“Touch screen interfaces may be trendy in gadget design, but that doesn’t mean they do everything elegantly. The finger is simply too blunt for many tasks. A new interface, called
Manual Deskterity, attempts to combine the strengths of touch interaction with the precision of a pen.” (Erica Naone –
MIT Technology Review)
“(…) as a community like this matures, it’s natural (but not inevitable) that the pioneers leave, and the new folks carry on without them.” (
Peter Morville)
“Not only are profound and apparently lasting demographic changes underway, but technology is also changing, or it is not changing in the ways that had been expected.” (Jack Rosenberger –
CACM)
“And what does Mary Meeker see in her crystal ball this year? Two overwhelming trends that will affect consumers, the hardware/infrastructure industry and the commercial potential of the web: mobile and social networking.” (Mathew Ingram –
GigaCom)
“This blog is a personal project and the opinions here are strictly my own.” (
Kevin Arthur)
“In his day one keynote from the 2010 IA Summit, Dan Roam—founder of Digital Roam Inc and author of the best-selling
Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures – shares his unique visual-thinking approach with a receptive crowd in Phoenix. Transcending language barriers, his approach helps solve complex problems through visual thinking, and has helped resolve challenges at many businesses: Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and eBay to name a few.” (
Jeff Parks –
Boxes and Arrows)
“With the majority of the earth’s population now living in cities, Richard Saul Wurman realized there was a yawning information gap about the urban super centers that are increasingly driving modern culture. In this keynote presentation from the 2010 IA Summit, Mr. Wurman discusses his 19.20.21 initiative: an attempt to standardize a methodology to understand comparative data on 19 cities that will have 20 million or more inhabitants in the 21st century. He encourages the design community to take initiative and solve big problems rather than make small changes incrementally.” (
Jeff Parks –
Boxes and Arrows)
“Musical instruments provide really intriguing examples of user interface design. While it can take years of training and no small amount of aptitude, an instrument in the right hands can provide highly nuanced control over the many aspects of sound that come together to form one of the highest forms of human expression. And even for those of us who will never achieve such heights of virtuosity, merely using such a ‘user interface’ can result a great sense of enjoyment, immersion and fulfillment (what is often referred to as a state of flow).” (David Cronin –
Cooper Journal)
“Many people do not read easily. They may have a visual problem or dyslexia. They may have not have had opportunities to learn to read, or be reading in stressful conditions or poor light, or perhaps they are reading in a second language. Is it possible to provide one consistent set of guidelines or approaches that will allow designers to meet all the apparently diverse needs of these people? Or are there compromises to be made?” (
About Design to Read)
“The design process is messy, difficult to explain and sell, and its results are not certain from the beginning. People want more predictability.” (Dan Saffer –
Kicker Studio)
“Designers primarily concern themselves with how to create a ‘successful’ communication, product, or experience. But with the past 10 years of globalization, digitalization, and ever increasing design complexity, designers have come to realize that to answer the question of design ‘success’ requires that they answer that question of how the processes and artifacts of design help define what it means to be human. This ‘humanness’ can range from how humans control the environment through tools (homo faber); how high-heeled shoes affect natural ways of walking; to moral issues of how participation in the design process empowers marginalized communities. In this space, the practice and theory of design anthropology has emerged.” (Dori Tunstall)
“A design lens allows you to view your user experience design from the perspective of a single design principle. Lenses were originally created for game design but are just as powerful for user experience design.” (
Bill Scott and Theresa Neill)
“Web users spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half. A conventional layout is thus more likely to make sites profitable.” (
Jakob Nielsen –
Alertbox)
“Genetic algorithms essentially mimic evolutionary biology to find optimal solutions. Initially, they select a population of solutions based on some evaluation criteria, then use some subset of that population—the fittest members—as breeding stock for the subsequent generation of solutions. This process continues for multiple generations, each getting closer to an optimal solution. This article describes my experience with parallel design and discusses how to make parallel design more collaborative.” (
Mike Myles –
UXmatters)
“This column covers design patterns for maximizing the real estate available for search results, while the next will cover strategies for making people aware of filtering options.” (
Greg Nudelman –
UXmatters)
“We have launched this site in connection with the release of the spring issue of Innovation Magazine, which is dedicated to design research. All of the articles from the magazine are available here. We encourage you to read these articles and share your thoughts and ideas through the site.”
“In this installment, we took somewhat detailed tour of personas. First, we covered how to make them—the processes and techniques involved in developing, validating, and maturing the personas themselves, which has a big benefit to the whole team involved in getting a much better understanding of whom the solution is being developed for. Then we discussed some different uses of personas, how not to use them, as well as how to—chiefly to gain empathy to inform what and how you build so that it makes sense for your target audience as well as a valuable communication tool to keep team members on the same page, speaking the same language, and collaborating in terms of people rather than in terms of technical or hierarchical terms.” (Dr. Charles B. Kreitzberg and Ambrose Little)
“Reading with interest an unfolding flameup at Design for Service caused by Jeff Howard’s post entitled UX Rockstars need not apply. The gist of the conversation is a few folk getting all hot under the collar about disciplines and domains. Especially the emerging challenges in the US by this new fangled idea of Service Design and it seems to be freaking people out. Which is a good thing in my book. The argument was instigated by sweeping statement from an interview with Jesse James Garret of Adaptive Path, that went like this (…)” (Paul Sims –
Made by Many)
