“A comparison of methods for understanding mobile behavior to inform technology design.” (Mobile Community Design) – courtesy of john rhodes

“The purpose of this special issue is to consider the spectrum of approaches being used by different libraries and service providers as they negotiate the future with their user communities. At a time when a digital information future is increasingly certain, this timely and much needed collection of articles explores, documents and reflects on the theories, practices, and experiments focusing on digital library users.” (Anita Coleman et al. – Journal of Digital Information 5.3)

“A good overview coming out of IBM research of some usability issues of mobile devices in the context of User Centered Design.” (Mobile Community Design)

“The Web is a flexible medium, and designers and users share responsibility for its design. The Web designer still must make design decisions and attempt to accommodate user needs and expectations.” (Sarah Horton – Digital Web Magazine)

“The most important thing about a brainstorming session is what happens after it ends.” (Scott Berkun) – courtesy of column two

“Because typical experiences will differ, the mentality of the typical Internet user, or Homo interneticus, is likely to be significantly different from that of the typical reader of printed works or of writing or of the typical member of purely oral cultures. These differences include deep assumptions about time and space, authority, property, gender, causality and community.” (Michael H. Goldhaber – First Monday 9.6)

“How are user-centred methods going to play a role in developing the mobile communications products and services of the future? This panel debate, a special invitation to CHI 2004, brought together the most qualified people in the industry to show delegates what they have in store.” (Gerred Blyth – Usability News)

“This presentation of the Model of Attraction and Personal InfoCloud was given to the User Interaction with Information Systems class (INFM 702) in the University of Maryland, Master of Information Management program on June 8, 2004.” (Thomas Vander Wal)

“During the past twenty years, user-centered research (UCR) has become an increasingly common and important part of contemporary product development. The origins of this approach to design and development actually stretch back to the beginning of industrial design in America. Starting in the 1940s and 1950s, Henry Dreyfuss, widely considered the father of industrial design in the United States, practiced a method of design that clearly focused on studying people’s behaviors and attitudes as a first step in designing successful products. During the next forty to fifty years, Dreyfuss’ example served as motivation for other highly successful and influential designers (e.g., Robert Probst, Jay Doblin, Niels Different and William Stumpf) to adopt a user-centered research and design approach.” (design philosophy papers)

“An important principle of user interface design is that the user should always feel in control of the software rather than feeling controlled by the software.” (MSDN) – courtesy of column two

“User-centered design professionals pay special emphasis to one type of stakeholder—the users of the system-arguing that user experience needs to be carefully crafted to satisfy user needs. While understanding user needs and goals is certainly necessary, it is often not sufficient for producing a successful design. Apart from an understanding of user needs and perspective, design needs to incorporate the goals and perspective of other stakeholders in order to get their buy-in and be considered a success in the corporate workplace.” (Jonathan Boutelie – Boxes and Arrows)

“Design is disorienting. Especially when you are designing something in a collaborative environment, with multiple stakeholders, pressured deadlines, business objectives and budgetary constraints. We all go into design with the firm belief that the user is our pole star, but so often we lose that focus because of tossing waves, buffeting winds, and the crew screaming in our ears—never mind the dense cloud cover that always seems to obscure that trusty star just when a committee forms to gather requirements.” (Andrew Hinton – Boxes and Arrows)

“I like to say that the Web is about people. It’s been one of my many mantras over the years and it’s becoming more and more apparent to me that I’m not the only one who feels this way.” (D. Keith Robinson – Asterisk)

“Now that the consumer is in control, the industry may simply have to come hat in hand and adjust the expectations it’s built up over the years” (Brian Fuller – EETimes)

“As information technology devices and applications grow in number and importance, the significance of ease of use in their design grows apace. In this issue, twelve papers focus on aspects of design for ease of use as applied to the entire design process, from understanding user requirements to conceptual design, prototyping, field testing, and redesigning. The history and future of User-Centered Design (UCD) and User Engineering (UE) are discussed, and case studies illustrating the role of UCD and UE in many fields are presented. Topics include the design of wireless devices, on-screen documentation, and database management and data visualization systems.” (IBM Systems Journal)

“I spend a lot of time helping clients conduct task analysis to form mental-model diagrams. When teams first start analyzing the interview transcripts they’ve collected, they often run into a confidence issue. ‘How will we know if we get the task groups right?’ This question usually arises because the team doesn’t have the kind of details it needs to identify clear tasks. The problem isn’t in sorting; it’s in the data-gathering stage. If interviews don’t provide details, task sorting becomes much more complex. Fortunately, there are six simple things you can do to improve the quality of your interviews, and clarify task analysis.” (Indi Young – Adaptive Path)

“In the future, computation will be human-centered. It will be freely available everywhere, like batteries and power sockets, or oxygen in the air we breathe. It will enter the human world, handling our goals and needs and helping us to do more while doing less.” (MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory)

“It is NOT enough to just design from intuition and good intentions. We need the benefit of these scientific insights. As we move toward mature usability engineering, institutionalized in organizations, we must have resources to constantly incorporate these insights into our practice.” (Kate Straub – Human Factors International) – courtesy of usability news

“An executive dashboard is an intranet for a select group of users. These users tend to be executives—VPs and above, the people who are the main decision-makers in the company.” (Alex Kirtland – Boxes and Arrows)

“The topic of this thesis is users’ models: the representations users may form of the computer system which they are interacting with. It has been proposed that user interfaces which support the construction of appropriate users’ models facilitate learning and use of computer systems.” (Angela Sasse) – courtesy of iawiki