Information as a Material

Added on 11 October 2010 Peter Bogaards
“This talk will discuss what it means to treat information as a material, the properties of information as a design material, the possibilities created by information as a design material, and approaches for designing with information. Information as a material enables The Internet of Things, object-oriented hardware, smart materials, ubiquitous computing, and intelligent environments.” (Mike Kuniavsky ~ Kicker Studio D3)

The IxD Library: A collection of materials related to interaction design

Added on 7 October 2010 Peter Bogaards
“(…) a collection of books, articles, and presentations of interest to interaction designers. It attempts to not be the definitive collection of every piece of content about interaction design, only the best and most influential. It is also strictly (as is possible) about interaction design and not usability, information architecture, visual design, human factors, or even general experience design, although certainly all of those fields affect and exist alongside interaction design in the field.” (About)

Visualisations in Service Design

Added on 5 October 2010 Peter Bogaards
“The thesis provides an academic basis on the use of visualisations in service design. It is concluded that it seems like the service design community currently sees services as being not-goods, a line of thought other service disciplines have discarded the last ten years and replaced with a view of services as the basis for all transactions. The analysis highlights areas where there is a need to improve the visualisations to more accurately represent services.” (Fabian Segelström)

Prototyping Theory: Understanding How Prototyping Practices Affect Design Results

Added on 4 October 2010 Peter Bogaards
“This research examines aspects of the creative process such iteration and comparison, two key strategies for discovering contextual design variables and their interrelationships. We found that, even under tight time constraints when the common intuition is to stop iterating and start refining, iterative prototyping helps designers learn. Our experiments also indicate that creating and receiving feedback on multiple prototypes in parallel— as opposed to serially — leads to more divergent ideation, more explicit comparison, less investment in a single concept, and better overall design performance. Most recently, we found that groups who produce and share multiple prototypes report a greater increase in rapport, exchange more verbal information, share more features, and overall, reach a better consensus.” (Stanford HCI Group)

Inspiration Beyond the Lab

Added on 4 October 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Over the last ten years, both of us have read countless articles about innovation, entrepreneurship, and socially responsible ventures that change the world. The theme that appears to emerge time and time again is the importance of getting out of the office, visiting different cultures, looking outside the bubble we live in, and experiencing new adventures. But it wasn’t until a recent vacation in Costa Rica, where Bryan had the opportunity to see rural farm workers using cell phones to talk with other farm workers—people who appeared to be very poor—that he fully realized the importance of understanding the world beyond that which we encounter on a daily basis.” (Bryan McClain and Demetrius Madrigal ~ UXmatters)

Aligning UX Issues’ Levels of Severity with Business Objectives

Added on 4 October 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Many of us in the field people now generally refer to as user experience have long used levels of severity as a means of indicating the criticality of a product’s or service’s usability issues to clients. Over the past several years, I’ve grown increasingly dissatisfied with the vague and somewhat solipsistic nature of the gradations UX professionals typically use to describe the severity of usability issues. High, medium, and low don’t begin to sufficiently explain the potential brand and business impacts usability issues can have.” (Paul J. Sherman ~ UXmatters)

The Digital Life: Episode 1

Added on 29 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“We are proud to present our first – prototype! – episode of The Digital Life: adventures in design and technology. The purpose of the show is to provide insight into various topics and areas of interest pertaining to the bleeding edge of the industries behind digital technology. Leveraging our years inside the most important and progressive companies in Silicon Valley, we will provide insights and an interesting and ever-changing array of special guests to entertain you while helping your brain grow bigger. Bull Session: InfoViz.” (Involution Studios)

How to measure the effectiveness of web content?

Added on 27 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“(…) I can see two issues that make this a pretty difficult task, and it’s the reason why the above three methods should not be used in isolation. In combination, they help tell the whole story. It is difficult to know what users really read on a page and it is difficult to isolate the effect of content changes from the other influencing factors on a page.” (Rian van der Merwe ~ Elezea)

Testing Accordian Forms

Added on 21 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Web forms are the linchpins of most online businesses and applications. Whether they are responsible for checkout on e-commerce sites, communication on social applications, or any kind of data entry on the web, forms allow people to complete important tasks. And web form design details can have a big influence on how successful, efficient, and happy people feel about the process.” (Luke Wroblewski ~ A List Apart)