All posts from
August 2005

Usability Testing for e-Learning

“Usability testing has long been a part of the software and product design world. Jakob Nielsen brought the concept of usability to the Web, making Web pages simple to navigate and intuitively organized so that users can easily find the information they’re looking for. While this definition may be considered sufficient in the world of software, the definition of usability in the e-learning world should encompass a few more components than simply good user interface design.” (Shailesh Shilwant and Amy Haggarty – CLO) – courtesy of usernomics

State of the Mobile Web

This is the first article in the four-part series on Mobile Web Design. – “(…) if we learned only one thing from the ‘desktop web’ standards movement in recent years, it’s that even the most behemoth organizations listen if the wheel squeaks loudly enough. And where listening ears are found, there lies also the potential for change.” (Authentic Boredom)

Digital Information Design Camp

“Many traditionally trained, professional designers wonder what the next generation of computing technologies might bring to their field. At the same time, many digitally trained, professional designers feel that they have missed out on some of the cornerstones of a traditional design education. To work towards a common ground between the digital and traditional design sensibilities, during the summer of 2005 Professor John Maeda organized the first ‘Digital Information Design Camp’, a three-week-long exploration, completely in cyberspace.” (John MaedaAIGA)

Designing user interfaces with gestures and sound: Towards the performance and appeal of voice mail browsing

“In the current paper, three dimensions of multimodal access to content are explored: tangible media, use of gestures and sound. To this extent, the current study considers the role of sound feedback in support of user-product communication and gestures towards accessing voice mail via a tangible interface. In the case of voice mail representations, information can be directly represented by the recorded media, whereas the use of abstract sound representations creates a higher level overview of content.” (Marco C. Rozendaal and David V. Keyson – The Journal of Design Research)

Web Accessibility: A Broader View

“In this paper, we take a broader view, discussing an approach that costs developers less and provides greater advantages to a larger community of users. While we have quite specific aims in our technical work, we hope it can also serve as an example of how the technical conversation regarding Web accessibility can move beyond the narrow confines of limited adaptations for small populations.” (John T. Richards and Vicki L. Hanson – IBM Accessibility Center) – courtesy of joeclark

Users, activities, practices etc.

“(…) activity theory is always already part of user-centred design, and vice versa. They are part of the same tree: a mental or cybernetic species. Whether modelling users or activities, the models are systemic, relatively stable, quantifiable, hierarchical, discrete, and often predictive. More importantly, they make it difficult to imagine other ways of understanding.” (Anne Galloway – purselipsquarejaw)