All posts from
January 2007

The Key to Simplicity: Questions for Donald Norman

Added on 11 January 2007 Peter Bogaards
“Technology can help only if it can adopt a simple structure so that controls for different devices are as similar to one another as possible, making the learning much easier. Multiple purpose controls are an abomination. It is possible to have a single device transform itself into independent devices for controlling different tasks. But here the key is to make the switch from the support of individual technologies and individual devices to the support of cohesive, organized activities.” (Eddie Lopez – User Centered)

Usability in China: Encore

Added on 10 January 2007 Peter Bogaards
“Our objectives were simple yet bold: The leaders of the China chapter wanted to raise the profile of usability engineering and user-centered design in China and create the biggest usability conference in the region. We also wanted an event that the China usability industry could call its own. We figured that the best way to do this was to target people who are passionate about integrating usability into their products and give them a chance to meet, network, and attend talks and tutorials by leaders in user experience.” (Daniel Szuc and Paul J. Sherman – UXmatters)

Documenting Interaction Design: Wire Frames with Visio and Word

Added on 5 January 2007 Peter Bogaards
“There are many ways to document an interaction design and the level of details needed is dependent on what your documenting and for what purpose. There has also been a lot of discussions on what the best tool for creating interaction designs and/or prototypes is (…). The tool you choose is of course also dependent on what you are documenting and for what purpose. It is also much of a personal taste what tool one prefers to work with.” (interakt.nu) – courtesy of Anders Björk

Experience design is not about brands

Added on 4 January 2007 Peter Bogaards
“The problem is that ‘brand’ will always be about the impression companies want to make, and are by their nature an ‘inside-out’ proposition – a company figures out its brand and what it means, and does what it can to communicate or otherwise impart that message to people. Brand always starts with the company. Experience, though, needs to be about the people. What do they want to accomplish, achieve, do? For experience to succeed, it must start with the person, and from there, impress upon the company. ‘Experience’ is outside-in.” (Peter Merholz – Adaptive Path blog)

Pervasive fun

Added on 4 January 2007 Peter Bogaards
“Fun is a pervasive feature of software development, not only for open source programmers but in the area of commercial software development too: Open source developers that are paid for their work are observed to be very motivated and prepared for future effort, especially if they enjoy their development time. Furthermore, the fun that programmers experience functions as a good proxy for their productivity. Therefore, employers that want to enhance the programmers’ productivity can safely invest in an environment of fun for developers in their company.” (Benno Luthinger and Carola Jungwirth – First Monday 12.1)