design thinking’, and many come from a design background, so they have a sense of how the design approach is used to solve problems. (If you are interested in a good overview of design thinking, check out the article, thinking by design, written by Todd Wasserman and published this week on brandweek.)

But for the broader business (and social) community, it can be a bit tough to describe the components of a typical design research and strategy project. Part of the issue is that design research and strategy don’t fit into cozy little packages. Design strategy combines a generalist’s approach with talents and techniques stolen from social scientists, entrepreneurs, and writers, and then adds in the designer’s eye for detail.

Product and industrial designers add in a whole other set of skills, the skills of the craftsperson, understanding materials, global sourcing and production, refinement through prototyping, distribution, and a healthy dollop of chutzpah to drive the process through. Architects and urban planners use many related concepts, though they may call them by different names. Whether the projects are large or small, there are similar components and similarly practical benefits offered by engaging in ‘people-centered’ design strategy.

What is design strategy, and how does it work?

As I’ve mentioned previously in a posting on “What If” Design, design strategy is an approach that uses a combination of research and generative approaches to come up with specific and practical opportunities for improving products, services, and communications.

One of the most compelling aspects of the application of design strategy is that is can be scaled to meet the needs of almost any type of problem, whether large or small. For instance, I’m currently working with a large multinational corporation on how to better engage the global marketplace, and have also used the same approach working with local cultural heritage travel agencies and very small entrepreneurial startups.

From my perspective there are four components involved in every design strategy project: research, interpretation, ideation, and iteration.

Research: Figure and Ground

Research involves understanding both the context (the ‘ground’), and the user (the ‘figure’). Both are vitally important to developing a successful strategy.

Understanding the context requires both the development of a clear mission statement (what are we trying to do?) as well as some sort of market and capabilities analysis (what is possible?). Without contextual understanding, projects risk devolving into hypothetical models that don’t provide concrete and actionable solutions.

This is not to discount the importance of brainstorming and ideation – the goal of design strategy is always to find new opportunities that weren’t apparent previously – but rather to understand that design is always about working within restrictions. Teams will often attempt to jump right into the ideation process without first defining clear goals, which can quickly hamstring a project and create frustration. In my experience, not spending time on defining the project’s goals is one of the most frequent causes of failure in a design strategy project.

Contextual analysis can be done in a number of ways; I usually begin with some combination of stakeholder interviews and competitive analysis. Depending on the complexity of the project, I’ll also often conduct a multidisciplinary “visioning session” with stakeholders from within the organization. The extent of this research may vary widely depending on the scope of the project and the resources of the organization; as an example, a two-hour visioning session may be all that is needed for a new interactive marketing and communications plan for a non-profit organization, while it may take months of effort to pull together the right combination of information to understand the market context for a new product or service.

In addition to developing a mission and vision for the project, one of the outputs of the contextual analysis is a map of the potential audience for the product or service being designed. This map then serves as a starting place for the next phase of research.

Understanding the Individual

Former Congressman and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill was fond of saying that “all politics is local.” I believe that all design strategy projects are local, or even more to the point, all design strategy is focused on engaging the needs of the individual. In order to do this, there needs to be an understanding of the individual, and to provide specific solutions that meet the needs and desires of the individual.

Of course, there’s no way to understand (or design) the experience of every individual – in fact, some thoughtful folks including Hugh Dubberly have argued persuasively that there is no such thing as ‘experience design’ – and given the nature of interaction, it’s ultimately not desirable to do so. Our goal is to create a framework to allow the individual to engage and enhance the experience in their own way.

But in the research phase of our project, our goal is to spend whatever time and energy we can (within the limitations of the timeline) gaining insight into the various individuals who will be using the proposed solution. On a small project, this may be as simple as interviewing one or two co-workers or friends – it’s possible that a ‘test group of one’ could offer the insight you need.

Other projects (okay, most projects) require more effort in terms of people-centered research. My own process usually involves selecting as broad a range of individuals from the target audience as possible. So, if we’re designing a downtown library, we’d want to take a look at some combination of employees, volunteers, historical researchers, mystery readers, event attendees, children, homeless people, and more, and then decide on what cross-section we can conduct our research on. Depending on the complexity of the project, I usually limit the number of research subjects to between 10 and 12, as after that I usually begin to see repetition in the findings.

Although interviews are a good starting point (and sometimes all that can be arranged), I prefer to engage in look at other methods of fieldwork that can provide more meaningful data to use in analysis and interpretation. If it’s a physical space, pure observation (live, or via video or photography) can be helpful. Sometimes it’s useful to engage the audience more directly in the process (via photo journaling, for instance). The truth is that there are hundreds of different techniques for conducting ethnographic fieldwork, and the most effective approach needs to be specific to the context of the particular project.

Interpretation: A Bridge to Somewhere

Dr. Rick Robinson, one of the godfathers (in the sense of important progenitor, not mafioso) of applied ethnography, says that an ethnography is:

a (thick) description of something (a system, an activity, a group, a setting, a belief, a culture) and an interpretation (not simply a summary) of that description, toward an end (meaning that someone has to do something with it), within the constraints of site, setting, time, tools, materials, and solution spaces.

One of the essential differences between design research and traditional research (as practiced by social scientists) is that in our world we are looking for ways that research can inform the design process. We’re looking for connections between what we are studying and what we want to create. For this reason, we’re not doing ‘real’ research, and it’s almost inevitable that some of our personal prejudices will enter into the process. The value of design research comes through what Rick calls the “interpretation” of the description of something (a system, an activity, a group, etc.).

From my perspective, this interpretation or analysis is the bridge between the observational and generative phases of the project, and therefore the insights found within this phase are vital to moving the project forward. This interpretation may take many forms - often, it will be expressed in the form of a model (such as the experience models that Rick uses), but it can also be represented through narrative, imagery, and other graphics. I don’t find it useful to sweat the formal components, but rather to look for ways to communicate most effectively. If the interpretation doesn’t effectively inform the design process, then it hasn’t been successful.

Ideation and Iteration

Okay, so where do ideas come from? There’s certainly some truth to the “necessity is the mother of” argument, but we’re looking at how to encourage new ideas in a context where it is often easier (and safer) just to regurgitate what the boss said, or what the competition does. Keep your head down and it won’t get shot off.

If ideas come from a willingness to not just repeat the common line, the standard response, it’s also not just a question of coming up with something new – practical ideas evolve from a strong understanding of the particular situation, which is why ideation can be informed by insights provided by people-centered design research. Design as a practice is about creatively overcoming limitations; without some sort of structure, there is no freedom.

Effective ideation is not a one shot deal, and it’s usually a collaborative process - it’s about iteration and variation as explored by multidisciplinary teams. Advertising agencies speak of the holy trinity of the creative director, designer, and writer – but it’s the combination of a the visual person and the verbal person that most often provides the spark. I’ve seen the same spark come from combining a marketing person and an engineer, though only if there is a structure in place that makes the process effective.

The process of ideation is also one that can take many forms - sketches, cartoons, storyboards, use cases, paper prototypes, video-based narratives, animations, all starting from the most basic (drawn on a napkin) to the most refined. Try not to get stuck, but when you do head back to the initial mission, and the insights offered the research. As a variation on voting in Chicago, try to fail early and often - it’s much less expensive to explore new ideas earlier in the process than later.

Some Final Thoughts

The essence of this approach, from my perspective, is as follows:

• Understand your mission, your vision, and your stakeholders
• Conduct some research, preferably in context
• Interpret your research findings through models and narrative
• Explore design options through low fidelity approaches
• Get the big questions answered before you niggle the details

More and more, the job of the designer (and the design researcher) is to provide a platform on which more can be added later. This is especially true in interaction and service design, but there is more and more overlap between products, services, and platforms.

The house is a mess, a rental property and not well-maintained, but it was all she could afford. Since she hurt herself the owner has been trying to get her to move out, but she doesn’t have the money to go anywhere else. So, they are involved in some litigation, or threats of litigation. I imagine that the owner wants to sell the house now, as I’m pretty sure she’s lost her homeowner’s insurance. But she can’t really kick Jane out, given that her slumlord ways were the reason that Jane got hurt in the first place. 

When Jane first moved in, she was excited to have a place of her own. She’d come back to Denver after getting out of an abusive relationship, and was looking to make a new start. But then one of her three sons moved in with his wife and kids. He had moved back to Colorado from North Carolina, where he’d been in the military, and needed a place to stay. His family stayed next door for several months while he looked for work. Eventually, he moved to the suburbs. As he said to me, he didn’t want his kids to go to school with a bunch of mexicans. Of course, he said he wasn’t racist. Just wants his kids to be with their own kind. 

Once his family moved out, Jane’s high school age son (her youngest), moved in. Just the two of them. At first. But then Jane told me one day that her son’s girlfriend was pregnant. His high school girlfriend. Soon enough, the girlfriend moves in, and now there are three generations there once again, now that the grandkid has been born. And more. Jane’s middle son moved back from Wyoming, where he’d apparently lost his job working on an oil rig. And her brother, he’s staying there too, just for a while. 

It’s a little unclear what anyone does over there, at least most of the time. There’s a lot of time spent smoking on the front porch, and the cigarette butts tend to pile up on the sidewalk, and then work their way down the hill into our yard. Occasionally, there’s a forty ounce beer bottle on display. But there’s almost never any sign of industrious activity. 

Last weekend we put up an Obama Biden sign in our yard. Not a big deal around here - this is a pretty urban neighborhood in Denver and, as you would expect, it votes pretty significantly to the progressive side of the spectrum. Of course, I realize that yard signs are not a particularly useful way to promote a candidate (fivethirtyeight.com had a pretty funny post on the topic last month), but what the heck. Show your flair. And, I thought maybe it might get our neighbors to consider becoming involved in politics, and maybe vote for their own self-interest.

So, imagine my surprise earlier this week when I look out and saw that our neighbors had put up some yard signs in front of their house. Three, actually. Two for John McCain, and one for Bob Schaffer. Apparently, they are three times as excited about their candidate as we are about ours. 

At first, I was shocked. Republicans? In my neighborhood? And right next door? And it’s the unemployed family with the unwed teenage mother who are on the verge of getting evicted, and have no where to go, and they are supporting McCain Palin and Big Oil Bob? Unbelievable. 

When I thought about it a bit more though, it does take a bit a cojones to politic for the republicans in this neighborhood. As Kenny Be said when we told him about it a couple nights ago, “hey, it’s easier to come out as gay in this neighborhood than republican.” 

I haven’t had the chance to ask why they support who they do, but I suppose I can imagine. There’s a teenage mom. Some military. Some fear of immigrants taking their jobs. Fear, really, has to be the driving force in their decisions. 

I’d love to see that fear replaced with hope - through education, job training, sustainable growth. I feel for Jane, and know that she’s got a lot on her plate, unemployed, hurt, with a teenage kid and his girlfriend and their son and her brother and her other son all living together and threatened with losing their home. It’s tough, and I hope for the best. 

Here’s hoping the election doesn’t turn out the way they want it to.

Vote 2008

I ran into Patty Calhoun at the primary this summer, and talked about how we’re going to miss going down to the polling place and visiting with the residents at the Ivy Manor (now called the Spearly Center) where voting day was the one of the most exciting events of the year. Somehow, that “I Voted” sticker just isn’t the same when it comes from your mail-in ballot, and not from the community-spirit infused volunteer.

The following is my attempt to make sense of an unnaturally long and tedious Colorado ballot. To create this version, I used a Ballot Guide tool provided by Politics West, which works pretty well. I did actually read the ballot amendments that are proposed, and I considered a variety of points of view, including progress now, the denver dailies, bell policy center, squarestate.net, and others.

Most of all, my decisions are based on an underlying belief that progressive politicians better represent a future of opportunity. I also believe that “citizen-sponsored’ amendments to the constitution are usually a bad idea, though that belief is occasionally tempered by the reality that some of the bad amendments we’ve passed in the past (aka, TABOR) require an occasional run around.

So here it is, for what it’s worth:

1. President

   1. John McCain
   2. → Barack Obama
   3. Charles Baldwin
   4. Bob Barr
   5. Cynthia McKinney
   6. Ralph Nader

2. U.S. Senate

   1. Bob Kinsey
   2. Bob Schaffer
   3. → Mark Udall

3. 1st Congressional District

   1. Martin Buchanan
   2. → Diana DeGette
   3. George Lilly

4. House District 5

   1. → Joel Judd
   2. J J Swiontek

5. Amendment 46 - Discrimination and Preferential Treatment by Governments

   Amendment 46 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: - prohibit Colorado governments from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, or public contracting; - make exceptions for federal programs, existing court orders or other legally binding agreements, and bona fide qualifications based on sex; and - provide the same remedies that are available for violations of existing Colorado anti-discrimination law.
   1. Yes
   2. → No
   Comment: 46 is stupid and unnecessary. Perfect example of a bad use of the amendment process.

6. Amendment 47 - Prohibition on Mandatory Labor Union Membership and Dues

   Amendment 47 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: ‚ prohibit requiring an employee to join and pay any dues or fees to a labor union as a condition of employment; and ‚ create a misdemeanor penalty for violation of this law.
   1. → No
   2. Yes
   Comment: Anything Jake Jabs is for, I’m against.

7. Amendment 48 - Definition of Person

   Amendment 48 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: define the term “person” to “include any human being from the moment of fertilization”; and apply this definition of person to the sections of the Colorado Constitution that protect the natural and essential rights of persons, allow open access to courts for every person, and ensure that no person has his or her life, liberty, or property taken away without due process of law.
   1. Yes
   2. → No
   Comment: Inane. Dangerous. Even our pro-life governor is against this.

8. Amendment 49 - Limitation on Public Payroll Deductions

   Amendment 49 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: -prohibit any public employee paycheck deduction, except for: deductions required by federal law; tax withholdings; court-ordered liens and garnishments; health benefit and other insurance deductions; deductions for savings, investment, and retirement plans; and deductions for charitable, religious, educational, and other tax-exempt organizations.
   1. Yes
   2. → No
   Comment: Interferes with individual choice and local control. Basically, an attempt to limit free speech.

9. Amendment 50 - Limited Gaming

   Amendment 50 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: - allow residents of Central City, Black Hawk, and Cripple Creek to vote to extend casino hours, approve additional games, and increase the maximum single bet limit; - give most of the gaming tax revenue that results from new gaming limits to Colorado community colleges and to the gaming cities and counties; - require statewide voter approval for any gaming tax increase if new gaming limits are adopted by any gaming town; and - exempt the revenue raised from new gaming limits from state and local revenue and spending limits.
   1. Yes
   2. → No
   Comment: This is one of the more interesting choices on the ballot. Apparently, I’m a puritan. Perhaps you are a libertarian, and believe that if someone is stupid enough to gamble, they deserve to lose their money. I, on the other hand, am afraid that someone, somewhere, is having more fun than I am. And, I’m voting against this because I don’t want to see that happen.

10. Amendment 51 - State Sales Tax Increase for Services for People With Developmental Disabilities

    Amendment 51 proposes amending the Colorado statutes to: - increase the state sales and use tax from 2.9 percent to 3.0 percent on July 1, 2009, and from 3.0 percent to 3.1 percent on July 1, 2010; - direct that the new money be used to pay for services for people with developmental disabilities and to help eliminate the waiting lists for services; - prohibit the legislature from reducing the current level of state funding for services for people with developmental disabilities; and - exempt the new money from state spending limits.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: It seems that I’m a socialist. This is one of those times when I vote against my fundamental beliefs to get around TABOR (taxpayer bill of rights, for the acronym challenged). As a society, we have to treat people with disabilities with more respect.

11. Amendment 52 - Use of Severance Tax for Highways

    Amendment 52 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: require the state legislature to spend a portion of state severance tax collections on highway projects.
    1. Yes
    2. → No
    Comment: It’s a stupid idea to change the distribution of funds through the constitution.

12. Amendment 53 - Criminal Accountability of Business Executives

    BACKERS OF THIS MEASURE PULLED IT FROM THE BALLOT ON OCT. 2. WHILE THE QUESTION MAY STILL APPEAR ON YOUR BALLOT, RESULTS WILL NOT BE TALLIED.
    1. Yes
    2. No

13. Amendment 54 - Campaign Contribution Restrictions for Certain Govt. Contractors

    Amendment 54 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: - prohibit certain government contractors from contributing to a political party or candidate for the contract’s duration and two years thereafter; - prohibit contributors to ballot issue campaigns from entering into certain government contracts relating to the ballot issue; - apply the prohibitions on campaign contributions and ballot issue contracts to any contractor with a government contract or contracts that does not use a public and competitive bidding process soliciting at least three bids and with a total value greater than $100,000 in a single year; and - apply the prohibitions on campaign contributions and ballot issue contracts to a labor organization holding a collective bargaining agreement with a state or local government.
    1. Yes
    2. → No
    Comment: this is an attempt to reign in free speech, and it also places very tough contracting requirements on rural areas of the state.

14. Amendment 55 - Allowable Reasons for Employee Discharge or Suspension

    BACKERS OF THIS MEASURE PULLED IT FROM THE BALLOT ON OCT. 2. WHILE THE QUESTION MAY STILL APPEAR ON YOUR BALLOT, RESULTS WILL NOT BE TALLIED.
    1. Yes
    2. No

15. Amendment 56 - Employer Responsibility for Health Insurance

    BACKERS OF THIS MEASURE PULLED IT FROM THE BALLOT ON OCT. 2. WHILE THE QUESTION MAY STILL APPEAR ON YOUR BALLOT, RESULTS WILL NOT BE TALLIED.
    1. Yes
    2. No

16. Amendment 57 - Additional Remedies for Injured Employees

    BACKERS OF THIS MEASURE PULLED IT FROM THE BALLOT ON OCT. 2. WHILE THE QUESTION MAY STILL APPEAR ON YOUR BALLOT, RESULTS WILL NOT BE TALLIED.
    1. Yes
    2. No

17. Amendment 58 - Severance Taxes on the Oil and Gas Industry

    Amendment 58 proposes amending the Colorado statutes to: - increase the amount of state severance taxes paid by oil and natural gas companies, primarily by eliminating an existing state tax credit; - allocate the increased severance tax revenue to college scholarships for state residents, wildlife habitat, renewable energy projects, transportation projects in energy-impacted areas, and water treatment grants; and - exempt all oil and gas severance tax revenue from state and local spending limits.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: Okay, here’s another example of going against my fundamental bias against constitutional amendment. But hey, why should Colorado be cheaper than Wyoming when it comes to the cost of oil drilling?

18. Amendment 59 - Education Funding and TABOR rebates

    Amendment 59 proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: - eliminate rebates that taxpayers receive when the state collects more money than it is allowed, and spend the money on preschool through 12th grade (P-12) public education; - eliminate the required inflationary increase for P-12 education spending; and - set aside money in a new savings account for P-12 education.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: Once again, an initiative to address the difficulties that TABOR has placed on funding - in this case for education.

19. Ref. L - Age Qualification for Serving in the General Assembly

    Referendum L proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: - lower the age requirement for serving in the state legislature from 25 to 21.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: Okay, Referenda are different, they are offered up by the legislature. In this case, I’m not too concerned by having a 21 year old in the legislature. In exchange, I’d like to see the legal driving age raised to 25.

20. Ref. M - Eliminate Obsolete Constitutional Provisions - Land Value

    Referendum M proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: - remove a provision that allows the state legislature to delay taxing land value increases from planting hedges, orchards, and forests on private lands.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: I would like to have a private forest, and I want it tax free. But I’ll vote for this anyhow.

21. Ref. N - Eliminate Obsolete Constitutional Provisions - Intoxicating Liquors

    Referendum N proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: - remove provisions related to the regulation of alcohol beverages from two sections of the constitution.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: Because I want to be able to go into a saloon in Colorado.

22. Ref. O - Initiative Petition Requirements

    Referendum O proposes amending the Colorado Constitution to: - decrease the number of signatures required to place a statutory initiative on the ballot, and increase the number of signatures required to place a constitutional initiative on the ballot; - require that eight percent of signatures for constitutional initiatives be gathered from each congressional district; - require that drafts of proposed constitutional initiatives be submitted for review earlier in the year; - extend the time period for collecting signatures for statutory initiatives; - increase the number of votes required for the legislature to change a statutory initiative for five years after the statute takes effect; and - allow the public and state legislators to comment on proposed initiatives at a public meeting.
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: YES, oh yes, for the love of all things holy. Look at this insane ballot! Dearest neighbors, please vote for this.

23. DPS Referred Issue 3A

    SHALL DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS (SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1) DEBT BE INCREASED $454 MILLION, WITH A MAXIMUM REPAYMENT COST OF $990 MILLION, AND SHALL DISTRICT TAXES BE INCREASED $59 MILLION ANNUALLY (ESTIMATED TO RESULT IN A TAX INCREASE OF APPROXIMATELY $5 DOLLARS PER YEAR FOR EVERY $100,000 OF RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY VALUE) TO COMPLETE NECESSARY RENOVATIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS DISTRICTWIDE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE FOLLOWING: • MAKING CRITICAL REPAIRS AND RENOVATIONS, THAT TOUCH ALMOST EVERY SCHOOL BUILDING OR GROUNDS IN THE DISTRICT • IMPROVING COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY ACROSS THE DISTRICT • REPLACING DETERIORATING SCHOOL PLAYGROUNDS WITH NEW ONES THAT ARE SAFER 14 • CONSTRUCTING A NEW KINDERGARTEN-THROUGH-EIGHTH GRADE AND NEW HIGH SCHOOL TO ACCOMMODATE THE RAPID STUDENT GROWTH IN FAR NORTHEAST DENVER • EXPANDING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CLASSROOM CAPACITY TO ACCOMMODATE THE INCREASING DEMAND OF PRESCHOOL AND KINDERGARTEN PROGRAMS
    1. → Yes
    2. No
    Comment: Children are the future. And I am, apparently, a socialist.

24. State Board of Education (1st CD)

    1. → Elaine Gantz Berman

25. District Attorney 2nd District

    1. → Mitch Morissey

26. RTD District A

    Includes Denver, Glendale and parts of Arapahoe County      

    View a map of districts: DISTRICT MAP

    To look up your district by address: RTD LOOKUP

    1. Bill James
    2. Peter Lorenzen
    3. → John Maslanik
    4. Laura Yribia
    Comment: John seems like a good bet. Bill James would probably be fine too. Toss a coin?

27. RTD District D

    Includes Bow Mar, parts of Denver, Englewood, Lakewood, Littleton, and Sheridan      

    View a map of districts: DISTRICT MAP

    To look up your district by address: RTD LOOKUP

    1. → Barbara Brohl

28. RTD District E

    Includes Aurora, Centennial, Denver, and Greenwood Village      

    View a map of districts: DISTRICT MAP

    To look up your district by address: RTD LOOKUP

    1. → William McMullen

29. Supreme Court

    BALLOTS WILL ASK: “Shall (Name and Court) be retained in office?” Select the box next to each person’s name if you want to vote “YES”
    1. → Honorable Allison H. Eid
    2. → Honorable Gergory J. Hobbs Jr.
    Comment: Okay, where the judges are concerned I’m going off the recommendations of my friend Matt in the State Attorney’s office. He says that usually it’s fine to vote to retain everyone, except for Judge Nottingham, who resigned anyhow.

30. Court of Appeals

    BALLOTS WILL ASK: “Shall (Name and Court) be retained in office?” Select the box next to each person’s name if you want to vote “YES”
    1. → Honorable Steven L. Bernard
    2. → Honorable David M. Furman
    3. → Honorable Robert D. Hawthorne
    4. → Honorable Jerry N. Jones
    5. → Honorable Gilbert M. Román
    6. → Honorable Diana L. Terry

31. District Judge 2

    BALLOTS WILL ASK: “Shall (Name and Court) be retained in office?” Select the box next to each person’s name if you want to vote “YES”
    1. → Honorable Martin F. Egelhoff
    2. → Honorable Robert S. Hyatt
    3. → Honorable John W. Madden IV
    4. → Honorable Anne M. Mansfield
    5. → Honorable Robert L. McGahey Jr.
    6. → Honorable Larry J. Naves
    7. → Honorable Sheila A. Rappaport

I had a conversation with Rudi Cerri of DOCA, and he pointed out that Dialog:City was intended primarily as a program for the residents of Denver, and not for the attendees at the Convention. It’s unfortunate (though understandable) that it took place during the DNC - many denverites were staying away from downtown and all the traffic hassles, so the events weren’t as well-attended as they might have been otherwise. Nonetheless, it was great fun for those of us who were able to make it.

I didn’t make it to everything, but the following are some thoughts and photos from where we did make it to.

Terra Nova: Antarctic Suite

On Sunday night in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, DJ Spooky (Paul Miller, formerly known as the ’subliminal kid’) offered an hour or so of electronic soundscapes with imagery overhead addressing the issue of the antarctic ice shelf and global warming.

Although the political component of the imagery was a bit obvious and risked preaching to the choir (e.g., US residents create more greenhouse gasses than anyone else in the world), overall the combination of music and images had a hypnotic feeling that was reminiscent of old school performance art.

I snapped a couple of photos before I was told it wasn’t allowed due to potential copyright violations (which I found pretty amusing given Paul Miller’s writings on remix culture and the art of the mashup.

A Spiritual Singalong

On Monday, Jill and I headed down to the DCPA, where we caught part of Ann Hamilton’s performance piece entitle “O”. It involved a combination of adult and child choirs, including members of The Spirituals Project (started by the remarkable Dr. Art Jones of the University of Denver).

The work was essentially a choral singalong in a unique urban setting - the choirs were on the stairs in the stairs of the DCPA Galleria, while the audience were on the ground. The roundness of the long O sound that was used to anchor the singing, combined with the acoustics of the galleria, gave the event a fullness and richness that worked to complement the simplicity of the staging.

At the end of the performance, the chorus and audience joined in singing America The Beautiful. It was pretty emotional, and I although I’m not usually overly patriotic, I found myself choking up (twice in one night, actually - the second time was during Michelle Obama’s speech).

Jill and I had the chance to meet Ann on Tuesday; she was extremely gracious and easy to talk to. She said that music has been increasingly important for her work in recent years, including at her Acoustic Tower in California, where she has worked with Meredith Monk, among others. This photo doesn’t really do justice to the experience, but it gives some sense of what went on there.

Images from Iran

Over in Civic Center Park, just across from where the police and anarchists were having a bit of an altercation, there was an independently produced installation called “Pictures of You: Images From Iran.” The artist, Thomas Loughlin, wanted to show the connections between people from around the world; the portraits of iranians are printed on translucent fabric and hung on the walls and across the ‘halls’ of a mosque-like structure. All in all, quite a beautiful effect.

Luke Dubois: From Gentleman to Terror

Luke Dubois’ installation, called “Hindsight”, uses the familiar eye chart as the starting place to analyze the contents of State of the Union Addresses from Washington to Bush. He included a separate panel for each address. The results offers some fun and startling insights into the concerns of the country at different times in our history.

It turns out that “Gentleman” was the most common word in Washington’s speeches, while “Terror” was the most common in the shrub’s addresses. No big surprise there, I suppose.

During the course of the convention, there were docents available to explain the various works, and one of them (the best one, from my perspective) was my mom, who did her part to help explain the details of American history as explored by Luke Dubois. Here’s a photo of her in front of Bill Clinton’s State of the Union roundup. Oddly, she didn’t want her picture taken in front of George W Bush’s tablet.

We didn’t make it everything - I was sorry to miss Krzysztof Wodiczko’s ‘Veteran Vehicle Project’ (I just saw the humvee during the day, not while it was projecting at night, and only saw Minsuk Cho’s Air Forest in City Park from a distance. But still, it was great to see that culture can be explored in conjunction with the american political process.

The welcome address was in the Elitches theater, where we were kept at a very safe distance from those making their presentations. Like, several hundred feet away. Apparently, the event was designed to cater to the 20 or 30 photographers with press passes.

Okay, you can’t see much in that panorama, so here’s as good a close up as I could come by from the cheap seats. If you squint you can see our governor Bill Ritter, mayor John Hickenlooper, Senator Ken Salazar, and attorney Steve Farber, who is apparently responsibly for raising a lot of the 50 million bucks it took to bring this party to town.

At least the speeches were mercifully short, and there was one of the best national anthems I’ve heard (sung by the performers at PhaMaLy), and some great dancing in full regalia by representatives of the Southern Ute, Ute Mountain, and Northern Ute tribes. Unfortunately, we were too far away to get a decent photo.

Once the official presentation was over we were treated to a performance by the Flobots. The Flobots offer a high energy combination of rap and rock with a classical flair (really!), and their politics are terrific. Fortunately, the crowd was allowed to get down to the stage during their performance.

Regarding their intentions for the convention, they put out this statement on their website:

During the DNC we will seek to embody the change we wish to see in the world by behaving as citizens of an America that does not yet exist. We invite you to join us.

You have to love a band that quotes Langston Hughes:

“America never was America to me, and yet I swear this oath – America will be!”

The evening ended up with enough fireworks to scare the dog, who was cooped up in the house a half mile away.