Dancing with the Cards: Quick-and-Dirty Analysis of Card-Sorting Data

Added on 20 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“User researchers frequently use card sorting to understand how users perceive the structure of a Web site and the ideal way for them to navigate through the site. Usually card sorting starts with doing an inventory of a Web site’s content, then creating a card for each stand-alone piece of content. Researchers recruit participants for a card sort from a Web site’s target audience, then ask them to group the cards into categories that make sense to them.” (Shanshan Ma ~ UXmatters)

Leveraging User Data by Embedding UX Design Knowledge in Products

Added on 20 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“The role of data in a UX design process usually goes something like this: User researchers or UX designers gather data about users and their needs, using a variety of qualitative and quantitative approaches. They then analyze the data—often developing documentation that synthesizes the data, such as a task analysis or a set of personas. Finally, they use their analysis as a basis for making design decisions or influencing the strategy of the broader organization. Throughout this process, UX professionals mediate the relationships between the data that describes users and their requirements, design goals, and business objectives, seeking to align them as closely as possible. This article looks at how we can make this process of data analysis and design—or redesign—more effective by embedding UX design knowledge in computer systems.” (Peter Hornsby ~ UXmatters)

What comes after mobile

Added on 20 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Matt Webb talks about how slightly smart things have invaded our lives over the past years. People have been talking about artificial intelligence for years but the promise has never really come through. Matt shows how the AI promise has transformed and now seems to be coming to us in the form of simple toys instead of complex machines. But this talks is about much more then AI, Matt also introduces chatty interfaces and hard math for trivial things.” (Matt Webb ~ Mobile Monday Amsterdam)

Can Experience be Designed?

Added on 16 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“As in every other field there are con men that fool naive clients using experience design as a slogan. Some just make empty promises, some sell fluffy white papers, some use the slogan to hold pompous speeches, some just upsell naive clients with hot air. (…) Being an active facebook or Twitter user, a talented speaker, a winning sales man or a collector of UXD articles doesn’t make you an expert on user experience design.” (Oliver Reichenstein ~ Information Architects)

Information science as a social science

Added on 15 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“This paper traces the specifics of information science as a social science. The paper examines the background of the social sciences in the history of academic disciplines. The paper discusses the ways in which positivism and interpretativism, the leading traditions of the social sciences, assert themselves in information science as a social science. It is argued that received ideas about the social sciences impact how information science as a social science is perceived. It is also argued that information science as a social science can and should provide valid scientific explanations. This paper distinguishes social interaction as the defining feature of information science as a social science. To this end, the paper proposes global complexity not as a theory or solution, but as a metaphor for information science as a social science to address the pressing issues of our increasingly interconnected world.” (Sylvain K. Cibangu ~ Information Research 15.3)

The mobile experience is nothing like desktop

Added on 14 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“I put together this list of typical differentiating attributes of the two experiences. It’s not 100% correct because in some cases the reverse will be true … for example people using desktop computers are often in a hurry and don’t have time to waste and sometimes people using mobile phones are sitting in a hospital with hours to spare. But it’s a reasonable guide that shows how polarised the experiences are.” (Nathanael Boehm)

Recommendations for usability in practice

Added on 13 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“This is the final version of my recommendations for usability in product development practice, based on a PhD research project at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of TU Delft. In the 25 recommendations I discuss how I would organize a company if the goal is to make usable products. So am I speculating here? Yes, to some extent. But the recommendations are based on evidence I found through the three case studies I conducted. The vast majority of the recommendations were based on actual practices within companies I studied or on suggestions by experienced product development professionals.” (Jasper van Kuik ~ uselog)

Simplicity is Not Overrated, Just Misunderstood

Added on 13 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Usability and user experience design is all about making things simple and easy to use. I never would’ve expected such a contradictory statement coming from some one who co-founded the Nielsen and Norman group, a firm that offers usability consulting, training seminars and research reports. This statement puts a dagger into the back of usability and user experience design.” (UX Movement)

Design With Intent: How designers can influence behavior

Added on 13 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“The central idea behind UCD is that designers create experiences based on a rich and nuanced understanding of observed and implied user needs over time. UCD grew out of a functional, usability-oriented philosophy that began in the workplace, but it has since expanded beyond the purely functional to take into account many dimensions of the user’s experience, including emotional needs and motivations. Using the UCD approach, designers are one step removed from the action. We influence behavior and social practice from a distance through the products and services that we create based on our research and understanding of behavior. We place users at the center and develop products and services to support them. With UCD, designers are encouraged not to impose their own values on the experience.” (Robert Fabricant ~ Design Observer)

Mobile HCI 2010 Tutorials

Added on 12 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“After more than 10 years of Mobile HCI, providing an overview of the state of the art becomes more and more challenging. During the tutorial days of Mobile HCI 2008 & 2009, a number of well-known researchers in Mobile HCI gave overviews of the state of the art and cover many of the relevant topics. The tutorials also introduced the must read papers in this domain. The audience varied and included new students starting a PhD in Mobile HCI, practitioners wanting a quick survey of the state of the art and educators wishing to get an overview of Mobile HCI for their own teaching.” (Enrico Rukzio) – courtesy of Wolf Noeding

The auteur theory of design

Added on 9 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Why is it that some projects never rise to the level of the talent of those who made it? It’s oft said regarding good work that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But sometimes the whole is less than the sum of its parts—a company or team comprised of good people, but yet which produces work that isn’t good. In his session, John Gruber will explain his theory to explain how this happens—in both directions—based on the longstanding collaborative art of filmmaking. Learn how to recognise when a project is doomed to mediocrity, and, more importantly, how best to achieve collaborative success.” (John Gruber ~ dConstruct 2010)

Quality Assurance as Applied to User Experience Design

Added on 8 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Of course verifying the integrity of the user experience is the role of the UX and design teams. While this may be true, many do not approach verifying all elements of a user experience with the same rigor as technical QA. This is in part because of easily made assumptions that once a design is near finalized or in development that it’s already been finalized from a UX standpoint. However, there are many elements of the user experience that need to be reviewed at this stage of the development process.” (Catriona Cornett ~ inspireUX)

On defining UX

Added on 7 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Information architects, interaction designers, researchers, academics. They are all UX professionals and not necessarily involved in the broad process, but are a cog in the machine. (…) Just like the debate about whether designers should be able to write HTML, this discussion is just not as black and white as every one is making out. There’s a whole lot of grey in there.” (Mark Boulton)

Strategic Content Management

Added on 7 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“The rise of content strategy is dealing the content management industry a huge kick up the backside. In the web’s Wild West era, the CMS was run by the IT department—or sometimes a lone webmaster who knew HTML—so CMS choices were based on features, price, and cultural fit, rather than web or content strategy. It was the classic IT drill: selection committees, feature matrices, and business lunches with men wearing neckties.” (Jonathan Kahn ~ A List Apart)

Why I think Ryan Carson doesn’t believe in UX Professionals, and why I do

Added on 6 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“I think the reason Ryan thinks that ‘UX professional’ is a bullshit job title designed to ‘over-charge naive clients’ is because he’s never actually been in the position to need one. If you look at Ryans’ background, he worked for agencies in the late nineties and early noughties when the field of user experience was still in it’s infancy. As such I suspect that he’s never worked with a team of dedicated UX people.” (Andy Budd)

No knowledge but through information

Added on 6 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“This article argues for the following: (1) Information is a thing to be handled and controlled; knowledge is not. (2) Knowledge can be managed only indirectly, through the management of information. (3) Personal knowledge management is, therefore, best regarded as a subset of personal information management — but a very useful subset addressing important issues that otherwise might be overlooked.” (William Jones ~ First Monday 15.9)