All posts from
December 2018

Designing for meaningful social interactions

Added on 19 December 2018 Peter Bogaards

Meaning as driver for design decisions.

“But it doesn’t have to be that way. Now the time has come for us—designers, working on digital products—to step up our game and act like real gatekeepers. Instead of unethical practices and cheap tricks to lure people into more and more engagement, we need to do the hard work of designing meaningful products where people can connect, collaborate in a meaningful way, and help each other build a better world. We have a huge responsibility here as designers. It’s up to us how we design these platforms and what social norms we set there. In this article, I will share a few good examples I’ve seen, and I will also share a few stories from my UX company, where we try hard to put more meaningful social features in both our client’s products and our own.”

David Pasztor /davidpasztor ~ Boxes and Arrows ★

An Information Architecture Framework for the Internet of Things

Added on 17 December 2018 Peter Bogaards

Academic thinking on IA, IoT and ecosystems. We need more of this.

“This paper formalizes an approach to the Internet of Things as a socio-technical system of systems and a part of the infosphere. It introduces a principle-based, human-centered approach to designing Internet of Things artifacts as elements of contextual cross-channel ecosystems. It connects the Internet of Things to the conceptualization of cross-channel ecosystems from current information architecture theory and practice, positing that the Internet of Things is both a formal, objective superset of any given ecosystem and a contextual, subjective subset of specifically instantiated ecosystems. The paper argues for the necessity of a transdisciplinary theoretical framework to promote a human-centered generative understanding of the Internet of Things phenomena and their consequences, in accordance with the Metamodel Methodology (M3). It proposes a phenomenology-grounded information architecture model detailing a set of 16 principles and secondary heuristics grouped according to an architectural perspective, which identifies guidelines that support the design of Internet of Things artifacts considering their objective characteristics; a human perspective, which identifies guidelines that support the design of Internet of Things artifacts considering subject/object relationships and the production of meaning; and a systemic perspective, which identifies guidelines that support the design of Internet of Things artifacts as relational parts of information-based ecosystems. These principles and guidelines are meant to provide the foundations for a practice-based approach to designing the Internet of Things–enabled information ecosystems.”

Flávia Lacerda, Mamede Lima-Marques and Andrea Resmini ★

Anthropocene Economics and Design: Heterodox Economics for Design Transitions

Added on 17 December 2018 Peter Bogaards

Design interventions for Earth System.

“Economics is a field under fierce contestation. In response to the intersecting challenges of the Anthropocene, scholars who take a broader and more critical view of current economic models have described the shortcomings of orthodox economic theory along with the severe consequences of its systemic discounting of the environment. Heterodox economists describe how the logic of neoclassical and neoliberal economics disregards the interests and needs of the natural world, women, workers, and other historically disadvantaged groups. Explorations of the household, the state, and the commons as alternative economies open space at the intersection of economics and design for incorporating and valuing the provisioning services provided by the ecological context and the undervalued work provided by certain groups of people. Design theorists, economists, social and cultural theorists, and anthropologists describe the relationship between value and values in ways that reveal how sustainable and socially just futures depend on the priorities (notions of value) embedded in the systems that determine what is designed. With these ideas, design can contribute to economic transitions with conceptualizing, modeling, mapping, framing, and other future making practices. Ecologically engaged, heterodox economics is a basis for societal responses to climate change on a scale that can make a difference.”

Joanna Boehnert a.k.a. /jodyboehnert | @Ecocene ~ She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation 4.4 ★ courtesy of @KateRaworth

Designing for interaction modes

Added on 17 December 2018 Peter Bogaards

How to switch from one mode to another.

“The best experiences result from designers matching the way the computer behaves with the way our users are thinking, feeling, and interacting. This is what user experience design is all about. And yet, because of pressures, competing priorities, and industry trends, interaction modes are often an afterthought.”

Andrew Grimes a.k.a. /apgrimes | @andrew_grimes ~ A List Apart ★

50 years ago, Douglas Engelbart’s ‘Mother of All Demos’ changed personal technology forever

Added on 10 December 2018 Peter Bogaards

We need to look back to see the future.

“Imagine someone demonstrating a jet plane 15 years before Kitty Hawk. Imagine someone demonstrating a smartphone 15 years before the first cellular networks were even launched. Imagine someone demonstrating a controlled nuclear chain reaction 15 years before Einstein formulated e=mc2. On a crisp, overcast, and breezy Monday afternoon in San Francisco on December 9, 1968, before an SRO audience of more than 2,000 slack-jawed computer engineers, a soft-spoken engineer named Douglas Engelbart held the first public demonstration of word processing, point-and-clicking, dragging-and-dropping, hypermedia and hyperlinking, cross-file editing, idea/outline processing, collaborative groupware, text messaging, onscreen real-time video teleconferencing, and a weird little device dubbed a “mouse” — the essentials of a graphical user interface (GUI) 15 years before the first personal computers went on sale.”

Stewart Wolpin ~ Mashable ★

What is the role of creativity in UX design?

Added on 6 December 2018 Peter Bogaards

What’s the role of thinking in UX design. A big one.

“Did you know that there are three brain networks that are involved in creativity? In this article, Susan Weinschenk explores what creativity is, the recent brain science on what is happening in your brain when you are being creative, and the role of creativity in UX design.”

Susan Weinschenk a.k.a. /susanweinschenk | @thebrainlady ~ Smashing magazine ★