All posts from
April 2010

Physical Place and CyberPlace: The Rise of Personalized Networking

“Computer networks are social networks. Social affordances of computer supported social networks–broader bandwidth, wireless portability, globalized connectivity, personalization–are fostering the movement from door-to-door and place-to-place communities to person-to-person and role-to-role communities. People connect in social networks rather than in communal groups. In-person and computer-mediated communication are integrated in communities characterized by personalized networking.” (Barry Wellman 2001)

Industry trends in prototyping

“Prototypes are meant to be a cost-effective way of experimenting with ideas. They are generally considered part of the pre-planning phase, rather than part of the construction or manufacturing process that results in the final product—although obviously the discoveries made during the process of prototyping should ultimately both inform and shape the construction process.” (Dave Cronin ~ Cooper)

Design Patterns: Faceted Navigation

“Faceted navigation may be the most significant search innovation of the past decade. It features an integrated, incremental search and browse experience that lets users begin with a classic keyword search and then scan a list of results. It also serves up a custom map that provides insights into the content and its organization and offers a variety of useful next steps. In keeping with the principles of progressive disclosure and incremental construction, it lets users formulate the equivalent of a sophisticated Boolean query by taking a series of small, simple steps. Learn how it works, why it has become ubiquitous in e-commerce, and why it’s not for every site.” (Peter Morville & Jeffery Callender ~ A List Apart)

Typography for Lawyers

“Even though the legal profession depends heavily on writing, legal typography is often poor. Some blame lies with the strict typographic constraints that control certain legal documents (e.g. court rules regarding the format of pleadings). But the rest of the blame lies with lawyers. To be fair, I assume this is for lack of information, not lack of will. This website fills that void.” (Matthew Butterick) – courtesy of luctiemessen

Ubiquitous Service Design

“Decades later, these concepts remain relevant, and yet we must adapt for new contexts. As Glushko and Tabas explain, today’s service systems may include interrelated sub-systems (e.g., person-to-person, self-service) across multiple locations, devices, and channels; and customer satisfaction is influenced by the extent of integration and consistency across those channels.” (Peter Morville ~ Semantic Studios)

CHI 2010: Growing the UX Management Community

“As User Experience matures as a discipline and grows in influence in the business community, UX leaders need to support one another by sharing their insights with their counterparts in other organizations, as well as with the educators molding the next generation of UX leaders at universities offering Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) programs. Indeed, the success of UX design and research initiatives within organizations depends significantly on how UX leaders position their teams and partner and build support with other senior leaders in their organizations.” (Jim Nieters ~ UXmatters)

The Process Police

“No process guarantees success. If there were a process that guaranteed happy users everyone would be using it. Nobody gets it right every time. Design doesn’t work like that. It’s iterative, responsive, ever-changing. You have to react as much as plan. You have to change your process on the fly to react to the marketplace. That’s why we need to optimize for what’s most important, a happy user, and do whatever it takes to make it happen, process be damned.” (52 Weeks of UX)

IA Summit 10: Whitney Hess Keynote

“In her keynote closing the 2010 IA Summit, Whitney asks if our work is just our job or our passion. To really make the difference we seek, our practice needs to be our calling. The UX community is united because of a common mission: We empower people to become self-reliant and more resourceful, organized, social, and relaxed. We don’t do it for them, they do it for themselves.” (Jeff ParksBoxes and Arrows)

The perils of persuasion

“The success of UCD has sustained demand for user experience design skills, and the land rush has continued in 2010. UX is becoming a cookie cutter add-on for digital agencies and I rarely meet a web designer now who doesn’t claim UX proficiency, although not all can articulate what that means. And it’s not just the designers: I also see back-end developers, SEO professionals and marketers rapidly appending these two magical letters to their CVs.” (Cennydd Bowles)

The Secret to Designing an Intuitive UX: Match the Mental Model to the Conceptual Model

“A mental model represents a person’s thought process for how something works (i.e., a person’s understanding of the surrounding world). Mental models are based on incomplete facts, past experiences, and even intuitive perceptions. (…) A conceptual model is the actual model that is given to the user through the interface of the product.” (Susan Weinschenk – UX Magazine)

Defining the Designer of 2015

“(…) it has been apparent that design studios and corporate departments have been looking for a new kind of designer, one that has traditional skills and yet a much broader perspective on problem solving. Because one of AIGA’s central responsibilities is to keep abreast of developments in the industry, we recognized that we needed to better understand the emerging role of designers and to enter into a deeper discussion with educators and design leaders on how to prepare designers for future changes.” (AIGA)