All posts from
May 2016

The war on information: A time to muster our UX practitioners

Added on 31 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

Many synonyms for the tsunami, deluge or overload of information.

“The world as we know it today is rich in information. At whim, we can usually find (without much delay) an information source that answers a question, suggests nearby restaurants, tells us how to travel, or provides us with data for the paper we are writing. The internet, as well as the technological innovations that allow us to easily and enjoyably access it, has given rise to a new era where knowledge is plentiful and interpretation is vital.”

Dash Neimark a.k.a. /uxdash | @ux_Dash ~ Boxes and Arrows ★

What’s in a genre? Metadata, controlled vocabularies, and the Folger’s digital anthology

Added on 28 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

Digital humanities is picking up information architecture concepts.

“Shakespeare’s plays are organized in the First Folio into three now familiar genre categories: Comedies, Tragedies, and Histories. Later scholars added a fourth, describing certain late plays like The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale that contain elements of both comedy and tragedy, along with fantastical features like magic, as ‘romance plays’. In organizing the 403 plays that make up the Folger’s Digital Anthology of Early Modern English Drama, we needed a few more than those four categories. By grouping our plays by genre, we aim to classify our dramatic material in ways that make it easy for scholars and readers to compare plays that were generally alike—comparing tragedy to tragedy, so to speak, using as few broadly applicable genres as possible.”

Meaghan J. Brown a.k.a. @EpistolaryBrown ~ Folger Shakespeare Library ★

Artificial intelligence is your health advisor

Added on 25 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

After digital disruption we’re now moving into computational disruption.

“Artificial Intelligence promises everything from self-driving cars to self-writing newspapers, but AI may be missing its greatest opportunity in healthcare, where AI-driven ‘conversational interfaces’ hold untapped potential to influence the health and wellbeing of billions of people.”

Thomas Sutton a.k.a. /thomasthinks | @thomas_thinks ~ frog Designmind ★

Service Design Geographies: Proceedings of the ServDes2016 Conference

Added on 24 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

They are popping up everywhere: service design events. In China as well, I’m told.

“After a long maturation period, the discipline of Service Design is evolving in several directions and exploring new territories. The discipline has been founded on the area of affluence of many knowledge streams, from service marketing and management to interaction design and product design. The ground knowledge from those disciplinary areas has been integrated through research and cases studies that have emphasized different and new aspects of service design, including user-participation and co-creation, user experience, systemic and social aspects, technological implications and strategic perspectives. This relatively young area of design research is now exploring a wide landscape, that includes methodological contributions, practice-based research, concrete cases and prototypes, while new stakeholders are expressing interest in this discipline and promoting new cases and experiences. The last few years have also seen an increasing number of public sector initiatives with the support of design agencies, foundations and research groups that are promoting novel approaches to public service innovation. This includes for example modes to capture and amplify signals of social innovation projects or the set up of innovation labs within Government offices. At the same time the private sector is exploring the potential of more collaborative approaches to service innovation that value users contribution and participation in the design process.”

Nicola Morelli et al. ~ Linköping University Electronic Press

What’s the difference between an experience and a customer experience?

Added on 23 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

Broadening the scope of (marketing) definitions.

“So if you think your UX and CX are enough to surprise and delight your audience, you’re not quite right. It’s how you weave those features into the bigger story you’re trying to tell as a brand that really matters. That’s what experience is, and that’s what you should be striving for with your marketing this year.”

Ted Karczewski a.k.a. /tedhartkarczewski | @TeddyHK ~ ContentStandard ★

UX Reality Check: 14 Hard Truths About Users

Added on 17 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

Having to deal with other people is often a pain. Designers included.

“After any amount of time in the design industry, you’ll most certainly hear someone refer to users as “dumb.” People talk about having to “dumb down” interfaces, design for “the lowest common denominator,” and try to make applications “idiot-proof.” Designers say it themselves once in a while. The really terrible designers say it repeatedly. (…) This sort of thinking discounts a key component of good design: human psychology. Understanding some basics of user behavior, then applying them to design, is one of the most important things a company can do. Here are 14 things you should know about the people who use your websites and applications.”

Robert Hoekman Jr. a.k.a. /rhoekmanjr | @rhjr ~ FastCo.design ★

Content-First Prototyping

Added on 11 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

Digital material, language for humans and machines. Human language equals content.

“Content is the core commodity of the digital economy. It is the gold we fashion into luxury experience, the diamond we encase in loyalty programs and upsells. Yet, as designers, we often plug it in after the fact. We prototype our interaction and visual design to exhaustion, but accept that the ‘real words’ can just be dropped in later. There is a better way.”

Andy Fitzgerald a.k.a. /andyfitzgerald | @andybywire ~ Smashing Magazine ★

Content strategy in service design

Added on 10 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

The content layer of the customer journey map, sort of.

“We live in a service economy with evolving liquid expectations. Content is a fundamental component of how users engage with a service, and content strategy is the mechanism that enables that service experience to be delivered holistically and consistently across all touchpoints.”

Jennifer McCutchen a.k.a. /jennifermccutchen | @jenmccutchen ~ Fjord ★

CreativeAI: On the democratisation & escalation of creativity  (chapter 01)

Added on 9 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

The blend of creativity, design, and deep understanding of digital technology.

“A primary goal of this research project was to find a set of guiding principles, metaphors and ideas, that inform the development of future theories, experiments, and applications. By combining different domains into one narrative, we formulate a new school, or praxis for creativity: CreativeAI. Its desire is to explore and celebrate creativity. Its goal is to develop systems that raise the human potential. Its belief is that addressing the “what” and “why” is as important as the “how”. Its conviction is that complex ethical questions are not an afterthought, but an opportunity to be creative collectively. Finally, CreativeAI is a question, rather than an answer. Its only demand is more collaboration and creativity. It is an invitation for play!”

Samim Winiger a.k.a. /samimwiniger | @samim & Roelof Pieters a.k.a /roelofpieters | @graphific ~ Medium ~ courtesy of karsalfrink

NewsFlash no. 7,000: On the significance of making in interaction design research

Added on 7 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

Great to have found this newsflash after almost 20 years.

“The notion of making seems to be gaining some traction lately. When I talk to people outside academia about interaction design and new media, making often comes up, with references to physical computing, 3D printing, and Maker Faires, and overtones of grassroots activism and yet another this-changes-everything movement. I note a corresponding increase in the interaction design research discourse—but here, the word is used slightly more broadly to include construction, programming, and other craft-like activities forming part of the core of traditional design practice. That is also the sense in which I will be using the word here.”

Jonas Löwgren a.k.a. /jonaslowgren ~ ACM Interactions Magazine ★

DesignX: Complex sociotechnical systems

Added on 6 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

The roles, values and challenges for a new generation of strategic designers.

“This paper is a follow up to DesignX, a position paper written in 2014, which introduced the design challenges of complex sociotechnical systems such as healthcare, transportation, governmental policy, and environmental protection. We conclude that the major challenges presented by DesignX problems stem not from trying to understand or address the issues, but rather arise during implementation, when political, economic, cultural, organizational, and structural problems overwhelm all else. We suggest that designers cannot stop at the design stage: they must play an active role in implementation, and develop solutions through small, incremental steps—minimizing budgets and the resources required for each step— to reduce political, social, and cultural disruptions. This approach requires tolerance for existing constraints and trade-offs, and a modularity that allows for measures that do not compromise the whole. These designs satisfice rather than optimize and are related to the technique of making progress by ‘muddling through’, a form of incrementalism championed by Lindblom.”

Donald A. Norman and Pieter Jan Stappers ~ She Ji

Paradigm Shift: Report on the New Role of Design in Business and Society

Added on 4 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

Thomas Kuhn and design in business and society.

“Corporate cultures’ prevailing attitudes towards design have begun to shift. Financial companies and management consultancies now have design teams, and include “design” in their service portfolios. Large corporations are bolstering their in-house design capabilities, and appointing designers to executive roles. Venture capitalist firms and startups increasingly recognize the value of including designers in the early stages of business development. Even global organizations and international foundations now list design on their agendas. A paradigm shift is taking place in the field of design. This study examines some of the latest corporate investments in design, and reflects on what this phenomenon means for the wider field of design. The focus of this study is on the key trend indicators that are defining the current landscape of design, and its changing role in business and society.”

Gjoko Muratovski a.k.a. /gjokomuratovski ~ She Ji ★

Designing education: Educating design

Added on 4 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

Design and education, how can they have been separated for soo long.

“The concept of design in not new to education. However, the act of designing as we understand it in user experience—or design thinking—is not yet mainstream in the design for teaching and learning. The pervasiveness of technology and the maturity of both user-centered design and e-learning are intertwining design and education in deeper ways. (…) Modern design approaches and philosophies are well-placed to facilitate this orchestration. Designing education and educating design is the right path to take. While the immensity of the task can feel overwhelming, we as designers can find the challenge and beauty of it by tackling it at a human-sized level. Let’s not focus on the systemic problems and policy changes needed in education but on the things that we as designers can do to enhance the teaching and learning experience. This crossroads of education and design is just the beginning.”

Muriel Garreta-Domingo a.k.a. /murielgd | @mparticulars ~ UXPA Magazine ★

Measuring your ‘Return on Content’: How to tell whether your content is successful

Added on 3 May 2016 Peter Bogaards

Be conservative in what you publish, be liberal in what you read.

“Even if your organization doesn’t produce anything close to that kind of volume, it’s wise to ask yourself an important question: Is all this content working? This article lays out how to answer that question for the content you have now and ensure that, going forward, your future content is positioned to succeed.”

Hilary Marsh a.k.a. /hilarymarsh | @hilarymarsh ~ Content Company ★