http://www.informationdesign.org/ Dedicated to the growth and improvement of the information experience industries. en-us plato@xs4all.nl 2012-02-03T10:19:01+01:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 As long as we see UX projects as software engineering projects and not the other way around, the plus and minus sides of the magnet will not connect. "Teams moving to agile often struggle to integrate agile with best practices in user-centered design and user experience in general. Fortunately, using a UX Integration Matrix helps integrate UX and agile by including UX information and requirements right in the product backlog. While both agile and UX methods share some best practices-like iteration and defining requirements based on stories about users-agile and UX methods evolved for different purposes, supporting different values. Agile methods were developed without consideration for UX best practices. Early agile pioneers were working on in-house IT projects (custom software) or enterprise software." (Jon Innes ~ Boxes and Arrows) courtesy of janjursa http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/integrating-ux-into User experience 2012-02-03T10:19:01+01:00 Information design, one of the many giant fields on which shoulders we stand. "In a competitive business marketplace, not everyone wants to acknowledge that each generation tends to learn from, build on or divert from the previous generations ideas and output. We see this phenomenon clearly evident in the various streams of Information Design history." (GK VanPatter ~ Humantific) http://www.humantific.com/lost-stories-information-design-history/ Information design 2012-02-03T09:13:15+01:00 Unfortunately, many users don't even notice a tab has been initiated. Back, back, back... "When most designers design websites, they don't pay much attention to links. As long as the link works and takes users to the right page, everything is fine. However, a great user experience goes further than that. There are certain links that should open in new browser tabs, and ones that should open in the same browser tab. It's important for designers to know the difference." (UX Movement) courtesy of rolandnagtegaal http://uxmovement.com/navigation/why-external-links-should-open-in-new-tabs/ HCI 2012-02-02T14:58:36+01:00 As long as UX designers learn from their mistakes. "Rather than talk about tactical mistakes, such as in prototyping and running studies, I focused on the ones we overlook the most, about attitude and culture." (Scott Berkun a.k.a. @berkun) http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2012/the-top-mistakes-ux-designers-make-the-writeup/ User experience 2012-02-01T11:39:07+01:00 CX is getting a lot of traction due to Forrester these days. I wonder why. "An increasing number of companies are appointing a single executive to lead customer experience efforts for a business unit or the entire company." (Paul Hagen a.k.a. @PaulHagen ~ UX magazine) http://uxmag.com/articles/how-chief-customer-officers-are-driving-change Customer experience 2012-01-31T20:45:29+01:00 Mental modeling, the black swan of webdesign. "If you don't have much of a background in philosophy, the social or psychological sciences, you may not be familiar with the concept of intersubjectivity. Most would agree that it refers to a cognitive state somewhere between subjectivity (judgment based on individual personal impressions and feelings and opinions rather than external facts) and objectivity (judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices), which refers to a shared understanding of meaning or concept by more than one person." (Daniel Eizans a.k.a. @danieleizans) http://danieleizans.com/2012/01/mental-modeling-for-content-work-information-gathering/ Content strategy 2012-01-31T12:48:55+01:00 Great read about the making of the iconic vision video by AAPL. "Sparked by the introduction of Siri, as well as products such as iPad and Skype, there have been many recent posts and articles tracing the technologies back to a 1987 Apple video called Knowledge Navigator. The video simulated an intelligent personal agent, video chat, linked databases and shared simulations, a digital network of university libraries, networked collaboration, and integrated multimedia and hypertext, in most case decades before they were commercially available. Having been involved in making Knowledge Navigator with some enormously talented Apple colleagues, I thought I would correct the record once and for all about what really happened." (Bud Colligan a.k.a. @collbud ~ Dubberly Design Office) http://www.dubberly.com/articles/how-the-knowledge-navigator-video-came-about.html Classics 2012-01-31T10:29:58+01:00 Systems lead to models, and modelling is what we do. "Information architects are inveterate systems thinkers. In the Web's early days, we were the folks who focused less on pages than on the relationships between pages. Today, we continue to design organization, navigation, and search systems as integral parts of the whole. Of course, the context of our practice has shifted. Increasingly, we must design for experiences across channels. Mobile and social are just the beginning. Our future-friendly, cross-channel information architectures need to address the full spectrum of platforms, devices, and media." (Peter Morville ~ Journal of Information Architecture Volume 3 Issue 2) http://journalofia.org/volume3/issue2/01-morville/ Information architecture 2012-01-30T16:13:33+01:00 Great write-up of the founding mothers and fathers of our beloved field. "Information architecture is a professional practice and field of studies focused on solving the basic problems of accessing, and using, the vast amounts of information available today. You commonly hear of information architecture in connection with the design of web sites both large and small, and when wireframes, labels, and taxonomies are discussed. As it is today, it is mainly a production activity, a craft, and it relies on an inductive process and a set, or many sets, of guidelines, best practices, and personal and professional expertise. In other words, information architecture is arguably not a science but, very much like say industrial design, an applied art." (Andrea Resmini & Luca Rosati ~ Journal of Information Architecture Volume 3 Issue 2) http://journalofia.org/volume3/issue2/03-resmini/ Information architecture 2012-01-30T16:10:21+01:00 I'm wondering if traditional media also have this chrome thing. "Chrome is the user interface overhead that surrounds user data and web page content. Although chrome obesity can eat half of the available pixels, a reasonable amount enhances usability." (Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox) http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ui-chrome.html Usability 2012-01-30T09:48:47+01:00