January 2010

Better User Experience With Storytelling (Part One)

"Stories have defined our world. They have been with us since the dawn of communication, from cave walls to the tall tales recounted around fires. They have continued to evolve with their purpose remaining the same; To entertain, to share common experiences, to teach, and to pass on traditions. Today we communicate a bit differently. Our information is fragmented across various mass-media channels and delivered through ever-changing technology. It has become watered down, cloned, and is churned out quickly in 140-character blurbs. We’ve lost that personal touch where we find an emotional connection that makes us care." (Francisco Inchauste - Smashing Magazine)

Posted by PJB on January 29, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Stephen Anderson on Seductive Interactions

"How can we design systems that encourage the behaviors we want? One of the bleeding edge ideas we’ll be talking about at the UIE Web App Masters Tour is adding motivation to web applications. How do you encourage user behavior through the design of your web app? It may initially sound a little far-fetched, but there’s an industry that's been shaping its customer’s behavior since the beginning: the gaming industry." (UIE Brain Sparks)

Posted by PJB on January 29, 2010 | Classification: Podcasts - User experience | Permalink

Thoughts on Apple's iPad

"The iPad is not a laptop nor is it a smart phone. It is a couch device, a bedroom device (don't read that the wrong way), and a kitchen device (swivel it to cook from a recipe you find online). In all these places, a laptop always felt wrong. The iPad is optimized for surfing the Web, reading blogs/news/books, watching TV shows, playing casual games, listening to music, managing personal productivity (calendar, contacts) and looking at photos. Expecting it to do what a laptop does is the wrong frame of reference." (Luke Wroblewski)

Posted by PJB on January 28, 2010 | Classification: Information design - Interaction design | Permalink

UX Case Study: Designing a user-focused web app

"I wrote this article to give you insight into the complete design process for the redesign of Nearby Tweets. Web app developers and entrepreneurs will hopefully gain some ideas or reinforce their own processes. Users may find it interesting to see what goes into the design of a complex UI. I'd love your ideas, feedback, and thoughts at the end of this article! Enjoy." (Brian Cray)

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Writing for the Web: The Right Strategy

"When it comes to designing a website, content is often overlooked, but why? Very rarely do users browse the web looking for a good design or decent experience. Users come for the content. Not giving them what they want with poorly written content will frustrate users. Not only does it waste their time, but your time as well." (Shay Howe - letscountthedays) - courtesy of destrywion

Posted by PJB on January 26, 2010 | Classification: Content strategy - Writing | Permalink

What Makes Design Intuitive?

"Using examples of web sites, applications, devices, and more, guest lecturer Jared Spool tackles factors that contribute to counter-intuitive design, and narrows down when design is intuitive." (Jared Spool - MFA in Interaction Design)

Posted by PJB on January 26, 2010 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

The Differences between Usability and User Experience

"Usability refers to the ease with which a user can accomplish his or her goals using any tool. (...) Somewhat in contrast, user experience refers to the way a user perceives his or her interaction with a system. User experience design encompasses both interaction design and visual design and seeks to promote an interface that is pleasing to the user." (RJ Owen - InsideRIA)

Posted by PJB on January 25, 2010 | Classification: Usability - User experience | Permalink

Testing Expert Users

"It's more difficult to conduct usability studies with experienced users than with novices, and the improvements are usually smaller. Still, improving expert performance is often worth the effort." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on January 25, 2010 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Preso: UX Strategy as told by the paintings of Jan Steen (and friends)

"UX strategy lacks strategy, it is usually just a glorified waterfall process, even agile processes are just incremental waterfall. This presentation tells the current state of UX strategy in pictures while it outlines a real UX Strategy in words." (Jonathan Arnowitz)

Posted by PJB on January 22, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Innovation is Served

"(...) a good model for spreading the word about service design to a lay audience. I’d prefer a bit more detail in the case studies but 31Volts has done an admirable job hitting the design highlights and staying out of the weeds." (Jeff Howard - Design for Service)

Posted by PJB on January 21, 2010 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

20 User Experience Books you should own

"These highly recommended user experience books cover everything from user research and interface design, to information architecture and UX strategy. If you're really serious about your career as a user experience professional, these books should be the cornerstone of your personal library." (UXbyDesign)

Posted by PJB on January 21, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

UX design in print media: Designing with the user in mind

"Due to the increasing popularity of usability design and user experience design articles that focus on the internet and web design, you might not be aware that user experience design has been around a lot longer than the internet has. This article will discuss the effects that user experience design has specifically in print design. It is my firm belief that user experience design is important in any design setting and your future success in the design industry depends on how well you can design an experience." (Preston D. Lee - Graphic Design Blender)

Posted by PJB on January 20, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Preso: Wireframes for the Wicked

"Wireframes beyond the basics, not for the weak at heart. In this panel, three experienced designers will share their tried and true tips for making wireframes really work. We'll talk about how to sketch a wireframe on the fly to demonstrate an idea and how to create a standalone wireframe deliverable; when to show a concept and when to describe nitty-gritty detail; how to make a narrative wireframe and how to make a specification wireframe. And best of all, we'll show you plenty of examples." (Michael Angeles, Nick Finck and Donna Spencer - March 6, 2009)

Posted by PJB on January 19, 2010 | Classification: Wireframes | Permalink

What have we forgotten about UX?

"Maybe I'm not very smart (don't answer that!). Possibly it's because I got my Graphic Design degree almost 20 years ago. Or maybe it's because most of what I've learned about UX design is geared toward eLearning, where the overriding goal is to make sure the user has the best possible chance of absorbing whatever content is presented. But I seem to have some concepts about what constitutes good usability that are at odds with what I see demonstrated on websites that are about UX and design or are by people who are using their sites to market their UX design services. Before I get specific about what I'm seeing in these sites, I thought I'd outline what the criteria are for me for good UX." (Amy Blankenship - InsideRIA)

Posted by PJB on January 19, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Apple's Proposed Multi-touch User Interface System

"(...) these proposals outline an integrated interaction model of virtual "floating" controls that are specific to the mode or application the system is in. The controls are accessed and manipulated through touch-based gestures, combinations of mutli-touch inputs, and/or inputs detected through sensors. Users get haptic, audible, and visual feedback when using these input methods to interact with the system's set of virtual controls." (LukeW)

Posted by PJB on January 19, 2010 | Classification: HCI - Interaction design | Permalink

Pervasive Information Architecture: Designing information space in ubiquitous ecologies

"Information is going everywhere, bleeding out of we thought was cyberspace and back into the real world: increasingly, many tasks we perform every day not only constantly require us to move between different media, but actually have us move from the digital to the physical environment and back. Computation is everywhere, and so are search and interaction. It's time to move beyond the computer screen to design information space in these new ubiquitous ecologies." (Andrea Resmini & Luca Rosati)

Posted by PJB on January 19, 2010 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Embedding User Experience in the Product Development Lifecycle

"All UX professionals, not just user assistance developers, face the problem of integrating their work into the product development lifecycle. At lower levels of organizational usability maturity, too often, the contributions of User Experience tend to be reactive. Usability professionals test the usability of a given product, then designers mitigate any shortcomings they find, and user assistance developers merely document what is already there. This column takes a look at the full scope of the product development lifecycle and how UX professionals can add value." (Mike Hughes - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on January 18, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

UX Leader as Sales Agent?

"(...) many UX professionals feel a bit frustrated that it is necessary for them to convince their business partners that user experience is valuable—and that our core practices should be a central part of standard business practices." (Jim Nieters - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on January 18, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Design Trends across Decades

"Joining Karel on this episode are Keith Instone (Information Architecture Lead, IBM CIO’s Office, IBM.com), Eliane Tozman (User Interface Designer, IBM Media Design Studio), Ben Sykes (UX Design Strategy Consultant at Interactoid), and Shawn O’Keefe (Interactive Festival Producer and Web Developer at SXSW. The panel discusses recent design related news from the last month or two, the biggest user experience design innovations of the last decade, and predictions about what the next decade holds in store." (UXDEsignCast)

Posted by PJB on January 16, 2010 | Classification: Podcasts | Permalink

Fantastic Information Architecture Resources

"Information architecture can be a daunting subject for designers who've never tried it before. Creating successful infographics and visualizations takes skill and practice, along with some advance planning. But anyone with graphic design skills can learn to create infographics that are effective and get data across in a user-friendly manner. Below are a collection of resources to get you going down the information architecture path. Whether you just want to become more familiar with infographics and data visualizations for occasional use or are thinking of making it a career, the resources below will surely come in handy. There are also some beautiful examples and more roundups to see even more fantastic graphics." (Cameron Chapman - Noupe)

Posted by PJB on January 15, 2010 | Classification: Information architecture - Information design | Permalink

People don't remember what was said: People remember how they felt

"This mantra has been one of my favourites for a good 7 years now. Working with a range of companies, charities and individuals, and having been in many board rooms, held live events, and developed digital strategy, I can certainly say it's true. I'm not trying to brag here, but point out through experience I've learned that Experience itself is a big a deal. The other people who know how big a deal experience is are restaurant owners. They know that it's not only the food they serve that people are paying for – it's everything else that goes with it – and the things that go before and after it." (Search Engine People Blog)

Posted by PJB on January 15, 2010 | Classification: Search - User experience | Permalink

Search and Browse

"Historically I had been taught and understood search and browse as distinct elements – which they are visually and from a UI elements standpoint – but from a behavioral perspective, they really are not, rather, they are part of a continuum. A spectrum of discovery behaviors if you will." (Livia Labate)

Posted by PJB on January 15, 2010 | Classification: Search | Permalink

It's time for content strategy

"Content is anything that informs, instructs, or entertains people. Text, raw data, images, games, music, lectures, videos, flash widgets, a good joke, roadside signs – it's all content. A content strategy is a plan for creating, sharing, and governing content effectively. Content strategy isn't just a web thing. In fact, it's been around for thousands of years. Content creation and sharing began when our earliest ancestors started telling each other stories." (Melissa Rach - Scroll Magazine)

Posted by PJB on January 15, 2010 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

A wheelbarrow of PPT slides

"If we have a call for papers and no one writes them, we aren’t documenting our work. One has to then question what historical significance these excellent summits will have. Wouldn’t it be extremely advantageous to be able to look back at the papers for all the summits, especially as time marches on and the field continues to (hopefully) develop? Wouldn’t it be a valuable teaching tool and reference for those institutions with IA programs? Wouldn’t it also be a valuable reference for companies and their IA teams? A collection of papers from past summits could also be a important tool for spreading the value and knowledge that IA has to offer." (Andrea Resmini)

Posted by PJB on January 14, 2010 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Service Design Neue

"I suppose there's nothing stopping UX designers from doing the same thing, or anyone else for that matter, but for service designers taking the holistic view is our raison d'être." (Jeff Howard - Design for Service)

Posted by PJB on January 14, 2010 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Interaction Design's Early Formal Education & Beyond

"I believe that there has been a huge paradigm shift in the very nature of design practice and a growing shift in its education. And if we are not to acknowledge this shift at the core of education and career development we are doing a disservice to those who are interested in coming up the ranks as young interaction designers today. At the core of these issues is the believe in the separation between form and interaction. This myth can no longer be maintained - definitely not in education." (David Malouf - Johnny Holland Magazine)

Posted by PJB on January 13, 2010 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

Order Out of Nothingness: Tagging 101

"I'm organized but not overly so. I mean, I kept my books in alphabetical order as a kid, but I didn't think of it as an early indicator of the career path I'd take. But I do appreciate order, so when I import a CD into iTunes and iTunes assigns metadata to my lovely new tunes via its Gracenotes system (which compiles user-generated and submitted data), it's a relief to me, when the provided data has been entered with, you know, some semblance of order. Often, it isn't. In reviewing this data over time, I noticed users make certain mistakes consistently when tagging their music. These mistakes then, reveal principles, and though they happen to apply to music in my iPod, in practice, they also apply to tagging other digital files." (Robert Stribley - Scatter/Gather)

Posted by PJB on January 13, 2010 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Explain IA

"In this contest, you are invited to explain information architecture. What is it? Why is it important? What does it mean to you? Some folks may offer a definition in 140 characters or less, while others will use this opportunity to tell a story (using text, pictures, audio, and/or video) about their relationship to IA." (Peter Morville)

Posted by PJB on January 12, 2010 | Classification: Information architecture - Social Web | Permalink

Design with a capital 'D'

"Stefano Marzano, CEO and Chief Creative Director at Philips Design addressed a gathering of business leaders on the role of design in creating value for business and society. (...) And remember, the great and good companies will be remembered in the future as those who considered posterity, sustainability, quality of life and a better future for humanity. The choice is yours." (new value by Design Jan. 2010 - Philips Design)

Posted by PJB on January 12, 2010 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

In Defense of Lorem Ipsum

"If content strategists want to ask designers to stop using Lorem Ipsum, maybe designers should insist that content strategists add style sheets to their copy decks that match the proposed design direction." (Karen McGrane)

Posted by PJB on January 12, 2010 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Bad Usability Calendar 2010

"Bad Usability Calendar is published by Netlife Research, a user experience consultancy firm based in Oslo, Norway. We are dedicated to creating user friendly solutions that our clients and their customers love." (About Us)

Posted by PJB on January 11, 2010 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

The Case Against Vertical Navigation

"(...) five reasons why vertical navigation should not be used and why designers and architects should almost always construct their sites with horizontal navigation in mind." (Louis Lazaris - Smashing Magazine)

Posted by PJB on January 11, 2010 | Classification: Information architecture - Visual design | Permalink

Attention is the fundamental literacy

"Life online is not solitary. It's social. When I tag and bookmark a Website, a video, an image, I make my decisions visible to others. I take advantage of similar knowledge curation undertaken by others when I start learning a topic by exploring bookmarks, find an image to communicate an idea by searching for a tag. Knowledge sharing and collective action involve collaborative literacies." (Howard Rheingold - EDGE)

Posted by PJB on January 11, 2010 | Classification: Information design - Social Web | Permalink

fluidIA

"(...) is an emerging agile design tool for prototyping rich user interfaces. The big idea behind this experiment is whether we as interaction designers, IA's, UX professionals and developers can create our own prototyping tool in an open way."

Posted by PJB on January 08, 2010 | Classification: Information architecture - Prototyping | Permalink

52 Weeks of UX

"This is the first rule of UX. Everything a designer does affects the user experience. From the purposeful addition of a design element to the negligent omission of crucial messaging, every decision is molding the future of the people we design for." (Joshua Porter and Joshua Brewer)

Posted by PJB on January 08, 2010 | Classification: User experience - Weblogs | Permalink

UX University 1: Subliminal Priming

"The first UX University was held on the 2nd of December 2009. We invited 20 people who attended to meet with UX experts and learn about subliminal persuasion. Martijn Veltkamp, expert for subliminal research, held a succinct presentation explaining the idea of subliminal persuasion and introducing some interesting researches." (About UX University)

Posted by PJB on January 07, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Choruses from the rock

"This echoes the frontstage and backstage fundamentals of service design. He interacts with everyone, frontline staff (waiters), backstage staff (chefs) and the customers, gaining opinions from all sides to build a holistic picture of the restaurant, focusing on the product, the service, the experience." (Sarah Drummond - Inside the head of a designer)

Posted by PJB on January 07, 2010 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a New Genre

"What is Web 2.0 storytelling? As the phrase suggests, it is the telling of stories using Web 2.0 tools, technologies, and strategies. Since the name is fairly recent (and not yet widely used), it may not bear out as the best term for this trend. Another name may emerge, one better suited to describing this narrative domain. However, the term seems to have met with quiet acknowledgment to date, so it may serve as a useful one going forward. To further define the term, we should begin by explaining what we mean by its first part: Web 2.0. Tim O'Reilly coined Web 2.0 in 2004,1 but the label remains difficult to acceptably define. For our present discussion, we will identify two essential features that are useful in distinguishing Web 2.0 projects and platforms from the rest of the web: microcontent and social media." (Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine - EDUCAUSE) - courtesy of wolfnoeding

Posted by PJB on January 07, 2010 | Classification: Social Web | Permalink

Introduction to Information Retrieval

"Information retrieval did not begin with the Web. In response to various challenges of providing information access, the field of information retrieval evolved to give principled approaches to searching various forms of content. The field began with scientific publications and library records, but soon spread to other forms of content, particularly those of information professionals, such as journalists, lawyers, and doctors. Much of the scientific research on information retrieval has occurred in these contexts, and much of the continued practice of information retrieval deals with providing access to unstructured information in various corporate and governmental domains, and this work forms much of the foundation of our book." (Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan, and Hinrich Schütze 2008)

Posted by PJB on January 06, 2010 | Classification: Search | Permalink

Interviewing the front-end engineer

"Interviewing a front-end engineer is an interesting task primarily because most are self-taught. Startups and large companies alike have equal trouble finding quality front-end engineers simply because they don't know what to look for and which questions to ask. Having been around the industry for a while, I've developed my own methods for interviewing front-end engineers that I find to be very effective." (Nicholas C. Zakas - NCZOnline)

Posted by PJB on January 06, 2010 | Classification: Technology | Permalink

Designing & Selecting Components for UIs

"I have to think much harder when I design rich interfaces than when I work on standard Web applicaitons. With the increased flexibility and more components comes a higher risk of making silly mistakes. If I use a component inappropriately, users can't figure out what to do, even though the components may look cool. The purpose of this article is to help designers avoid mistakes and to help them choose (or design) components based on sound, fundamental principles of usability." (Donna Maurer Spencer - UX Magazine)

Posted by PJB on January 06, 2010 | Classification: HCI - Prototyping | Permalink

25 User Experience Videos That Are Worth Your Time

"We're all mostly accustomed to educating ourselves by reading articles. Rare are the opportunities to attend conferences or watch live shows on subjects that we’re interested in. That’s why we are presenting here phenomenal videos and related resources on the topic of user experience (UX) by different presenters at different events. We have focused on current content but have included some older videos that are still relevant. It will take you more than 16 hours to watch all of these videos. So, make some popcorn, turn off the lights and enjoy." (Janko Jovanovic - Smashing Magazine)

Posted by PJB on January 05, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

What is Interaction Design History?

"The interesting question is how you separate interaction design history from the broader scope of computing history in general. User experience people gravitate toward the history of hypertext and the graphical user interface, direct manipulation and the mouse, the work done at Xerox PARC and Apple. In many people's minds, that era marks the dividing line between the 'us' of the design community and the 'them' of computer scientists, because it's the point at which it became possible to draw a separation between the work that was done to serve the needs of the machine, and the work that was done solely to meet the needs of the user." (Karen McGrane)

Posted by PJB on January 05, 2010 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

The web designer's guide to user experience: Experts demystify the process behind UX design

"Good UX doesn't happen by magic: you have to plan for it." (Craig Grannell - TechRadar UK) - courtesy of usabilitynews

Posted by PJB on January 05, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Specifying Behavior: With an Example Menu Behavior Specification

"(...) why do so many software products still violate them? And why do so many applications provide a poor user experience as a result of their not behaving properly? I can think of several possible reasons why some applications don’t behave as they should." (Pabini Gabriel-Petit - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on January 04, 2010 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

Research Is Communication

"In actuality, the reason so many small software businesses fail so quickly is because they don’t understand that their knowledge of how to build a product is not sufficient to build success. The true vision of a multidisciplinary team of engineers, designers, product people, marketers, business people, and researchers is foreign to them. If some of the people creating software don’t understand our role, it’s not surprising consumers don't." (Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on January 04, 2010 | Classification: Design research | Permalink

More Like This: A Design Pattern

"The idea behind the More Like This pattern is very simple: within each group of items representing a particular category from a catalog or accompanying each item in search results, provide a prominent link or button with a label that is some variation of More Like This. Of course, the devil, as they say, is in the details." (Greg Nudelman - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on January 04, 2010 | Classification: Patterns | Permalink

The Transmedia Design Challenge: Technology that is Pleasurable and Satisfying

"We live in exciting times. Finally, we are beginning to understand that pleasure and fun are important components of life; that emotion is not a bad thing; and that learning, education, and work can all benefit from pleasure and fun." (Donald A. Norman - ACM Interactions XVII.1)

Posted by PJB on January 04, 2010 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

10 Best Intranets of 2010

"Intranet design is maturing and reaping the rewards of continuous quality improvement for traditional features, while embracing new trends like mobile access, emergency preparedness, and user/employee-contributed content." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on January 04, 2010 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Controls are Choices

"Designing Devices is a series of articles on how and why to create devices, written by me, Dan Saffer, principal designer at Kicker Studio. This is a place for essays that I hope to eventually collect into a book in 2011. Like drafts, the articles will be constantly evolving, hopefully with your feedback." (Dan Saffer - Designing Devices)

Posted by PJB on January 01, 2010 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink