UX leadership insight #12: The space between

(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.)
How should the teams for design be built? There are thousands of handbooks how to build effective teams, so let’s not get into the generics. There’s one specific aspect of design teamwork that I would like to emphasize, and that is the collaboration of interaction design and [...]

Urban Screens Presentation

Forum Virium held a nice event this morning. It was about service design for urban media and embedded design, especially in relation to the recent selection of Helsinki as the World Design Capital 2012. I presented about urban screens. My presentation is attached here with English notes.
Urban Screens
View more presentations from Teppo Kotirinta.

Presentation schedule
Helsinki Design [...]

UX leadership insight #11: Skill is everything

(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.)

Mikko Franck, a respected Finnish conductor, was asked to help out and rehearse with an amateur orchestra for a full weekend. He arrived at the site, and just for a trial started to conduct the first composition. The musicians in the orchestra didn’t play particularly well. In [...]

About the iPad

After a long wait, the Apple tablet saw the light of the day today. We at Nordkapp are as excited as you are, and here’s a few thoughts on what this might be all about;
The new old media
One of the most obvious uses for this is naturally the “old” media and the publishing industry. I am [...]

Eight things for 2010

Here are some of the themes we think will either finally make their way into mainstream or are there, and keep on on getting stronger in 2010. Tell us what you think in the comments.
1. Design as a process
In 2006, the UK’s Design Council published their seminal paper on Transformation Design. Somehow things kept bubbling [...]

Looking in from the Outside

Here’s the presentation I gave for the annual Project Managers’s Club seminar at Aalto University Design Factory on 25.11.

UX leadership insight #10: Tools of trade

(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.)
Watercolor paintings and oil paintings look no doubt quite different. The artist had a vision about the desired end result and then selected the painting technique that is best suited to reach it. In any form of art or craft, the tool is always visible in the [...]

UX leadership insight #9: Demos are not only for demos

(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.)
Demos are great for many purposes. The most obvious ones are to communicate the design to someone else, and test the UI with end users. However, in a large design project, the less obvious purposes may be the most important ones.
A demo or a simulation is [...]

UX leadership insight #8: UX and agile

(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.)
Agile software methodologies were developed for creating small software applications for company internal use. The process was intended for small software teams. Most certainly, no user experience folks were involved. Anyway, software developer is UI designer’s best friend. If agile makes them perform and feel better, it [...]

UX leadership insight #7: Difficulty of UX design reviews

(See my earlier posts for introduction to the series.)
Have you noticed how well a couple of screenshots of UI designs can inspire discussion? In project reviews, technical architecture charts may get a question or two, but when you show UI designs, everyone has an opinion. Although this is sometimes quite annoying (you don’t want to [...]