Usability Do’s And Don’ts For Interactive Design

Added on 27 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“We often talk about how to make our websites more usable, whether it’s tweaking the HTML structure of pages to benefit the user’s process or figuring out how best to display a message via CSS. But we never bring this thought process into our jQuery-based (and other JavaScript-based) elements. How can we enhance the user experience and usability of our jQuery events? Below, we’ll briefly discuss ways to look at the code and the result of our interactive designs and, thus, improve their usability.” (Smashing Magazine)

Search Patterns is Customer Behavior and Business Insights

Added on 27 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
Interview with Peter Morville about his new book Search Patterns – “(…) I’m a skeptic when it comes to grand visions of The Semantic Web. In narrow domains such as medicine, we can develop thesauri (or ‘ontologies’) that define terms precisely and map hierarchical, equivalent, and associative relationships. But these approaches simply don’t scale, and they can’t keep up with the rapid evolution of language and knowledge.” (Bridgeline Digital)

Podcasts from the IA Summit 2010: Day 2

Added on 26 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“This year marks the 11th annual Information Architecture Summit. Our theme is meant to inspire everyone in the community—even those who aren’t presenting or volunteering—to bring their best ideas to the table. As busy practitioners, we rarely have the chance to step back and think about the future of our field—we’re too busy resolving day-to-day issues. By gathering and sharing practical solutions for everyday challenges, we can create more breathing room to plan for what’s to come.” (Jeff Parks – Boxes and Arrows)

The Promise of Using UI Patterns for Large Software Packages Revisited

Added on 26 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“In this case study, we reflect on how a UI pattern-based design for building standard business software affects the user experience and the user-centered design process. We learned that pattern-based design does not optimize the user experience per se. Additional factors, such as user-centered design, prototyping tools, and management support determine the success or failure of the pattern-based approach. Interweaving the factors in the right way is a prerequisite for success.” (Annette Stotz and Udo Arend – SAPDesignGuild)

Intentional Communication: Expanding our Definition of User Experience Design

Added on 26 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Design and content. Content and design. It’s impossible (and stupid) to argue over which one is more important than the other – which should come first, which is more difficult or ‘strategic’. They need each other to provide context, meaning, information, and instruction in any user experience (UX).” (Kristina Halvorson – interactions XVII.3)

Designing For A Hierarchy Of Needs

Added on 26 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the idea of a design hierarchy of needs rests on the assumption that in order to be successful, a design must meet basic needs before it can satisfy higher-level needs. Before a design can ‘Wow’ us, it must work as intended. It must meet some minimal need or nothing else will really matter. Is this true? Or could a design that’s hard to use still succeed because it makes users more proficient or meets certain creative needs? Do you have to get all of the low-level needs exactly right before considering higher-level needs? To answer these questions, let’s start by looking at Maslow’s hierarchy.” (Steven Bradley – Smashing Magazine)

A DIY Guide to Content Strategy

Added on 23 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“You’re a web professional: a designer, developer, information architect, or strategist. Your team has the web design disciplines covered: research, strategy, user experience design, standards-based development, and project management. But something’s going wrong with your projects; the user experience just isn’t meeting your expectations. You’re reasonably sure you know why: there’s a problem with the content. You realise that your team could use some help from the discipline of content strategy, but for whatever reason, hiring a dedicated content strategist isn’t a feasible option. So what can you do to add some content strategy to your projects? Learn how web professionals can practise content strategy for ourselves, through advocacy, improved design processes, and community engagement. And when we have the luxury of a dedicated content strategist, learn how we can engage with the discipline in our everyday practice.” (Jonathan Kahn)

Podcasts from the IA Summit 2010: Day 1

Added on 23 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“This year marks the 11th annual Information Architecture Summit. Our theme is meant to inspire everyone in the community—even those who aren’t presenting or volunteering—to bring their best ideas to the table. As busy practitioners, we rarely have the chance to step back and think about the future of our field—we’re too busy resolving day-to-day issues. By gathering and sharing practical solutions for everyday challenges, we can create more breathing room to plan for what’s to come.” (Jeff Parks – Boxes and Arrows)

Physical Place and CyberPlace: The Rise of Personalized Networking

Added on 21 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Computer networks are social networks. Social affordances of computer supported social networks–broader bandwidth, wireless portability, globalized connectivity, personalization–are fostering the movement from door-to-door and place-to-place communities to person-to-person and role-to-role communities. People connect in social networks rather than in communal groups. In-person and computer-mediated communication are integrated in communities characterized by personalized networking.” (Barry Wellman 2001)