All posts from
August 2009

Designing is at least quadricentric

Added on 6 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
Video registration with multiple brain crackers. – “Interaction Design stresses human-centeredness. A strong focus on people is essential, but we also must focus on craft materials, their form and their function. While some design practices focus too much on means (the ‘what’ of design), avoiding commitments to explicit ends (the ‘why’), we cannot ignore design means. Also, we must further distinguish the purpose of design (‘why’) from its beneficiaries (‘who’), and also between both of these and the ‘if’ of designing, i.e., between evaluation, purpose and beneficiaries.” (Gilbert Cockton)

IA for the Rest of the World

Added on 6 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“As designers, one of the greatest challenges we face is designing for other people. It is remarkably easy to design for oneself and infinitely more challenging to design for others. Like me, you are probably experienced in designing for others in your own world – likely a Western country, in a large city, with high quality information infrastructure.” (Miles Rochford – ASIS&T Bulletin Aug/Sep 2009)

The Debut of Usable, Influential Content

Added on 6 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“What happens when we architect a user experience that makes the content easy to find? The content becomes a focus of the experience, a star of the show. If the content performs well, it will have an influence. Users will be more likely to take the action we want them to take, make the decision we want them to make or have the perception we want them to have. Users will be more likely to consider our brand, our product or our idea.” (Colleen Jones – ASIS&T Bulletin Aug/Sep 2009)

The Information Architecture of Social Experience Design

Added on 6 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Designing and building a successful social website or application is no mean feat. Adding a social dimension to an existing experience is trickier still. Nevertheless, the skills to do so are well worth cultivating, as the ubiquitous, pervasive, massively interconnected world of the Internet and allied digital networks, such as mobile SMS connections, have unlocked a growing panoply of opportunities for social relationships, remote presence, real-time interactions and the capacity for self-organized groups of people to coordinate their behavior and collaborate on changing the world.” (Christian Crumlish – ASIS&T Bulletin Aug/Sep 2009) – courtesy of janjursa

Videos About Service Design

Added on 5 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“(…) a few video excerpts of Bob Cooper, founder and CEO of Frontier Service Design, from a recent panel discussion related to the origins and purpose of service design. Each video is approximately 2 minutes in length and range in topic from the high level need for service design in today’s economy to specific tactics used in understanding our client’s customers.” (Frontier Service Design)

Card Sorting

Added on 5 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“The following article belongs to an upcoming series – A series on developing approaches to problem solutions with systematic use of creative techniques. I want to comply with this article and series to wishes and requests of friends and colleagues. (…) Card sorting is a categorization technique where users sort cards describing and giving their picture, their understanding and their mental picture of concepts, workflows and information and knowledge.” (Holger Maassen – ux4.com)

Blinded by Content Bliss

Added on 4 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Consider the source of the content you’re reviewing. What’s his or her background? Consider the individual’s education, career, and publishing history. That’s not to say, of course, that people’s opinions are only valid if they have the right alma mater, but that information may provide context and insight as to whether someone’s qualified to make the particular claims he or she’s making.” (Robert Stribley – Scatter/Gather)

The Content Conundrum: Bridging the gap between design and content

Added on 4 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“As web designers and information architects, we often dismiss deep consideration of content when we design interactive experiences. By content I’m not only referring to the various forms of text (e.g., headers, body copy, error messages) but also imagery, graphics, and videos or audio that make up the full interactive experience. Sure, we have a sense of what content is available, and we’ve likely considered it to some extent when creating flows, wireframes, and prototypes. But the design artifacts that we create represent only part of the overall user experience that we’re designing. The content that sits inside of our design framework is often the final arbiter of success, yet we sometimes diminish it’s importance and separate ourselves from it. The more we separate our design activities from content development, the greater the risk of design failure.” (Christopher Detzi – Boxes and Arrows)

Content Analysis: A Practical Approach

Added on 4 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“To know your content is to love it. Content analysis is an essential part of many UX design projects that involve existing content. Examples of such projects include migrating a Web site to a new platform or design, merging multiple Web sites into one, or assessing Web content for reuse in a new channel. Just as you cannot nurture a garden without regularly inspecting its plants and flowers, you cannot take proper care of your content without looking at it closely. You must become familiar with your content to judge whether it’s effective, understand how it relates to other content, make decisions about how to use or format it, identify opportunities for improving it, and more.” (Colleen Jones – UXmatters)

Does Your Client Need a Consultant or an Agency?

Added on 4 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“There are no hard-and-fast rules for judging whether a consultant or an agency is a better fit for any given project. Aside from time, money, and required skills, there are a variety of other factors to consider—for example, the stage of the product development process at which you’re asked to come in, whether an engagement is one of strategic guidance or tactical execution, and the maturity and capacity of the client’s team.” (Whitney Hess – UXmatters)