“Card Sorting is a methodology for assessing mental/conceptual models by asking users to categorize a list of terms. uzCardSort is open source (…)” (Andy Edmonds – mozdev) – courtesy of louis rosenfeld

“Ethnography isÝa fascinating technique toÝdo research onÝhuman behaviour.” (Peter Van Dijck) – courtesy of column two

“The expert user is dead, not because we no longer need sophisticated tools to find informationóemphatically we doóbut because we can no longer get away with designing for expert users only.” (Leo Klein – Library Journal)

“User-centered design is now widely accepted, but the emphasis on its usability component under-estimates peopleís abilities and limits innovation.” (Nico Macdonald | Spy) – courtesy of oskar van rijswijk

“One of the greatest misconceptions about web sites is that they should be designed for selling.Users now come to web sites with the intent of exploring their options to make a decision. By making it easier for users to make decisions, we can create a much more compelling experience than a sales-oriented site.” (Andrew Chak – UIE Roadshow)

“Organizations increasingly view usability and user-centered design to be a key ingredient in creating high quality products. Designing for ease of use is a well-accepted goal, even if many organizations have far to go to create user-centered products. Even with the present downturn in the economy, more companies, from new media to established banks, have larger usability and design teams than ever before.” (John Zapolski and Jared Braiterman – Boxes and Arrows)

“eXtreme Programming and other Agile processes provide a middle ground between chaos and over-elaborate processes sometimes referred to as ‘death by documentation’. A particular attrtactive aspect of the Agile approach for many teams is its willingness to accomodate change no matter how advanced development might be. However, this very flexibility can cause user interface design issues and ensuing usability problems. Adopting a user-centered approach to user interface design can address these issues, as I hope the following simulated conversation between a user-centered design consultant and an XP team leader will explain.” (William Hudson – Syntagm) – courtesy of beth mazur

All files on this site are PDFs. (MIT Virginia Tech)

“Personas are power tools that give a much-needed focus to interface design projects.” (Alison J. Head – Information Today)

Presentation slides by Donald A. Norman (IBM Ease of Use Conference 2003)

“Every design is defined by three basic components: inspiration, tools and people.” (Maria Acosta – Thread Inc.)

“I’m increasingly convinced that, as networks of smart objects permeate our environment, people’s attitudes toward technology will become more animist. In other words, we’ll start to anthropomorphize our stuff.” (Mike Kuniavsky – Adaptive Path)

“An organization is a form of group. Groups can be elitist. Groups are always trying to define who is in and who is out. To a great many organizations, the customer is on the outside. To be a success, a website must live on the outside.” (Gerry McGovern)

“Putting the user at the center of the process and setting the metrics for project success implies that user-centered design is the ‘right’ approach. Assuming UCD is THE right approach suggests that there is a sort of moral imperative to pursue a user-centered methodology.” (Jess McMullin – Boxes and Arrows)

“Personas, like all powerful tools, can be grasped in an instant but can take months or years to master.” (Alan Cooper – Cooper)

“The most valuable asset of a successful design team is the information they have about their users. When teams have the right information, the job of designing a powerful, intuitive, easy-to-use interface becomes tremendously easier. When they don’t, every little design decision becomes a struggle.” (Jared Spool – User Interface Engineering)

“If IDEO is the yang of the design industry, then Sony is the yin as the two companies ideologies are diametrically opposed.” (Simon Tsang – The Age) – courtesy of fabio sergio

“Researching the users of your product is extremely important in making it more popular, more profitable, and more compelling. But companies make products, not user research teams. A company needs more than data about its users; it needs to be able to take that knowledge and act on it. Unless the benefits and techniques of user-centered design and research are ingrained in the processes, tools, and mind-set of the company, knowledge will do little to prevent problems.” (Mike Kuniavsky – Usability News)

“Empirical research is finding that users rather than manufacturers are the actual developers of many or most new products and services ñ and that they are a major locus of innovative activity in the economy. This finding opens up new questions and avenues for exploration in fields ranging from economics to management of technology to organizational behaviour to marketing research. Examples are patterns in innovation by users, characteristics of innovating users, design of a user-centered innovation process, economics of a distributed innovation process that includes users as innovators, and social welfare implications of innovations by users.” (MIT) – courtesy of fabio sergio