March 2010

Case study: Agile and UCD working together

"Large scale websites require groups of specialists to design and develop a product that will be a commercial success. To develop a completely new site requires several teams to collaborate and this can be difficult. Particularly as different teams may be working with different methods. This case study shows how the ComputerWeekly user experience team integrated with an agile development group. It's important to note the methods we used do not guarantee getting the job done. People make or break any project. Finding and retaining good people is the most important ingredient for success." (James Kelway - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on March 31, 2010 | Classification: Information design - Technology - User experience | Permalink

What's missing from design education

"Here are 12 qualities of design and design education I think will be driving the next wave of design educators." (David Malouf)

Posted by PJB on March 31, 2010 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Common Ground

"In the modern, agile world, programmers defend themselves against changing requirements by showing customers the program as often as possible, and by being able to make rapid changes to suit the customers expressed needs. Interaction designers defend themselves against uncooperative programmers by doing ever more detailed design and documenting it with greater accuracy, detail, and precision." (Alan Cooper)

Posted by PJB on March 31, 2010 | Classification: Interaction design - Technology | Permalink

Developing a UI Design Pattern Library

"Designing good user interfaces is difficult, and thus software development organizations need effective and usable design tools to support design work. In this thesis a tool, a user interface design pattern library which captures knowledge of good UI design and shares it effectively in reusable format to the development organization (...)" (@Janne Lammi 2007)

Posted by PJB on March 30, 2010 | Classification: HCI - Patterns | Permalink

Taming Goliath: Selling UX to Large Companies 2/2

"Collaborating effectively can be difficult for large companies. Projects can involve multiple locations, people, systems, and other outside companies. Large companies also tend to be departmental rather than project-focused, and this can hinder working together. But, being able to bring people together is key to delivering successful sites for large companies. Here are some tools and techniques to improve collaboration on projects." (Alan Colville - UX Booth)

Posted by PJB on March 30, 2010 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

Fred Wilson’s 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps

"In February 2010 Fred Wilson, a New York based tech investor, spoke at the annual Future of Web Apps Miami conference. His talk, clocking in at just under 30 minutes, looks at his top 10 principles for creating a successful web app. A full transcript is available too." (Keir Whitaker - Think Vitamin)

Posted by PJB on March 30, 2010 | Classification: Interaction design - User experience | Permalink

Seven Contexts for Service System Design

"Many of the most complex service systems being built and imagined today combine person-to-person encounters, technology-enhanced encounters, self-service, computational services, multi-channel, multidevice, and location-based and context-aware services. This paper examines the characteristic concerns and methods for these seven different design contexts to propose a unifying view that spans them, especially when the service-system is information-intensive. A focus on the information required to perform the service, how the responsibility to provide this information is divided between the service provider and service consumer, and the patterns that govern information exchange yields a more abstract description of service encounters and outcomes. This makes it easier to see the systematic relationships among the contexts that can be exploited as design parameters or patterns, such as the substitutability of stored or contextual information for person-to-person interactions." (Robert Glushko 2009)

Posted by PJB on March 29, 2010 | Classification: Service design - Technology | Permalink

Rock Stars Need Not Apply

"The world needs talented, passionate service designers but it can do without rock stars. Service designers are humble. They embrace participatory values, particularly the idea that we should be designing with people rather than designing for them. The practical upshot is an evolutionary divergence in approach to research, sketching, design and prototyping." (Jeff Howard)

Posted by PJB on March 29, 2010 | Classification: Information architecture - Service design - User experience | Permalink

Leonard Cohen versus Jesse James Garrett

"I think we should be called information architects and that it’s easier to talk about IA with people outside our field in terms of A than to talk with them about UXD in terms of X or D. Mr. Garrett thinks we are now and have always been user experience designers, that UXD is easier for muggles to understand, and that those of us who specialize in and choose the titles of IA or IxD are either fools or liars." (Dan Klyn - Wildly Appropriate)

Posted by PJB on March 26, 2010 | Classification: Information architecture - User experience | Permalink

Interaction10: How to Design an Experience for Experience Designers?

"Collaborating with a large team of designers, who all worked as volunteers, we decided to approach the conference experience as designers creating a service, taking every aspect of the experience into account. We thought through the lifecycle of the event, in light of the needs and motivations of the 600+ participants at the event, in their various roles from attendees and speakers to sponsors, volunteers, and conference staff. We used our empathy as designers to imagine what was important to each user at each stage of the experience. And while not everything worked out exactly as we planned, based on feedback, I think conference was a success. Here are a few things we learned along the way." (Jennifer Bove - Fast Company)

Posted by PJB on March 26, 2010 | Classification: Events - Interaction design - User experience | Permalink

What am I?

"My interests and skills in the universe that is Design tack heavily toward using information to create structured systems for human experience. I'm obsessed with the design challenges that come from linking things that couldn't be linked before the Internet — creating habitats out of digital raw material. That, to me, is the heart of information architecture." (Andrew Hinton)

Posted by PJB on March 26, 2010 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Web App Masters: Designing for Interesting Moments

"In his Designing for Interesting Moments presentation at the Web App Masters Tour in San Diego, CA, Bill Scott outlined several rich interaction design principles and showed them in action within several Web applications." (the notes of LukeW)

Posted by PJB on March 25, 2010 | Classification: Events - Interaction design | Permalink

UX at Year X

"Adaptive Path co-founder and principal Jesse James Garrett's accolades range from creating seminal works on user experience to coining the term AJAX. Ahead of his UX London presentation, he talked to us about The Elements of User Experience a decade on, how service design relates to user experience, and his pick of future UX rock stars. (...) the phenomenal success Apple has had in the last ten years has been a double-edged sword for us." (Jeroen van Geel - Johnny Holland Magazine)

Posted by PJB on March 24, 2010 | Classification: Interviews - User experience | Permalink

Designing for the Web

"(...) aims to teach you techniques for designing your website using the principles of graphic design. Featuring five sections, each covering a core aspect of graphic design: Getting Started, Research, Typography, Colour, and Layout. Learn solid graphic design theory that you can simply apply to your designs, making the difference from a good design to a great one. If you're a designer, developer, or content producer, reading the book will enrich your website design and plug the holes in your design knowledge. Now available online. For free!" (Mark Boulton)

Posted by PJB on March 24, 2010 | Classification: Information design - Typography | Permalink

Taming Goliath: Selling UX to Large Companies 1/2

"Large companies are the financial backbone of the web industry, but their size and complex organizational structure can make them challenging to work with. Having worked on both sides of the fence, I've seen great ideas become the casualties of this struggle between the proverbial David and Goliath, as agencies or freelancers meet face-to-face with Big Business to create web sites. Closing the door to large companies means missing out on important revenue, good work, and more people using our designs, so how can we make large companies work for us?" (Alan Colville - UX Booth)

Posted by PJB on March 23, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Content: Not Always King

"The strategy you adopt when tackling a project needs to take this continuum in mind. If your product is about content consumption, content is king and you should do due diligence and start from a content strategy perspective. Users of those products are coming to be informed or entertained and need the content to be front-and-center; the product is in service to displaying the content in as appropriate a manner as possible. The meaning of the content matters; you wouldn't display a cartoon the same way you’d display an analysis of the stock market. At least, not usually." (Dan Saffer - Kicker Studio) - Goes back to the old web app (code) versus doc (data) distinction.

Posted by PJB on March 22, 2010 | Classification: Content strategy - Information architecture - Interaction design | Permalink

Designing for Awareness at SXSWi

"Interaction designers talk a lot about a user’s emotional experience, but they understand very little about what motivates people to engage. How can designers understand triggers (signals, facilitators, and sparks) that help to change people’s behavior? frog VP of Creative Robert Fabricant investigates." (Robert Fabricant - frogdesign)

Posted by PJB on March 22, 2010 | Classification: Events - Interaction design | Permalink

User-Centered Innovation is not Sustainable

"Only forward-looking executives, designers, and, of course, policy makers may introduce sustainable innovation into the economic picture. They need to step back from current dominant needs and behaviors and envision new scenarios. They need to propose new unsolicited products and services that are both attractive, sustainable, and profitable." (Roberto Verganti - Harvard Business Review)

Posted by PJB on March 22, 2010 | Classification: Design research - Information design | Permalink

Scrolling and Attention

"Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on March 22, 2010 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

UX Design versus UI Development

"One of the more interesting tensions I have observed - since getting into user experience design about five years ago - is the almost sibling-rivalry tension between UX Designers and User Interface (UI) Developers. At the heart of the tension between them is the fact that most UI Developers consider themselves - and sometimes rightfully so - to be UI Designers. The coding part is like Picasso’s having to understand how to mix paint. It's not the value they add, just the mechanics of delivering the creative concepts." (Mike Hughes - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on March 22, 2010 | Classification: HCI - Technology - User experience | Permalink

Sustainable User Research

"Traditionally, user research involves directly observing and talking with people in the context of their work or play. Either researchers travel to observe participants in their natural environments or participants travel to a usability lab or focus-group facility. How better to understand how people use a product or technology than to observe them using it firsthand?" (Jim Ross - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on March 22, 2010 | Classification: Design research - User experience | Permalink

There Is No Such Thing As Jesse James Garrett

"The president of a firm that's synonymous with User Experience and who literally 'wrote the book' on the elements of User Experience making an impassioned call for everybody who’s called information architect or interaction designer to change their business cards to omit mention of these competing paradigms, and then insisting that the way your firm does its work is different than every other kind of design approach that’s come before it? It's a sell job, if not a sales pitch. I think he doth protest too much." (Dan Klyn - Wildly Appropriate)

Posted by PJB on March 21, 2010 | Classification: Information architecture - User experience | Permalink

Invisible Revolution

"(...) the story of Doug Engelbart, the man who invented much of the information environment we live in today - the computer mouse, word processing, email, hypertext and so on. In short: Interactive computing. This is his story, and the story of his fellow dreamers, thinkers, doers - revolutionaries - who changed our lives forever." (Frode Hegland & Fleur Klijnsma)

Posted by PJB on March 19, 2010 | Classification: Classics | Permalink

How UX can get anything they want

"When it comes to the world of UX, designers, usability engineers, and the rest, they tend to complain about how little power they have, but spend little time doing skill development in how to gain influence and power. The average designer or IA would be better served by going to a sales conference and learning sales and pitching skills, than going to yet another design event. They're already good at design, but they’re probably not very good at pitching design ideas to non-designers." (Scott Berkun)

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

Starting Out Organized: Website Content Planning The Right Way

"So many articles explain how to design interfaces, design graphics and deal with clients. But one step in the Web development process is often skipped over or forgotten altogether: content planning. Sometimes called information architecture, or IA planning, this step doesn't find a home easily in many people's workflow. But rushing on to programming and pushing pixels makes for content that looks shoehorned rather than fully integrated and will only require late-game revisions." (Kristin Wemmer - Smashing Magazine)

Posted by PJB on March 17, 2010 | Classification: Content strategy - Information architecture | Permalink

Content Strategy as Information Design

"Content strategy is in many respects information design. And as Steve Jobs famously said, 'Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.' Content, and content strategy are experiential – much the same as design. And design requires planning." (Will Sullivan - Craft Interactive)

Posted by PJB on March 17, 2010 | Classification: Content strategy - Information design | Permalink

Preso: User Experience Will Make or Break Social Business

"User experience is the art and science of designing digital products that people want to use." (Karen McGrane - Bond Art+Science)

Posted by PJB on March 17, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

17 guidelines for better information architecture (from 1991)

"Given the emphasis on HCI and psychology one might easily think this is a relatively recent volume on IA and usability. In fact, this book was published in 1991! I find it amazing how appropriate much of the content still is." (Jussi Pasanen - Volkside) - courtesy of ferrydendopper

Posted by PJB on March 16, 2010 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

The (Near) Future of Managing Experiences

"What's your plan for the near future? If you're like most in our field, the path forward is murky and no one at your office is handing out maps. We'll look at the trends and tactics that matter, so you can make your own map for moving ahead." (Brandon Schauer - MX Managing Experience 2010)

Posted by PJB on March 16, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

We learn from stories and experience

"When it comes to learning and genuinely retaining something, nothing beats experiences. Formal educational or speaking settings don't always allow for actual hands-on experience with the content, but almost every learning situation — including presentation in various forms — does permit the use of stories." (Garr Reynolds - Presentation Zen)

Posted by PJB on March 16, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

SXSW Live: Beyond the Desktop

"Some people think it's just the hardware, but it’s not. It's also about the software, the context, and the overall user experience." (Michael Leis)

Posted by PJB on March 16, 2010 | Classification: HCI - User experience | Permalink

The Guardian supplement on Service Design

"We are happy to announce that the British newspaper The Guardian has released a ten page supplement on Service Design today, Monday, 15th of March! In co-operation with the Service Design Network The Guardian has produced a supplement themed on Service Design and Innovation in partnership with organisations from the Service Design and Innovation markets. Included are many interesting case studies and best practices with perceivable business impact but also enjoyable and easy understandable examples. 10 Pages, 350.000 copies... great stories! " (Service Design Network) - courtesy of ronverweij

Posted by PJB on March 15, 2010 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Sketching in Film

"My next bit of insight into how to sketch a service comes from the intersection of ethnography and cinema." (Design for Service)

Posted by PJB on March 12, 2010 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Books in the age of the iPad

"With the iPad, we finally have a platform for consuming rich-content in digital form. What does that mean? To understand just why the iPad is so exciting we need to think about how we got here." (Craig Mod)

Posted by PJB on March 12, 2010 | Classification: Tablet design | Permalink

The Virtues of a UX Professional

"UX professionals can be an egotistical lot. We like to think that only certain people with certain qualities can do what we do. Not everybody has the right stuff to fly to the moon or storm the beaches at Normandy. And in a similar way (sort of) not everybody has what it takes to create great user experiences." (Colman Walsh - IQBlog)

Posted by PJB on March 11, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

User Experience Books Free to Read Online

"The truly worldwide reach of the Web has brought with it a new realisation among computer scientists and industry professionals of the enormous importance of usability and user interface design. In the last ten years, much has become understood about what works in user interfaces from a usability perspective, and what does not." (Simon Whatley)

Posted by PJB on March 11, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Can you mix Agile and UX?

"Here's my open transparent written exploration of how I am navigating this concept. (...) I think the concept of Agile is fine, its the execution of it that I think is where the story kind of starts to fall a little to the way side, I think from a UX standpoint you really need to outline the features ahead but do so in a way that is suited to a ready, aim, fire model." (Scott Barnes)

Posted by PJB on March 11, 2010 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Preso: Data-Driven Design

"A five minute rant on the importance of letting data be your guide when making tactical design decisions. An introduction for managers of design teams who are driven from a heuristic, or 'genius' perspective." (Ryan Freitas)

Posted by PJB on March 10, 2010 | Classification: Design research | Permalink

The Craft of Interaction Design

"I've been involved in developing what I would say is the craft of interaction design. A craft is a way of working that you develop entirely through experience without thinking about rationalizing it or systematizing it. And I believe that craft is essential to interaction design, and always will be. But I also believe that there could be ways of thinking about interaction design, ways of generalizing principles from experience and existing knowledge, just as in the twenties general principles about composition and graphic design were developed at the Bauhaus, or a new grammar of film was invented by Eisenstein and written about by Arnheim. These ways of thinking about practice make a platform in which people coming after us can build without them needing to invent everything from the start." (Gillian Crampton-Smith 2007)

Posted by PJB on March 09, 2010 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

Closeness of Actions and Objects in GUI Design

"Users overlook features if the GUI elements — such as buttons and checkboxes — are too far away from the objects they act on." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on March 09, 2010 | Classification: HCI - Usability | Permalink

Time To Start Taking The Internet Seriously

"In short: it's time to think about the Internet instead of just letting it happen." (David Gelernter - EDGE)

Posted by PJB on March 08, 2010 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Proceedings First International Congress on Web Studies

"The 1st international congress on Web Studies aims at providing a venue for researchers and professionals from different backgrounds for discussion, study, practical demonstrations, sharing, and exchange on new developments and theories regarding the World Wide Web. The congress therefore invites contributions from a heterogeneous set of fields and domains such as: Web systems, computational intelligence, human-computer interaction, digital theory, Web sociology, and well as interactive and digital arts. We also encourage contributions from businesses and organizations." (1st Int'l Congress on Web Studies) - courtesy of markbernstein

Posted by PJB on March 08, 2010 | Classification: Events - Hypertext | Permalink

iPad Application Design

"The iPad may be a larger version of the iPhone in terms of the hardware and operating system, but treating it as the same device would be foolish. It turns out that increasing the display size of touch-screen hardware can transform it into an entirely new class of device. The iPad is a productivity platform in a way that the iPhone rightly never tried to be." (Matt Legend Gemmell)

Posted by PJB on March 08, 2010 | Classification: HCI - Mobile design - Tablet design | Permalink

Do's and Don'ts of Usability Testing

"Usability testing is one of the least glamorous, but most important aspects of user experience research. Over the years, it has also been one of the forms of user research we have performed most frequently. In doing so, we’ve learned quite a few best practices and encountered some potential pitfalls. We think it's important that we share what we've learned with the many stakeholders, designers, and engineers who might find this information helpful." (Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on March 08, 2010 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Designing Mobile Search: Turning Limitations into Opportunities

"Thinking of porting your Web finding experience to iPhone, Android, or Windows Mobile? Just forget about the fact that these devices are basically full-featured computers with tiny screens. Having gone through this design exercise a few times, I have realized that designing a great mobile finding experience requires a way of thinking that is quite different from our typical approach to designing search for Web or desktop applications. To put it simply, designing a mobile finding experience requires thinking in terms of turning limitations into opportunities. In this column, I'll discuss some of the limitations of mobile platforms, as well as the opportunities they afford, and share a few design ideas that might come in handy for your own projects." (Greg Nudelman - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on March 08, 2010 | Classification: Mobile design - Search | Permalink

The Art of Narrative and the Semantic Web

"The art of the narrative is one of the strongest threads running through our society and culture, and is in many respects one of the defining traits of humanity. 'The story' is more than just a recitation of facts or assertions (whether real or otherwise). A good story is experiential. It puts each of us as listeners into the narrator's world and frame of mind, let's us live, vicariously, through the experiences that the narrator had or conceived. In many cases we identify with the protagonist, whether the story is an epic fantasy journey through lost worlds, a sports article talking about the clash between two rival football teams, or the reportage of a major political event. We read meaning into these narratives at many level, from the bald statement of fact to the subtle interplay of analysis, implication, innuendo and metaphor, and it is the richness of these metaphors that give meaning to the work." (Kurt Cagle - DevX)

Posted by PJB on March 05, 2010 | Classification: Metadata | Permalink

Ten unexpected online user behaviours to look out for

"Designing is hard enough as it is, taking into account your surprisingly erratic users makes it that much harder. Fortunately, taking unexpected user behaviour into account throughout the design process is a large part of the battle, it's a significant step on the way to a good user experience." (Alistair Gray - Webcredible)

Posted by PJB on March 05, 2010 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Is Technology Becoming More Usable - or Less - and With What Consequences?

"Back quite a while ago, when there was a Sun Microsystems, the company banned the use of PowerPoint, because its employees were spending two minutes on the content of their presentations and 16 hours on using PowerPoint's features to make their slides look pretty. (I probably exaggerate, but you get the point.) Is the technology really making us more productive, or is it simply providing a pleasant (in some cases) user experience at the expense of real productivity?" (Daryle Gardner-Bonneau - Journal of Usability Studies February 2010)

Posted by PJB on March 05, 2010 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Content Strategy Is About Publishing

"When people talk about the imminent death of publishing, they’re usually talking about something narrow, specific, and tied to ways of working that predate the internet: the publication of books, magazines, newspapers, and all kinds of printed legal and business data, along with the economic, logistical, and aesthetic structures that have made that process possible. And that kind of publishing is indeed getting whipped around like a very small cowboy on a very large bull. Why? Because the internet is made of publishing, and its new and often anarchic publishing models are messing with older models in all kinds of ways." (Erin Kissane - Incisive.nu) - courtesy of khalvorson

Posted by PJB on March 03, 2010 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

The Future of Wireframes

"As we move into the next decade of web design, it's time for us to reevaluate our understanding of wireframes—a tried and tested user experience staple." (Nishant Kothary - MIX Online) - courtesy of rasmusdegruil

Posted by PJB on March 03, 2010 | Classification: Wireframes | Permalink

Social Tagging and the Enterprise: Does Tagging Work at Work?

"Organizations are interested in using social tagging technology both within workgroups and across the enterprise. Tagging can supplement information retrieval options in intranets and document management systems, allowing employees to use tags to enhance the findability of internal and external content without waiting for an information professional to categorize it." (Stephanie Lemieux - User Interface Engineering)

Posted by PJB on March 02, 2010 | Classification: Metadata | Permalink

Eyes on Content Experience

"(...) slides about the special aspect to user experience: content experience. The value for user comes typically from the content, not the interaction itself. It is sometimes hard for us HCI people to remember this." (Virpi Roto - Eyes on User Experience)

Posted by PJB on March 01, 2010 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Internet on Mobiles: Evolution of Usability and User Experience

"This dissertation has its focus in the area of human-computer interaction research and practices. The overall goal of my research has been to improve the usability and the user experience of mobile Internet services. My research has sought answers to questions relevant in service development process. I have sought answers mostly from a human factors perspective, but have also taken the elements form technology and business infrastructure into consideration." (Anne Kaikkonen)

Posted by PJB on March 01, 2010 | Classification: Mobile design | Permalink

Meaningful Innovation Relies on Interaction and Service Design

"Interaction designers can play a key role in creating a more meaningful, sustainable, and post-consumer world. come learn about frameworks and approaches that help designers make real change for customers." (Nathan Shedroff - Interaction10 videos)

Posted by PJB on March 01, 2010 | Classification: Interaction design - Service design | Permalink

Service as Design

"Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot from watching.” Over the last several years, a unique set of students has been challenged to think about design for healthcare services. In my role as a professor at Carnegie Mellon I had the opportunity to observe their work and it offered many insights into design, design thinking, and just how big the healthcare service challenge is. In my new role in Microsoft's FUSE lab I’m looking at the future of social experience. My experience with the students and healthcare exposed the underlying notion that people participating in service—whether providers, consumers, or others that are actively involved—are actually designing as they participate in the service. If we accept the service as design lens, designers may need to see their role differently—from one of developing static objects and environments—to one of creating new methods for modeling experience, and skilling everyone to be active participants in design during the service experience." (Shelley Evenson - Interaction10 videos)

Posted by PJB on March 01, 2010 | Classification: Interaction design - Service design | Permalink