Out there on the crazy InterWeb:

• Some interaction design veterans finally started to pick up on Activity-Centered Design, which means we now have another way to solve problems besides all that touchy-feely user research.
• Yahoo! did the web a great service by putting out a public design pattern library, apparently aimed at standardizing some of those crazy new Web 2.0 interactions.
• Ross Howard showed us a wonderful and very untapped design approach with his article, “Ambient Signifiers“.
• Seth Godin made a nice attempt to show clients and managers how to live happily with a great designer.
• The psychological principle of “Flow” - the fully immersed state where we lose all sense of space and time - gained some popularity this year, despite that the premier book on the subject has been out since 1991.
• Simplicity earned top billing this year as John Maeda’s new book hit the streets and earned wide appeal. The book itself is just one piece in a wide array of books, magazines, and blogs talking about simplifying your life, which has become so ridiculously complex that it’s impossible to make a decision about anything.
• The notoriously serious Jakob Nielsen managed to squeak his way onto this list with a tongue-in-cheek Alertbox article about usability in the movies.

And in my world:

• The new book is doing extremely well, and is getting some very passionate, very positive reviews.
• Wrote my first Vitamin article, Communicating Web 2.0 Through Design.
• Had loads of fun speaking at FlashForward and MAX, where I met a ton of great people and got to talk about the book for hours and hours. Even had my first book signing!
• Started the new gig at GoDaddy.com as the lead of the user experience team, which I also established. (No, I had nothing to do with the Go Daddy web site. Rather, I designed several web apps, including the newly-released Metropolis.)

(There were, of course, many other memorable moments in 2006, but I’m trying to keep the list to a reasonable length.)

Happy holidays, everyone!

Posted by Robert on December 26th, 2006