June 2011

Experience Design Models: Minding the Gap Between Ideas and Interfaces

"So what can we do to better communicate experience design vision during that window of opportunity between raw ideas and design deliverables? How can we use our abilities to visualize for the greater good? Enter experience modeling."

(Marc Sasinski a.k.a. @sashimijack ~ Johnny Holland Magazine)

Posted by PJB on June 30, 2011 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Showcase of Impressive Design Process Explanations

"A common feature amongst the top design portfolio and agency websites is a visually presented explanation of their design process. This simple idea of describing how a potential client's project will be handled from start to finish is a great way of securing projects and giving the customer an insight into what their working relationship with the designer(s) will be like. This showcase rounds up a bunch of impressive examples of how various designers have explained their design process with the aid of clever graphical elements."

(Chris Spooner a.k.a. @chrisspooner ~ Line25)

Posted by PJB on June 29, 2011 | Classification: Information graphics - UCD | Permalink

Using tag bundles in intranets

"It's common for enterprises to have a document library in their intranets that houses all types of administrative and operational content. Such a document library usually has a taxonomy to improve the discoverability and findability of content. However, there is one problem: documents need to get into the library first! Submitting a document to the library involves filing or tagging the document with the right taxonomic terms, a procedure that can make people see red if not done properly. Tag bundles can help simplify this procedure and also improve the use of such document libraries."

(Maish Nichani a.k.a. @maish ~ PebbleRoad)
courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on June 27, 2011 | Classification: Information architecture - Metadata | Permalink

Tales of Designer Initiation: The UX Design Boot Camp

"Our objective during the UX Design Boot Camp was to design a user interface for a new product concept in only two weeks. Four new team members paired up to form two teams that would work on separate design projects. Deliberately vague, the description of the design problem for each pair comprised fewer than five sentences."

(Lauren Shupp and Davis Neable ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on June 24, 2011 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Reliability and Dependability in Usability Testing

"Usability testing is a form of user research, in so far as it allows you to make conclusions about a large population based on observations of a small sample of that population. Essentially, we try to assess our products' suitability for our marketplace - as well as its usability for the population of interest - by testing it with a group of typical users. Usability testing often involves both quantitative and qualitative data - either of which can be subject to misunderstandings. This column discusses principles of rigorous research as they apply to usability testing, with an emphasis on reliability and dependability."

(Mike Hughes ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on June 24, 2011 | Classification: Design research - Usability | Permalink

The Future of UX

"Are we going to evolve into tie-wearing consultants? Do UX pros matter at all a few years down the road? And how do Africa and refrigerators fit in? Together with the awesome folks at UXcamp Europe, we discussed the future of our profession."

(UX Café)

Posted by PJB on June 21, 2011 | Classification: Podcasts - User experience | Permalink

Web apps v native apps v mobile sites: a guide

"In two year's time mobile phones will overtake computers as the most popular device for web browsing, John Barnes, managing director of digital and tech at Incisive Media, told delegates at the Mobile Media Strategies day. Users expect a seamless experience whether they are accessing websites on a Android device, a BlackBerry, iPhone, tablet, laptop or desktop."

(Sarah Marshall ~ Journalism)

Posted by PJB on June 21, 2011 | Classification: Mobile design | Permalink

Building a Content Strategy Methodology in Several Thousand Easy Steps

"Methodology. An ugly word, to be sure. Cold and clinical, it marginalizes flexibility in the name of process. Gross. Yet, we all seek it out. We all want a methodology - a guide to doing what we are going to do. We want it for us. We want it for our clients. We want to take the amorphous blob that is content strategy and define WHAT THAT MEANS on a task-related level. Great. But how?"

(Corey Vilhauer a.k.a. @MrVilhauer ~ Eating Elephant)

Posted by PJB on June 21, 2011 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Mini-IA: Structuring the Information About a Concept

"In a miniature information architecture, coverage of a single topic is chunked into units that are connected through simple navigation."

(Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on June 21, 2011 | Classification: Information architecture - Usability | Permalink

Flocks, Herds, and Stories: Temporal Coherence and The Long Tail

"The Web is large and new, it flourishes, It seems to go from strength to strength, and yet we do not know how strong it really is. We must remember that we still could wreck the web."

(Mark Bernstein a.k.a. @eastgate)

Posted by PJB on June 20, 2011 | Classification: Events - Hypertext | Permalink

Six Things User Experience Designers Forget When They Criticize Websites

"It's easy to criticize the user experience of an application or website, because we're all end users. But sometimes we use it once, while many have to use it day after day as a part of their job. We talk about how we like using some sites, but there's always the 'I wish it was way.' Still, we are our own worst enemies. We constantly pick at sites and snipe on Twitter how certain missing features are UX 101, but we don't offer constructive feedback. We don't understand that some decisions are based on conscious business decisions. Worst of all, we don't get that company culture, most of all, plays a part in the final product. Not every company is Apple where design is king. Trade offs are made all the time, sometimes without any input from the user experience stakeholders. All good user experience designers make decisions regarding what they can live with and what they can't."

(Patrick Neeman ~ usabilitycounts)

Posted by PJB on June 20, 2011 | Classification: Usability - User experience | Permalink

Measuring information behaviour performance inside a company: A case study

"Measuring information behaviour performance to provide practical guidance for knowledge workers is an important issue for the success of a company. Drawing upon the literature from psychology, marketing, management and information systems, this paper develops a practical model of information behaviour that provides fundamental determinants of knowledge workers' performance."

(Yujong Hwang ~ Information Research, 16(2)

Posted by PJB on June 16, 2011 | Classification: Design research - Information design | Permalink

Developing a UX Practice of Practicing

"Good practice focuses on the process, while work focuses on the outcome. When doctors, musicians, and pilots are practicing, they are not doing the entire job. They are looking at the process of the work, often repeating the same step multiple times."

(Jared Spool a.k.a. @jmspool ~ User Interface Engineering)

Posted by PJB on June 15, 2011 | Classification: UCD - User experience | Permalink

CS is (Still) Not (Only) UX ... and Why It Matters

"(...) I tend to think of UX design as a kind of design work associated with certain methods, processes, and values. It's not limited to the web, or even (theoretically, at least) to the digital world."

(Erin Kissane a.k.a. @kissane ~ Brain Traffic)
courtesy of basevers

Posted by PJB on June 10, 2011 | Classification: Content strategy - User experience | Permalink

Effective Use of Typography in Applications for Children

"In this installment of my column, I'll take a look at one of the most important visual design elements for graphic user interfaces: typography. I'll concentrate on general guidelines for the effective use of typography in the design of applications for children between 3 and 10 years of age. What considerations do we need to take into account when working with digital typography when children are its primary interpreters?"

(Catalina Naranjo-Bock ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on June 08, 2011 | Classification: Typography | Permalink

Comparing User Research Methods for Information Architecture

"In this column, I'll summarize and compare the latest generative and evaluative methods for IA user research. The methods I'll examine include open card sorting, Modified-Delphi card sorting, closed card sorting, reverse card sorting, card-based classification evaluation, tree testing, and testing information architecture with low-fidelity prototypes. I'll cover the advantages and disadvantages to consider when choosing between these methods, when it makes sense to use each method, and describe an ideal combination of these methods."

(Jim Ross ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on June 08, 2011 | Classification: Design research - Information architecture | Permalink

Online digital text and implications for reading in academe

"While the Internet is a text–saturated world, reading online screens tends to be significantly different from reading printed text. This review essay examines literature from a variety of disciplines on the technological, social, behavioural, and neuroscientific impacts that the Internet is having on the practice of reading. A particular focus is given to the reading behaviour of emerging university students, especially within Canada and the United States. A brief overview is provided of the recent transformation of academic libraries into providers of online digital text in addition to printed books and other materials, before looking at research on college students' preferences for print and digital text, and the cognitive neuroscience of reading on screen."

(Barry W. Cull ~ First Monday, Volume 16, Number 6)

Posted by PJB on June 08, 2011 | Classification: Tablet design - Writing | Permalink

Where are the Mobile First Responsive Web Designs?

"Mobile first design is primarily about the starting point. After a site is complete, how can I tell whether or not the developer started from the mobile and built up to desktop or started from the desktop and whittled down to mobile? I didn't want to have to tear apart over a hundred sites in the Mediaqueri.es gallery to find the handful of mobile first sites. I needed some way to narrow the number of sites I cared about to some sort of manageable number."

(Jason Grigsby a.k.a. @grigs ~ Cloud Four)
courtesy of lukew

Posted by PJB on June 08, 2011 | Classification: Mobile design - Technology | Permalink

Service Design: Setting The Stage For The Consummate Experience

"Mention service design to your UX colleagues and you may find yourself unwittingly engaged in a game of Buzzword Bingo. Whether you call it 'service design,' 'holistic design,' 'multi-channel experience design' or 'cross-channel design,' chances are you're all talking about the same thing. And your next challenge is defining exactly what you mean when you say 'service design.' The field of service design is still young and evolving. And its interdisciplinary nature makes it difficult to define. In fact, (...) no common definition of service design exists."

(Megan Grocki a.k.a. @megangrocki ~ UX Magazine)

Posted by PJB on June 07, 2011 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Information Overload, Reloaded

"Contemporary information architecture can help reframe how we approach this thing called information overload. In this article (...) Nathaniel Davis, founder and curator of DSIA Research Initiative and DSIA Portal of IA, leads the discussion on behalf of contemporary information architecture. He repositions information abundance and filter failure as signatures of information overload. Davis then suggests how information overload can be quantified as two unique conditions that are ideal for further investigation in theory, research and practice to better understand their influence on providing sound information architecture recommendations."

(Nathaniel Davis ~ DSIA Portal of IA)

Posted by PJB on June 07, 2011 | Classification: Information architecture - Metadata | Permalink

International Usability: Big Stuff the Same, Details Differ

"User testing on 3 continents confirmed that the main usability guidelines hold worldwide, but many other considerations exist to better support international users."

(Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on June 06, 2011 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Understanding Our Interaction Design History

"It's great that we're starting to make the history of digital technology available, but I believe we should also be doing the same for interaction design. We need to understand the history of digital design on screens and how it has changed. It's not because the basic interaction design principles change over time, because they haven't. The principles we introduced in the CHI course - prominence, relationship, flow, clarity, simplicity and consistency - were just as relevant 25 years ago, they probably just had different names. No, the history matters because how we apply those principles has changed as our technology changed."

(David Rondeau a.k.a. @dbrondeau ~ InContext)

Posted by PJB on June 01, 2011 | Classification: Events - HCI - Interaction design | Permalink

I don't care about User Experience

"These days we've stopped selling UX and started simply doing it. (...) Sure, some agencies or individuals haven't quite reached that inflexion point yet, but I can tell you that it's on the way. Demand is far outstripping supply, so if you're not there yet, you soon will be. User Experience is no longer a point of difference, it's just the way all good websites are built these days."

(Andy Budd a.k.a. @andybudd)

Posted by PJB on June 01, 2011 | Classification: User experience | Permalink