January 2009

Design matters, like never before

"In a world changing faster than at any other time in human history, a dynamic and critical analysis of what is 'good' design could not be more urgently required. Whilst new communication technologies are offering revolutionary platforms for mass collaboration and opportunities to democratically converse within a global community (1), simultaneously the world faces unprecedented environmental, social, and economic crises (2). Are designers really capitalising on social media platforms and collaborative opportunities? What do these democratic shifts and global challenges mean, and what future role do they offer to the designer, writer and critic?" (Kate Andrews - on Social Design)

Posted by PJB on January 29, 2009 | Classification: Social Web | Permalink

How Search Fits Into The Web Site Design Process

"The important thing to remember here is that search should be a key consideration at every stage of the process, whether it is selecting a provider, setting requirements, producing comps, coding or site deployment." (Rob Garner - MediaPost) - courtesy of janjursa

Posted by PJB on January 29, 2009 | Classification: Search | Permalink

Detangling the meanings around the design of services

"From the technical perspective, a service is an atomic unit of unctionality. (...) From the user experience perspective, a service is an atomic unit of activity." (Mike Kuniavsky - Orange Cone) - courtesy of markvanderbeeken

Posted by PJB on January 29, 2009 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Interactions Jan/Feb '08: The Digital Version

"This issue marks a quiet milestone for us: the beginning of our second year as editors in chief. Year one was marked by six quality issues, a new look and feel, a new website, a new team of contributors and advisors, a presence at more than two dozen premier conferences, and greatly renewed and expanded respect for the magazine. Our second year begins with a bang, with a very strong January+February issue and several additions to the interactions team." (ACM Interactions Magazine)

Posted by PJB on January 28, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

User Experience Deliverables

"It's an exhilarating time for the user experience community. Rising awareness of our value plus emerging technologies and transmedia trends have created conditions for a step change in our practice." (Peter Morville)

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Optimizing Tagging UI for People and Search

"This content has come from more than four years of research and discussions with people using tools, both inside enterprise and using consumer web tools. As enterprise moves more quickly toward more cost effective tools for capturing and connecting information, they are aware of not only the value of social tools, but tools that get out the way and allow humans to capture, share, and interact in a manner that is as natural as possible with the tools getting smart, not humans having to adopt technology patterns." (Thomas Vanderwal)

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2009 | Classification: Metadata | Permalink

Beyond Usability: Designing Web Sites for Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust

"The next wave in Web site design is persuasive design, designing for persuasion, emotion, and trust. While usability is still a fundamental requirement for effective Web site design, it is no longer enough to design sites that are simply easy to navigate and understand so users can complete transactions. As business mandates for Web site design have grown more strategic, complex, and demanding of accountability, good usability has become the price of competitive entry. So, while usability is important, it is no longer the key differentiator it once was." (Eric Schaffer - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Antipatterns

"Tools for developing user interfaces have become increasingly sophisticated and available in recent years, ranging from object-oriented application development tools such as Java Swing to WYSIWYG HTML editors such as Dreamweaver. Such tools promise more rapid development—including quicker iteration—and potentially greater reliability. While we should welcome these benefits, increasing the ease of user interface development at a technical level can—perhaps ironically—make it more difficult for UX teams to operate effectively. We must bridge the gap between the technical skills we need to implement user interfaces and the skills that let us understand users and design maximally effective user interfaces for them." (Peter Hornsby - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2009 | Classification: Patterns | Permalink

Designing Social Interfaces: The Book

Principles, Patterns, and Practices for Improving the User Experience - "This book presents a family of social web design principles and interaction patterns that we have observed and codified, thus capturing user experience best practices and emerging social web customs for web 2.0 practitioners." (Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone)

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2009 | Classification: HCI - Patterns | Permalink

Pattern Languages for Interaction Design

"Will Evans stalked and captured Erin Malone, Christian Crumlish, and Lucas Pettinati to talk about design patterns, pattern libraries, styleguides, and innovation. Erin, Christian, and Lucas are leading a workshop on design patterns at this year's Interactions in Vancouver and, Erin and Christian are writing a book on patterns for designing social spaces for O'Reilly." (Will Evans - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2009 | Classification: Interaction design - Interviews - Patterns | Permalink

Fourth Order Design? What Do You Think?

"Lately people started talking to me about 'fourth order design' or systemic integration. The person who comes up the most in this discussion is Richard Buchanan." (Arne van Oosterom - DesignThinkers)

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2009 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Design Research Methods for Experience Design

"There is a trend among some in the UX community to take the U out of UX and refer to our discipline simply as experience design. One reason for this change in terminology is that it lets us talk about a specific target audience in terms that resonate with business stakeholders more than the generic term user—for example, customer experience, patient experience, or member experience. The other reason for using the term experience design rather than user experience design is that it recognizes the fact that most customer interactions are multifaceted and complex and include all aspects of a customer’s interaction with a company or other organizational entity, including its people, services, and products. Customer interactions encompass much more than the usability of a particular user interface. They include all of the social and emotional consequences of a customer’s interaction with an organization or brand, including trust, motivation, relationships, and value." (Michael Hawley - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on January 23, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

The UX Customer Experience: Communicating Effectively with Stakeholders and Clients

"User experience and its associated fields of expertise—such as usability, information architecture, interaction design, and user interface design—have expanded rapidly over the past decade to accommodate what seems like insatiable demand, as the world moves toward an increasingly digital existence." (Jonathan Follett - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on January 23, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Text Treatment and the User Interface

"Before graphic user interfaces, text was the primary means of both input and output defining human-computer interactions. Even today, much of the information user interfaces present is textual. Therefore, we should not underestimate how the right text treatment can measurably improve user productivity and increase user satisfaction. As new technologies become available—for example, larger monitors with higher resolutions—a good foundation of knowledge about effective text treatment can help designers create usable user interfaces for them more quickly." (Tobias Komischke - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on January 23, 2009 | Classification: Typography | Permalink

Researching Video Games the UX Way

"Video games are often overlooked in the scope of usability testing simply because, in a broad sense, their raison d'etre is so different than that of a typical functional interface: fun, engagement, and immersion, rather than usability and efficiency. Players are supposed to get a feeling of satisfaction and control from the interface itself, and in that sense, interaction is both a means and an end. The novelty and whimsy of the design occasionally comes at the expense of usability, which isn't always a bad thing—that said, video games still have interfaces in their own right, and designing one that is easy to-use and intuitive is critical for players to enjoy the game." (Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on January 22, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Press Area Usability

"As three studies of journalists show, they use the Web as a major research tool, exhibit high search dominance, and are impatient with bloated sites that don't serve their needs or list a PR contact." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on January 20, 2009 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

User Experience (UX)

"How a person reacts to a Web site determines that user's experience with the product and can determine a return visit. The usability of a Web site, which usually refers to the elegance, flow-of-content & clarity with which the site is designed, can ensure a positive user experience. User Experience (UX) is part of Business Exchange, suggested by Michael Herman. This topic contains 790 news and 1,139 blog items. Read updated news, blogs, and resources about User Experience (UX). Find user-submitted articles and comments on User Experience (UX) from like-minded professionals." (Business Week Exchange) - courtesy of tvantongeren

Posted by PJB on January 20, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Scott McCloud on Comics

"In this unmissable look at the magic of comics, Scott McCloud bends the presentation format into a cartoon-like experience, where colorful diversions whiz through childhood fascinations and imagined futures that our eyes can hear and touch." (TED) - courtesy of presentationzen

Posted by PJB on January 19, 2009 | Classification: InfoViz | Permalink

Introduction to Interaction Design

An Interview with Dave Malouf - "interaction design is about deciding the flows and conversation, the narrative that these interface points make up - the notes that are played by the musician." (Will Evans - Johnny Holland)

Posted by PJB on January 19, 2009 | Classification: Interaction design - Interviews | Permalink

The Visual Repertoire of Obama's Run for the White House

"An analysis of the visual diversity of the 2008 Presidential Elections in America, for the Parsons Journal for Information Mapping, New York (USA)." (Gerlinde Schuller - Information Design Studio)

Posted by PJB on January 19, 2009 | Classification: Information graphics | Permalink

Taken Out of Context

"As social network sites like MySpace and Facebook emerged, American teenagers began adopting them as spaces to mark identity and socialize with peers. Teens leveraged these sites for a wide array of everyday social practices - gossiping, flirting, joking around, sharing information, and simply hanging out. While social network sites were predominantly used by teens as a peer-based social outlet, the unchartered nature of these sites generated fear among adults. This dissertation documents my 2.5-year ethnographic study of American teens' engagement with social network sites and the ways in which their participation supported and complicated three practices - self-presentation, peer sociality, and negotiating adult society." (Danah Boyd - apophenia)

Posted by PJB on January 19, 2009 | Classification: Information design - Social Web | Permalink

Experience Design for Interactive Products 

Designing Technology Augmented Urban Playgrounds for Girls - "Recent technological developments have made it possible to apply experience design also in the field of highly interactive product design, an area where involvement of non-trivial technology traditionally made it impossible to implement quick design cycles. With the availability of modular sensor and actuator kits, designers are able to quickly build interactive prototypes and realize more design cycles. In this paper we present a design process that includes experience design for the design of interactive products. The design process was developed for a master level course in product design. In addition, we discuss several cases from this course, applying the process to designing engaging interactive urban playgrounds." (Aadjan van der Helm et al.)

Posted by PJB on January 16, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

I am no longer an IAI Board member

"The official IAI announcement will say Because of personal and professional reasons, our fellow board member Peter Boersma has decided to resign his position on the IAI board. Here's some explanation around that phrase." (Peter Boersma - BEEP)

Posted by PJB on January 16, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Game Mechanics for Interaction Design

An Interview with Amy Jo Kim - "Game mechanics are a collection of tools and systems that an interactive designer can use to make an experience more fun and compelling. Used well, game mechanics make a Web design more engaging, sticky and viral by incentivizing certain behaviors. However, game mechanics are not a panacea: to be effective, the mechanics need to be integral to the experience." (Joshua Porter - Bokardo)

Posted by PJB on January 16, 2009 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

Three Questions to the Service Design World

"(1) How do we change our understanding of the design process in Service Innovation?; (2) What are the designer's new roles while working with multiple stakeholders?; (3) How would design's value be recognised and accepted by other disciplines in Service Knowledge?" (Qin - Design Generalist)

Posted by PJB on January 15, 2009 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Wireframes Magazine

"Oh come on don't be shy. Do you have something to show off while documenting rich interaction, dynamic content, user flows, and web 2.0 wireframes? Please send me a sample and I will put it up. Also tell me who to credit and if you would like an optional link back." (Jakub Linowski)

Posted by PJB on January 13, 2009 | Classification: Wireframes | Permalink

Jesse James Garrett - The Lost IDEA 2008 Interview

"I think IA does have a future as a practice - the future of IA may not look like the present or past of IA, but if IA is the practice of the structuring of information for human understanding, well that's never going to go away." (Russ Unger - UserGlue)

Posted by PJB on January 13, 2009 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

Pattern Browser

"This browser was produced by the Interface Design Team of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam." - courtesy of latebytes

Posted by PJB on January 13, 2009 | Classification: Patterns | Permalink

Bad Usability Calendar 2009

"Here it is again! The (in)famous Bad Usability Calendar has featured 48 classic design mistakes in 13 different languages since 2005. Get it while it's hot!" (NetLife Research) - courtesy of usa'news

Posted by PJB on January 13, 2009 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Representing Artefacts as Media

Modelling the Relationship Between Designer Intent and Consumer Experience - "The design literature contains many diagrammatic models that represent the relationship between how designers intend artefacts to be experienced and how they are subsequently experienced by consumers, users and other stakeholders. Despite the prevalence of such models, they remain largely disconnected from each other, both within and across design disciplines, and also disconnected from the models of communication whose basic structure they share. The existing models are therefore difficult to locate and useful conceptual developments are often overlooked. The consequences of this are that unnecessary effort is expended in developing representations that duplicate those that already exist or new models are developed from inappropriate foundations. To address such issues, this article reviews many of the existing models that can be found in the different disciplines that comprise the fields of communication and design. The most pertinent features of these models are extracted and synthesised into a generic communication-based model of design. This acts as both a guide to what the existing models emphasise and an integrated foundation from which future models might be developed." (Nathan Crilly, Anja Maier, P John Clarkson - Int'l Journal of Design Dec.2008)

Posted by PJB on January 12, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

'Misconceptions about user experience design' by K. Instone

Whitney Hess writes: "I especially enjoyed the recap -- I think you hit the nail on the head." (Keith Instone - Experienceologist)

Posted by PJB on January 12, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

In Venting, a Computer Visionary Educates

"The look back by this forward-thinking man is not without its bitterness. The Web, after all, can be seen as a bastardization of his original notion that hyperlinks should point both forward and backward." (John Markoff - NYT) - Chapter summaries available.

Posted by PJB on January 11, 2009 | Classification: Classics | Permalink

A definition of user experience

"User experience (UX) represents the perception left in someone's mind following a series of interactions between people, devices, and events – or any combination thereof. (...) A good user-experience designer needs to be able to see both the forest and the trees. That means user experience has implications that go far beyond usability, visual design, and physical affordances." (Eric Reiss - FatDUX)

Posted by PJB on January 11, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design

"The term 'user experience' or UX has been getting a lot of play, but many businesses are confused about what it actually is and how crucial it is to their success. I asked some of the most influential and widely respected practitioners in UX what they consider to be the biggest misperceptions of what we do. The result is a top 10 list to debunk the myths. Read it, learn it, live it." (Whitney Hess - Mashable)

Posted by PJB on January 10, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Tap is the New Click (The Video)

Video registration - "Even though the technology has been around for decades, only now are we starting to see mass production and adoption of touchscreen and gestural devices for the public. Jeff Han's influential 2006 TED demonstration of his multitouch system, followed by the launches of Nintendo's Wii, Apple's iPhone, and Microsoft Surface, have announced a new era of interaction design, one where gestures in space and touches on a screen will be as prominent as pointing and clicking. But how do you create products for this new paradigm? While most of us know how to design desktop and web applications, what do you need to know to design for interactive gestures? This introduction to designing gestural interfaces will cover the basics: usability and ergonomics; a brief history of the technology; some elemental patterns of use; prototyping and documenting; and how to communicate that a gestural interface is present to users." (Dan Saffer)

Posted by PJB on January 09, 2009 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

Three Mobile User Experience Trends to Watch in 2009

"2008 was truly a milestone year for mobile. In an industry that has long felt downtrodden by a multitude of technical and business constraints, wild and exciting inflection points burst like fireworks across the mobile landscape, bringing visibility to our industry and renewing our hopes." (Rachel Hinman - Adaptive Path blog)

Posted by PJB on January 08, 2009 | Classification: Mobile design | Permalink

FoodUX: Gastronomic Inspiration for UX Designers

"FoodUX is a collection of inspirational web gems for user experience designers from the gastronomic and culinary arts." (Composing Cook)

Posted by PJB on January 07, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Magic Fairy Tales as Source for Interface Metaphors

"The work is devoted to a problem of search of metaphors for interactive systems and systems based on Virtual Reality environments. The analysis of magic fairy tales as a source of metaphors for interface and virtual reality is offered. Some results of design process based on magic metaphors are considered." (Vladimir L. Averbukh - Journal of HCI Vistas)

Posted by PJB on January 06, 2009 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

Culture and Personas Perception

"In this experiment, it is especially the holistic versus the analytic thinking and grouping in themes rather than according to taxonomies that might be in play. In connection to personas descriptions the question becomes; how different are the categories we use to perceive a description?" (Lene Nielsen - Journal of HCI Vistas)

Posted by PJB on January 06, 2009 | Classification: Personas | Permalink

The Client Experience

"User experience is all the rage. First impressions, consistent quality, matching online with offline, all that good stuff. Every year the same design conferences are full of the same talks. The slides might get shinier each year, but it's the same guys making the same comparisons." (Des Traynor - Contrast) - courtesy of lucraak

Posted by PJB on January 05, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

10 Best Intranets of 2009

"Intranets are getting more strategic, with increased collaboration support. Team size is growing by 12% per year, and platforms are becoming integrated, with a strong showing for SharePoint. Improving usability increased use by 106% on average." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on January 05, 2009 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Service Design at HRO

"Two weeks ago I had to opportunity to give a lecture on Service Design at the Hogeschool Rotterdam. The presentation was recorded so hereby I'd like to share the footage with you." (Marc Fonteijn - 31Volts)

Posted by PJB on January 05, 2009 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Google's view on the future of business: An interview with CEO Eric Schmidt

"There's such an explosion of content, and yet there's so little understanding of it." (The McKinsey Quaterly) - courtesy of deluca

Posted by PJB on January 02, 2009 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

Engelbart and the Dawn of Interactive Computing

Event videos available - "On December 9, 2008 at Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium, SRI International commemorated the 40th anniversary of the world debut of personal and interactive computing by Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart and the SRI Augmentation Research Center (...) Speakers at the 2008 event included original participants in the 1968 demo and presentations on Doug Engelbart's vision to use computing to augment society's collective intellect and ability to solve the complex issues of our time." (A 40th Anniversary Celebration)

Posted by PJB on January 01, 2009 | Classification: Classics | Permalink