October 2009

Co-creation through generative design thinking

"Co-creation is not just the next new thing in marketing. It is an alternative way of seeing and being in the world. Existing and thriving in the emerging co-creative landscapes will require the creation and application of new tools, methods and methodologies for connecting, innovating, making, telling and sharing. These generative tools must be useful and usable for all types of people. Generative design thinking provides a design language for all of us, designers as well as non-designers, to use in provoking the imagination, stimulating ideation, stirring the emotions, discovering unmet needs and facilitating embodiments of future possibilities. Examples of this generative design language in action, from projects ranging from consumer product and service development to the planning and architecture of new healthcare campuses, will be shared." (Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders - IASDR09)

Posted by PJB on October 30, 2009 | Classification: Design research - Social Web | Permalink

Science and Design

"But as the world grows more complex, more interconnected, with the underlying infrastructure less and less visible, hidden inside electronic and optical mechanisms, conveyed as all-powerful yet invisible information and knowledge, design more than ever needs a body of reliable, verifiable procedures. Science is the systematic method of building a reliable, verifiable, repeatable, and generalizable body of knowledge. Science is not a body of facts: it is a process. Design is the deliberate shaping of the environment in ways that satisfy individual and societal needs. Scientific methods can inform design. Designers can create a science of design." (Donald A. Norman - IASDR09)

Posted by PJB on October 30, 2009 | Classification: Design research - Service design - User experience | Permalink

On Authenticity

"Calling something 'authentic' may connote original, traditional, indigenous, old, rare, the real thing, or in some crucial way a better example of its category. We use the term today as a messy amalgam of its twin roots: the art historian’s validation of an object and the philosopher's valuing of the true self. While the concept of authenticity is employed in vague and subjective ways, we want to believe that an item’s authenticity is an absolutely determinable quality, an expectation that (as you’ll see) is not wholly realistic." (Steve Portigal - ACM SIGCHI Interactions Magazine XVI.6)

Posted by PJB on October 29, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

When Security Gets in the Way

"Usability or security: Do we really have to choose? At times the two seem immutably bound. Make it more secure, goes the belief, and as night follows day, things become harder to use. It is a never-ending challenge, with security experts pitting themselves against usability experts, and both fighting with the engineers and marketing representatives—all convinced that their view is the most important, each convinced that attention to the others defeats their goal." (Donald A. Norman - ACM SIGCHI Interactions Magazine XVI.6)

Posted by PJB on October 29, 2009 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Technical Documentation Know-how

"Know-how, checklists, tools and links, which will help you to create user-friendly software documentation such as manuals, online help, software demos and other forms of software user assistance." (Indoition Software User Assistance)

Posted by PJB on October 28, 2009 | Classification: TechCom | Permalink

Creating a Timeless User Experience

"(...) the kinds of products, websites, and applications that survive and continue to be effective are those that that focus on the user experience. The digital world evolves continually, but we need to manage this by making sure we don't leave the people who use our applications and websites in the dust. In this article we will explore creating a timeless user experience." (Francisco Inchauste - Six Revisions)

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

Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Patterns, and Practices for Improving the User Experience

By Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone - "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." (About the authors)

Posted by PJB on October 20, 2009 | Classification: Social Web - User experience | Permalink

The Myth of Usability Testing

"Usability evaluations are good for a lot of things, but determining what a team’s priorities should be is not one of them. Fortunately, there is an explanation for these counterintuitive outcomes that can help us choose a more appropriate evaluation course." (Robert Hoekman Jr. - A List Apart)

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

Would you like service design with that?

"Service design is a new discipline which focuses on understanding what customers want, then designing services which meet their needs. Sound familiar? Web designers have focused on user-centered design for years to create websites and applications that are user friendly. Service design is well established in Europe and North America and there's already a handful of Australian businesses offering service design. What is it? Does experience in designing for screen interaction translate to designing services too? Will service design be the next big thing?" (Service Design Hub)

Posted by PJB on October 20, 2009 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Eyetracking: Is It Worth It?

"It is easy to get excited about eyetracking. Seeing where people look while using your Web site, Web application, or software product sounds like an opportunity to get amazing insights into their user experience. But eyetracking is expensive and requires extra effort and specialized knowledge. The heat maps and other visualizations certainly look impressive, but what can you really learn from them? After using eyetracking for the first time, many find that it is not easy to know how to analyze the visualizations and make conclusions from them. Does eyetracking really provide any additional insights you would not have discovered anyway through traditional usability testing? Does the value of eyetracking outweigh its limitations? This article will discuss and answer these questions." (Jim Ross - UXmatters)

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

The Scoop on Content Strategy: An Interview with Kristina Halvorson

"There are lots of different definitions floating around out there. It was important to me to talk about content strategy in a way that people can understand easily. I define content strategy as planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content. Planning is the key. Planning is about asking the right questions to collect data and information, with the goal of delivering a plan that gets you from where you are now to where you want to be." (Colleen Jones - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on October 20, 2009 | Classification: Content strategy - Interviews | Permalink

Usability Testing Versus Expert Reviews

"In this Ask UXmatters column—which is the first in a series of three columns focusing on usability—our experts discuss the use of usability testing versus expert reviews. In the upcoming columns, we'll discuss what usability techniques to use when money or time is tight and how to best conduct remote usability testing." (Janet Six - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on October 20, 2009 | Classification: Usability - User experience | Permalink

UX Design Defined

"(...) User Experience Design is the practice of integrating user-centered design methods, collecting, interpreting and applying meticulous user research, process management for testing elements of a system independently in gradually increasing levels of fidelity, and integrating multiple symbolic systems (languages) to affect and influence users of an interactive system in a predictable and measured way, according to the user’s own criteria for success and happiness." (Michael Cummings - UXDesign) - courtesy of thehotstrudel

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

25 tips for writing the user experience

"While this article tends toward copywriting for the user experience as it pertains to the online world, you can apply it to other aspects of your brand as well. The most important point being to take the user, aka the person, reading what you're writing into account from the get-go. Communicate for them first and foremost." (Karen Goldfarb)

Posted by PJB on October 16, 2009 | Classification: User experience - Writing | Permalink

User Experience Engineering

"User experience is becoming a more and more specialized area of expertise, says Mayhew. IT departments need to invest in multidisciplinary teams and then provide a work environment that fosters mutual respect, collaboration, and highly effective teamwork among them. Training can be one very effective way to support this agenda." (Kurt Marko - Processor) - courtesy of usabilitynews

Posted by PJB on October 16, 2009 | Classification: Usability - User experience | Permalink

Mining the Web for Feelings, Not Facts

"The rise of blogs and social networks has fueled a bull market in personal opinion: reviews, ratings, recommendations and other forms of online expression. For computer scientists, this fast-growing mountain of data is opening a tantalizing window onto the collective consciousness of Internet users. An emerging field known as sentiment analysis is taking shape around one of the computer world's unexplored frontiers: translating the vagaries of human emotion into hard data." (Alex Wright - NYT)

Posted by PJB on October 15, 2009 | Classification: Design research - User experience | Permalink

Interactions and Relationships

"(...) I was asked to do a session that addressed the everyday reality that managers of user experience live in, to reflect on that reality, and to share some approaches and ideas for that reality. I decided to focus largely on some of the interactions and relationships that comprise that everyday reality, but particularly those by managers intent on enabling experience research and design to play a strategic role in their companies." (Richard Anderson - riander)

Posted by PJB on October 15, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

What is Design Thinking Anyway?

"Toward the end of the nineteenth century, American philosophers such as William James and John Dewey began to explore the limits of formal declarative logic — that is, inductive and deductive reasoning. They were less interested in how one declares a statement true or false than in the process by which we come to know and understand. To them, the acquisition of knowledge was not an abstract, purely conceptual exercise, but one involving interaction with and inquiry into the world around them. Understanding did not entail progress toward an absolute truth but rather an evolving interaction with a context or environment." (Roger Martin - Design Observer)

Posted by PJB on October 15, 2009 | Classification: Design research - Information design | Permalink

How to Understand Your Users with Personas

"Personas are a powerful tool for helping you to better understand the needs of your users. In this comic, drawn exclusively for Think Vitamin, you'll learn more about Personas and how they'll revolutionize the way you design and build web sites." (Brad Colbow - ThinkVitamin) - courtesy of jjursa

Posted by PJB on October 15, 2009 | Classification: Personas | Permalink

The Value of Visual Thinking

"Being able to think visually, break down complex ideas and synthesize them into something meaningful is my forte. It's a skill that has landed me in the company of the smart and capable folks I currently work with. More importantly, I took whatever abilities I had and I gave them over to my ecosystem. In any social system, you always come to the table offering something of value rather than seeking it." (David Armano)

Posted by PJB on October 14, 2009 | Classification: InfoViz - Information graphics | Permalink

Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists

"Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned." (Derek Powazek) - courtesy of markbernstein

Posted by PJB on October 13, 2009 | Classification: Search | Permalink

Streams, Walls, and Feeds: Distributing Content Through Social Networks and RSS

"Users like the simplicity of messages that pass into oblivion over time, but were frequently frustrated by unscannable writing, overly frequent postings, and their inability to locate companies on social networks." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on October 12, 2009 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

The State of User Experience

"As the field of user experience grows and evolves, UX practitioners find themselves having to master new techniques to take on new challenges. Adaptive Path's Jesse James Garrett takes a look at where user experience has been and where it's going." (Jesse James Garrett - UX Week 2009)

Posted by PJB on October 12, 2009 | Classification: Events - Information architecture - User experience | Permalink

Make It So: Learning From SciFi Interfaces by Nathan Shedroff and Chris Noessel

"Make It So explores how science fiction and interface design relate to each other. The authors have developed a model that traces lines of influence between the two, and use this as a scaffold to investigate how the depiction of technologies evolve over time, how fictional interfaces influence those in the real world, and what lessons interface designers can learn through this process. This investigation of science fiction television shows and movies has yielded practical lessons that apply to online, social, mobile, and other media interfaces." (Nathan Shedroff and Chris Noessel - Huffduffer)

Posted by PJB on October 12, 2009 | Classification: HCI - Podcasts | Permalink

Restoring Spring to iPhone/iPod Touch Springboard

"All of these changes work within the current Springboard metaphor and should not present any insurmountable programming challenges. Certainly vertical scroll is most critical and should be implemented within the next couple of months if sales are not to be further limited. The rest can follow. These changes are also designed so that the new user or disinterested user will enjoy the same Springboard experience as today, while the 'power-buyer' can regain control of their device. Because iPhone/iPod Touch apps, at least at this point, all work one-at-a-time, adding ten or even twenty times as many apps to an iPhone/iPod Touch should have no effect on its reliability, etc. The only effect of these changes will be that both Apple and its developers make a whole bunch more money and that users will be having a whole bunch more fun, making their personal Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that much more beloved and indispensable." (Bruce Tognazinni - AskTog) - courtesy of nicotenhoor

Posted by PJB on October 11, 2009 | Classification: Interaction design - Mobile design | Permalink

SpoolCast: Visual Design for the Non-Designer

"What can a non-designer do to harness the power of visual design without calling professional help? Quite a lot, says internationally-regarded visual designer Dan Rubin. We called Dan to talk about what design techniques are accessible to mere mortals. He also gave us a preview of his day-long workshop for non-designers at our User Interface 14 Conference, this November." (Jared Spool - UIE)

Posted by PJB on October 09, 2009 | Classification: Podcasts - Visual design | Permalink

Usability Testing Demystified

"There seems to be this idea going around that usability testing is bad, or that the cool kids don't do it. That it's old skool. That designers don't need to do it. What if I told you that usability testing is the hottest thing in experience design research? Every time a person has a great experience with a website, a web app, a gadget, or a service, it's because a design team made excellent decisions about both design and implementation—decisions based on data about how people use designs. And how can you get that data? Usability testing." (A List Apart No. 293)

Posted by PJB on October 07, 2009 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

SpoolCast: Information Architecture Essentials

"Donna Spencer is our long-time, go-to expert on the topic of Information Architecture. We're happy to bring her stateside again for the upcoming User Interface 14 conference. Recently, I spoke with her, all the way from Australia, in advance of her trip to Boston." (Jared Spool - UIE)

Posted by PJB on October 07, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture - Podcasts | Permalink

An Evolution of Search

"The technology of information retrieval systems continues to evolve, and in particular, the technology of search has continued to evolve. A new stage in the evolution of search has arrived with the advent of entity-based searching. This paper provides a brief review of some of the earlier stages of search evolution in the context of the evolutionary pressures of the concurrent improvement of both precision and recall." (John D. Holt and David J. Miller - ASIS&T Bulletin October/November 2009)

Posted by PJB on October 06, 2009 | Classification: Search | Permalink

Experience Themes: How a storytelling method can help unify teams and create better products

"There's an old adage among screenwriters that when a writer can sum up a story in a sentence or less, he has discovered what's important about the story. He'll know what the story is about and therefore have a strong sense of theme. And in knowing the theme, he’ll have a compass to use in the process of “designing” the damn thing (i.e. what to keep, what to lose, what actually happens at the end). The story will be all the better for it because it all hangs together with a central idea that will give it greater impact and meaning." (Cindy Chastain - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on October 06, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

How Mobile is Changing Design

"Mobile is evolving, the web is adapting, and these two colossal worlds are about to collide to create something new. In order to design the experiences of this new contextual web, we need to change the way we look at design. In this talk Brian will provide his insights on some of the emerging trends in mobile design and share his thoughts on how we will design the interfaces of tomorrow." (Brian Fling - Huffduffer)

Posted by PJB on October 05, 2009 | Classification: Mobile design - Podcasts | Permalink

UX: An art in search of an methodology

"Perhaps like all forms of design, in practice user experience design rarely resembles the execution of a method, so much as it resembles the practice of an art. There is a heavy reliance on intuition, and when a designer does choose to refer to some piece of shared knowledge, that knowledge usually takes the form of a pattern (in the architectural sense) rather than empirical studies or a unified theoretical framework." (Justin Tauber - Johnny Holland Magazine)

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

Can UX Be Agile?

"Traditional, heavyweight development methodologies can be very effective at solving well‑defined problems, where the person solving the problem has a clear understanding of the initial and goal states, the available options, and the constraints on the problem. At the opposite end of the spectrum are ill‑defined, so-called wicked problems. When it's necessary to balance numerous, often‑conflicting factors, traditional development methodologies are much less effective." (Peter Hornsby - UXmatters)

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

The Ever-Evolving Arrow: Universal Control Symbol

"Symbols and icons can be both friend and enemy to UX designers. They can convey a great deal of information in the span of just a few pixels or utterly confuse users, depending on the context. The careful application of icons, however, can greatly enhance software, enabling quick access to a feature or function, using a minimal amount of screen real estate." (Jonathan Follett - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on October 05, 2009 | Classification: HCI - User experience | Permalink

Powers of 10: Time Scales in User Experience

From 0.1 seconds to 10 years or more, user interface design has many different timeframes, and each has its own particular usability issues." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

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

Using Microformats: Gateway to the Semantic Web

"In this podcast Karl Stolley discusses his article, Using Microformats: Gateway to the Semantic Web, which appears in the September, 2009 issue of Transactions on Professional Communication. In the article Stolley explains and describes the use of several microformats, which make information marked up in HTML available for use in applications outside of traditional web browsers. Because microformats consist of minor additions to the HTML backbone of common webpages, they represent a simple but significant move toward what Tim Berners-Lee has called the Semantic Web—but without requiring the technical and practical shifts and time demands of a complete XML-based semantic web development approach." (Karl Stolley - IEEE Professional Communication Society)

Posted by PJB on October 02, 2009 | Classification: Metadata - Technology | Permalink

No Chief Web Officer Required

"It's a widely-held belief among various Web practitioners (from content strategists and information architects to Web infrastructure tool builders and application developers) that senior executives don’t understand the real power and capability of the Internet. And, that this lack of understanding has left Web Teams executing in a vacuum, with inappropriate funding and inadequate headcount. More importantly, it has left organizations exposed, as new Internet-enabled businesses sneak up and shut down the slower-to-react belle-weathers. The house is on fire and the C-Suite has got a garden hose. To address this strategic deficit, there’s been a lot of discussion about the placement of a senior Web-savvy person in the C-Suite to drive the creation of a sensible Web content and information strategy. I've thought about this potential new role in the C-suite a lot and think that it's not required." (Lisa Welchman) - courtesy of ruudruissaard

Posted by PJB on October 01, 2009 | Classification: Content strategy - Information architecture | Permalink

Tages Anzeiger of Switzerland: Tale of a new look, and the model that didn’t quite make it

"The Swiss daily, Tages Anzeiger, introduced a new design this week. It is the work of designer Tom Menzi, who has given the TA a classic, elegant, functional look; however, the process started with a pitch for the job, which included the design team of Information Architects (IA), a firm with offices in Zurich and Tokyo. Their model did not win the job for IA. In this post, Oliver Reichenstein, of IA, offers an unusually transparent account of what they did, how they did it, and why they think their model did not make it. Every designer who has ever participated in a pitch will identify with Oliver’s account." (Mario R. Garcia - Garcia Media) - courtesy of michielvuijlsteke

Posted by PJB on October 01, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture - Information design | Permalink

Halcyon days at the EuroIA Conference

"I had low expectations for the conference, thinking it was not going to be very professional. That was my estimation of the IA movement in general. (...) I assume that CHI was where the interesting professional UX work would be done. I did not expect any such thing at an IA conference, which I thought was too narrow and too niche to be interesting.I was wrong and closed minded, both of which I find annoying." (Jonathan Arnowitz - UX in Arnoland)

Posted by PJB on October 01, 2009 | Classification: Events - Information architecture | Permalink