All posts from
October 2011

Seven Things You Should Know About Service Design

Always good to have many 101’s.

“Service design is a process that examines the relationship between those who use a service and the service environment. By focusing on and making improvements to the points at which users interact with other people or the environment, service design enables an organization to run smoothly, provide the best service to its users, and reduce the kind of situations that that can generate complaints.”

(iLibrarian)

UX For Suits

Paying attention to UX is just good business.

“User experience is a catch-all term that we use in the software industry to describe the overall feeling an end-user gets when using a product. The UX is the attitude that is triggered when using (and subsequently thinking about) a company and their products and services. Since your user’s attitude affects their future behavior toward your brand or product, a good user experience is vital to product adoption, engagement and loyalty.”

(Jurgen Altziebler a.k.a. ALT74 ~ Intridea)

Information Overload, Information Architecture and Digital Literacy

So, information architecture and digital literacy fix filter failure.

“When thinking about folksonomies and similar user-generated knowledge organization, we can see that professional goals would most probably require not only the use of these unsophisticated tools, but also classification and subject indexing that employ classification schemes, top-down hierarchical taxonomies, thesauri and other formal structures.”

(Tibor Koltay ~ ASIS&T Bulletin Oct/Nov 2011)

Is Information Architecture Dead?

Dead of alive? Who cares? Making the complex clear and understandable is more necessary than ever.

“Employees need to perform their jobs to support their clients. Information architects are on the front lines when it comes to improving performance. We know how to listen to what users want from a system; we know how to analyze what we learn so we can determine what to put in and what to leave out; we know how to cluster information into smaller usable chunks that support information processing and decision-making; and we know how to test our assumptions and optimize a system so it is directed toward a common goal.”

(Thom Haller ~ ASIS&T Bulletin Oct/Nov 2011)

Emotional Design for the World of Objects

Great set of interesting conference talks.

“Welcome to the world of atoms. The human body is part of the physical world. It savors touch and feeling, movement and action. How else to explain the popularity of physical devices, of games that require gestures, and full-body movement? Want to develop for this new world? There are new rules for interacting with the world, new rules for the developers of systems.”

(Donald A. Norman ~ dConstruct 2011 videos)

The Strategic IA

A column is like a site. Great to start but a hell of a job (for most) to maintain it on a regular basis. As always, benefit of the doubt.

“This column explores the strategic aspects of information architecture and the tools to equip information architects for success. Topics will address the business, strategy, user experience, and implementation of strategic information architecture, including organizational, content management, and tactical considerations.”

(Andrea Ames and Alyson Riley ~ STC Intercom)
courtesy of keithinstone

Designing to overcome behaviour barriers

Always doubt if behaviour is the real thing, except buying something. Thoughts are more important.

“People are creatures of habit and this can introduce challenges should you want them to adopt a new behaviour. We all start forming and evolving our behaviours from the time we are born, and each of us will respond to different stimuli in our own unique way. Some of us can’t start their day without our morning coffee whereas others will reach for a cigarette as a first port of call. Some can’t fall asleep without a book in their hands and others like to leave their T.V. switched on. These behavioural differences are a big part of what makes us human.”

(Caroline Jones a.k.a. @caroline_maree ~ Optimal Usability)

Shoes, Cars, and Other Love Stories: Investigating The Experience of Love for Products

We not only love people, but products as well. And they don’t talk back, sort of.

“People often say they love a product. What do they really mean when they say this, and is this a phenomenon that is relevant to the field of design? Findings from a preliminary study in this thesis indicated that people describe their love as a rewarding, long-term, and dynamic experience that arises from a meaningful relationship built with products they own and use. Inspired by existing approaches to the experience of love from social psychology, research tools are developed for the closer study of person-product love. Using those tools the research in this thesis investigates how person-product interactions are linked to the experience of love and how these influence love over time. The findings reveal how the experience of love arises from person-product relationships, how love relationships develop over time, and which factors can provoke change in the love experience and love relationships over time. These findings present opportunities for design researchers and designers to foster rewarding experiences and long-lasting person-product relationships. Person-product love relationships can bring emotional rewards that benefit people’s wellbeing and stimulate sustained efforts to keep loved products for longer.”

(Beatriz Russo ~ Technical University Delft)

The T-Model and Strategies for Hiring IA Practitioners: Part 1

Or, what a simple diagram can bring.

“What I also find disturbing is the lack of competency that some senior IA practitioners, with three to five years of experience, demonstrate when looking for employment. As a manager of an IA team, I have reviewed many resumes and portfolios of IA practitioners who don’t meet the basic requirements; whose design artifacts don’t reflect what I would expect of someone with senior-level experience. Does anyone know what junior or senior means? UX design managers, managers of information architecture, and IA practitioners should have a shared understanding of what makes a junior or senior IA practitioner a viable candidate.”

(Nathaniel Davis a.k.a. @iatheory ~ UXmatters)

The Ghost Hunter’s Guide to User Research

Some handy tips and tricks from the ghost hunter.

“It was never my childhood dream to become a usability professional. In kindergarten, I didn’t observe the other kids playing with their toys and think of ways to improve them. I didn’t yearn to perform heuristic evaluations, usability tests, and contextual inquiries. Don Norman wasn’t my Mister Rogers and Jakob Nielsen wasn’t my Captain Kangaroo.”

(Jim Ross a.k.a. @anotheruxguy ~ UXmatters)

Design Research and Research Design

Looking into understanding from an art perspective is always interesting.

“Much of design is informed by research of some sort; research, on the other hand, is almost never informed by design. Over the past several months, my students and I have built a curriculum centered around the idea that research and design are two sides of the same coin. We took it for granted that research can inform design; what took us by surprise was the great extent to which design can, in turn, enhance research.”

(Kevin Walker ~ Design Observer)