|
Categories
Powered by
|
UCD Considering the User Perspective: Research into Usage and Communication of Digital Information"In this article we present the methodology and initial results from qualitative research into the usage and communication of digital information. It considers the motivation for the research and the methodologies adopted, including Contextual Design and Cultural Probes. The article describes the preliminary studies conducted to test the approach, highlighting the strengths and limitations of the techniques applied. Finally, it outlines proposals for refinement in subsequent iterations and the future research activities planned." (Kelly Snow et al. - D-Lib Magazine May/June 2008) Posted on July 02, 2008 | Permalink Top 100 User-Centered Blogs"Web designers often concern themselves with optimizing sites for spiders from Google, Yahoo, and other search engines, but pay little attention to creating sites that real people can use. This problem has sparked a movement towards user-centered web design, a topic that covers accessibility, web standards, and interfacing. Check out these blogs for the latest and greatest in this people-centric field of design." (Jessica Hupp - Virtual Hosting) Posted on October 16, 2007 | Permalink CORE (Cognitive Organization for Requirements Elicitation)"Using a case study drawn from the Orbitz.com information architecture environment, our 2007 IA Summit poster uses visuals and text to describe a rules-based soft systems methodology for collaborative decision-making. In this case study, the Orbitz information architect was faced with a need to rapidly develop specifications for new web application features. Produced in the absence of use cases, functional requirements, or business requirements, these new specifications had to be both culturally and technically acceptable, and meet changing business and user needs." (Joanna Wiebe and Scott Confer) Posted on September 24, 2007 | Permalink Conducting Successful Interviews With Project Stakeholders"A simple, semi-structured, one-on-one interview can provide a very rich source of insights. Interviews work very well for gaining insights from both internal and external stakeholders, as well as from actual users of a system under consideration. Though, in this column, I'll focus on stakeholder interviews rather than user interviews. (And I'll come back to that word, insights, a little later on, because it's important.)" (Steve Baty - UXmatters) Posted on September 11, 2007 | Permalink The Art of the Conceptual Prototype"Conceptual prototypes are often very interesting projects because the ideas are leading edge. But they also present some unique challenges compared to more traditional projects where we are designing for actual implementation." (Heidi Adkisson - Blink Interactive) Posted on August 29, 2007 | Permalink User Value: Competing Theories and Models"In design research, the issues of what exactly constitutes user value and how design can contribute to its creation are not commonly discussed. This paper provides a critical overview of the theories of value used in anthropology, sociology, philosophy, business, and economics. In doing so, it reviews a range of theoretical and empirical studies, with particular emphasis on their position on product, user, and designer in the process of value creation. The paper first looks at the similarities and differences among definitions of value as exchange, sign, and experience. It then reviews types and properties of user value such as its multidimensionality, its contextuality, its interactivity, and the stages of user experience dependency identified by empirical studies. Methodological approaches to user value research and their possible applications in design are also discussed. Finally, directions for future research on user value are discussed giving particular emphasis to the need of tools and methods to support design practice." (Suzan Boztepe - International Journal of Design 1.2) Posted on August 15, 2007 | Permalink Four Factors of Agile UX"Drawing lessons from my experience with this kind of agile approach, I can state that its advantage is certainly the ability to produce a satisfying result despite time and budget constraints—even though the result is not perfect and will certainly need refinement later on. Another advantage of this kind of project is that both our team and our client's team got to know each other better and learned how to exploit each person’s know-how, improving the overall ability of the design team." (Luca Mascaro - UXmatters) Posted on June 05, 2007 | Permalink Walking Through Your Product Design With Stakeholders"This article provides some basic tips to help you better prepare to walk through your product designs with stakeholders." (Daniel Szuc - UXmatters) Posted on June 05, 2007 | Permalink When ROI Isn’t Enough: Making Persuasive Cases for User-Centered Design"Making the case for user-centered design (UCD) is a topic of recurring discussion for UX professionals. Much of the discussion has centered on strictly objective approaches such as cost-benefit or return-on-investment (ROI) analysis. However, recent commentary suggests proving ROI is not always enough. For example, Dray, Karat, Rosenberg, Siegel, and Wixon have raised concerns about significant weaknesses of the ROI argument, including their concern it ties UCD to tactical, not strategic initiatives." (Colleen Jones - UXmatters) Posted on May 08, 2007 | Permalink When Observing Users Is Not Enough: 10 Guidelines for Getting More Out of Users’ Verbal Comments"Observing a user perform a task provides more reliable information than simply asking the user how easy it would be to perform the task." (Isabelle Peyrichoux - UXmatters) Posted on April 10, 2007 | Permalink Effective Prototyping for Software Makers"This book will help software makers - developers, designers, and architects - build effective prototypes every time: prototypes that convey enough information about the product at the appropriate time and thus set expectations appropriately. This practical, informative book will help anyone - whether or not one has artistic talent, access to special tools, or programming ability - to use good prototyping style, methods, and tools to build prototypes and manage for effective prototyping." (The Book) Posted on March 27, 2007 | Permalink User Research Doesn't Prove Anything"Recently, I was reading through a sample chapter of a soon-to-be-published book. The book and author shall remain nameless, as shall the book’s topic. However, I was disappointed to read, in what otherwise appeared at first glance to be an interesting publication, a very general, sweeping statement to the effect that qualitative research doesn't prove anything and, if you want proof, you should perform quantitative research. The author's basic assumption was that qualitative research can't prove anything, as it is based on small sample sizes, but quantitative research, using large sample sizes, does provide proof. This may come as a shock to everyone, but quantitative research does not provide proof of anything either." (Steve Baty - UXmatters) Posted on March 20, 2007 | Permalink Five Principles to Design by"(1) Technology Serves Humans. (2) Design is not Art. (3) The Experience Belongs to the User. (4) Great Design is Invisible. (5) Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication." (Joshua Porter - Bokardo) Posted on March 05, 2007 | Permalink Developing user-centered tools for strategic business planning"User experience professionals continue to attempt to move their work and impact 'upstream' -- to play an earlier and more strategic role in their workplaces' business. But exactly what does that mean? What is it that user experience practitioners or groups thereof should be doing differently or working towards doing (more)?" (Richard Anderson - riander) Posted on January 21, 2007 | Permalink Clash of the Titans: Agile and UCD"Agile software development has become fairly popular in the last few years, leaving many UX professionals wondering how user-centered design (UCD) can fit into an extremely fast-paced development process that uses little documentation. User-centered design can involve a variety of techniques that provide insights into users’ wants, needs, and goals, including ethnography, contextual inquiry, contextual interviewing, usability testing, task analysis, and others. But all of these take time-time that an agile development process might not allow. There is hope, though. Agile and UCD methods are not completely at odds with each other-and in some cases, agile development can even enable a more user-centered approach. By taking the time to understand the differences and similarities between agile development and UCD, it's possible to devise a process that is both user-centered and agile." (Richard F. Cecil - UXmatters) Posted on December 18, 2006 | Permalink Cautions Cars & Cantankerous KitchensDRAFT: Chapter 1 of 'The Design of Future Things' - "As our technology becomes more powerful, more in control, its failure at collaboration and communication becomes ever more critical. Collaboration requires interaction and communication. It means explaining and giving reasons. Trust is a tenuous relationship, formed through experience and understanding. With automatic, so-called intelligent devices, trust is sometimes conferred undeservedly." (Donald A. Norman) - courtesy of michelvuijlsteke Posted on November 29, 2006 | Permalink User Research: Subjectivity and Objectivity in Practice"There has been an interesting dialogue on the IxD Discussion mailing list in recent months, in which some participants have questioned the need for and benefits of doing user research rather than relying on the experience and intuition of designers. These comments led others to voice concerns about the actual quality of the user research companies are undertaking and the validity of any conclusions they have drawn from the resulting data." (Steve Baty - UXmatters) Posted on November 07, 2006 | Permalink Applied Empathy: A Design Framework for Meeting Human Needs and Desires"The design community keeps making a lot of noise about designing for people/users/customers. However, while this notion is well-intentioned and even conceptually correct, I find much of it boils down to empty rhetoric. What exactly are we doing? More user research? More usability testing? Certainly these are valid approaches to finding out about people’s needs, but they’re only a small part of an optimal solution. Are we using hollow tasks and tools like personas and scenarios? Those approaches typically take design farther away from the people for whom we are designing products rather than closer. How about focusing on usability and the user experience? That gets at only part of the issue and tends to come from the perspective of the product—as opposed to the more universal needs and desires of actual people" (Dirk Knemeyer - UXmatters) Posted on September 26, 2006 | Permalink Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning"Communicating Design is for everyone who creates, uses, or approves documentation during the web design process. Covering 10 of the most common types of documents, the book walks readers through creating and presenting each deliverable. It describes the document's essential contents, tips for preparing the document, strategies for managing risk, how to structure presentation meetings, and lots of other practical advice." (Dan Brown) - courtesy of petermorville Posted on September 12, 2006 | Permalink Why Doing User Observations First is Wrong"Usability testing is like Beta testing of software. It should never be used to determine 'what users need'. It is for catching bugs, and so this kind of usability testing still fits the new, iterative programming models, just as Beta testing for software bugs fits the models. I have long maintained that any company proud of its usability testing is a company in trouble, just as a company proud of its Beta testing is in trouble. UI and Beta testing are meant simply to find bugs, not to redesign." (Donald Norman - uiGarden.net) Posted on August 26, 2006 | Permalink Words Matter. Talk About People: Not Customers, Not Consumers, Not Users"Words matter. Psychologists depersonalize the people they study by calling them 'subjects'. We depersonalize the people we study by calling them 'users'. Both terms are derogatory. They take us away from our primary mission: to help people. Power to the people, I say, to repurpose an old phrase. People. Human Beings. That's what our discipline is really about." (Donald Norman) Posted on June 12, 2006 | Permalink Communicating Complex Ideas"The most successful sites are those that understand the experience range of their users. Some are veteran traders who know what to do, while others can’t tell a bid from an ask price. Accommodating the novice traders is crucial to the success of these markets, as well as moving them along as they gain experience." (Alex Kirtland - Boxes and Arrows) Posted on May 31, 2006 | Permalink Communicating design concepts without getting skewered"Communicating design does take time, no doubt about it. But it will save a lot more time by reducing the thrash that occurs when developers don't have a clear understanding about what it is they are supposed to build." (Steve Calde - Cooper Newsletter3.2) Posted on May 15, 2006 | Permalink Convivio Network"(...) the European Thematic Network for the human-centered design of interactive technologies. Convivio supports and promotes the development of 'convivial technologies', ICT products, systems and services that enhance the quality of everyday life and human interaction." (About Convivio) - congrats fabio! Posted on May 12, 2006 | Permalink Book Review: Paper Prototyping"Carolyn Snyder’s Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces provides the only complete guide to paper prototyping. It teaches you everything you need to know to successfully do paper prototyping and offers many practical tips. However, only about a third of the book is actually about doing paper prototyping. The majority of the book’s content comprises a basic reference on usability testing. While some of the information on usability testing describes how to test paper prototypes, most of it is applicable to any type of usability testing. If you’re already an expert in usability testing, you may not find this information as useful, but Snyder has honed her approach to usability testing over her many years of experience as a usability professional and provides a wealth of practical information." (Pabini Gabriel-Petit - UXmatters) Posted on May 09, 2006 | Permalink In The MakingProceedings from the Nordic Design Research Conference (May 29-31 2005, Copenhagen Denmark) - "Design is a restless field positioned as a productive practice in between conceiving and making. Design research is no less volatile, as it explores, explains and challenges what we know in and through design." (About the conference) Posted on May 01, 2006 | Permalink Live by the Mockup, Die by the Mockup"Mockup... The term itself brings to mind the duality inherent in this omnipresent design artifact. It’s both a direct representation of a product experience and a shallow portrayal of an interactive system at the same time. Perhaps the term originated with engineers or product managers intent on pointing out that the mockup was just that: a superficial representation that could never compare to the real product they had to build." (Luke Wroblewski - UXmatters) Posted on February 06, 2006 | Permalink The Website Development Process"Think about how you are going to structure things. What is important? What is not? What needs to be on every page? Depending on the scale of the project you might want to create a visual sitemap for your client. Preparing a sitemap is essential if you are reorganising content in any way." (PingMag) - courtesy of kelake Posted on December 11, 2005 | Permalink Putting Perfect Participants in Every Session"When putting together a design study, whether it is usability testing, field research, or focus group activity, it turns out that the most critical activity is recruiting the right participants." - (Jared Spool - OK/Cancel) Posted on November 15, 2005 | Permalink Planning for User Research Success"Planning is crucial if you want your user research efforts to be effective. You need to think about what information you need to gather, and why, before embarking on any research. Good planning, well communicated to the client or project, and followed by careful implementation will ensure your research is effective." - (Daniel Szuc and Gerry Gaffney - Apogee) Posted on November 11, 2005 | Permalink Listening to users considered harmful?"In fact, many of the changes went against what their user feedback seemed to suggest. In other words, in many ways the team deliberately did not listen to users." (Kathy Sierra- Creating Passionate Users) Posted on September 16, 2005 | Permalink Users, activities, practices etc."(...) activity theory is always already part of user-centred design, and vice versa. They are part of the same tree: a mental or cybernetic species. Whether modelling users or activities, the models are systemic, relatively stable, quantifiable, hierarchical, discrete, and often predictive. More importantly, they make it difficult to imagine other ways of understanding." (Anne Galloway - purselipsquarejaw) Posted on August 03, 2005 | Permalink Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful"Human-Centered Design has become such a dominant theme in design that it is now accepted by interface and application designers automatically, without thought, let alone criticism. That's a dangerous state — when things are treated as accepted wisdom. The purpose of this essay is to provoke thought, discussion, and reconsideration of some of the fundamental principles of Human-Centered Design. These principles, I suggest, can be helpful, misleading, or wrong. At times, they might even be harmful. Activity-Centered Design is superior." (Donald Norman) Posted on July 23, 2005 | Permalink Collaboration SessionsHow to Lead Multidisciplinary Teams, Generate Buy-In, and Create Unified Design Views in Compressed Timeframes - "Collaboration Sessions are highly interactive meetings (or more accurately, work sessions) with representation from each discipline. These meetings address everything from strategic planning to the design of site sections and page details. For example, a team working on the Travel section of our site used this technique to brainstorm a new line of business and then used it to help design page details. This method is most helpful for redesigns, new features, and controversial or strategic sections of a site. Typically, an interaction designer or product manager leads the meeting at the beginning of the Design phase." (Sasha Verhage - Boxes & Arrows) Posted on July 08, 2005 | Permalink Task-Based Audience Segmentation"Most importantly, task-based segmentation puts your team in the right frame of mind for insightful design research that very probably will uncover that 'killer product idea'." (Indy Young - Adaptive Path) Posted on May 26, 2005 | Permalink Introducing User-Centered Design to an eGovernment Software Development Company"When I started working for the company in December 2002, the user interface department was growing fast. Instead of a small number of generalist Web designers, it was becoming a large collection of specialists, with titles such as information architect, visual designer, art director and producer. These new employees, each with their own specific backgrounds, brought with them a surprisingly wide array of new words for what they did, their own jargon. The department's manager realized something had to be done before his team turned into a new Tower of Babel." (Peter Boersma - ASIS&T Bulletin Feb/Mar 2005) Posted on April 17, 2005 | Permalink Rapid Contextual Design: A How-To Guide to Key Techniques for User-Centered DesignBook Excerpt - "Today companies want to infuse more user data into their processes. But if we analyze the 'right' way to do customer-centered design for any project we may be dismayed at the time and resources it takes. And, companies are also resistant to changing their own development processes. So what to do?" (Karen Holtzblatt et al. - ACM Ubiquity) Posted on March 09, 2005 | Permalink Mind/Brain Learning Principles"(1) The brain is a complex adaptive system. (2) The brain is a social brain. (3) The search for meaning is innate. (4) The search for meaning occurs through 'patterning'. (5) Emotions are critical to patterning. (6) Every brain simultaneously perceives and creates parts and wholes. (7) Learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception. (8) Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes. (9) We have at least two ways of organizing memory. (10) Learning is developmental. (11) Complex learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat. (12) Every brain is uniquely organized." (Renate Nummela Caine and Geoffrey Caine - New Horizons for Learning) - courtesy of elearningpost Posted on February 07, 2005 | Permalink Concept Cars"But good design is a lot more than style. Good design includes substance: function, comfort, pleasure, safety, economy, environmental friendliness, and a lot more besides. A concept car should be an opportunity to explore all of these directions." (Donald Norman) - courtesy of usability views Posted on January 31, 2005 | Permalink What's the Problem?"(...) web developers seem reluctant to adopt methods and approaches from other disciplines that could reduce their problems. Particularly during the crucial initial phase of projects, we can benefit from emulating certain software engineering practices." (Norm Carr and Tim Meehan - A List Apart) - courtesy of ui designer Posted on January 26, 2005 | Permalink User-Centered Design for Fully Mobile Devices"This paper introduces a lot of taxonomies to help understand different form-factors and mobile usage contexts. It is arguing for the application of a User Centered Design process for mobile devices, and presumably within IBM. They strongly differentiate the differences with Fully Mobile Wirelessly Connected (FMWC) devices. A number of examples of UCD activities are given. In particular the effects of context are shown with examples and the need for task-analysis that includes the surrounding activities is promoted." (Mobile Community Design) Posted on November 16, 2004 | Permalink Design to Research: It Takes a Team, and Atoms are Better Than BitsPresentation - "This show-and-tell session describes the results of combining three points of view: (1) It is useful to manage design projects as a collaborative work of "translating research into design. (2) It is useful to manage the design process not as a series of activities, but as a chain of milestone artifacts, each of which requires collaboration by the whole team to complete. (3) Collaboration is better, and therefore translation better accomplished, when the milestone documents are created in large-scale physical form using walls, paper, ink, tacks and glue, rather than digital form." (Marc Rettig - about, with and for) - courtesy of louise ferguson Posted on November 08, 2004 | Permalink Report: HITS is a welcome Collaboration of Design and Business"(...) most of the conference presented a rather different story. Speakers from the business world offered their views on the role of design; designers shared cases in which they'd helped businesses; and even the presentations on design methods were squarely in 'service' of business innovation." (Nico MacDonald - Usability News) Posted on November 08, 2004 | Permalink Mobile Research Methods"A comparison of methods for understanding mobile behavior to inform technology design." (Mobile Community Design) - courtesy of john rhodes Posted on October 12, 2004 | Permalink Digital Libraries and User Needs: Negotiating the Future"The purpose of this special issue is to consider the spectrum of approaches being used by different libraries and service providers as they negotiate the future with their user communities. At a time when a digital information future is increasingly certain, this timely and much needed collection of articles explores, documents and reflects on the theories, practices, and experiments focusing on digital library users." (Anita Coleman et al. - Journal of Digital Information 5.3) Posted on September 24, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack Usability and UCD Methods for Mobile Devices"A good overview coming out of IBM research of some usability issues of mobile devices in the context of User Centered Design." (Mobile Community Design) Posted on September 12, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack Forging a partnership between designer and user"The Web is a flexible medium, and designers and users share responsibility for its design. The Web designer still must make design decisions and attempt to accommodate user needs and expectations." (Sarah Horton - Digital Web Magazine) Posted on September 02, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack How to run a brainstorming meeting"The most important thing about a brainstorming session is what happens after it ends." (Scott Berkun) - courtesy of column two Posted on July 28, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack The mentality of Homo interneticus: Some Ongian postulates"Because typical experiences will differ, the mentality of the typical Internet user, or Homo interneticus, is likely to be significantly different from that of the typical reader of printed works or of writing or of the typical member of purely oral cultures. These differences include deep assumptions about time and space, authority, property, gender, causality and community." (Michael H. Goldhaber - First Monday 9.6) Posted on July 19, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack Looking for the Killer Use Case"How are user-centred methods going to play a role in developing the mobile communications products and services of the future? This panel debate, a special invitation to CHI 2004, brought together the most qualified people in the industry to show delegates what they have in store." (Gerred Blyth - Usability News) Posted on July 18, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack Understanding the Personal Info Cloud: Using the Model of Attraction"This presentation of the Model of Attraction and Personal InfoCloud was given to the User Interaction with Information Systems class (INFM 702) in the University of Maryland, Master of Information Management program on June 8, 2004." (Thomas Vander Wal) Posted on June 09, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack User-Centered Research: A status report"During the past twenty years, user-centered research (UCR) has become an increasingly common and important part of contemporary product development. The origins of this approach to design and development actually stretch back to the beginning of industrial design in America. Starting in the 1940s and 1950s, Henry Dreyfuss, widely considered the father of industrial design in the United States, practiced a method of design that clearly focused on studying people's behaviors and attitudes as a first step in designing successful products. During the next forty to fifty years, Dreyfuss' example served as motivation for other highly successful and influential designers (e.g., Robert Probst, Jay Doblin, Niels Different and William Stumpf) to adopt a user-centered research and design approach." (design philosophy papers) Posted on June 03, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack Microsoft User-Centered Design Principles"An important principle of user interface design is that the user should always feel in control of the software rather than feeling controlled by the software." (MSDN) - courtesy of column two Posted on May 25, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack Understanding Organizational Stakeholders for Design Success"User-centered design professionals pay special emphasis to one type of stakeholder—the users of the system-arguing that user experience needs to be carefully crafted to satisfy user needs. While understanding user needs and goals is certainly necessary, it is often not sufficient for producing a successful design. Apart from an understanding of user needs and perspective, design needs to incorporate the goals and perspective of other stakeholders in order to get their buy-in and be considered a success in the corporate workplace." (Jonathan Boutelie - Boxes and Arrows) Posted on May 07, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research"Design is disorienting. Especially when you are designing something in a collaborative environment, with multiple stakeholders, pressured deadlines, business objectives and budgetary constraints. We all go into design with the firm belief that the user is our pole star, but so often we lose that focus because of tossing waves, buffeting winds, and the crew screaming in our ears—never mind the dense cloud cover that always seems to obscure that trusty star just when a committee forms to gather requirements." (Andrew Hinton - Boxes and Arrows) Posted on April 20, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack The People-Centric web"I like to say that the Web is about people. It's been one of my many mantras over the years and it's becoming more and more apparent to me that I'm not the only one who feels this way." (D. Keith Robinson - Asterisk) Posted on March 23, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack New design rules: Yield to consumer"Now that the consumer is in control, the industry may simply have to come hat in hand and adjust the expectations it's built up over the years" (Brian Fuller - EETimes) Posted on March 22, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack Ease of Use"As information technology devices and applications grow in number and importance, the significance of ease of use in their design grows apace. In this issue, twelve papers focus on aspects of design for ease of use as applied to the entire design process, from understanding user requirements to conceptual design, prototyping, field testing, and redesigning. The history and future of User-Centered Design (UCD) and User Engineering (UE) are discussed, and case studies illustrating the role of UCD and UE in many fields are presented. Topics include the design of wireless devices, on-screen documentation, and database management and data visualization systems." (IBM Systems Journal) Posted on February 18, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack Six Steps to Better Interviews and Simplified Task Analysis"I spend a lot of time helping clients conduct task analysis to form mental-model diagrams. When teams first start analyzing the interview transcripts they’ve collected, they often run into a confidence issue. 'How will we know if we get the task groups right?' This question usually arises because the team doesn't have the kind of details it needs to identify clear tasks. The problem isn't in sorting; it's in the data-gathering stage. If interviews don't provide details, task sorting becomes much more complex. Fortunately, there are six simple things you can do to improve the quality of your interviews, and clarify task analysis." (Indi Young - Adaptive Path) Posted on February 17, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack MIT Project Oxygen: Pervasive Human-Centered Computing"In the future, computation will be human-centered. It will be freely available everywhere, like batteries and power sockets, or oxygen in the air we breathe. It will enter the human world, handling our goals and needs and helping us to do more while doing less." (MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) Posted on January 26, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack Key Research Findings Related to User-Centered Design (2002–2003)"It is NOT enough to just design from intuition and good intentions. We need the benefit of these scientific insights. As we move toward mature usability engineering, institutionalized in organizations, we must have resources to constantly incorporate these insights into our practice." (Kate Straub - Human Factors International) - courtesy of usability news Posted on January 05, 2004 | Permalink Executive dashboards"An executive dashboard is an intranet for a select group of users. These users tend to be executives—VPs and above, the people who are the main decision-makers in the company." (Alex Kirtland - Boxes and Arrows) Posted on November 25, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack Eliciting and describing users' models of computer systems"The topic of this thesis is users' models: the representations users may form of the computer system which they are interacting with. It has been proposed that user interfaces which support the construction of appropriate users' models facilitate learning and use of computer systems." (Angela Sasse) - courtesy of iawiki Posted on November 21, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack uzCardSort"Card Sorting is a methodology for assessing mental/conceptual models by asking users to categorize a list of terms. uzCardSort is open source (...)" (Andy Edmonds - mozdev) - courtesy of louis rosenfeld Posted on November 18, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack Ethnography: A wiki"Ethnography isÝa fascinating technique toÝdo research onÝhuman behaviour." (Peter Van Dijck) - courtesy of column two Posted on November 18, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack The expert user is dead"The expert user is dead, not because we no longer need sophisticated tools to find informationóemphatically we doóbut because we can no longer get away with designing for expert users only." (Leo Klein - Library Journal) Posted on November 17, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack Design by or for the people?"User-centered design is now widely accepted, but the emphasis on its usability component under-estimates peopleís abilities and limits innovation." (Nico Macdonald | Spy) - courtesy of oskar van rijswijk Posted on November 14, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack Designing for decisions"One of the greatest misconceptions about web sites is that they should be designed for selling.Users now come to web sites with the intent of exploring their options to make a decision. By making it easier for users to make decisions, we can create a much more compelling experience than a sales-oriented site." (Andrew Chak - UIE Roadshow) Posted on November 13, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack Designing customer-centered organizations"Organizations increasingly view usability and user-centered design to be a key ingredient in creating high quality products. Designing for ease of use is a well-accepted goal, even if many organizations have far to go to create user-centered products. Even with the present downturn in the economy, more companies, from new media to established banks, have larger usability and design teams than ever before." (John Zapolski and Jared Braiterman - Boxes and Arrows) Posted on November 11, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack Adopting user-centered design within an agile process: a conversation
|
|