Why you need a user experience vision (and how to create and publicise it)

Added on 5 January 2011 Peter Bogaards
“Many design teams launch into development without a shared vision of the user experience. Without this shared vision, the team lacks direction, challenge and focus. This article describes how to use the ‘Design the Box’ activity to develop a user experience vision, and then describes three ways of publicising the vision: telling a short story; drawing a cartoon showing the experience; and creating a video to illustrate the future.” (David Travis ~ UserFocus)

The Relevance of User Experience: Using Every Opportunity to Impress Users

Added on 5 January 2011 Peter Bogaards
“Is it possible to calculate the ROI of great design? What about the cost-per-acquisition of a customer sold on User Experience? There are no second chances for first impressions, and even the smallest opportunity is a chance to ‘Wow’ users. What you do with that opportunity can spark a chain of events that can make or break your business.” (Nicolas Thomas ~ UX Booth)

New media and literacies: Amateurs vs. professionals

Added on 4 January 2011 Peter Bogaards
“New media are not supportive of critical thinking and conscious selection of information. Literacies of our age stress critical thinking and take many forms. Despite differences and similarities among information literacy, media literacy and digital literacy, all of them have to differentiate between amateur and professional contents produced in new media. Similarly to the traditional division of labor among libraries, the needs behind amateurism and professionalism have to be satisfied differently.” (Tibor Koltay ~ First Monday 16.1)

The Joy of Stats

Added on 31 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“An hour-long documentary on statistics and infoviz produced by the BBC. Documentary which takes viewers on a rollercoaster ride through the wonderful world of statistics to explore the remarkable power thay have to change our understanding of the world, presented by superstar boffin Professor Hans Rosling, whose eye-opening, mind-expanding and funny online lectures have made him an international internet legend.” courtesy of jasonkottke

A Contentmas Epiphany

Added on 22 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Be honest, did you immediately think of a sketch or mockup you have tucked away? Or some clever little piece of code you want to fiddle with? Now ask yourself, why would you start designing the container if you haven’t worked out what you need to put inside? Anyway, forget the content strategy lecture; I haven’t given you your gifts yet. I present The Twelve Days of Contentmas! This is a simple little plan to make sure that your personal site, blog or portfolio is not just looking good at the end of these twelve days, but is also a really useful repository of really useful content.” (Relly Annett-Baker ~ 24Ways)

An Interview with Jesse James Garrett

Added on 21 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“I’m pretty excited that the new edition of Elements of User Experience is out – the first edition was one of the first books I really connected with, and it’s great to see a refresh. What are some of the highlights in this version? (…) There is so much evident care and craft in the Rosenfeld Media books – I think they now occupy the place O’Reilly books held 15 years ago as definitive works.” (Russ Unger ~ Peachpit)

The Importance of Designing an Experience Culture

Added on 21 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Attitudes and behaviors are constantly being shaped within organizations. It’s the reason there are performance reviews, processes and procedures, and role expectations. If business leaders want to foster a specific culture, then all opportunities, activities, and expectations of their staffs will be measured against the success of exemplifying that culture. To design is to plan something for a specific role, purpose, or effect – to work out its form. Company culture is designed in every conversation, and in every bit of feedback and evaluation criteria. It’s possible to control the corporate atmosphere by choosing which behaviors to support and encourage, and which to discourage. Cultures grow organically, but they are actively designed.” (Cynthia Thomas ~ UX Magazine)

From Wireframes to Code (1/2)

Added on 20 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Within many companies, the use of wireframes in user experience design can be a contentious issue. People typically think of wireframes simply as artifacts designers create when generating design concepts, then later discard. Why not create a design artifact that is not disposable, but instead, one your team can convert to actual production code? Is this Holy Grail of the design process a good idea? Is it even possible? Or does the answer depend on the project, the team, and its agility? This first part in a two-part series takes an in-depth look at the process of converting wireframes to code.” (Bill Schmidt ~ UXmatters)

Accessibility First for a Better User Experience for All

Added on 20 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“All of these problems affect their general usability for people without disabilities, though not as severely. The more crowded or complex a screen, the harder it is to understand it and learn to use it effectively. Just as making hard decisions about priorities for a mobile user interface can pay off in a better Web version of an application, designing for better accessibility can make a product more usable for everyone.” (Whitney Quesenbery ~ UXmatters)

The nature of information science: Changing models

Added on 16 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“This paper considers the nature of information science as a discipline and profession. It is based on conceptual analysis of the information science literature, and consideration of philosophical perspectives, particularly those of Kuhn and Peirce. It is argued that information science may be understood as a field of study, with human recorded information as its concern, focusing on the components of the information chain, studied through the perspective of domain analysis, in specific or general contexts. A particular aspect of interest is those aspects of information organization, and of human information-related behaviour, which are invariant to changes in technology. Information science can also be seen as a science of evaluation of information, understood as semantic content with respect to qualitative growth of knowledge and change in knowledge structures in domains. This study contributes to the understanding of the unique ‘academic territory’ of information science, a discipline with an identity distinct from adjoining subjects.” (Lyn Robinson and Murat Karamuftuoglu ~ Information Research 15.4)

An interview with Bill Verplank

Added on 16 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Back in the late 1980s, Bill Verplank, when working at what would become IDEO, stopped calling what he did ‘user-interface design’, and instead coined a new term: ‘interaction design’. His work over the years has included Xerox Parc, IDTwo/IDEO, and collaborations with design schools such as the RCA, MIT and Carnegie Mellon. Steve Baty talked with him about interaction design.” (Steve Baty ~ Johnny Holland Magazine)

Testing Content

Added on 14 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Nobody needs to convince you that it’s important to test your website’s design and interaction with the people who will use it, right? But if that’s all you do, you’re missing out on feedback about the most important part of your site: the content. Whether the purpose of your site is to convince people to do something, to buy something, or simply to inform, testing only whether they can find information or complete transactions is a missed opportunity: Is the content appropriate for the audience? Can they read and understand what you’ve written?” (Angela Colter ~ A List Apart)