Musings on design & other stuff jen's place

I've penned a number of blog posts expressing my appreciation for the music of Great Big Sea. So, when they announced that they'd be playing in Massachusetts this Summer, I bought tickets right away. Last year, they played in Lowell, which is only 15 minutes away. This year, they were playing in Edgartown, a town I didn't recognize.

I know, I should have Google-d, MapQuest-ed, or researched in some other way where Edgartown was, but I figured it'd just be a drive away in any case. The show was 21+, so my 8-year-old wouldn't be able to join us this time; we'd leave her with my Mom, who'd be visiting.

So imagine my surprise when I found that Edgerton is a town on Martha's Vineyard, which requires a ferry ride to get to. The round-trip ferry is about $200, and you need reservations. But for that price, we may as well see MV, since I've never been there, so we'll stay for 2 nights, and since we'll be gone that long, we may as well take my mom and Rachel with us. Of course August is high season at MV, so the hotel room is going to run us more than $400 a night, including taxes. The term "slippery slope" comes to mind.

$75 for concert tickets, $800 for the hotel, $200 for the ferry. And three days of eating out for four people. Oh well. I've never seen Martha's Vineyard, and it'll still be a lot cheaper than our trip to Florence.

I guess that I was a little burned out on blogging ... I'd said what I wanted to say on my own blog, and had posted a lot on the design@sun blog, so I needed a break. And, at the same time, I started working with a new team in the Chief Technology Office on a really interesting project, and I just let that consume all the time I had.

But then before I left for Florence, Maya asked me to write a blog post on my CHI talk for the design@sun blog. I wrote it in just a few minutes on Monday, and it was fun. And having been away from blogging for over 3 months, now, I have a nice list of things saved up, which I'll be writing about in the coming days:

• My experiences with my new iPhone
• My experiences with my new MacBook Air
• A well-designed UI for a door
• How to innovate, not just create incremental improvements
• My upcoming talk at the Boston UPA Mini Conference
• A little more on Florence, and CHI 2008
• Mentoring:
  • When should you take your mentor's advice?
  • Treating yourself like a business

So, I'm here, and I'm writing again. And for the first time in a little while, I'm really enjoying it.

I've been really busy lately. Even too busy to blog. But I like to keep on top of what my friends are up to, and in return let them know what I'm doing. The most convenient way for me to do that is my Facebook status. Sometimes, a friend will send me a note on my status or I'll send one to them. For example, Paul sent me a Facebook message when I was fed up one day. And I sent Amy a note to let her know that the mystery comment from a former professor sounded positive. And then one to Mark to find out where he was getting Afghan food -- was he still in Baltimore or back in Boston?

But then Tuesday, several of us from my former graduate program gathered at the local watering hole for appetizers and pints of Murphy's, and that's when our Facebook status really changed the nature of what our conversation would have otherwise been. I asked Neeta what she had been counting the days until ... it was graduation, but she's also planning her wedding, now, too! And Manya asked how my daughter's surgery went, and Amy and I talked about where she'd finally decided to travel to (she decided not to travel) and how I'd had 27 people over for Thanksgiving dinner. Now the content of our conversations wasn't necessarily any different than it might have been otherwise, but it was the way it unraveled ... there was no "what have you been up to". We just skipped to, "Tell me about what I read on your Facebook status" ... I hadn't spoken to any of these folks for several weeks or several months, and yet we "see" each other all the time.

I can see drawbacks to this kind of abbreviated conversation, built on frequent status updates ... for example, I probably missed out on some interesting answers to the questions that I didn't ask, (like, "What have you been up to?") ... and yet, I felt like we were able to have more meaningful dialog than we might have otherwise.

As a postscript, another member of a band I like joined Facebook. But he did it as an entertainer, not an individual. More of a persona rather than a person. And I could sign up to be his fan, but not his friend... No thanks. I'll keep reading his blog, and I'll keep Facebook for the people who want to talk back to me :)

Yesterday, as we were running some errands, we happened across a rainbow ... and as we drove on a bit farther, we saw that there were actually two rainbows. The second one is more faint, but it's there, to the left of the brighter one :)

Yesterday, as I was driving to work, I felt the need to capture some of what I was seeing. It was a foggy morning, and my drive to work was particularly lovely.

I know, you don't hear a lot of people telling you how great their commute is, but mine's about 20 minutes, and this is the time of year to be out and about. Having only been in New England for 10 years, it still cracks me up that the practice of going out to look at the Fall color is called "leaf peeping". I can't say that I got a lot of spectacular shots -- after all, I was pulling over to the side of the road, rolling down my window, and shooting them one-handed, while watching out for moving traffic :)

If you take a look, you'll see that the trees still have most of their leaves, and only a quarter to a third of them have changed color. So, with any luck, I'll have more shots of pretty Fall color coming soon :)

So last night, before the pumpkin seeds and the apple pie, I received an email saying that we could book a vacation to join Great Big Sea and several other bands on a cruise. Apparently, booking started yesterday, and I didn't know that a delay of 18 hours would make that much of a difference, but the cruise is nearly sold out -- and all the exterior rooms are gone.

Rats.

I was thinking that this vacation could be my Christmas present to Tom and myself (and Rachel, who screamed, "We'd get to meet them?"). But I'm too late. All the good cabins are gone :(

It's Fall in new England ... the very best season that this part of the country has to offer. So Saturday, we went apple picking (we got a peck of Cortland), and selected our Halloween pumpkins. I still need to get a dozen or so mums and put them in the ground. It's unseasonably warm -- this was the first year that the boys could carve their pumpkins outdoors.

We just put an apple pie in the oven. It took two trips to the convenience store: first for sugar, and then for cornstarch and butter. Oh well, it's made now. Tom also made apple pancakes Sunday morning, and we roasted pumpkin seeds -- there are really only a couple of things to know about making good pumpkin seeds: use more salt than you think you'll need, and put a piece of parchment between the seeds and the cookie sheet. Then put them in a 350-degree oven until they are light brown. Yum ...

I'll be truthful -- I didn't really care for this song at first -- on the surface, it sounded like a Christmas carol meets an Ode to the Who. But over the last several weeks, it's been my favorite song, in large part because of the imagery that both the lyrics and music evoke. I'm referring to the song "Feel it turn", by Great big Sea.

Now, I'll preface the next few paragraphs with the confession that in college, the first major that I declared was English -- and I secretly wondered what the authors of the works we were studying would think of all that was being interpreted into their writing by scholars. What if the author didn't think that his characters were metaphors for anything? That he was just writing a story? This is the interpretive line that I now walk with GBS.

The first lyric in this song that I could visualize was "Cut steel wired into water; Fixed link, circumnavigate". It made me think of the longitude and latitude lines across a globe.

The next lyric that caught my visual attention was "I can see the earth below me; and I can feel it turn". I envisioned the author on a mountaintop, somewhere far North, say in Newfoundland or Greenland, with arms outstretched to his sides, head thrown back -- literally feeling on top of the world -- both invigorated and happy.

And most recently, I've seen something in the music -- the notes that open the song (what I'd previously thought of as the Christmas carol notes) struck me today as falling leaves, turning into falling snow. That's not hard to figure out; in my real world, it's Autumn in New England, and the trees are glorious reds, yellows, and oranges set against a blustery sky. So all around me, it looks and feels like Fall, but what it sounds like is Great Big Sea :)

You know, it's not like I have time on my hands -- I'm trying to attend to several hundred details that need to be addressed before our flights tomorrow morning at 7:00am, so I'm doing laundry, running dishes, gathering the recycling, and then ... what comes traipsing through my head, but a lyrical spoof on one of my favorite Great Big Sea Songs (which I'll share with you in a minute).

How does this happen? Why is my subconscious messing with me? Of course, I immediately break into song for my husband and daughter, who respond with peals of laughter. We are a strange family, but I like us this way. Neither Tom nor I remember the capacity to spoof lyrics before we met one another, but it is not unusual for us to break into song, whenever something spoken reminds us of something musical.

Usually, it's just a few words and the accompanying notes, but sometimes we go longer. Here's an example of a spoof that I wrote when Rachel was an infant, to the tune of "Breaking up is hard to do" -- it's called "Waking up is hard to do" -- and I'd sing it to her whenever she grumpily transitioned from a sleeping state into consciousness. It goes like this:

... 'Cause waking up is hard to do
They say that waking up is hard to do (do do)
Now I know, I know that it's true
Don't say my nap's at an end
Instead of waking up, I wish that I were dosing off again
I beg of you -- don't make me cry
Sing me one more little lullaby
Let me sleep, or I'll be blue
'Cause waking up is hard to do

So the lyrics that came into my head this morning reminded me of the Weird Al songs that Tom's sons from his first marriage so enjoy (they also love Great Big Sea, so I can't wait to sing this for them). It's to the refrain of "Beat the drum", and it's called "Eat the gum".

Eat the gum, eat the gum
Like a candy, but chewy and long
Eat the gum, eat the gum
Blow some bubbles, but make sure they're strong
Eat the gum

Okay, I'm sorry -- I know that wasn't really worth waiting for. Happy Sunday, anyway :)

The second paper that I wanted to write for the ACM CHI conference doesn't have the basis in the literature that I was hoping for, so the bad news is that I won't be writing another paper for this year's conference, but the good news is that I'm feeling a lot less pressure today :)

And speaking of today, I turned 40 a little while ago ... sometime around 6:30am in Austin, TX. My mom says that there were three tornadoes over the hospital at the time, as a result of a hurricane off the coast — I suppose that's like me, to want to make an entrance :)

This morning, I was greeted by my almost-8-year-old and my husband singing a round of Happy Birthday, which they delivered with seven birthday cards (5 from Rachel, 2 from Tom). What a fantastic way to start a new decade ...

I've admitted that I'm getting old. It's true — 4 days and counting, and I'll have crossed the threshold into (I'm feeling queasy, just trying to type it ... ) middle age. And maybe that's why I just don't get facebook.

I totally see the value proposition of LinkedIn — professional networking, that's cool. And recently, I even started posting my own photos on Flickr, not just linking to and viewing my friends' pictures. And, of course, I'm blogging. But facebook ...

When Manya first invited me to be her friend on facebook, I admitted, "Okay — I signed up, but I don't get facebook. It's like a yearbook ... but what am I supposed to *do* with it? I'm embarrassed to ask Andrew, since he's got, like, 300 friends. Is it a way to keep in touch with people as they move around? Like an address book that updates itself?" She replied with some version of "yes", and I felt okay about it.

But recently, colleagues (you know who you are) have been "poke"ing me, and you know, my profiles says I'm married so, I assume that it's like elbowing a person. And then Manya and Andrew "wrote on my wall". Oh god. What wall? I look at what my other friends have written on their walls, and I wonder ... how well do I really know them?

So I suppose that one use case is that I can find people that I've been out of touch with for years, and even people in bands that I like, but whom I don't know. But there is facebook, asking if I want to send this person a message or if I want to poke him ...

I must be getting old, because that just does not sound appropriate.

It's been a very tough week at work, but Great Big Sea (GBS) music has been getting me through. The tune that I've been playing in a loop over the last few days is an Irish jig, that by their title, must go by several names: "Eavesdropper's Jig"/"Both Meat & Drink"/"Off We Go". What it sounds like to me is: late morning, when the dew is just coming off the grass; Spring time; new love; blue-sky happiness; and optimism — when all things are possible.

Since the concert a month ago, I've been listening to all of the GBS albums with which I was hitherto unfamiliar. Before the concert, mostly I'd just listened to their 2004 CD, Something Beautiful, which is still my favorite. Since the concert, I've downloaded ~40 songs from iTunes, and purchased CD's, DVD's, and a T-shirt from the GBS store, as my birthday gift to myself (now, just 6 days away, if you're still shopping :)

My other favorites by GBS change weekly, but here they are as recommendations, for your listening pleasure:

• The River Driver
• Sea of No Cares
• Boston and St. Johns
• When I'm Up
• I'm a Rover
• Everything Shines
• Consequence Free
• Ordinary Day
• Time Brings
• Captain Kidd
• Stumbling In
• French Perfume
• Shines Right Through Me
• When I am King
• Beat the Drum
• Something Beautiful
• Helmethead
• Summer
• Sally Ann
• Let it Go
• John Barbour
• Lucky Me
• Can't Stop Falling
• Feel it Turn
• Jack Hinks
• Goin' Up
• The Chemical Worker's Song
• Eavesdropper's Jig/Both Meat & Drink/Off We Go

But now that I'm going through iTunes to create this list, I see that I haven't listened to all their songs, so while this list is comprehensive, it may not be complete :)

A couple years ago, a colleague and I hosted an afternoon "tea" in Sun Labs. Essentially, volunteers bring in snacks one afternoon a week, which gives everyone a good reason to come out of their offices and informally chat. That day, I'd made guacamole from scratch. It was awesome, and I was asked to share the recipe. I was a bit nervous, because, as a writer, I knew I'd have to give proper attribution to the author of the recipe (Al Roker, in his Big Bad Book of Barbecue), but it seemed somehow incongruous with the gourmet minds of Labs. As a result, when I posted the recipe on the Labs twiki, I added this disclaimer: "you should be able to find wisdom, or a very good guacamole recipe where ever it happens to be."

Which is exactly how I feel about fortune cookies :) Opportunistic wisdom and inspiration. Here are my favorites — they are all easy to recall, because they are taped to my computer monitor:

• "Not all the best days are sunny."
• "Your determination will bring you much success."
• "Every truly great accomplishment is at first impossible."
• "Every person is the creation of himself, the image of his own thinking or believing."
• "Do not follow where the path may lead. Go where there is no path ... and leave a trail."
• "Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps."
• "Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the conquest of it."
• "The secret of getting ahead is getting started."
• "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence."
• "You are ready to take on the world."

You bet I am :)

Happy Monday!

I'll be honest -- Nova Scotia wasn't what I expected. I think I expected something like Ireland, and what I experienced was more like Maine. That said, there are still lovely places to visit, excellent food (a variety of smoked salmons, lobster everything, and seafood chowders), and plenty to drink (I found a Halifax-made bitter beer that could rival any English bitter beer, and we brought a case a wine with us for the friend that we were visiting).

We stayed with our friend in a house on Western Head -- a cliff about 50 feet over a rocky ocean. I'd always thought that living on a cliff over-looking the sea would be romantic (I am a descendant of Danish ship builders and Vikings from all over), but there are reasons that people stay in the more sheltered coves and inland towns. For one, it's very isolated up on the cliff. It's a long drive to get out there, and the remoteness is exacerbated by the clear view out to open sea. I could imagine being married to a young sailor who deposited me on that shore, and then left again to go work for several months -- it was intimidating to say the least.

The towns that we saw only dated back to the 1750's, and they were proud of the part that they played (acting as a staging area) in helping the British launch their attack on Boston, which began the Revolutionary war. Having lived in the Boston area for the last 10 years, I had some mixed feelings about that heritage.

We traveled to the nearby towns of Liverpool, Lunenburg, and Mahone Bay, supporting the local economy where ever we went. There are a large number of talented painters, potters, silver and pewter smiths in the area, and we brought home many of their creations. We chartered a small fishing boat to take us for a ride out of Port Mutoun, and we built bonfires on the cliffs by the house. We collected sea urchin shells, and dipped our toes in the many icy waters of the white sand beaches nearby. We had clear blue skies and temperatures in the 70's every day, which I hear is unusual.

It was a relaxing vacation, for sure, but if we return, we'll go by plane. We took the CAT from Portland, and had rough waters on the way back. My daughter (and about a hundred other people) got sick on the 6-hour journey over the cold black ocean. Great Big Sea has a song in which the refrain is "There isn't that much ocean between Boston and St. Johns" -- they are referring to Newfoundland, even further away than Nova Scotia. The song was written to "beg the patience of the fairest maiden" that the lead sing ever knew -- my response is: if she swallowed that line, you'd better hold onto her ;)

I'd like to thank all the people who have been reading my blog — some whom I know, and many whom I don't. I just want to let you know that I'm going to Nova Scotia tomorrow with my mom and daughter — my husband and his two sons from his first marriage will be off camping while we're gone — so I don't expect to be blogging until my return.

Our friend who has the place in Nova Scotia (the town she's in is near Liverpool, on the South-Western side of the island - Western Head) has dial-up internet access, so I expect to be off line, but maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. I haven't used dial-up for 10 years, so I don't really remember how well it performs. But either while I'm there or after my return, I'll be sure to post pictures :)

Slantia! :)

On Friday night, we went to see the Newfoundland Celtic rock group, Great Big Sea, as part of the the Lowell Summer Music Series. It was, in three words, FAN TAS TIC :) Their music is intelligently written, expertly executed, appeals to all age groups, and (uncommon in this day and age) really happy. It was our first time seeing them, but will certainly not be our last.

We were introduced to their music completely by accident. My husband, Tom, also works at Sun: a few years ago, the group he was in decided to celebrate the winter holidays with a Yankee swap, and Tom came home with a new CD, Something Beautiful. The CD had come to the Yankee swap by way of another Tom, Tom Wells, who is the brother-in-law of one of the band members (doesn't he resemble Scott McNealy?).

Two years ago, we loaned the CD to some friends, who have been enjoying it ever since :) They saw that Great Big Sea was coming to Lowell, so we all went together. We were quite the motley crew: Tom and myself, our 7-year-old daughter, my retired mom, our friends (Carla Corey and Paul Buckley), their teenage daughter and her friend (who were too cool to be there, so they played cards throughout the concert), and another friend from church (accompanied by her seeing eye dog, Paz).

What that means is that the CD that Tom Wells brought to the Yankee swap resulted in no less than 9 direct ticket sales, a $30 (US) concert t-shirt for my daughter, and several subsequent CD purchases. So -- Tom, if you're reading this and have a few extra CD's, I'm sure we can find good homes for them :) Really -- think of it as investment :)

Really, I know, but it's Friday, so I think it's fair game :)

I have three plants in my office: an orchid whose blooms are long gone, and then two plants of unknown heritage, which I inherited from colleagues at Sun. The orchid is doing just fantastic; the leaves are green and full, as are its little rooty tendrils. And the one on the right is doing well: inherited when a colleague was laid off last year, but she's returning to Sun next week, so I hope to give it back to her in good health. It's the plant in the white container that I'm having trouble with.

It's my oldest office plant, inherited probably four or five years ago from my friend Nancy, a former technical writer turned UI designer, who wanted to save the plant from a slow death in the usability test lab. I took the plant into my bright sunny office, and it thrived -- multiple stalks, big leaves, shiny, green, and happy.

At the time I took the plant, I was a technical writer, like Nancy had been before me. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do next, but I knew I didn't want to be a technical writer any longer. I was considering becoming a Six Sigma Black Belt, or moving back into instructional design, or getting into user research and product design. I was fortunate enough to have been accepted into the SEED mentoring program, so that was the venue that I used to explore my next steps.

Over the years, as my education and career moved into the field of user experience, I wondered if the plant was some kind of subliminal reminder that I could do what Nancy had done before me. A visual totem to my new path.

So, it's with that meaning and history that I am now concerned about the plant -- maybe it has simply done for me what it came to do. Maybe if I was a better caretaker, I'd pass it along to some future UI designer. And yet, I don't feel ready to let it go, either through death or re-gifting. Not that I have much control over it, really. It gets light and water like the healthy plants in my office. I suppose the one last thing I can try is some fresh soil and a new container ... and then I have to accept the outcome.

Have you ever Google-d yourself? I bet you have. And even if you haven't, I bet you've Google-d someone else. So what did you think of the results? I tend to use Google to find papers quickly, and now that I've co-authored a couple of papers, I use Google to quickly find the permanent links to them.

However, all the content that matches my name doesn't refer to me. Some of it refers to another Jennifer McGinn, or another Jennifer McGinn or this Jenn McGinn. Actually, that first one kind of looks like me -- but I was never in the Army and have worked for Sun for more than 11 years, now.

I'm sure that if you have a common name, that you've had that experience; my office is next to Kevin Clarke's office -- do you know how many Kevin Clarke's there are in the world? I had that problem when I was in high school -- back then I was Jennifer Ann Sullivan. Who knew that it was a common name? Who knew my married name would cause the same kind of mistaken identity?

Anyway, so which Jen am I? I'm the one that answered questions on the RMI-USERS and JINI-USERS email aliases (why do those still show up?). I reviewed the RMI chapter of the Java tutorial. I almost wrote a book about Solaris, but decided not to (however, it looks as though 7 copies are available). I've attended user experience conferences this year. And written about heuristic evaluation and usability test findings.

But you know what? Google hasn't even scratched the surface ...

So here's something strange. Now that I'm blogging, I was interested in whether my peers were doing the same, and if so, what they were writing about. I belong to an email alias that has about 200 members, all of whom are or were students of the Human Factors graduate program that I attended. So I sent an email with the subject line, "Who's blogging?" and this content: "I just started blogging -- who else is doing this? What design issues are you talking about?"

The good news is that I got four responses from colleagues who are blogging, so I'll talk more about that in a minute. But the odd part was that there was one particularly outspoken person, who responded in angry tones that not only did too many people have blogs, but that we as user experience professionals should not be blogging because it would contribute to information overload. Not only were those points illogical -- my two middle MBTI letters are NT -- but it took the tone of the alias to a different level. From a place to get support and help to a place where you could be attacked without warning.

There were people who disagreed with the angry poster, and people who conceded points. So what is it about blogging that makes people upset and angry? Do websites have the same effect on them? Books in a library? Newspaper or magazine articles? Is it really that there is more information "out there" (and that they think that is bad) or is there something about the nature of blogging that just sets people off?

I responded to the email, but did not engage the person in a flame war -- didn't flame wars go out of fashion in 1994? I thanked the four people who responded that they were blogging, and I was interested to hear what they use their blogs for: one colleague had a personal blog, two people used their blogs as a way to communicate their professional skills and values, and a fourth peer is engaged in a group blog with her work colleagues, where they discuss design issues. That was exactly the kind of information that I was looking for.

But, now that I'm forewarned, the next time I ask a question on that alias, I'll be sure to have my sword and shield at the ready, just in case. And I'll find a more supportive alias to talk to about blogging.

Good news, on the weight front. I was down another 1.4 pounds on Saturday, which was not as much as I was I was hoping for, but the needle is still moving in the right direction. Now that I'm down 4.4 pounds, that keeps me on track for the ~2 pounds a week I'm going for, so I'll take it!