Early and often: How to avoid the design revision death spiral

Added on 13 January 2007 Peter Bogaards
“One lesson we’ve learned over the past several years here at Cooper is that on the vast majority of our projects, intimate client collaboration is a critical ingredient for success. This is a lesson that we have sometimes learned the hard way; collaboration can be messy, unpredictable and has often forced us to compromise what we thought was a supremely clear and elegant vision. Despite these growing pains, we have now come to embrace the unpredictability and compromise; through well-managed client collaboration, our designs are stronger and are more likely to serve our clients’ needs and satisfy the goals of end users” (David Cronin – uiGarden.net)

Jon Bosak Closing Kenote XML 2006

Added on 13 January 2007 Peter Bogaards
“It’s hard to remember now just how different this community was ten years ago. There were only a few hundred SGML experts in the world, a goodly number of whom came to this conference every year. Very few groups in existence today could boast the level of intelligence, the breadth of interest, and the depth of independence, not to say downright weirdness, evidenced by the SGML community of a decade past.” (XML 2006 Proceedings) – courtesy of timoreilly

The Key to Simplicity: Questions for Donald Norman

Added on 11 January 2007 Peter Bogaards
“Technology can help only if it can adopt a simple structure so that controls for different devices are as similar to one another as possible, making the learning much easier. Multiple purpose controls are an abomination. It is possible to have a single device transform itself into independent devices for controlling different tasks. But here the key is to make the switch from the support of individual technologies and individual devices to the support of cohesive, organized activities.” (Eddie Lopez – User Centered)

Usability in China: Encore

Added on 10 January 2007 Peter Bogaards
“Our objectives were simple yet bold: The leaders of the China chapter wanted to raise the profile of usability engineering and user-centered design in China and create the biggest usability conference in the region. We also wanted an event that the China usability industry could call its own. We figured that the best way to do this was to target people who are passionate about integrating usability into their products and give them a chance to meet, network, and attend talks and tutorials by leaders in user experience.” (Daniel Szuc and Paul J. Sherman – UXmatters)

Documenting Interaction Design: Wire Frames with Visio and Word

Added on 5 January 2007 Peter Bogaards
“There are many ways to document an interaction design and the level of details needed is dependent on what your documenting and for what purpose. There has also been a lot of discussions on what the best tool for creating interaction designs and/or prototypes is (…). The tool you choose is of course also dependent on what you are documenting and for what purpose. It is also much of a personal taste what tool one prefers to work with.” (interakt.nu) – courtesy of Anders Björk

Experience design is not about brands

Added on 4 January 2007 Peter Bogaards
“The problem is that ‘brand’ will always be about the impression companies want to make, and are by their nature an ‘inside-out’ proposition – a company figures out its brand and what it means, and does what it can to communicate or otherwise impart that message to people. Brand always starts with the company. Experience, though, needs to be about the people. What do they want to accomplish, achieve, do? For experience to succeed, it must start with the person, and from there, impress upon the company. ‘Experience’ is outside-in.” (Peter Merholz – Adaptive Path blog)

Pervasive fun

Added on 4 January 2007 Peter Bogaards
“Fun is a pervasive feature of software development, not only for open source programmers but in the area of commercial software development too: Open source developers that are paid for their work are observed to be very motivated and prepared for future effort, especially if they enjoy their development time. Furthermore, the fun that programmers experience functions as a good proxy for their productivity. Therefore, employers that want to enhance the programmers’ productivity can safely invest in an environment of fun for developers in their company.” (Benno Luthinger and Carola Jungwirth – First Monday 12.1)

Review of ‘Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing’

Added on 27 December 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Adam’s thesis is that technology and our experience of it will change significantly in the very near future: computer processing will insinuate its way in into our daily lives deeply and invisibly, in a way that PCs haven’t. It will move from our desktops and server rooms into our walls, our furniture, our clothing, and perhaps even into our bodies; everyware will literally be everywhere.” (Andrew Otwell – heyblog)

Clash of the Titans: Agile and UCD

Added on 18 December 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Agile software development has become fairly popular in the last few years, leaving many UX professionals wondering how user-centered design (UCD) can fit into an extremely fast-paced development process that uses little documentation. User-centered design can involve a variety of techniques that provide insights into users’ wants, needs, and goals, including ethnography, contextual inquiry, contextual interviewing, usability testing, task analysis, and others. But all of these take time-time that an agile development process might not allow. There is hope, though. Agile and UCD methods are not completely at odds with each other-and in some cases, agile development can even enable a more user-centered approach. By taking the time to understand the differences and similarities between agile development and UCD, it’s possible to devise a process that is both user-centered and agile.” (Richard F. Cecil – UXmatters)

Seeing the World in Symbols: Icons and the Evolving Language of Digital Wayfinding

Added on 18 December 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Of all the objects that occupy our digital spaces, there are none that capture the imagination so much as icons. As symbols, icons can communicate powerfully, be delightful, add to the aesthetic value of software, engage people’s curiosity and playfulness, and encourage experimentation. These symbols are key components of a graphic user interface-mediators between our thoughts and actions, our intentions and accomplishments.” (Jonathan Follett – UXmatters)