Michael Freedman
is Director of Business Development at Plumb Design. He comes to Plumb Design from Razorfish, where he developed strategies for firms such as IBM, AOL, AT&T, Microsoft, Pepsi-Cola International, and The Smithsonian Institution. Previously he worked as a teacher, developer of curriculum, author and producer of CD-ROMs for The Princeton Review, the world's largest test-preparation company. He received a BA in Fine Arts and Mathematics from New College (USF). http://www.plumbdesign.com Information Choreography and Subtle Complexity The brief history of the design of online environments is best described as a progression from the design of absolute position, to the design of relative position, to the design of movement, and finally to the design of behavior. If this is true, this progression can also be described as one in which the designer continues to relinquish a certain amount of control to the viewer and ultimately to the product itself. Before the web, graphic designers were primarily concerned with absolute positioning, the juxtaposition of static elements. Then the web came along, and suddenly former print designers had to deal with a page that could be resized. Suddenly the grid had to be flexible, and static proportional systems had to give way. Next, frames were invented, and they began to further degrade the analogy between paper and the web. Then, along came Java and other client-side technologies that made it easier to for online experience designers to consider movement and animation. Today's best "designed" online experiences are not static compositions, nor pre-scripted animations, but they are living systems, which establish a three way dialog, between the information, the user, and the designer. To be effective, online design must become an active moderator between the publisher and the viewer. To create a successful moderator requires the designer to relinquish the control that he or she is used to holding and assert it in other, more subtle ways. But this relinquishing of control, this progression from print, to web page, to living system, does not signify the end of craft, or for that matter, craftsmanship. It is rather the beginning of a new type of craftsmanship that is more like choreography than print design. This talk will examine the issues of what it means to be a craftsperson and choreographer of information in this dynamic medium. To be a designer is to be a craftsperson. Craftspeople develop an intimate relationship with the material they work with. Craftspeople embrace the idiosyncrasies of the medium, and view imperfections as opportunities. To be a choreographer is to set up organizational systems that respect the expression of the individual elements of the design while establishing an overall order. What does it mean to be a craftsperson or choreographer in a medium that is so essentialized and ephemeral? This talk will examine the philosophy of my firm, Plumb Design, through the examples of work we have done with our software, Thinkmap. Our approach is not about design in any traditional sense. Instead, it is about striving to make work that may be adapted to people's differing needs and contexts. The interfaces we create are part of our continuing efforts to develop and change the envelope that defines the "nature of the medium." Interfaces in which the very experience of seeking information can be enriching and challenging. Our desire is for the online experiences that we create to act as moderators who can facilitate the exchange of knowledge and the interplay of ideas. We proceed through our work with rigorous process; we try to be constantly on guard to protect the openings for the unpredictable and the unknowable so that our process is ultimately open-ended and reflexive rather than visionary and pre-conceived. We feel that the real challenges ahead are not aesthetic, ideological, or even technical. The challenge is to develop new ways of thinking: about culture, technology, and information choreography. This new way of thinking is a kind of "soft" knowledge, not closed, objective, absolute and over-determined, but subjective, situational, open, and conditioned by the user's reception. If there is one idea to take from our work, it's that when designing a user interface, the approach needn't be clinical or overly scripted. By trusting the user to forge his or her own path and providing infinite options, you can design an interface that not only respects the user, but gives him or her a reason to return again and again to see what unfolds. The idea is to give the interface an organic feel which encourages serendipity and, while is still carefully designed, offers a feeling of depth, rhythm, texture and complexity. See schedule.	program BILL BUXTON ANDY CAMERON MATTHEW CHALMERS DANIEL DÖGL BILL GAVER NEIL GERSHENFELD ANDREW GLASSNER PAUL HAEBERLI TOM HEWETT BREWSTER KAHLE PANU KORHONEN DOUG LENAT JO LERNOUT RALPH MERKLE THEODOR H. NELSON CELIA PEARCE MARK PESCE HANI RASHID BILL SCHILIT DAVID SMALL MARCO SUSANI JOHN THACKARA MICHAEL FREEDMAN TURNER WHITTED ANTON ZEILINGER
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