Interactions interviews Adam Greenfield

Added on 2 July 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Serendipity, solitude, anonymity, most of what we now recognize as the makings of urban savoir faire: it all goes by the wayside. And yes, we’re richer and safer and maybe even happier with the advent of the services and systems I’m so interested in, but by the same token we’re that much poorer for the loss of these intangibles. It’s a complicated trade-off, and I believe in most places it’s one we’re making without really examining what’s at stake.” (Speedbird)

The Future of HCI: Intelligent User Interfaces as Agents of Change (preso)

Added on 2 July 2009 Peter Bogaards
“The predominant interaction paradigm for the last 30 years has been Direct Manipulation. This metaphor is starting to crack under the weight of information it has to deal with. The Indirect Management approach taken by systems such as Intelligent Agents aim to alleviate the cognitive load on users. This presentation shows the constraints we face in the user experience field and some future opportunities and threats.” (Christopher Khalil)

Pattie Maes on interfaces and innovation

Added on 1 July 2009 Peter Bogaards
“There is a wealth of information available, and most of it these days is digitized. I feel that we still don’t have good ways to know what information may be available and what is relevant to whatever we are currently doing, to be able to access information, especially while we are in the middle of something. The current computers and the interfaces that we use, they are not really the ideal information-accessing devices.” (MHT)

Being an Experience-led organization

Added on 1 July 2009 Peter Bogaards
“We’ve heard it before: we should focus on designing for an experience; experiences are fundamentally different design challenges to a product or services; experiences are designed from the outside in. We’re also told that we can apply this experience-centric perspective to tackle problems beyond the design of a product or piece of software. But we don’t often see examples of these ideas being put into practice.” (Steve Baty – Johnny Holland Magazine)

50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills

Added on 1 July 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Effective writing skills are to a writer what petrol is to a car. Like the petrol and car relationship, without solid skills writers cannot move ahead. These skills don’t come overnight, and they require patience and determination. You have to work smart and hard to acquire them. Only with experience, you can enter the realm of effective, always-in-demand writers.” (Smashing Magazine) – courtesy of khalvorson

A Scientific Approach to Infographics

Added on 30 June 2009 Peter Bogaards
“If you’ve been reading this blog regularly for awhile, you know that I occasionally bemoan the sad state of most information graphics. Most of the folks who produce infographics lack guidelines based on solid research. In their attempt to inform, describe, or instruct, most of the infographics that I’ve seen fail-many miserably. I’m thrilled to announce, however, that a new book is now available that takes a great step toward providing the guidelines that are needed for the production of effective infographics.” (Stephen Few – Visual Business Intelligence)

Usability Engineers vs Designers: The Process Problem

Added on 30 June 2009 Peter Bogaards
“A Designer works on a conceptual design with the customer. Then he works out a detailed design into a prototype that can be tested. So far so good. But what goes wrong is that the Usability Engineer is often disconnected to either the design concept or the detailed design. The usability engineer ends up suggesting new designs that totally contradict the conceptual design. The designer is gone. The engineering team implements the changes and the result is a Frankenstein’s monster that despite the best UX resources, fails in the marketplace.” (Jonathan Arnowitz – User Experience in Arnoland)

CMU/Mayo Clinic Podcast on Service Design

Added on 30 June 2009 Peter Bogaards
“The Lab A6 series from College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University presents a podcast on service design featuring Shelley Evenson from the School of Design and CMU alum Maggie Breslin from the Mayo Clinic. The podcast covers some familiar ‘what is service design’ ground but also delves into the service design course at CMU and the Advanced Medical Home project that Mayo and Continuum sponsored last year at the university.” (Jeff Howard – Design for Service)

Building Better User Interfaces

Added on 30 June 2009 Peter Bogaards
“A great user experience starts with the user interface. In this talk, we will explore best practices in user interface design in a learn-by-example approach of the good, bad and the ugly in user interface design. From web sites to rich client, you will learn how areas such as navigation, layout, typography, controls and dialogs can make or break the usefulness of an application. At the end of this talk, you will have the tools and tips you need to bring great user experience through best practices in user interface design.” (Microsoft NL DevDays 2009) – courtesy of all2gether

Redefining content strategy

Added on 29 June 2009 Peter Bogaards
“When we talk about content strategy, then, my contention is that the type of content we include in the definition needs to broaden beyond Web content, as does the recognition that the content, even if just for the Web, includes not only persuasive content, but instructive/informative, user-generated, and even entertainment content.” (Intentional Design)

How to Generate Reader Interest in What You Write

Added on 25 June 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Who has not discovered to their dismay that no one wants to read their most carefully crafted, meritorious, compelling, and passionate writings? Think of all the proposals you have written that no one is interested in. Or the web pages, the blog posts, or the company brochures. Chances are, your failures are linked to an inability to connect with what your readers would be interested in reading.” (Phil Yaffe – ACM Ubiquity)

A conversation with Ed Niehaus, new CEO of Cooper

Added on 24 June 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Working with Steve can be brutal, but you get a chance to see firsthand his tremendous eye for detail and the clarity of his vision. Nobody can judge work like Steve can — design, advertising, engineering — you name it, Steve knows, and look out because he’ll tell you. He has got a hierarchy of judgment that’s really pretty simple: at the top is ‘Insanely great’, which is the best in category that you’ll see in your lifetime. Then there’s ‘really, really, really great’, – and he says it packed with emotion – that’s the best that you’ll see this year or maybe this decade. And, there’s ‘shit’, and that’s the entire hierarchy.” (Cooper Journal)