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A Canon of User Experience: Seminal works of a discipline

Love making relevant and interesting curated lists, especially about the past.

“Without being familiar with the ‘classics’ there is always the danger of repeating mistakes from the past. And also, proper knowledge of the ideas, theories and works of previous movers and shakers is always interesting, valuable and usefull. Some of them were too far ahead at the time and some even be forgotten. This overview can be especially used for educational purposes getting new generations connected to relevant predecessors. To be more specific, UX as a term was coined by Donald Norman when he was leading Apple’s ‘User Experience Architecture Group’ (1995). This is a contemporary term. In the near future, the label UX wil evolve (just like experience design, customer experience or service design will). However, the field has much deeper historical roots. These roots can be found in seminal documents on research, design and validation of user experiences in and for the digital domain. Texts upon which new and current ideas are built or are refer to. Starting from WW II on to the World Wide Web, mobile, social and what came after. UX as a field is grounded in many disciplines and therefore is to be considered interdisciplinary.”

Peter J. Bogaards a.k.a. /peterbogaards | @BogieZero

Classic: Electric Word, July 1990 (.pdf)

The Least Boring Computer Magazine In The World ~ “It’s always a crap shoot, you never know how an issue is going to turn out.Just coordinating all the elements is a task only slightly less humbling than trying to align all the planets. No wonder it’s become a standing joke around the EW office: that moment each issue when we start laying out pages and I get to see the magazine in its final form for the first time, when I proclaim in genuine surprise, hey, this issue isn’t so bad – in fact, it’s even better than the last. What makes it doubly gratifying this time is that this is the first issue of the rest of our lives. Thirty six months and two publishers later, ElectricWord is independent.”

(Louis Rosetto) ~ courtesy of johnrynne

Piet Westendorp (1950-2008)

Karel van der Waarde: “This morning, I received a message from Piet Westendorp’s partner that Piet passed away on November 19th. (…) Piet Westendorp has been a remarkable person. I’ll miss his clarity of thinking and his direct aproach, but even more, I’ll miss his inspirational enthusiasm and curiosity.” (InfoDesign-Cafe) – RIP Piet Westendorp

GK. VanPatter: The InfoDesign interview

“Regularly, InfoDesign interviews a thought leader in the design industry, focusing on people who are identified with or show strong sensibilities to the design of information and experiences. This time, Peter J. Bogaards has a conversation with GK. VanPatter on Next Design(ers), business innovation, cross-disciplinary work, design education and the growing complexity load.” (Peter J. BogaardsInfoDesign: Understanding by Design)

Victor Lombardi: The InfoDesign profile

“Victor Lombardi is actively participating in the fields of information architecture and interaction design. He co-founded and served on the board of the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture. He slaved away as designer for a number of companies, most notably four years at Razorfish. All this while teaching at the Parsons School of Design. He also led the information architecture practice at a global financial services company. Noise Between Stations is Victor’s personal website.” (InfoDesign: Understanding by Design)

Adam Greenfield: The InfoDesign profile

“Adam Greenfield is an internationally recognized information architect and user experience consultant. His practice is focused on making complex artifacts easy to understand and use, without sacrificing thoroughness or depth. Adam was the lead information architect for the Tokyo office of well-known web consultancy Razorfish; (…) He now works as a Happy Cog principal with Jeffrey Zeldman. His award-winning personal site can be found at www.v-2.org.” (InfoDesign: Understanding by Design)

Jared Spool: The InfoDesign interview

“Jared is one of the most important – and best-recognized – voices in the field of usability. User Interface Engineering, the firm that he founded in 1988, is the world’s largest research, training and consulting firm specializing in website and product usability.” (Dirk Knemeyer)

Nathan Shedroff: The InfoDesign Interview

“Nathan is one of the pioneers of experience design and popularized the term with the first dedicated book on the topic. He is an expert and leader in the fields of information architecture, interaction design and online and interactive media, with extensive professional experience as an innovator.” (Dirk Knemeyer)

Louis Rosenfeld: The InfoDesign interview

“(..) fields like IA and concepts like UX really are new. Certainly the work itself isn’t new, but a conscious understanding of them is. Consciousness is a prerequisite for just about everything else in life. So when we’re feeling our most frustrated with our clients, our bosses, our colleagues and peers, and the economic harshness of recent years, we have to remember that this is all new, that levels of consciousness are rising, things are get tingbetter, and that it remains an extremely exciting time to be working as a designer of any stripe.” (Dirk Knemeyer – InfoDesign: Understanding by Design)

The document triangle: The interdependence of the structure, information and presentation dimensions

“Every paper and digital document shares three basic dimensions: structure, information and presentation. Although these dimensions are always interwoven, some people in the digital world mostly focus on document structures (e.g. information architects), some on the information they contain (e.g. marketers and writers/editors) while others specialize in the (interactive) presentation aspects (e.g. visual designers and Flash developers). The mutual dependence and interaction of these dimensions is the next level of design and does not regularly get the proper attention.” (Peter J. BogaardsBogieLand)