All posts about
Information design

Information design is the skill and practice of preparing information so people can use it with efficiency and effectiveness. (source: Wikipedia)

Behavior Design Bootcamp with Stanford’s Dr. BJ Fogg

Added on 29 October 2012 Peter Bogaards
Buzzword galore.

“(…) it makes sense now to call attention to the distinction between Dr. Fogg’s Behavior Theory – the emerging discipline of behavior design – and the widening concept of design thinking. In my mind, both occupy some similar space but are not mutually exclusive or competing thought architectures. BJ and I briefly discussed how design thinking and behavior design relate to one another, and he admittedly has not arrived at a definitive relationship, though he believes they are complimentary. I’m hopeful Dr. Fogg is willing to have an ongoing conversation with me about their relationship, and work with the design community to develop a framework in which behavior design and design thinking can be successfully leveraged together. Held in comparison, behavior design fits quite nicely into the larger Design Thinking or Human Centered Design process, and can be employed with great effect as part of a design thinker’s arsenal.”

(Ryan Wynia a.k.a. @ryanwynia ~ Technori)

Breaking Design Principles on Purpose

Added on 24 October 2012 Peter Bogaards
Rules and exceptions.

“Rules. They keep our designs clean, consistent, aligned, and focused. The core principles upon which good design is built are absolutely essential to the education of any designer. The great thing about design rules though is that they can and should be broken, granted that you know what you’re doing. Read on to see some examples of effectively breaking design principles in order to improve a project.”

(Jason Gross a.k.a. @JasonAGross ~ Design Shack)

The Diagram of Information Visualization

Added on 23 October 2012 Peter Bogaards
Even business graphics is on the horizon. And that’s not clipart in PPTs.

“In the last ten years, the area of Information Visualization has witnessed an exponential increase in its popularity. Diagrammatic reasoning and visual epistemology are becoming readily accepted methods of research in many academic domains. Concurrently, information graphics and Infovis have grabbed the attention of a larger mainstream audience.”

(Parsons Journal for Information Mapping Volume IV, Issue 4)

The Catch Behind Design Thinking

Added on 19 October 2012 Peter Bogaards
Has Design Thinking lost its glory?

“Connecting design thinking with the broader context of problem solving has lead to the growth of two equally harmful myths: the guru designer and practice as a process, emphasizing on subjectivity or linearity where empathy, empowerment and divergent thinking are needed. Design thinking isn’t saving the world or revolutionizing business, for sure, mostly because of these two illusory paths.”

(Thierry de Baillon a.k.a. @tdebaillon ~ DeBaillon)

The Languages of Design

Added on 17 October 2012 Peter Bogaards
Language, the tool of communication.

“It’s common in design to discuss the “language of things”, the language expressed by physical objects and digital systems. We often consider the visual layout of a website – how it guides a user; what the hierarchy of fields in a form might suggest; or what the look and feel of a product says about a brand or company – but what about that company’s words; how do they fit into all this?”

(Angus Edwardson a.k.a. @Namshee ~ UX Booth)

How Visuals Can Help Content Strategists Find Their Voice

Added on 15 October 2012 Peter Bogaards
Visual thinking and communication, the way to tackle many wicked design problems.

“It’s not just clients who are compelled by visuals. Visuals grab everyone’s attention in meaningful, memorable ways, whether we’re trying to influence project managers or CMOs. Content strategists use words to argue our points, yet our colleagues (UX and Creative, and even Project Management) use visuals. We should, too. Not sure how to turn data into information?

(Tosca Fasso a.k.a. @toscafasso ~ SUBTXT)

How The Left/ Right Brain Theory Improves The User Experience

Added on 14 September 2012 Peter Bogaards
Integrative thinking leads to better designs for user experiences.

“Let’s take a quick look at the left brain-right brain theory to recap which part of our brain is responsible for what. Then, we’ll shed some light on how you can consider different ways of thinking in your design in order to optimize the experience for your visitors.”

(Sabine Idler a.k.a. @SabinaIdler ~ Usabilia)

Beyond Mobile: Making Sense of a Post-PC World

Added on 10 September 2012 Peter Bogaards
How to design for our multi-screen personal environment with computation and connectivity for ‘free’?

“Native applications are a remnant of the Jurassic period of computer history. We will look back on these past 10 years as the time we finally grew out of our desktop mindset and started down the path of writing apps for an infinite number of platforms. As the cost of computation and connectivity plummets, manufacturers are going to put ‘interactivity’ into every device. Some of this will be trivial: my power adaptor knows it’s charging history. Some of it will be control related: my television will be grand central for my smart home. But at it’s heart, we’ll be swimming in world where every device will have ‘an app’. What will it take for us to get here, what technologies will it take to make this happen? This talk will discuss how the principles of the open web must apply not only to prototocols but to hardware as well. How can we build a ‘DNS for hardware’ so the menagerie of devices has a chance for working together?”

(Scott Jenson a.k.a. @scottjenson ~ dConstruct 2012)

Introduction to Design Thinking

Added on 3 September 2012 Peter Bogaards
First, design thinking. Next, design thinking doing (by SAP).

“Design Thinking is one of the more recent buzz words in the design community. In this introductory article, I will investigate what Design Thinking is, what its main characteristics are, and take a look at the process and the methods associated with it. I will also take a brief look at the history of Design Thinking. (…) I have accumulated my knowledge of Design Thinking from presentations at SAP and conferences, and by reading of books and articles. I wrote this article to help readers gain a general understanding of the concepts of Design Thinking across different proponents of the approach. Since I do not have any practical experiences with this approach, I will refrain from evaluating it, which was not the purpose of my article.”

(Gerd Waloszek ~ SAP Design Guild) ~ courtesy of @sly

Designing Solutions to Wicked Problems: A Manifesto for Transdisciplinary Research and Design PDF Logo

Added on 30 August 2012 Peter Bogaards
Impressed by the deep thinking behind this manifesto from 2009.

“Proceedings from the Designing Solutions to Wicked Problems symposium held on the 9th and 10th November 2009 at the Melbourne Town Hall with a compendium of provocations and commentaries. (…) We can aspire to design that contributes to a more sustainable future that delights the eye and the soul, and that transforms the everyday as much as it does the uncommon. Design at its essence is focused on the creation of meaning and solutions. To focus on those problems for which no easy solutions have yet been found is the true challenge which great design should meet.”

(Terry Cutler editor ~ DRI Research Institute)

Achieve Product-Market Fit with our Brand-New Value Proposition Designer

Added on 30 August 2012 Peter Bogaards
Seeing how business modelling integrates with design for experiences.

“I’m a big fan of the Lean Startup movement and love the underlying principle of testing, learning, and pivoting by experimenting with the most basic product prototypes imaginable – so-called Minimal Viable Products (MVP) – during the search for product-market fit. It helps companies avoid building stuff that customers don’t want. Yet, there is no underlying conceptual tool that accompanies this process. There is no practical tool that helps business people map, think through, discuss, test, and pivot their company’s value proposition in relationship to their customers’ needs. So I came up with the Value Proposition Designer (…)”

(Alexander Osterwalder a.k.a. @AlexOsterwalder ~ Business Model Alchemist)

What is Digital Service Design?

Added on 28 August 2012 Peter Bogaards
Think system, not discrete nodes a.k.a. site, app or shop.

“Digital service design incorporates many existing disciplines – like web design, information architecture, user experience and content strategy. It is, if you like, an organising umbrella principle, in which all these disciplines can work together to build something that meets – and surpasses – user expectation. Perhaps most fundamentally, it’s about letting go of the website as the core idea of digital development, and thinking about service as something that can be delivered through any number of channels – some of them digital. Instead of fretting over your mobile strategy, you figure out how to express your service principles through a mobile device.”

(Adam Tinworth a.k.a. @adders ~ Next Berlin)

Designing Screens Using Cores and Paths: Designing from the inside out

Added on 21 August 2012 Peter Bogaards
Patterns are the designer’s best friend.

“Typically in web design, the opposite approach is the rule: designers begin with the homepage. They then work out a navigation scheme, which pages at the bottom of the site hierarchy automatically inherit whether it’s appropriate or not. The goal – or the primary content people are looking for or tasks they are trying to get done – turns out to be the last thing that gets attention in the design process.”

(James Kalbach a.k.a. @JamesKalbach ~ Boxes and Arrows)

Designers on Top: Paola Antonelli on the Evolution of Design

Added on 16 July 2012 Peter Bogaards
Design and art, a strong pair.

“The quest for elegance and empowerment, or how design went from process to authorship. ~ In this wonderful talk from the 2012 EyeO Festival, playfully titled Designers on Top, MoMA Senior Curator of Architecture and Design Paola Antonelli offers a sweeping look at the evolution of design over the past few decades, and the past few years in particular (…)”

(Maria Popova a.k.a. @brainpicker ~ Brain Pickings)