News flashes

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

May 16, 2008

Patterns for Sign Up and Ramp Up

"This document contains a library of patterns used by sites in the Web 2.0 landscape to support the new user sign-up and ramp-up experience. By leveraging the patterns we identified across twenty applications, you'll learn how to get users to join and participate in your network or application." (Adaptive Path Reports)

PJB @ 12:50 PM | Classification: Patterns | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

May 14, 2008

Thoughts on Interaction Design (download)

"Interaction designers are the shapers of behavior. Behavior is a large idea, and may, at first blush, seem too large to warrant a single profession. But a profession has emerged nonetheless. This professional category includes the complexity of information architecture, the anthropologic desire to understand humanity, the altruistic nature of usability engineering, and the creation of dialogue. These topics are discussed in the four sections of this text. Download 'Thoughts on Interaction Design' as a single .pdf file suitable for on-screen reading (2,520k)" (Jon Kolko et al.)

PJB @ 01:08 PM | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

May 13, 2008

Document Engineering and User Experience Design

"A great user experience on the web site doesn't mean squat if this back stage 'content choreography' goes wrong. So I've been saying that it is essential to consider the entire network of services that comprise the back and front stages as complementary parts of a 'service system'. We need new concepts and methods in service design that recognize how back stage information and processes can improve the front stage experience." (Robert J. Glushko - DocOrDie)

PJB @ 09:52 AM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Link List Color on Intranets

"Lists of links are an intermediate case between content-embedded links and menu items. Showing listed links in blue or in the site's main link color is the recommended design — and the one most intranets follow." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

PJB @ 01:16 AM | Classification: Usability | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

May 09, 2008

Interviewed by BusinessWeek

"Among the podcasts I subscribe to is BusinessWeek's 'Innovation of the Week', featuring interviews with people on the subject of design and innovation. So I was excited when BusinessWeek reporter Matt Vella asked me to talk with him about our MX 2008 conference, and our new book. You can listen to the interview." (Peter Merholz - Adaptive Path)

PJB @ 08:51 AM | Classification: Podcasts | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Luke Wroblewski on Form Design

"I recently had the pleasure of talking with Tom Crawford, CEO of VizThink, about my Web Form Design book and its relevance for the visual thinking community." (LukeW)

PJB @ 08:47 AM | Classification: Podcasts | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

May 08, 2008

An Interview with Lou Rosenfeld and Liz Danzico

"After working on five books as an editor or co-author, Lou Rosenfeld became disenchanted with the traditional book publishing model. So, in late 2005, he founded Rosenfeld Media, a new publishing house that develops short, practical, useful books on user experience design. Rosenfeld Media published their first book, Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior, in early 2008. I recently had the opportunity to interview Lou - along with Liz Danzico, Senior Development Editor at Rosenfeld Media - about starting a new publishing house and 'eating their own dog food'." (Joshua Kaufman - UXmatters)

PJB @ 12:37 PM | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Simplicity in Your Mind

"There is increasing interest in the simplification of information technology (IT). The IT industry is recognizing the need to simplify software technology as businesses express their increased interest in governing the return on their IT investments. Two goals are surfacing as explicit mandates to which all software vendors are responding: (1) lowering the skills required of software users and (2) increasing their productivity. Although this simplification mandate is most essential to small- and medium-sized businesses, where people with high-end technical skills may not be affordable, an awareness of the damage complexity inflicts on users is spreading to the enterprise market as well. Commoditization pressures make it necessary for the IT industry to reduce skills requirements as well as service and maintenance costs." (Lucinio Santos - UXmatters)

PJB @ 12:36 PM | Classification: Complexity | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

May 07, 2008

XProc: An XML Pipeline Language

"An XML Pipeline specifies a sequence of operations to be performed on zero or more XML documents. Pipelines generally accept zero or more XML documents as input and produce zero or more XML documents as output. Pipelines are made up of simple steps which perform atomic operations on XML documents and constructs similar to conditionals, iteration, and exception handlers which control which steps are executed." (W3C)

PJB @ 08:47 AM | Classification: Technology | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

May 06, 2008

How Little Do Users Read?

"On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

PJB @ 03:13 PM | Classification: Usability | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Information Design Patterns

"A sophisticated online collection of about 48 design patterns that describe distinct methods for the display of interactive information graphics, their active behavior as well as the forms of user interaction with them." (Niceone) - courtesy of informationaesthetics

PJB @ 11:56 AM | Classification: Patterns | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

May 05, 2008

User Experience Evaluation in Nokia 

"Nokia has a long history in designing for experiences, as mobile phones are very personal and experiental devices. We have established processes to take user needs and wants into account when designing new concepts, and we do various types of evaluations with real users during the development process. Experience evaluations are, however, an area we want to improve. In this paper, we describe the user experience evaluation practices in the different phases of Nokia product development process." (Virpi Roto et al.)

PJB @ 01:16 PM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Bill Morggridge's keynote presentation

"Bill Morggridge delivered a really cool talk during the Service Design Symposium, hosted by the CIID. It’s really interesting the way he explains how design has evolved over time. Just after graduation, back in the 60’s, he thought he would spend his whole life designing kettles and washing machines. But as technology evolved, and life became more complex, he realised that designers needed to design the systems that actually surround a product. For example, how to make a train journey more delightful? Designers need to not only worry about making a comfy seat, they actually need to think about the whole customer journey, and how systems, processes, people impact a customer’s experience. Welcome to the amazing world of service design!" (Erick Mohr - intuire)

PJB @ 10:11 AM | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

User Experience Factor 1: State Glue

"I finally got myself an iPhone, ... and it is reeeaaally nice! Perhaps not the best phone on the market but using it is a real joy. One of the great things about it is that the interaction feels so smooth and sweet. It made me wonder what makes it so nice. One of the things I want to show you in this article is how this actually works in practice and what makes it such a good user experience." (Martijn van Welie - Thoughts on Interaction Design)

PJB @ 09:10 AM | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

May 02, 2008

User Interface Implementations of Faceted Browsing

"Just as it is important to choose the proper knife when slicing-n-dicing vegetables, it is critical to prescribe a suitable user interface to support faceted filtering. Faceted filtering allows you to narrow down a large list of objects to a manageable size by applying flexible combinations of attribute filters in any order. Rather than forcing you down fixed paths within a website’s information architecture, faceted filtering allows you to multi-dimensionally slice-n-dice the information in a manner that best accommodates your specific needs. A user interface that optimally supports faceted filtering must expose its robust functionality in a way that expresses affordances, controls complexity, and follows existing standards that have been pre-established across the web." (Mike Padilla - Digital Web Magazine)

PJB @ 11:38 AM | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

The Nature of Design Practice and Implications for Interaction Design Research

"The focus of this paper is interaction design research aimed at supporting interaction design practice. The main argument is that this kind of interaction design research has not (always) been successful, and that the reason for this is that it has not been guided by a sufficient understanding of the nature of design practice. Based on a comparison between the notion of complexity in science and in design, it is argued that science is not the best place to look for approaches and methods on how to approach design complexity. Instead, the case is made that any attempt by interaction design research to produce outcomes aimed at supporting design practice must be grounded in a fundamental understanding of the nature of design practice. Such an understanding can be developed into a well-grounded and rich set of rigorous and disciplined design methods and techniques, appropriate to the needs and desires of practicing designers." (Erik Stolterman - International Journal of Design) - courtesy of markvanderbeeken

PJB @ 11:30 AM | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

April 28, 2008

Right-Justified Navigation Menus Impede Scannability

"Users scan lists by moving their eyes rapidly down the left edge. Menu items that are right-aligned make scanning more difficult." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

PJB @ 10:30 AM | Classification: Usability | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Interview with Alex Wright

"Alex Wright, New York Times information architect and author of the book Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, takes questions from Namahn on what we can learn from the Web's precursors about globally accessible information repositories, taxonomies, hierarchies and the evolving dance between oral and literate cultures." (Joannes Vandermeulen - Namahn Interviews)

PJB @ 10:21 AM | Classification: Podcasts | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

What is Design?

"Since the word 'design' means many things to many people, let's define design as seen from a usability consultant's perspective." (Frank Spiller - Demystifying Usability)

PJB @ 08:51 AM | Classification: Information design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

April 23, 2008

Recycle These Pixels: Sustainability and the User Experience

"Whether we're designing the user experience for a digital product or a physical one, as UX professionals, we are uniquely positioned to influence the behavior of other people, for good or ill. Our employers or clients charge us with responsibility for not only defining a design problem from multiple perspectives, but also finding solutions that are better than the ones that came before." (Jonathan Follett - UXmatters)

PJB @ 12:45 PM | Classification: Visual design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

So You Want to Be a UX Manager—Seriously?

"This is my first column on the management of UX. In my column, I'll articulate what I've learned from my experience as a manager, senior manager, and director and three years in intensive senior leadership development programs. Have you ever known a manager you felt shouldn't manage people? Maybe you've worked for one. Most of us have at one point or another. On the other hand, most of us have also had great managers. What sets great managers apart from bad ones? That's one of the questions I'll explore in this article." (Jim Nieters - UXmatters)

PJB @ 12:42 PM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Data Visualisation Blogs You Might Not Know About

"I tried to add a comment there with some blogs I subscribe to (some already mentioned, some not) but I suspect the spam filter thought I was nuts to try posting 20 links. So here are a few other blogs/feeds you might like, if you like Flowing Data (...)" (Random Etc.)

PJB @ 03:13 AM | Classification: InfoViz | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

April 22, 2008

Information Design = Complexity + Interdisciplinarity + Experiment

"Information design is the transfer of complex data to, for the most part, two-dimensional visual representations that aim at communicating, documenting and preserving knowledge. It deals with making entire sets of facts and their interrelations comprehensible, with the objective of creating transparency and eliminating uncertainty." (Gerlinde Schuller - AIGA)

PJB @ 08:48 PM | Classification: Information design | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

April 21, 2008

25 years in usability

"Since I started in 1983, the usability field has grown by 5,000%. It's a wonderful job — and still a promising career choice for new people." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

PJB @ 10:59 AM | Classification: Usability | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

inspireUX

"(...) a blog that posts quotes relating to user experience (UX). Every quote on inspireUX focuses on the impact that user experience has on people, business, or the world." (Catriona Cornett - About inspireUX)

PJB @ 09:03 AM | Classification: Weblogs | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

April 18, 2008

TagPipe: IA Summit 2008 

This TagPipe covers all found and uploaded user-generated content tagged as 'IASummit2008' on Google BlogSearch (blogposts), Flickr (pictures), Technorati (links), Del.icio.us (pages) and SlideShare (presentations). Just download the OPML-file and import the file into your RSS Reader. Enjoy!

PJB @ 10:47 AM | Classification: Tagpipe | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

TagPipe: CHI 2008 

This TagPipe covers all found and uploaded user-generated content tagged as 'CHI2008' on Google BlogSearch (blogposts), Flickr (pictures), Technorati (links), Del.icio.us (pages) and SlideShare (presentations). Just download the OPML-file and import the file into your RSS Reader. Enjoy!

PJB @ 10:44 AM | Classification: Tagpipe | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

April 17, 2008

Swimlanes for the Win!

"Swimlanes are a great tool for helping clients understand users, business needs and technology all at once. They help bridge the differences between multiple stakeholders by showing all the 'moving parts' of an experience in one document." (Gene Smith - nForm)

PJB @ 10:58 AM | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

Linkosophy

"Giving this talk at the IA Summit was a blast; I'm so grateful for the positive response, and the patience with these still-forming ideas. I'm looking forward to seeing where the conversation goes from here! NOTE: You need to view this in 'Full Screen' mode, which you can only do from the SlideShare page itself. Otherwise, the narrative text isn't readable." (Andrew Hinton - inkblurt)

PJB @ 10:48 AM | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

IA Summit 2008 Tagged Pix at Flickr

A growing number of pictures from the Information Architecture Summit 2008 (April 10-14, 2008 - Miami Florida)

PJB @ 07:23 AM | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

From: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design