Klick_Ass is playing on words: a combination of the Ace of Spades playing card with a mouse pointer

Home of the "19 inch talk" & building stuff

I build things…

Raw planks at the wood dealer

…and plan to write about it. Actually I took so many learnings about carpentry and other handcraft from the web, that I plan to give back. At a minimum, by telling the stories about my own projects, which is what others did, and from where I’ve been able to pick up a lot of inspiration and best practice.

Coming. Soon-ish.

Last 2 tickets for UX-DAY Mannheim

UX-Day Mannheim view from stage

UX-DAY Mannheim, among the largest UX-centric events in Germany, is approaching FAST. Together with that Joachim Tillessen guy I will have a session on the main stage, and I’ll be showing off the latest with Adobe XD at our booth. And, well, the event is SOLD OUT. But fear not. I know many of you want to go, so I have the absolutemost-lastestmuch TWO TICKETS for you!

Take your chance, and:

1. Follow @AdobeXD, @jtillessen, and myself, @klick_ass, on Twitter
2. Complete the following sentence and tweet it out to your followers no later than Tuesday, October 11 2016, 10am CET:

Hey @klick_ass, let me explore @AdobeXD @UXdaymannheim, because …

(Click here to compose your tweet or copy the line above to your Twitter client manually)

I will review your tweets and the most creative, funniest, or probably just the most reasonable request wins! Winners will be announced around Tuesday noon, ticket codes will be sent to the lucky ones via Twitter DM. Oh and last time at UXcamp Europe, people have been *very* creative with their tweets… hint hint! :)

Good luck – looking forward to your tweets, and can’t wait to meet you in Mannheim!

Introducing the “Frame Of Average”

Jay in the Frame of Average. He's average at handwriting! What's your average? Join us at http://IxDAberlin.de

Interaction Design is common ground for design sectors focussing on Services, Strategy, User Experience, Product and much more. Together with Thomas Kueber, Audrey Liehn and Kathryn Hing I do have the pleasure to nurture and grow a local chapter of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). IxDA Berlin convenes the local community of experts in related areas, together with students, novices, and all other parties interested in thought exchange and driving this design discipline forward.

At our frequent events, we present renowned international speakers and host discussions among the protagonists of Berlin’s vivid Interaction Design scene. Partnering with the industry and design schools, we constantly challenge ourselves to expand the communities horizon beyond established design paradigms. We believe that evolution comes from the community.

“Being average is what makes you normal. Let’s appreciate it.”

Our own Kathryn came up with a concept she named the “Wall of average” a while ago. Thinking of ways to emphasize on IxDA Berlins mission statement, which includes a strong focus on non-experts to the field, to students, newbies, and interested people from other professions, we came to the idea of translating that initial concept to our community.

We envisioned a frame a person can hold and peek through. The individual average goes on the frame – using chalk. At our events, you can find a photographer that is happy to get you pictured in the “FOA”. And we had some quite funny results when we tested the FOA in the wild for the first time back in June!

Starting today, IxDA Berlin is beginning to post a series of pictures taken at our events, capturing our beloved community members together with their averages. Our goal is not only to capture memories of our events and give back to the community. By sharing the images across social networks, we also hope for people to relay our call to action, to join our events, follow us along, and contribute to all of us learning.

I am super-curious for all those FOAs to come in the future!

The Frame Of Average under construction
The FOA is made of plywood and has a finish of several paint layers and decal, including special chalkboard paint on the lower part. Here’s a series of tweets capturing the creation of the physical thing.
FOA Making of - names and social coordinates on the clipboard
To ease production, we take a snapshot of everybody along with their names and social coordinates
One of the resulting raw FOA pictures
…a series of pictures is being taken…
The resulting FOA image
…and with the best picture selected and some Photoshop polish, a template is being applied before the whole thing hits the Twitterz.
PAGE