Today is World Usability Day

Added on 13 November 2008 Peter Bogaards
Welcome message by Bill Gates – “It’s about making our world work better. It’s about ‘Making Life Easy’ and user friendly. Technology today is too hard to use. A cell phone should be as easy to access as a doorknob. In order to humanize a world that uses technology as an infrastructure for education, healthcare, transportation, government, communication, entertainment, work and other areas, we must develop these technologies in a way that serves people first. World Usability Day was founded in 2005 as an initiative of the Usability Professionals’ Association to ensure that services and products important to human life are easier to access and simpler to use. Each year, on the second Thursday of November, over 225 events are organized in over 40 countries around the world to raise awareness for the general public, and train professionals in the tools and issues central to good usability research, development and practice.”

The Design Manifesto

Added on 13 November 2008 Peter Bogaards
“Here is the ‘manifesto’ of our Global Agenda Council/Design group that came out of an amazing day of discussion in Dubai about the financial/economic crisis and what design thinking can do to help reshape the big issues of the day. It is an excellent summary of the state of art of design and innovation.” (Bruce Nussbaum) – courtesy of marcelzwiers

DD4D: Data Designed for Decisions

Added on 12 November 2008 Peter Bogaards
“Data tells the stories of our lives and societies, but it needs intermediaries to find it, to visualise it, to communicate it, to help understand it and act on it. In a joint conference the International Institute for Information Design and the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development take up the subject from their respective positions, exploring how people interact with (statistical) data. How can data help people understand, and how does understanding help people to take action?” (International Institute for Information Design)

Newspaper Website Design: Trends And Examples

Added on 12 November 2008 Peter Bogaards
“News websites can be intriguing to examine from a design perspective. Regardless of what type of news they cover, they all face the challenge of displaying a huge amount of content on the home page, which creates plenty of layout, usability and navigational challenges for the designer. The lessons that can be learned from examining how news websites address these challenges can be valuable for designers who work with other types of websites, including ones with blog theme designs.” (Steven Snell – Smashing Magazine)

First Fictions and the Parable of the Palace

Added on 5 November 2008 Peter Bogaards
“Welcome to the inaugural installment of ‘Everyware: Designing the Ubiquitous Experience“, a column exploring user experience and design in the era of ubiquitous computing. Through this column, interested readers can investigate the expanding wavefront of the ubiquitous experience as it impacts design, covering topics ranging from ubiquitous computing to near-field communication, pervasive computing, The Internet of Things, spimes, ubicomp, locative media, and ambient informatics.” (Joe Lamantia – UXmatters)

Common Visual Design Misconceptions

Added on 5 November 2008 Peter Bogaards
“Recently, I had the opportunity to reflect on common misconceptions about the role of visual design that are still prominent in the beliefs of executives, product leaders, engineering managers, and marketing professionals. Is there anything team members can do to illustrate certain beliefs are wrong? What could they do to demonstrate the truth about visual design to coworkers and stakeholders?” (Luke Wroblewski – UXmatters)

Prototyping with XHTML

Added on 31 October 2008 Peter Bogaards
“While prototyping with XHTML isn’t tied to a specific design process, iterative development seems to effectively leverage its strengths. There are many reasons for this, but perhaps the most significant is that in both cases the prototype, and later the application itself, doubles as a specification. We’ll explore what that means in a bit, but first let’s walk through a suggested process for prototyping with XHTML.” (Anders Ramsay and Leah Buley – Boxes and Arrows)

Designing universal knowledge

Added on 30 October 2008 Peter Bogaards
“Knowledge is power. If one possesses a collection of the ‘universal knowledge’ of the world, one has ultimate power. Establishing comprehensive, global collections of knowledge already fascinated mankind thousands of years ago. Today, modern communication and information technologies offer quick and prompt collecting, high memory capacities and wide-ranging access. In addition, globalization and the Internet advance a mentality which moves away from the local and regional towards the international and universal. Collections of knowledge, such as archives, encyclopaedias, databases and libraries, also follow this trend. They are engaged in a race against time in both the technological and creative area. Their clearly formulated aim is to establish for us a complete and up-to-date collection of ‘universal knowledge’.” (Gerlinde Schuller – Information Design Studio)