News flashes - Hand-picked since 1997

Curated by Peter J. Bogaards (pjb at BogieLand dot com).

You should follow InfoDesign on @BogieZero.

September 7, 2010

On defining UX

"Information architects, interaction designers, researchers, academics. They are all UX professionals and not necessarily involved in the broad process, but are a cog in the machine. (...) Just like the debate about whether designers should be able to write HTML, this discussion is just not as black and white as every one is making out. There's a whole lot of grey in there." (Mark Boulton)

PJB @ 2:58 PM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Strategic Content Management

"The rise of content strategy is dealing the content management industry a huge kick up the backside. In the web's Wild West era, the CMS was run by the IT department—or sometimes a lone webmaster who knew HTML—so CMS choices were based on features, price, and cultural fit, rather than web or content strategy. It was the classic IT drill: selection committees, feature matrices, and business lunches with men wearing neckties." (Jonathan Kahn ~ A List Apart)

PJB @ 12:46 PM | Classification: Content management - Content strategy | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

September 6, 2010

Why I think Ryan Carson doesn't believe in UX Professionals, and why I do

"I think the reason Ryan thinks that 'UX professional' is a bullshit job title designed to 'over-charge naive clients' is because he's never actually been in the position to need one. If you look at Ryans' background, he worked for agencies in the late nineties and early noughties when the field of user experience was still in it's infancy. As such I suspect that he's never worked with a team of dedicated UX people." (Andy Budd)

PJB @ 12:03 PM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

No knowledge but through information

"This article argues for the following: (1) Information is a thing to be handled and controlled; knowledge is not. (2) Knowledge can be managed only indirectly, through the management of information. (3) Personal knowledge management is, therefore, best regarded as a subset of personal information management — but a very useful subset addressing important issues that otherwise might be overlooked." (William Jones ~ First Monday 15.9)

PJB @ 10:39 AM | Classification: Information design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Three Reasons Why Persuasive Design Isn’t Enough to Influence Change

"To accomplish the good intentions of persuasive design, we need to do more than design to get people to act. We need to create content that influences people’s thinking in a positive way, motivates them to act, and makes acting easier. As the UX design industry pays more attention to content, we’ll be better prepared to influence what people do and think—and have a real chance at making the world a better place, online and off." (Coleen Jones ~ UXmatters)

PJB @ 9:26 AM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Juicy Stories Sell Ideas

"Stories are hot. And why not? We all know how to tell a story. Stories are a lot more interesting than most other ways of sharing information. And they work. Stories are a great way to introduce a concept in an imaginative way or sell an idea to your team or management." (Whitney Quesenbery and Kevin Brooks ~ UXmatters)

PJB @ 9:23 AM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Usability for Mobile Devices

"The mobile space is the new Wild West of technology. Much like the Web during the 1990s, mobile is the new domain at the forefront of innovation. Users are discovering new capabilities, integrating them with their daily lives, and experiencing new interaction models." (Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain ~ UXmatters)

PJB @ 9:20 AM | Classification: Mobile design - Usability | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

September 5, 2010

UX design framework: Interaction

"Undoubtedly, interaction design is a design discipline that has become a defining element of UX. Though the preceding two quotes assert the alignment with a user's behaviour they do so here in relation to their interaction (the person and the artifact). In other words, it is the behaviour of the object in relation to the user. The following principles reassert this notion that many interaction design issues are born out of preconceptions of what a user expects to be able to do with the interface they are presented with." (User Pathways)

PJB @ 7:00 PM | Classification: Interaction design - User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

September 2, 2010

ACM Hypertext 2010: As we may have thought, and may (still) think

"(...) I gave a keynote address at the Hypertext 2010 conference in Toronto where I found a community somewhat under threat by other web research conferences but nevertheless alive and kicking. The organizers had asked me to consider where the field might have gone wrong and where it might go in the future." (Andrew Dillon ~ ACM Hypertext Conference 2010)

PJB @ 10:43 AM | Classification: Events - Hypertext | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

September 1, 2010

Future os Screens: Experience video

"Capacitive screens has now become a commodity for touch screen devices. Screen technology is now taking the next leap and the coming years imagination is the only thing stopping us." (Mobile User Interface Blog)

PJB @ 2:57 PM | Classification: Mobile design - Technology | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

August 31, 2010

Designing Behavior in Interaction: Using Aesthetic Experience as a Mechanism for Design

"As design moves into the realm of intelligent products and systems, interactive product behavior becomes an ever more prominent aspect of design, raising the question of how to design the aesthetics of such interactive behavior. To address this challenge, we developed a conception of aesthetics based on Pragmatist philosophy and translated it into a design approach. Our notion of Aesthetic Interaction consists of four principles: Aesthetic Interaction (1) has practical use next to intrinsic value, (2) has social and ethical dimensions, (3) has satisfying dynamic form, and (4) actively involves people's bodily, cognitive, emotional and social skills. Our design approach based on this notion is called 'designing for Aesthetic Interaction through Aesthetic Interaction', referring to the use of aesthetic experience as a design mechanism. We explore our design approach through a case study that involves the design of intelligent lamps and outlines the utilized design techniques. The paper concludes with a set of practical recommendations for designing the aesthetics of interactive product behavior." (Ross, P. R. & Wensveen, S. A. G. ~ International Journal of Design 4.2)

PJB @ 10:09 PM | Classification: Interaction design - User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

August 30, 2010

5 negative perceptions about information architects and how to defeat them

"Information Architects often struggle to stay relevant to business clients and internal project teams due to their academic approach to achieving business objectives. Way too often, Information Architecture presentations fail to resonate with internal and external stakeholders due to how methods, findings, and solutions are presented." (Jonathan Lupo)

PJB @ 10:37 AM | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Don't Become A Digital Dinosaur: Design For The Space Between

"As UX professionals, we need to extend our reach beyond just experiences for the Web and mobile applications. A website or mobile app might comprise just one interaction—one touchpoint—in the end-to-end experience that users have during their journey to complete their goals." (Samantha Starmer ~ UX magazine)

PJB @ 10:24 AM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

August 26, 2010

Why Great Ideas Can Fail

"Designers are proud of their ability to innovate, to think outside the box, to develop creative, powerful ideas for their clients. Sometimes these ideas win design prizes. However, the rate at which these ideas achieve commercial success is low. Many of the ideas die within the companies, never becoming a product. Among those that become products, a good number never reach commercial success." (Donald A. Norman ~ Core77)

PJB @ 4:44 PM | Classification: Information design - User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Jodi Forlizzi on Service Design

"Interaction design encompasses human interaction with objects, people, environments and systems. It's not a widely held perspective outside of the Pittsburgh diaspora." (Jeff Howard ~ Design for Service)

PJB @ 3:54 PM | Classification: Interaction design - Service design - User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

August 25, 2010

Possibilities Abound

"Wurman holds a special place for those who practice information architecture. He coined the term in 1976, in part as a response to what he identified as limited perceptions of the word design. The term information architect grew from his desire to know rather than already knowing; and from his ignorance and curiosity rather than his intelligence and assumptions. So it's not surprising that when Wurman presented keynote remarks at the recent IA Summit, he spoke of information architecture within the framework of a journey from not knowing to knowing. That's the magic of this business, he told us." (Thom Haller)

PJB @ 4:16 PM | Classification: Events - Information architecture | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

August 24, 2010

Emotional Design with A.C.T.: Defining Emotion, Personality and Relationship (1/2)

"In Part 1 of this two-part article, I'll be discussing how emotions command attention. Then, we'll dive deeper to explore how design elicits and communicates emotion and personality to users. Emotions result in the experience of pleasure or pain that commands attention. The different dimensions of emotion affect different aspects of behavior as well as communicating personality over time. In Part 2, I'll introduce a framework for describing the formation of relationships between people and the products they use." (Trevor van Gorp ~ Boxes and Arrows)

PJB @ 10:01 AM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

August 23, 2010

Should You Copy a Famous Site's Design?

"Although successful websites typically have high usability, average sites can hurt their business by copying design elements that don't work well in other contexts." (Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox)

PJB @ 11:26 AM | Classification: Usability - Visual design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Making the Deal: Supporting Product Demos with User Assistance

"Demo software changes the rules. Customers purchase your product only after it has proven its usefulness. Usability barriers in demos often cause customers to decide not to purchase—after all, their commitment to your product is minimal at that point. Plus, product reviewers often use demos to evaluate products. They rate your product based on how well the demo performs for them. A poor review can discourage many potential customers from even trying your demo, let alone purchasing your product. In both of these scenarios, your product’s user assistance can affect how successful a user or reviewer is in getting your product to work for them, in the critical window during which they’re making their judgment about your product." (Mike Hughes ~ UXmatters)

PJB @ 10:25 AM | Classification: HCI | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Personas: Explorations in Developing a Deep and Dimensioned Character

"If we are going to begin to address these issues, we need to get at the root of the problem—our empathetic understanding of our users. Having empathy for users and understanding their needs doesn't come from reading words on a page. It doesn’t come from statistical analysis of demographics either. It comes from truly embodying and experiencing the character of a persona, so it becomes ingrained emotionally and physically in our memories. Actors understand this. From the time Stanislavski began teaching Method Acting - a process of transformation in which actors begin to take on the true nature of a character - actors have referred to this moment when they realize a character's emotional memory and have truly become the character as the moment of embodiment." (Traci Lepore ~ UXmatters)

PJB @ 10:23 AM | Classification: Personas - User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

August 19, 2010

The making of Undercover UX Design

"Writing a book has been the most complex information architecture challenge of my life. The permutations in which you can sculpt, exclude, clarify and link information are staggering. No surprise then that we relied on our familiar design process, heading up the chain of goals, structure, content and surface. We appropriated the tools of our trade: personas, content analysis, user feedback and deep iteration—but it was trial and error that finally unearthed the process that worked for us." (Cennydd Bowles)

PJB @ 3:42 PM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

August 18, 2010

Good Help is Hard to Find

"One of the most fundamental rules of user experience on the web is that developers are rarely qualified to evaluate it. As developers, we know far too much about the web in general, and intuitively grasp details that mystify people who spend their days contributing to society in other ways. For this reason, it’s all too easy for us to build websites and applications that are hard to use. Good user testing during the development process can mitigate the problem, but in many projects, the testing budget is limited if present at all." (Lyle Mullican ~ A List Apart)

PJB @ 4:23 PM | Classification: TechCom - Writing | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Corporate Blogs: Front Page Structure

"Showing summaries of many articles is more likely to draw in users than providing full articles, which can quickly exhaust reader interest." (Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox)

PJB @ 11:00 AM | Classification: Usability | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

July 26, 2010

Interviewing Users

"Despite many weaknesses, interviews are a valuable method for exploratory user research." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

PJB @ 10:30 AM | Classification: Design research - UCD | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

July 21, 2010

Knowledge Visualization in Design Practice (.pdf)

Exploring the power of knowledge visualization in problem solving - "This paper presents knowledge visualization as a design activity in problem solving. In contemporary design practice the increasing complexity of problems and range of information that design practitioners engage with is driving the need for more robust processes and tools in order to design relevant, meaningful solutions for people. We situate visualization within a four phased model where the intent is to understand the dimensions of a problem. Visualization aids in sensemaking and cognitive processing of complex information. It accomplishes this through framing ambiguous states, bringing order to complexity, making sense out of seemingly unrelated things or finding insights that are buried in data. We propose that in a problem solving context its value goes beyond the functional level of simply representing information but rather operates as a powerful instrument for thinking in analysis, synthesis and insight generation. Visual models and frameworks serve as tools to illuminate relationships and meanings within data and define the areas to explore and construct solutions." (Joanne Mendel and Jan Yeager ~ Parsons Journal for Information Mapping Volume 2 Issue 3)

PJB @ 2:55 PM | Classification: Design research - InfoViz | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

July 20, 2010

The Information Architecture of Cities

"Cities can be viewed as information architecture systems. Here, 'architecture' is used in the sense of computer architecture -- it refers not to the design of buildings, but to how the components of a complex system interact. Information exchange includes the movement of people and goods, personal contact and interactions, telecommunications, as well as visual input from the environment. Information networks provide a basis for understanding living cities and for diagnosing urban problems. This paper argues that a city works less like an electronic computer, and more like the human brain. As a functionally complex system, it heuristically defines its own functionality by changing connections so as to optimize how components interact. An effective city will be one with a system architecture that can respond to changing conditions. This analysis shifts the focus of understanding cities from their physical structure to the flow of information." (L. Andrew Coward and Nikos A. Salingaros ~ Journal of Information Science, Volume 30 No. 2, 2004) | courtesy of @wantmag

PJB @ 7:22 PM | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Why traditional intranets fail today's knowledge workers

"(...) most of today’s intranets primarily consist of pre-produced information resources which are intended to serve information needs which can be anticipated in advance. They aim to serve people who perform predefined and repeatable tasks. These intranets are push platforms. As such they might work well for repeatable routine work where the information needs can be defined in advanced, but they are quite dysfunctional for knowledge work. It’s not a coincidence that many knowledge workers find it much easier to find information on the web than in their internal systems and that the intranet plays a marginal role in their daily work." (Oscar Berg ~ The Content Economy) | courtesy of @everbass

PJB @ 3:39 PM | Classification: Content management | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Are you prepared for the Semantic Web?

"If you want to stay ahead of the web publishing curve, now is the time to start learning and experimenting with the Semantic Web. It’s been in development since the ’90s, led by Tim Berners-Lee himself. When media historians write books about the information transformation we are in (from print to web), the Semantic Web will be at least as important as the invention of HTML. Having Semantic Web-enabled pages will soon be a big competitive advantage for you and your company." (Writing for Digital)

PJB @ 10:20 AM | Classification: Content strategy - Metadata - Writing | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

July 19, 2010

Supporting User Experience Throughout the Product Development Process

"For most of us, the ideal when working on a product-development project would be to work with a group of like-minded professionals, each with their own areas of responsibility, but sharing the same overarching goal. Yet all too often in User Experience, we encounter unwarranted resistance to our ideas, making the product-development process much less efficient and adding to a project's costs. The apparent cost of involving User Experience early and throughout a product-development process becomes a series of hidden costs, resulting from project delays, incomplete requirements, and less than optimal products that result in higher error rates and reduced efficiency for users." (Peter Hornsby ~ UXmatters)

PJB @ 2:16 PM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Design Is a Process, Not a Methodology

"(..) I'll provide an overview of a product design process, then discuss some indispensable activities that are part of an effective design process, with a particular focus on those activities that are essential for good interaction design. Although this column focuses primarily on activities that are typically the responsibility of interaction designers, this discussion of the product design process applies to all aspects of UX design." (Pabini Gabriel-Petit ~ UXmatters)

PJB @ 2:14 PM | Classification: UCD - User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design