All posts from
July 2005

When Norman Meets Chinese…

Added on 10 July 2005 Peter Bogaards
“I dream of harmony between the things in our life and the social, emotional, and experiential parts of our lives. Artifacts are not just about making us work better: they are about living better, about enjoying life more, and about spreading these benefits to everyone, everywhere.” (Christina Li – uiGarden)

First Monday Special Issue: Music and the Internet

Added on 10 July 2005 Peter Bogaards
“The relationship between music and the Internet is a site of perceived possibility and volatility. Stories of music theft, illegal downloads, unresolved court cases, and anti-piracy technologies, are now prominent. Conversely, stories about the creation of real-time music composition, music’s increasing accessibility, the regeneration of music collecting, and the development of virtual music communities have also become prominent. ” (First Monday)

Collaboration Sessions

Added on 8 July 2005 Peter Bogaards
How to Lead Multidisciplinary Teams, Generate Buy-In, and Create Unified Design Views in Compressed Timeframes – “Collaboration Sessions are highly interactive meetings (or more accurately, work sessions) with representation from each discipline. These meetings address everything from strategic planning to the design of site sections and page details. For example, a team working on the Travel section of our site used this technique to brainstorm a new line of business and then used it to help design page details. This method is most helpful for redesigns, new features, and controversial or strategic sections of a site. Typically, an interaction designer or product manager leads the meeting at the beginning of the Design phase.” (Sasha Verhage – Boxes & Arrows)

Less is more in Web search interfaces for older adults

Added on 7 July 2005 Peter Bogaards
“We have previously found the elderly users to face several usability problems with the current search engines. Thus, we designed an elderly–friendly search interface, Etsin. To evaluate the success of the design, a usability study was conducted for comparing the usability of Etsin and Google. The participants faced fewer usability problems when using Etsin than Google and they valued the clarity of the Etsin interface. In conclusion, elderly users benefit from a simplified search engine interface that is easy to understand and that takes into account age–related issues.” (Anne Aula and Mika Käki – First Monday 10.7)

Tagging for Fun and Finding

Added on 3 July 2005 Peter Bogaards
“We all grew up knowing about tags. We had tags in our clothes, we had them on our holiday presents, we played a game called tag, and some even used spray cans to tag their turf. All of these uses of tag have different meanings, but unless we understand the context and/or the person using the word tag we do not know what they mean. This can be a problem with tagging on the web, but like everything else there are two sides to the story and there are some great benefits from tagging, if it is done well.” (Thomas Vander Wal – OK/Cancel)