http://www.informationdesign.org/ Dedicated to the growth and improvement of the information experience industries. en-us plato@xs4all.nl 2010-03-18T14:03:06+01:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 "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) User experience 2010-03-18T14:03:06+01:00 "User experience is the art and science of designing digital products that people want to use." (Karen McGrane - Bond Art+Science) User experience 2010-03-17T09:43:48+01:00 "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) User experience 2010-03-16T13:33:34+01:00 "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) User experience 2010-03-16T09:48:41+01:00 "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) HCI 2010-03-16T09:27:38+01:00 "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) User experience 2010-03-11T13:13:32+01:00 "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) User experience 2010-03-11T12:39:21+01:00 "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) User experience 2010-03-11T11:18:49+01:00 "Only 11% have a very disciplined approach to customer experience." (Bruce Temkin - Customer Experience Matters) Design research 2010-02-26T09:59:00+01:00 "A surprise reaction to a product can be beneficial to both a designer and a user. The designer benefits from a surprise reaction because it can capture attention to the product, leading to increased product recall and recognition, and increased word-of-mouth. Or, as Jennifer Hudson puts it, the surprise element 'elevates a piece beyond the banal'. A surprise reaction has its origin in encountering an unexpected event. The product user benefits from the surprise, because it makes the product more interesting to interact with. In addition, it requires updating, extending or revising the knowledge the expectation was based on. This implies that a user can learn something new about a product or product aspect." (Geke D.S. Ludden, Hendrik N.J. Schifferstein & Paul Hekkert) User experience 2010-02-25T16:03:40+01:00 User experience 2010-02-22T14:44:24+01:00 "As a User Experience Designer, there have been moments on projects when I’ve had similar feelings of ineptitude—usually when I've been faced with a large, complex system or some completely new and foreign domain I didn’t understand. Have you ever experienced an awkward moment as you've tried to figuratively dance and negotiate your way through an uncomfortable situation? This often brings fear of making a decision or taking a step forward along with it—maybe even some shoe-flying moments. A recent acting class, in which I learned what Laban Movement Analysis is all about, helped me find a way to get past this fear. When people say knowledge is power, they are most assuredly correct." (Traci Lepore - UXmatters) User experience 2010-02-22T11:52:46+01:00 "In the design process we follow at my company, once we have defined the conceptual direction and content strategy for a given design and refined our design approach through user research and iterative usability testing, we start applying visual design. Generally, we take a key screen whose structure and functionality we have finalized—for example, a layout for a home page or a dashboard page—and explore three alternatives for visual style. These three alternative visual designs, or comps, include the same content, but reflect different choices for color palette and imagery." (Michael Hawley - UXmatters) User experience 2010-02-22T11:49:59+01:00 "In the second part of this Strategy discussion, I will concentrate on the Strategy diagram from the previous post. This post will cover what the diagram is and who is it for. There are more issues than that to be complete, but I can always add an additional post if there is a desire to read more detailed information about it." (Jonathan Arnowitz - User Experience in ArnoLand) User experience 2010-02-16T17:16:24+01:00 "So what we did was to articulate four (well, technically five) levels of consultant. These levels are based on obvious things like skills & experience, but also things like thought leadership activity, strategic acumen, client management, professional recognition, and business development. We defined specific criteria for each of these levels so that consultants can identify where they meet the criteria for their desired level and where they need to put in more effort. Granted, some of the criteria are pretty specific to an agency/consultancy model. But my hope is that those of you who work internally at large corporations, tiny startups, and anywhere in between can still use elements of our UX design career path to help structure your own." (Fred Beecher) - courtesy of jjursa User experience 2010-02-16T10:05:02+01:00