“Traditionally, user research involves directly observing and talking with people in the context of their work or play. Either researchers travel to observe participants in their natural environments or participants travel to a usability lab or focus-group facility. How better to understand how people use a product or technology than to observe them using it firsthand?” (Jim Ross – UXmatters)
All posts from
March 2010
There Is No Such Thing As Jesse James Garrett
“The president of a firm that’s synonymous with User Experience and who literally ‘wrote the book’ on the elements of User Experience making an impassioned call for everybody who’s called information architect or interaction designer to change their business cards to omit mention of these competing paradigms, and then insisting that the way your firm does its work is different than every other kind of design approach that’s come before it? It’s a sell job, if not a sales pitch. I think he doth protest too much.” (Dan Klyn – Wildly Appropriate)
Invisible Revolution
“(…) the story of Doug Engelbart, the man who invented much of the information environment we live in today – the computer mouse, word processing, email, hypertext and so on. In short: Interactive computing. This is his story, and the story of his fellow dreamers, thinkers, doers – revolutionaries – who changed our lives forever.” (Frode Hegland & Fleur Klijnsma)
How UX can get anything they want
“When it comes to the world of UX, designers, usability engineers, and the rest, they tend to complain about how little power they have, but spend little time doing skill development in how to gain influence and power. The average designer or IA would be better served by going to a sales conference and learning sales and pitching skills, than going to yet another design event. They’re already good at design, but they’re probably not very good at pitching design ideas to non-designers.” (Scott Berkun)
Starting Out Organized: Website Content Planning The Right Way
“So many articles explain how to design interfaces, design graphics and deal with clients. But one step in the Web development process is often skipped over or forgotten altogether: content planning. Sometimes called information architecture, or IA planning, this step doesn’t find a home easily in many people’s workflow. But rushing on to programming and pushing pixels makes for content that looks shoehorned rather than fully integrated and will only require late-game revisions.” (Kristin Wemmer – Smashing Magazine)
Content Strategy as Information Design
“Content strategy is in many respects information design. And as Steve Jobs famously said, ‘Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.’ Content, and content strategy are experiential – much the same as design. And design requires planning.” (Will Sullivan – Craft Interactive)
Preso: User Experience Will Make or Break Social Business
“User experience is the art and science of designing digital products that people want to use.” (Karen McGrane – Bond Art+Science)
17 guidelines for better information architecture (from 1991)
“Given the emphasis on HCI and psychology one might easily think this is a relatively recent volume on IA and usability. In fact, this book was published in 1991! I find it amazing how appropriate much of the content still is.” (Jussi Pasanen – Volkside) – courtesy of ferrydendopper
The (Near) Future of Managing Experiences
“What’s your plan for the near future? If you’re like most in our field, the path forward is murky and no one at your office is handing out maps. We’ll look at the trends and tactics that matter, so you can make your own map for moving ahead.” (Brandon Schauer – MX Managing Experience 2010)
We learn from stories and experience
“When it comes to learning and genuinely retaining something, nothing beats experiences. Formal educational or speaking settings don’t always allow for actual hands-on experience with the content, but almost every learning situation — including presentation in various forms — does permit the use of stories.” (Garr Reynolds – Presentation Zen)
SXSW Live: Beyond the Desktop
“Some people think it’s just the hardware, but it’s not. It’s also about the software, the context, and the overall user experience.” (Michael Leis)
The Guardian supplement on Service Design
“We are happy to announce that the British newspaper The Guardian has released a ten page supplement on Service Design today, Monday, 15th of March! In co-operation with the Service Design Network The Guardian has produced a supplement themed on Service Design and Innovation in partnership with organisations from the Service Design and Innovation markets. Included are many interesting case studies and best practices with perceivable business impact but also enjoyable and easy understandable examples. 10 Pages, 350.000 copies… great stories! ” (Service Design Network) – courtesy of ronverweij
Sketching in Film
“My next bit of insight into how to sketch a service comes from the intersection of ethnography and cinema.” (Design for Service)
Books in the age of the iPad
“With the iPad, we finally have a platform for consuming rich-content in digital form. What does that mean? To understand just why the iPad is so exciting we need to think about how we got here.” (Craig Mod)
The Virtues of a UX Professional
“UX professionals can be an egotistical lot. We like to think that only certain people with certain qualities can do what we do. Not everybody has the right stuff to fly to the moon or storm the beaches at Normandy. And in a similar way (sort of) not everybody has what it takes to create great user experiences.” (Colman Walsh – IQBlog)
User Experience Books Free to Read Online
“The truly worldwide reach of the Web has brought with it a new realisation among computer scientists and industry professionals of the enormous importance of usability and user interface design. In the last ten years, much has become understood about what works in user interfaces from a usability perspective, and what does not.” (Simon Whatley)
Can you mix Agile and UX?
“Here’s my open transparent written exploration of how I am navigating this concept. (…) I think the concept of Agile is fine, its the execution of it that I think is where the story kind of starts to fall a little to the way side, I think from a UX standpoint you really need to outline the features ahead but do so in a way that is suited to a ready, aim, fire model.” (Scott Barnes)
Preso: Data-Driven Design
“A five minute rant on the importance of letting data be your guide when making tactical design decisions. An introduction for managers of design teams who are driven from a heuristic, or ‘genius’ perspective.” (Ryan Freitas)
The Craft of Interaction Design
“I’ve been involved in developing what I would say is the craft of interaction design. A craft is a way of working that you develop entirely through experience without thinking about rationalizing it or systematizing it. And I believe that craft is essential to interaction design, and always will be. But I also believe that there could be ways of thinking about interaction design, ways of generalizing principles from experience and existing knowledge, just as in the twenties general principles about composition and graphic design were developed at the Bauhaus, or a new grammar of film was invented by Eisenstein and written about by Arnheim. These ways of thinking about practice make a platform in which people coming after us can build without them needing to invent everything from the start.” (Gillian Crampton-Smith 2007)
Closeness of Actions and Objects in GUI Design
“Users overlook features if the GUI elements — such as buttons and checkboxes — are too far away from the objects they act on.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)
