All posts from
October 2006

Designing the Mobile User Experience

Added on 11 October 2006 Peter Bogaards
“One of our biggest challenges in designing mobile services has been our inability to connect with our customers. We’re making the same mistakes we’ve made when designing for other media, but the constraints inherent in mobile devices exacerbate those mistakes. We can overcome this challenge by following the user-centered design process we’ve been advocating and using all along. We should do the user research that’s necessary to understand what users need and deliver meaningful, valuable products and services that integrate well with and enhance our customers’ lifestyles. Put simply, the opportunity for the mobile Web is huge, and UX professionals are the right people to help companies realize this opportunity. It’s yours, take it.” (Richard F. Cecil – UXmatters)

EuroIA 2006 in Review

Added on 8 October 2006 Peter Bogaards
“(…) there was little or no concession made for the multilingual nature of the event. The conference was conducted in English – which was just as well for me (there’s nothing like being in Europe to make you feel like a neanderthal for speaking only one language) – and understandable as English was the common tongue. Yet I couldn’t help but think that it seemed kind of strange that the proceedings were, well… so English.” (Leisa Reichelt – disambuity)

Form-Content-Essence: Designing Markup for Information Representation

Added on 8 October 2006 Peter Bogaards
“To define a web-format that addresses existing problems and requirements, and will last, needs a lot of work and consultation. XHTML2 is close to ready now, and will go to last call this year we expect. XForms is already in widespread use. Even if XHTML2 is not available in browsers, it is excellent as a content language that can be transformed on the fly. Several large companies are already doing this. (Steven Pemberton)

Changing Approaches to Metadata at bbc.co.uk: From Chaos to Control and Then Letting Go Again

Added on 6 October 2006 Peter Bogaards
“More and more we expect to break the back of the work with automation while using human brainpower to perfect the results. We will have to harness the power of folksonomies while remembering there is stuff our audience will demand we know about our own content. Most of all, we have to ensure our choices of metadata systems are made with the user in mind.” (Karen Loasby – ASIS&T Bulletin Oct/Nov 2006)

Designing Interactions: The Book

Added on 6 October 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Bill Moggridge introduces us to forty influential designers who have shaped our interaction with technology. The early chapters are mostly about invention of precedent setting designs, forming a living history. The center section is structured around topics, so that you can find several opinions collected together for comparison, about designing in a particular context. The later chapters move more towards the future, with trends, possibilities and conjectures. The introduction and final chapter combine to describe the approach to designing interactions that has evolved at IDEO. The book is illustrated with more than 700 images, with color throughout.” (Bill Moggridge) – courtesy of puttingpeoplefirst

Design and Emotion 2006 Conference Proceedings

Added on 5 October 2006 Peter Bogaards
“The Design and Emotion Society and Chalmers University of Technology invite you to the fifth conference on Design and Emotion, to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden on September 27-29, 2006. Emotions arise towards people, towards places, towards food, and towards things. Emotions influence our well-being as well as our purchase decisions. From a design perspective, we need to know more about how artefacts elicit emotions. We also need to know more about the way we can identify the relevant emotional aspects and how we can evaluate the emotional impact of a particular design. The International Conference on Design and Emotion 2006 is the arena for these topics.” (D&E 2006 – Design & Emotion Society)

Stewart Brand Meets The Cybernetic Counterculture

Added on 5 October 2006 Peter Bogaards
Book excerpt – “Like a cross between a touring rock entourage and a commune, USCO was more than a performance team. It was a social system unto itself. Through it, Brand encountered the works of Norbert Wiener, Marshall McLuhan, and Buckminster Fuller – all of whom would become key influences on the Whole Earth community – and began to imagine a new synthesis of cybernetic theory and countercultural politics.” (Fred Turner – EDGE)

12 Lessons for Those Afraid of CSS and Standards

Added on 4 October 2006 Peter Bogaards
“#1: Everything you know is wrong… sort of; #2: It’s not going to look exactly the same everywhere unless you’re willing to face some grief… and possibly not even then; #3: You will be forced to choose between the ideal and the practicable; #4: Perfection is not when there’s nothing to add, but when there’s nothing to take away; #5: Some sites are steaming heaps of edge cases; #6: Longer lead times are inevitable; #7: Coherent and sensible source order is the best of Good Things; #8: Descendant selectors are the beginning and end of genuinely powerful CSS rules; #9: In the real world, stylesheet hacks will get your project across the finish line; #10: Working around rendering bugs is like playing Whack-a-Mole; #11: When you’re drowning in CSS layout problems, make sure of the width and height of the water, float without putting up a struggle, and get clear of the problems; #12: Background images will make the difference between the plain and the tastefully embellished.” (Ben Henick – A List Apart)

Metrics for Heuristics: Quantifying User Experience

Added on 2 October 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Cooperative selection of success measures early in the project’s definition or discovery phase will align design and evaluation from the start, and both the information architect and web analyst can better prove the value of their services and assure that the project’s focus remains on business and user goals. To provide a useful context for design, Rubinoff’s user experience audit is one of several tools information architects can use to evaluate a website.” (Andrea Wiggins – Boxes and Arrows)