Erik Dahl

Over the last week, I've been living with and using my [Slow Backyard Birding] prototype. This past week has been focussed on the data collection experience, making it fast and clean, fixing bugs, adjusting collection parameters, and experimenting with various feedback loops.

I put together a working prototype of a slow birding app to track and observe birds in my backyard. This is replacing paper spreadsheet on a clipboard. Today is the first day of data collection. It’s basically a functional wireframe prototype to iterate on the data collection.

New book day. Two new books arrived today from Spector books. No.2 “The New Designer—Design as a profession” is still in transit and No.4 “Pedagogies of machine learning” is releasing in April.

Taking on new projects! Need a senior design and research partner? I've got you covered. What I do: research, strategy, information architecture, interaction design, and prototyping. I've spent time in healthcare, industrial, consumer, connected product, and emerging tech spaces.

Hey Columbus friends. I’m going to be in Columbus Wednesday (today) evening through Saturday morning with my evenings free. Anyone available to meet up? I’m staying near Worthington.

@_arvind I totally agree with you about aligning institutional incentive structures being one of the hard parts.

@eadahl I think anything approaching this problem needs to also reckon with the institutional incentives that make solving this problem difficult. Any number of such UIs have been proposed over the decades. I’d wager that’s the east part. Making it actually work sustainably, however…

There is an opportunity space pattern that keeps reemerging across domains over the years that I would love to work on, but haven’t had the chance to yet…How might we *browse* large amounts of information to discover unknown unknowns, not just popular, promoted or similar…

Is anyone doing good work in this space of enabling open browsing of large information spaces?

How might we use technology to enable or facilitate open browsing large information spaces without limiting, siloing, or overly influencing the persons engagement with the corpus of information?

@designinginward Exactly…When I was researching remote work and distributed collaboration in the early 2000s, we talked about the concept of “better than being there” which is exactly how leverage the advantages of distributed, electronically mediated work instead of trying to recreate F2F.

@keithinstone I’m not claiming or even suggesting any sort of causal relationship, but I find it interesting that 3 of the 6 cities in US hosting #IxDD events were also hosts for MidwestUX Conference: Columbus, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.

The #InteractionDesignDay #ixDD website ixdd.org/events lists 22 events taking place worldwide tomorrow. 6 events are in the US: 1 each in Georgia, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania 2 in OHIO #OhioUX

I’m available for freelance/contract work, collaborations and even full time engagements. If you or someone you know needs help from a seasoned interaction designer, researcher, and strategist, let’s talk. Feel free to grab some time on my calendar: calendly.com/eadahl/30min

I wrote some thoughts and reflections on prototyping and the value of actually "using" your prototypes, not just "testing" them. Give it a read: link.medium.com/GwGZlvPydob

This morning I 3D printed a replacement hook for our dishwasher basket after the original one broke off and the superglue+sugru hack finally gave out.

I’m unexpectedly available for freelance work, collaborations and even full time engagements. If you or someone you know needs help from a seasoned designer, researcher, and strategist, let’s talk. Feel free to grab some time on my calendar: calendly.com/eadahl/30min

After a decade of use, I’m still using my felt coasters from @ixda Interaction 11 in my home office every day. Although I have taped them together to create a mega-coaster. #ixda #ixdalife instagram.com/p/CY__5pir2qm/…

Hey KY/TN friends, I’m heading your way this week to run 100 miles through the woods of Daniel Boone National Forest and Big South Fork this Friday/Saturday at the @nobusiness100!! instagram.com/p/CUYS_5BL8Op/…

You know you are a regular when the server brings you off menu condiments without you asking for them.

@steveportigal On a current project I’m trying to understand all the information objects that make up a UI, in order to rearrange and regroup these objects into a new structural design (IA). Some of these information objects may be atomic/singular while others may be compound objects.

@steveportigal I often call them “objects” but also usually specify with an additional prefix modifier, so they categorically become information objects or functional objects making a distinction between things that are more static or things that can be manipulated.