August 2009

Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product

"A product is actually a service. (...) In reality a product is all about the experience. It is about discovery, purchase, anticipation, opening the package, the very first usage. It is also about continued usage, learning, the need for assistance, updating, maintenance, supplies, and eventual renewal in the form of disposal or exchange." (Donald A. Norman - Interaction Magazine XVI.5 Sep/Oct 2009)

Posted by PJB on August 31, 2009 | Classification: Service design - User experience | Permalink

The Value of Information

"While producing information costs money, information as such doesn't necessarily carry monetary value; it mostly carries intellectual, social, artistic, practical value. And that’s why, historically, news has been commercially, publicly, politically and privately subsidized." (Information Architects)

Posted by PJB on August 31, 2009 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Card Sorting: Pushing Users Beyond Terminology Matches

"It's easy to bias study participants, whether in user testing or in card sorting, if they focus on matching stimulus words instead of working on the underlying problem." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on August 31, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture - Usability | Permalink

The Gap in Service Design Education

"(...) it's become increasingly clear that there's something missing from service design education here in the United States. Co-design is barely on the radar." (Jeff Howard)

Posted by PJB on August 31, 2009 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Personas: How does the internet see you

"In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer's uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant." (Aaron Zinman - MIT Media Lab)

Posted by PJB on August 31, 2009 | Classification: Personas | Permalink

O'Reilly Webcast: Designing Web Interfaces

"Bill Scott shares six design patterns that are critical for creating effective web interfaces, focusing specifically on interaction design on the web. This presentation is a distillation of principles, patterns, and best practices for creating a rich experience unique to the web." (Bill Scott)

Posted by PJB on August 28, 2009 | Classification: Patterns - Technology | Permalink

Information Interplay: Visual Design, Information Architecture, and Content

"In good design, the interplay between visual design, information architecture, and content is how the user gets the best information. It is when we've balanced these three areas well that we see delighted users and achieve our business objectives." (Jared Spool - UIE)

Posted by PJB on August 28, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Smart talk about content strategy

"A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the lovely city of Atlanta to moderate a panel discussion on content strategy. Panel participants were selected from a variety of disciplines in order to facilitate discussion about how content strategy has impact on (and benefits for) a number of roles and functions across an organization. (OK, we were also hoping for a little fighting.) Participants were: Karen McGrane, Bond Art + Science (User Experience), John Muehlbauer, InterContinental Hotels Group (Marketing), Brian Ikeda, Philips Design (Visual Design), and Ryan Esparza, Content Management Consultant (CMS/IT)." (Kristina Halvorson - Brain Traffic)

Posted by PJB on August 27, 2009 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Preso: Design and Emotion

"Presentation that I gave at the Design and Emotion 2008 conference in Hong Kong. May be hard to understand from the slides alone... I'll try to add speech when I can. Content was from my thesis paper that I wrote for my Master of Interaction Design degree at Carnegie Mellon University." (Carrie Chan)

Posted by PJB on August 27, 2009 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Preso: Bringing Design to Life

"Web design without technology is just art. You must understand the magic that gets it on the site." (Bill Scott - Looks Good Works Well)

Posted by PJB on August 27, 2009 | Classification: Information design - Technology | Permalink

Jeff Veen on Great Designers

"Good designers copy. Great designers steal. - In this week's Ignite Show Jeff Veen, well-known for his design work on Google Analytics, Wikirank and Typekit, lays out a strong argument for why iPhone imitators are the cargo cults of the digital era. The people building touchscreen knock-offs don't understand what makes the iPhone great. So instead of creating an end-to-end service they attempt to imitate it's flashiest features - kind of like Pacific Islanders who built 'planes' out of bamboo." (O'Reilly Radar)

Posted by PJB on August 26, 2009 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Book Chapter: Designed Animism

"What does pervasive computing have to do with animism? Essentially, it can become a tool in manifesting what I call designed animism. The goal is fundamentally experiential, but the conequences are profound: designed animism forms the basis of a poetics for a new world." (Brenda Laurel)

Posted by PJB on August 26, 2009 | Classification: Design research - HCI - Information design | Permalink

Preso: UX design, service design and design thinking

"What is UX design, service design & design thinking? How are they related?" (Sylvain 'Sly' Cottong - IntegratedPlace)

Posted by PJB on August 26, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture - Service design - User experience | Permalink

Top 10 User Experience Myths

"Myth#2: People Read - Short: They don't." (Keith Lang - Carsonified)

Posted by PJB on August 26, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Design Thinking: Hard skills from a soft science

"Design thinking — distinct from analytical thinking — has emerged as the premier organizational path not only to breakthrough innovation but, surprisingly, to high-performance collaboration, as well. "It's not about the pretty," says one design-thinking practitioner, "it's about the productive." In this special section of articles, interviews, illustrated cases and research findings, the Review explores how to put design thinking to work." (MIT Sloan Management Review) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on August 25, 2009 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

The Value of Web Site Usability Evaluations

"Despite how much I rely on site audits, I'm well aware that some companies don't put much stock in them. In fact, many gurus from the usability industry don't like them at all. They have a point." (Kim Krause Berg - Cre8pc)

Posted by PJB on August 25, 2009 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

How to Extend Your Customer Experience Through Social Media

"The worst offenders are those who see social media as simply another platform for marketing communications, blasting press releases and other promotions without regard." (Peter Merholz - Harvard Business)

Posted by PJB on August 24, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

User Interface Trends

"Comment on and rate trends in user interface design for websites and web applications." (About UI Trends) - courtesy of usabilitynews

Posted by PJB on August 24, 2009 | Classification: HCI - Weblogs | Permalink

Twitter Postings: Iterative Design

"We made a timeline message more punchy, credible, and viral through 5 rounds of redesign." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on August 24, 2009 | Classification: Social Web - Usability | Permalink

Why can't we integrate sustainable design with mobile phones?

"Mobile phones have become an integral part of our daily life. Retrieving information has never been easier with current phones offering an array of features such as GPS and Internet access. However, a new mobile phone is released almost every week, and it has become common practice to get a new mobile phone at the end of every year’s contract since they are often offered as free with the new contract. But what then happens to the mobile phone you are upgrading from? Many are forgotten, most are thrown away, very few are recycled. Discarding such a high-tech piece of equipment as though it were as easy as balling up a piece of paper and throwing it in the bin surely cannot be sensible. Why do mobile phones only last for just over a year, and what are the effects of all of this high-tech electronic waste that we are generating?" (Peter van Lanschot)

Posted by PJB on August 21, 2009 | Classification: Mobile design | Permalink

Designing for Interaction: Design Research

"If only a small bit of the typical time, money, and resources used to make and market a product or service were put towards design research—observing, talking to, and maybe even making artifacts with customers and users—the products and services we use would be greatly improved. Dan Saffer explains." (Dan Saffer - Peachpit) - courtesy jhollandmag

Posted by PJB on August 20, 2009 | Classification: Design research - Interaction design | Permalink

Online Advertising: Factors That Influence Customer Experience

"In this article, I'll discuss the cognitive elements at the intersection of advertising and human behavior. By taking an approach to advertising that looks at the impact psychological factors have on customer behavior, I’ve learned that customers respond directly to online advertisements, as we can see from their emotions, behavior, and interactions on the Web." (Afshan Kirmani - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on August 19, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Inside Out: Interaction Design for Augmented Reality

"Many people enter the inside-out world of augmented reality (AR) by doing something as ordinary as visiting a major city like New York and trying to get to a local friend's favorite pizza shop, somewhere deep in Brooklyn, via public transportation. Standing in Times Square on a summer evening, they might hold up a new smart phone and pan it slowly around the Square to see a pointer to the nearest subway entrance overlaid on their phone’s video display of the buildings around them." (Joe Lamantia - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on August 19, 2009 | Classification: HCI - Technology - User experience | Permalink

Effective UX in a Corporate Environment: Part I

"Today's consumers have growing expectations for higher quality and ease of use in new products. They typically evaluate brand values and product specs before paying top dollar for products. Companies are scrambling to align their brand touchpoints and gain loyal customers for their current and future product lines. Without strong brands, consumers buy with their wallets, not their hearts. They may miss product innovations companies have designed to fill major gaps in their markets and increase their market shares—even products they've painstakingly tested with users." (Janet M. Six and Chris Anthony - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on August 19, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Managing UI Complexity

"Interface complexity is an issue every designer wrestles with when designing a reasonably sophisticated application. A complex interface can reduce user effectiveness, increase the learning curve of the application, and cause users to feel intimidated and overwhelmed." (Brandon Walkin) - courtesy of lievenbaeten

Posted by PJB on August 19, 2009 | Classification: Complexity - HCI | Permalink

The Case for Content Strategy - Motown Style

"Over the past year, the content strategy chatter has been building. Jeffrey MacIntyre gave us its raison d'être. Kristina Halvorson wrote the call to arms. Panels at SXSW, presentations at An Event Apart, and regional meetups continue to build the drum roll. But how do you start humming the content strategy tune to your own team and to your prospective clients? Listen up and heed Aretha Franklin. No, really." (Margot Bloomsteim - A List Apart)

Posted by PJB on August 18, 2009 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

The iPhone is Not Easy to Use: A New Direction for User Experience Design

"I live and breathe user experience design, and yet it took me two years to get myself the device referenced by almost every single presentation about user experience since 2007... Apple's iPhone. My reasons were very specific and perhaps boring, but what is interesting is the perspective this wait has afforded me. Since it was released, the iPhone has grabbed an astonishing share of mobile Web traffic, been regarded as a 'game-changer' in both the design and business worlds, and has even been referred to as the 'Jesus Phone'. Now that I've owned one for two weeks I've developed a different perspective. The iPhone is surprisingly difficult to use, but it sure is fun! And that is why it's a game-changer." (Fred Beecher - Johnny Holland Magazine)

Posted by PJB on August 18, 2009 | Classification: Mobile design - User experience | Permalink

Customization of UIs and Products

"Websites that let users customize the UI have the same measured usability as regular sites. Sites for customizing products, however, score substantially worse due to complex workflow." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on August 17, 2009 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Using the Internet: Skill related problems in users' online behavior

"This study extends the conventional and superficial notion of measuring digital skills by proposing definitions for operational, formal, information and strategic skills. The main purpose was to identify individual skill related problems that users experience when navigating the Internet. In particular, lower levels of education and aging seem to contribute to the amount of experienced operational and formal skill related problems. With respect to information skills, higher levels of education seem to perform best. Age did not seem to contribute to information skill related problems. Results did reveal that age had a negative effect on selecting irrelevant search results. Individual strategic Internet skill related problems occurred often, with the exception of subjects with higher levels of education. Younger subjects experienced far less operational and formal skill related problems, but there was no difference regarding information and strategic skill related problems." (Alexander J.A.M. van Deursen and Jan A.G.M. van Dijk) - courtesy of shuggie

Posted by PJB on August 14, 2009 | Classification: Design research | Permalink

Persona Format

"This persona format was created to organize information in the Fluid Personas. The format chosen was based on the competitive analysis of many persona examples below." (Fluid Project Wiki) - courtesy of janjursa

Posted by PJB on August 13, 2009 | Classification: Personas | Permalink

Study: Expected versus experienced usability

"In this paper. we explore why consumers do not seem to have a very distinct preference for usable products, even though these make satisfy them more after purchase. We wanted to explore the hypothesis that this might be due to the fact that it might be to hard for consumers to judge before use whether a product is usable or not. We call the pre-use assumptions that people have about the usability of a product expected usability. Experienced usability is the opinion people have about usability after use. We wanted to explore what product properties influence expected usability, and whether and when there is a difference between expected and experienced usability. And what the consequences of that are." (Jasper van Kuijk - uselog)

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

Preso: Designing for Social Traction

"Here is the slide deck from a talk I gave last week at Delve, a two-day masterclass held in Brooklyn, NY. The talk is in three parts, with each part focusing on a specific problem in software. Each problem is a major hurdle in what I call the usage lifecycle, or the stages people go through as they use and adopt software over time. These three hurdles come directly out of the work I do with clients…I’ve been focusing almost exclusively on these specific problems…I hope the slides help you focus on them as well." (Joshua Porter - Bokardo)

Posted by PJB on August 12, 2009 | Classification: Social Web | Permalink

Mobile User Experience Research: Challenges, Methods & Tools

"The main goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers from industry and academia, designers, and creators of mobile research tools to discuss methods, tools and infrastructure for mobile UX and HCI research. To achieve this goal, we plan to provide a forum for participants to share past experiences, success stories, failures and associated learnings, as well as recurring problems; to jointly prioritize these; to map out the dimensions required of mobile research tools, and translate some of these into draft requirements and low-fidelity prototypes for novel research tools." (CHI '09 Workshop)

Posted by PJB on August 12, 2009 | Classification: Mobile design - User experience | Permalink

Service Design: 10 Principles

Presentation by Hugh Dubberly - "ISO 2008 was a great success. Workshop participants joined us from all over the globe for three days of intense design activity." (People Centered Design)

Posted by PJB on August 11, 2009 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Scott Berkun: Growing Ideas In The Garden Of Innovation

"In this upbeat interview, Scott explains what drove him to write his book on innovation: after many years working in an innovation-obsessed software industry, he wanted to dispel the myths advocated in so much literature on the subject, or what he describes as the 'fantasy' that there is only one simple way to go about innovation and creative thinking." (Namahn interviews)

Posted by PJB on August 11, 2009 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

Introduction to Special Issue on Spatial Hypertext

"The field of spatial hypertext emerged from early efforts to visualize node-and-link hypertexts in the late 1980s. There were a few different systems by the end of the 1990s and an annual Workshop on Spatial Hypertext began in 2001." (Journal of Digital Information 10.3) - courtesy of mbernstein

Posted by PJB on August 11, 2009 | Classification: Hypertext | Permalink

Naview: Navigation preview tool for rapid IA prototyping

"Naview is a navigation preview tool for rapid information architecture prototyping from Volkside. It helps information architects design and visualise a new navigational structure and aims to bridge the gap between card sorting and IA user testing." (Volkside) - courtesy of jholland

Posted by PJB on August 11, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture - Navigation | Permalink

Zooming out from the desktop: The use of metaphors in Human-Computer Interface design

"The desktop/office metaphor is at the base in the interface of the majority of computers currently in use. The desktop metaphor was introduced in late 1970s to make computers friendlier to office workers. Today this type of interfaces and metaphors are not adequate with computer users needs. This dissertation explains why this obsolete concept is still in use. Then some alternative, emerging interfaces are presented. The last chapter then describes the One Laptop Per Child project as an example of how interface design can successfully take different routes from what is considered the industry standard." (Giuseppe Costanza)

Posted by PJB on August 10, 2009 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

Document Design Matters

"The classical approach to the data aspect of system design distinguishes conceptual, logical, and physical models. Models of each type or level are governed by metamodels that specify the kinds of concepts and constraints that can be used by each model; in most cases metamodels are accompanied by languages for describing models. For example, in database design, conceptual models usually conform to the Entity-Relationship (ER) metamodel (or some extension of it), the logical model maps ER models to relational tables and introduces normalization, and the physical model handles implementation issues such as possible denormalizations in the context of a particular database schema language. In this modeling methodology, there is a single hierarchy of models that rests on the assumption that one data model spans all modeling levels and applies to all the applications in some domain. The 'one true model' approach assumes homogeneity, but this does not work very well for the Web. The Web as a constantly growing ecosystem of heterogeneous data and services has challenged a number of practices and theories about the design of IT landscapes. Instead of being governed by 'one true model' used by everyone, the underlying assumption of top-down design, Web data and services evolve in an uncoordinated fashion. As a result, a fundamental challenge with Web data and services is matching and mapping local and often partial models that not only are different models of the same application domain, but also differ, implicitly or explicitly, in their associated metamodels." (Erik Wilde and Robert J. Glushko)

Posted by PJB on August 10, 2009 | Classification: Information design - Technology | Permalink

Change: moving on to the next level

"The HCI community has always been quite successful in adapting to the constantly changing technological opportunities, human needs and trends in society. By discussing our work amongst colleagues we have incrementally improved our methods and techniques, but apart from that it is important to respond adequately to changing practices and thinking in other fields. At the moment there seems to be a big opportunity and urgency for HCI experts to contribute to the development of the relatively new field of service design. We should not let that opportunity go to waste. This talk is an appeal to the pioneers in the community to get involved in this new area. A lot of the thinking and practices of HCI naturally fit in, and may even lead the way for some of the other disciplines involved." (Geke van Dijk - STBY)

Posted by PJB on August 06, 2009 | Classification: HCI - Service design | Permalink

Designing is at least quadricentric

Video registration with multiple brain crackers. - "Interaction Design stresses human-centeredness. A strong focus on people is essential, but we also must focus on craft materials, their form and their function. While some design practices focus too much on means (the 'what' of design), avoiding commitments to explicit ends (the 'why'), we cannot ignore design means. Also, we must further distinguish the purpose of design ('why') from its beneficiaries ('who'), and also between both of these and the 'if' of designing, i.e., between evaluation, purpose and beneficiaries." (Gilbert Cockton)

Posted by PJB on August 06, 2009 | Classification: Events - HCI | Permalink

IA for the Rest of the World

"As designers, one of the greatest challenges we face is designing for other people. It is remarkably easy to design for oneself and infinitely more challenging to design for others. Like me, you are probably experienced in designing for others in your own world – likely a Western country, in a large city, with high quality information infrastructure." (Miles Rochford - ASIS&T Bulletin Aug/Sep 2009)

Posted by PJB on August 06, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

The Debut of Usable, Influential Content

"What happens when we architect a user experience that makes the content easy to find? The content becomes a focus of the experience, a star of the show. If the content performs well, it will have an influence. Users will be more likely to take the action we want them to take, make the decision we want them to make or have the perception we want them to have. Users will be more likely to consider our brand, our product or our idea." (Colleen Jones - ASIS&T Bulletin Aug/Sep 2009)

Posted by PJB on August 06, 2009 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

The Information Architecture of Social Experience Design

"Designing and building a successful social website or application is no mean feat. Adding a social dimension to an existing experience is trickier still. Nevertheless, the skills to do so are well worth cultivating, as the ubiquitous, pervasive, massively interconnected world of the Internet and allied digital networks, such as mobile SMS connections, have unlocked a growing panoply of opportunities for social relationships, remote presence, real-time interactions and the capacity for self-organized groups of people to coordinate their behavior and collaborate on changing the world." (Christian Crumlish - ASIS&T Bulletin Aug/Sep 2009) - courtesy of janjursa

Posted by PJB on August 06, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Videos About Service Design

"(...) a few video excerpts of Bob Cooper, founder and CEO of Frontier Service Design, from a recent panel discussion related to the origins and purpose of service design. Each video is approximately 2 minutes in length and range in topic from the high level need for service design in today's economy to specific tactics used in understanding our client’s customers." (Frontier Service Design)

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

Card Sorting

"The following article belongs to an upcoming series – A series on developing approaches to problem solutions with systematic use of creative techniques. I want to comply with this article and series to wishes and requests of friends and colleagues. (...) Card sorting is a categorization technique where users sort cards describing and giving their picture, their understanding and their mental picture of concepts, workflows and information and knowledge." (Holger Maassen - ux4.com)

Posted by PJB on August 05, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Blinded by Content Bliss

"Consider the source of the content you're reviewing. What's his or her background? Consider the individual’s education, career, and publishing history. That's not to say, of course, that people's opinions are only valid if they have the right alma mater, but that information may provide context and insight as to whether someone's qualified to make the particular claims he or she's making." (Robert Stribley - Scatter/Gather)

Posted by PJB on August 04, 2009 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

The Content Conundrum: Bridging the gap between design and content

"As web designers and information architects, we often dismiss deep consideration of content when we design interactive experiences. By content I'm not only referring to the various forms of text (e.g., headers, body copy, error messages) but also imagery, graphics, and videos or audio that make up the full interactive experience. Sure, we have a sense of what content is available, and we've likely considered it to some extent when creating flows, wireframes, and prototypes. But the design artifacts that we create represent only part of the overall user experience that we're designing. The content that sits inside of our design framework is often the final arbiter of success, yet we sometimes diminish it's importance and separate ourselves from it. The more we separate our design activities from content development, the greater the risk of design failure." (Christopher Detzi - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on August 04, 2009 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Content Analysis: A Practical Approach

"To know your content is to love it. Content analysis is an essential part of many UX design projects that involve existing content. Examples of such projects include migrating a Web site to a new platform or design, merging multiple Web sites into one, or assessing Web content for reuse in a new channel. Just as you cannot nurture a garden without regularly inspecting its plants and flowers, you cannot take proper care of your content without looking at it closely. You must become familiar with your content to judge whether it's effective, understand how it relates to other content, make decisions about how to use or format it, identify opportunities for improving it, and more." (Colleen Jones - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on August 04, 2009 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Does Your Client Need a Consultant or an Agency?

"There are no hard-and-fast rules for judging whether a consultant or an agency is a better fit for any given project. Aside from time, money, and required skills, there are a variety of other factors to consider—for example, the stage of the product development process at which you're asked to come in, whether an engagement is one of strategic guidance or tactical execution, and the maturity and capacity of the client's team." (Whitney Hess - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on August 04, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Social Networking on Intranets

"Community features are spreading from 'Web 2.0' to 'Enterprise 2.0'. Research across 14 companies found that many are making productive use of social intranet features." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on August 04, 2009 | Classification: Social Web | Permalink

Mobile Usability

"In user testing, website use on mobile devices got very low scores, especially when users accessed 'full' sites that weren't designed for mobile." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on August 04, 2009 | Classification: Mobile design - Usability | Permalink