News flashes - hand-picked since 1997

For suggestions, contact Peter J. Bogaards (pjb at BogieLand dot com).

You should follow InfoDesign on @BogieZero.

March 15, 2010

The Guardian supplement on Service Design

"We are happy to announce that the British newspaper The Guardian has released a ten page supplement on Service Design today, Monday, 15th of March! In co-operation with the Service Design Network The Guardian has produced a supplement themed on Service Design and Innovation in partnership with organisations from the Service Design and Innovation markets. Included are many interesting case studies and best practices with perceivable business impact but also enjoyable and easy understandable examples. 10 Pages, 350.000 copies... great stories! " (Service Design Network) - courtesy of ronverweij

PJB @ 12:54 PM | Classification: Service design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

March 12, 2010

Sketching in Film

"My next bit of insight into how to sketch a service comes from the intersection of ethnography and cinema." (Design for Service)

PJB @ 5:40 PM | Classification: Service design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Books in the age of the iPad

"With the iPad, we finally have a platform for consuming rich-content in digital form. What does that mean? To understand just why the iPad is so exciting we need to think about how we got here." (Craig Mod)

PJB @ 4:49 PM | Classification: Tablet design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

March 11, 2010

The Virtues of a UX Professional

"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)

PJB @ 1:13 PM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

User Experience Books Free to Read Online

"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)

PJB @ 12:39 PM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Can you mix Agile and UX?

"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)

PJB @ 11:18 AM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

March 10, 2010

Preso: Data-Driven Design

"A five minute rant on the importance of letting data be your guide when making tactical design decisions. An introduction for managers of design teams who are driven from a heuristic, or 'genius' perspective." (Ryan Freitas)

PJB @ 9:15 AM | Classification: Design research | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

March 9, 2010

The Craft of Interaction Design

"I've been involved in developing what I would say is the craft of interaction design. A craft is a way of working that you develop entirely through experience without thinking about rationalizing it or systematizing it. And I believe that craft is essential to interaction design, and always will be. But I also believe that there could be ways of thinking about interaction design, ways of generalizing principles from experience and existing knowledge, just as in the twenties general principles about composition and graphic design were developed at the Bauhaus, or a new grammar of film was invented by Eisenstein and written about by Arnheim. These ways of thinking about practice make a platform in which people coming after us can build without them needing to invent everything from the start." (Gillian Crampton-Smith 2007)

PJB @ 2:52 PM | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Closeness of Actions and Objects in GUI Design

"Users overlook features if the GUI elements — such as buttons and checkboxes — are too far away from the objects they act on." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

PJB @ 9:28 AM | Classification: HCI - Usability | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

March 8, 2010

Time To Start Taking The Internet Seriously

"In short: it's time to think about the Internet instead of just letting it happen." (David Gelernter - EDGE)

PJB @ 12:43 PM | Classification: Information design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Proceedings First International Congress on Web Studies

"The 1st international congress on Web Studies aims at providing a venue for researchers and professionals from different backgrounds for discussion, study, practical demonstrations, sharing, and exchange on new developments and theories regarding the World Wide Web. The congress therefore invites contributions from a heterogeneous set of fields and domains such as: Web systems, computational intelligence, human-computer interaction, digital theory, Web sociology, and well as interactive and digital arts. We also encourage contributions from businesses and organizations." (1st Int'l Congress on Web Studies) - courtesy of markbernstein

PJB @ 11:04 AM | Classification: Events - Hypertext | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

iPad Application Design

"The iPad may be a larger version of the iPhone in terms of the hardware and operating system, but treating it as the same device would be foolish. It turns out that increasing the display size of touch-screen hardware can transform it into an entirely new class of device. The iPad is a productivity platform in a way that the iPhone rightly never tried to be." (Matt Legend Gemmell)

PJB @ 10:41 AM | Classification: HCI - Mobile design - Tablet design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Do's and Don'ts of Usability Testing

"Usability testing is one of the least glamorous, but most important aspects of user experience research. Over the years, it has also been one of the forms of user research we have performed most frequently. In doing so, we’ve learned quite a few best practices and encountered some potential pitfalls. We think it's important that we share what we've learned with the many stakeholders, designers, and engineers who might find this information helpful." (Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain - UXmatters)

PJB @ 10:16 AM | Classification: Usability | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Designing Mobile Search: Turning Limitations into Opportunities

"Thinking of porting your Web finding experience to iPhone, Android, or Windows Mobile? Just forget about the fact that these devices are basically full-featured computers with tiny screens. Having gone through this design exercise a few times, I have realized that designing a great mobile finding experience requires a way of thinking that is quite different from our typical approach to designing search for Web or desktop applications. To put it simply, designing a mobile finding experience requires thinking in terms of turning limitations into opportunities. In this column, I'll discuss some of the limitations of mobile platforms, as well as the opportunities they afford, and share a few design ideas that might come in handy for your own projects." (Greg Nudelman - UXmatters)

PJB @ 10:14 AM | Classification: Mobile design - Search | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

March 5, 2010

The Art of Narrative and the Semantic Web

"The art of the narrative is one of the strongest threads running through our society and culture, and is in many respects one of the defining traits of humanity. 'The story' is more than just a recitation of facts or assertions (whether real or otherwise). A good story is experiential. It puts each of us as listeners into the narrator's world and frame of mind, let's us live, vicariously, through the experiences that the narrator had or conceived. In many cases we identify with the protagonist, whether the story is an epic fantasy journey through lost worlds, a sports article talking about the clash between two rival football teams, or the reportage of a major political event. We read meaning into these narratives at many level, from the bald statement of fact to the subtle interplay of analysis, implication, innuendo and metaphor, and it is the richness of these metaphors that give meaning to the work." (Kurt Cagle - DevX)

PJB @ 3:10 PM | Classification: Metadata | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Ten unexpected online user behaviours to look out for

"Designing is hard enough as it is, taking into account your surprisingly erratic users makes it that much harder. Fortunately, taking unexpected user behaviour into account throughout the design process is a large part of the battle, it's a significant step on the way to a good user experience." (Alistair Gray - Webcredible)

PJB @ 2:46 PM | Classification: Usability | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Is Technology Becoming More Usable - or Less - and With What Consequences?

"Back quite a while ago, when there was a Sun Microsystems, the company banned the use of PowerPoint, because its employees were spending two minutes on the content of their presentations and 16 hours on using PowerPoint's features to make their slides look pretty. (I probably exaggerate, but you get the point.) Is the technology really making us more productive, or is it simply providing a pleasant (in some cases) user experience at the expense of real productivity?" (Daryle Gardner-Bonneau - Journal of Usability Studies February 2010)

PJB @ 10:19 AM | Classification: Usability | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

March 3, 2010

Content Strategy Is About Publishing

"When people talk about the imminent death of publishing, they’re usually talking about something narrow, specific, and tied to ways of working that predate the internet: the publication of books, magazines, newspapers, and all kinds of printed legal and business data, along with the economic, logistical, and aesthetic structures that have made that process possible. And that kind of publishing is indeed getting whipped around like a very small cowboy on a very large bull. Why? Because the internet is made of publishing, and its new and often anarchic publishing models are messing with older models in all kinds of ways." (Erin Kissane - Incisive.nu) - courtesy of khalvorson

PJB @ 4:11 PM | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

The Future of Wireframes

"As we move into the next decade of web design, it's time for us to reevaluate our understanding of wireframes—a tried and tested user experience staple." (Nishant Kothary - MIX Online) - courtesy of rasmusdegruil

PJB @ 10:26 AM | Classification: Wireframes | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

March 2, 2010

Social Tagging and the Enterprise: Does Tagging Work at Work?

"Organizations are interested in using social tagging technology both within workgroups and across the enterprise. Tagging can supplement information retrieval options in intranets and document management systems, allowing employees to use tags to enhance the findability of internal and external content without waiting for an information professional to categorize it." (Stephanie Lemieux - User Interface Engineering)

PJB @ 11:55 AM | Classification: Metadata | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

March 1, 2010

Eyes on Content Experience

"(...) slides about the special aspect to user experience: content experience. The value for user comes typically from the content, not the interaction itself. It is sometimes hard for us HCI people to remember this." (Virpi Roto - Eyes on User Experience)

PJB @ 1:38 PM | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Internet on Mobiles: Evolution of Usability and User Experience

"This dissertation has its focus in the area of human-computer interaction research and practices. The overall goal of my research has been to improve the usability and the user experience of mobile Internet services. My research has sought answers to questions relevant in service development process. I have sought answers mostly from a human factors perspective, but have also taken the elements form technology and business infrastructure into consideration." (Anne Kaikkonen)

PJB @ 1:29 PM | Classification: Mobile design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Meaningful Innovation Relies on Interaction and Service Design

"Interaction designers can play a key role in creating a more meaningful, sustainable, and post-consumer world. come learn about frameworks and approaches that help designers make real change for customers." (Nathan Shedroff - Interaction10 videos)

PJB @ 10:43 AM | Classification: Interaction design - Service design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Service as Design

"Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot from watching.” Over the last several years, a unique set of students has been challenged to think about design for healthcare services. In my role as a professor at Carnegie Mellon I had the opportunity to observe their work and it offered many insights into design, design thinking, and just how big the healthcare service challenge is. In my new role in Microsoft's FUSE lab I’m looking at the future of social experience. My experience with the students and healthcare exposed the underlying notion that people participating in service—whether providers, consumers, or others that are actively involved—are actually designing as they participate in the service. If we accept the service as design lens, designers may need to see their role differently—from one of developing static objects and environments—to one of creating new methods for modeling experience, and skilling everyone to be active participants in design during the service experience." (Shelley Evenson - Interaction10 videos)

PJB @ 9:37 AM | Classification: Interaction design - Service design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

February 26, 2010

Living with Complexity

"This person sits unperturbed by the apparent chaos of his desk. How does he cope with all that complexity? I've never spoken with the person in the picture, Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States and winner of the Nobel prize for his work on the environment, but I have talked with and studied other people with similar looking desks and they explain that there is order and structure to the apparent complexity. It’s easy to test: if I ask them for something, they know just where to go: the item is retrieved, oftentimes much faster than from a person who keeps a neat and orderly workplace. The major problem these people face is that others are continually trying to help them, and their biggest fear is that one day they will return to their office and discover someone has cleaned up all the piles and put things into their 'proper' places." (Donald A Norman - Living with Complexity)

PJB @ 12:41 PM | Classification: Information design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Content strategy is, in fact, the next big thing

"Content strategy is more or less on the same trajectory as social media was three years ago. Why? I think it’s because the reality of social media initiatives—that they’re internal commitments, not advertising campaigns—has derailed more than a few organizations from really implementing effective, measurable programs. Most companies can’t sustain social media engagement because they lack the internal editorial infrastructure to support it." (Kristina Halvorson)

PJB @ 10:19 AM | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

The State Of Customer Experience 2010

"Only 11% have a very disciplined approach to customer experience." (Bruce Temkin - Customer Experience Matters)

PJB @ 9:59 AM | Classification: Design research - User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

February 25, 2010

Surprise as a design strategy

"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)

PJB @ 4:03 PM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Designing User Interfaces For Business Web Applications

"Business Web application design is too often neglected. I see a lot of applications that don’t meet the needs of either businesses or users and thus contribute to a loss of profit and poor user experience. It even happens that designers are not involved in the process of creating applications at all, putting all of the responsibility on the shoulders of developers. This is a tough task for developers, who may have plenty of back-end and front-end development experience but limited knowledge of design. This results in unsatisfied customers, frustrated users and failed projects. So, we will cover the basics of user interface design for business Web applications. While one could apply many approaches, techniques and principles to UI design in general, our focus here will be on business Web applications." (Janko Jovanovic - Smashing Magazine)

PJB @ 3:34 PM | Classification: HCI - Interaction design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

February 24, 2010

Dense and Thick

"This is where the future is entirely in your hands. You can leave here today promising yourself to invent the future, to write meaning explicitly onto the real world, to transform our relationship to the universe of objects. Or, you can wait for someone else to come along and do it. Because someone inevitably will. Every day, the pressure grows. The real world is clamoring to crawl into cyberspace. You can open the door." (Mark Pesce - The Human Network)

PJB @ 2:52 PM | Classification: Information design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design