Interview with Jeff Veen
“In this interview, conducted at the Future of Web Apps Summit, Sarah Drew talks to design and UI expert Jeff Veen, Design Lead at Google.” (vitamin)
User Experience Research
“Creating a ‘killer user experience’ owes a lot to understanding subtle aspects such as User Interface Friction, and that is why I believe it is a very important notion. In many ways, creating an excellent user interface has become the digital equivalent of first-class manufacturing: we need it as users, and we need to understand what contributes to it if we are developing technology.” (Andreas Pfeiffer – ACM Ubiquity)
Creating a Universal Usability Agenda
“How do you keep usability, accessibility, and user experience requirements on track while developing standards? It is part of the very nature of standards to focus on details—and in the process, to sometimes lose sight of the real goals. This is especially true when a standards-making process goes on for a long time, a situation is highly political, or most people are focused on technology issues. For over two years, I’ve worked in just such a situation as part of the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) creating federal standards for voting systems in the United States.” (Whitney Quesenbery – UXmatters)
User Research: Subjectivity and Objectivity in Practice
“There has been an interesting dialogue on the IxD Discussion mailing list in recent months, in which some participants have questioned the need for and benefits of doing user research rather than relying on the experience and intuition of designers. These comments led others to voice concerns about the actual quality of the user research companies are undertaking and the validity of any conclusions they have drawn from the resulting data.” (Steve Baty – UXmatters)
Book Review: Designing Interfaces
“I must admit that I am not a fan of pattern books in general – especially in the field of design. I’ve always felt they are excellent sources of inspiration if you’re crafting a quilt or stenciling a wainscot for your living room, but for more involved design activities, I’ve concluded they are too simplistic—perhaps even limiting. I suspect this opinion was informed by my architecture professor’s intensely negative reaction to Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language and A Timeless Way of Building when they were first published. Years later, when I learned that software engineers were enamored of Alexander’s books, and the emergence of software patterns had its basis in Alexander’s notion of design patterns, I was bemused and skeptical.” (Leo Frishberg – UXmatters)
100 Million Websites
“The early Web’s explosive growth rate has slowed, but even the mature Web is still expanding and recently crossed the 100 M websites mark.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)
Web Science
“Since its inception, the World Wide Web has changed the ways scientists communicate, collaborate, and educate. There is, however, a growing realization among many researchers that a clear research agenda aimed at understanding the current, evolving, and potential Web is needed. If we want to model the Web; if we want to understand the architectural principles that have provided for its growth; and if we want to be sure that it supports the basic social values of trustworthiness, privacy, and respect for social boundaries, then we must chart out a research agenda that targets the Web as a primary focus of attention.” (Tim Berners-Lee et al.)
Weblog-mediated relationship: A co-constructed narrative
Draft chapter – “Although weblogs are perceived as low-threshold tools to publish on-line, empowering individual expression in public, there is growing evidence of social structures evolving around weblogs and their influence on norms and practices of blogging. This evidence ranges from voices of bloggers themselves speaking about the social effects of blogging, to studies on specific weblog communities with distinct cultures (e.g. knitting community described by Wei, 2004, or Goth community described by Hodkinson, 2004), to mathematical analysis of links between weblogs indicating that community formation in the blogosphere is not a random process, but an indication of shared interests binding bloggers together (Kumar, Novak, Raghaven & Tomkins, 2003).” (Lilia Efimova & Andrea Ben Lassoued – Mathemagenic)
Personas: the podcasts
“Too busy to decide if you want to buy the book? Try the podcasts, which take you on a whirlwind tour of the book’s content. The audio comes from a Molecular webinar I did a while back. For the industrious, you can also download the PowerPoint slides used in the webinar (warning: 23MB) for the full audio/visual experience.” (Steve Mulder – Practical Personas)
The Web before the Web
“In September 2004 I was a guest-blogger for the French online magazine fluctuat.net. I wrote a series of short posts about what could be called ‘the precursors of the Web’ – or ‘the Web minus the technology’ (…). Here is an augmented and updated version in English that will be published in the magazine for art and new media aminima N°20. Some of my pieces are described as well, in relation to these precursors.” (Christophe Bruno) – courtesy of brucesterling
Idea 2006: Audio and some slides
Creating Usability and Sociability in Online Social Spaces
“Creating successful online social spaces requires attention to usability and sociability. Online social interaction involves individuals interacting with the technology (i.e., usability) and with each other via the technology (i.e., sociability). Attending to issues such as how users create and send messages, and communicate non-verbal cues are examples of usability design; attending to moderation, facilitation, politeness, leadership, and social support online are examples of sociability design. Both are needed for thriving social interaction online.” (Jenny Preece – Oxford Internet Institute)
We Got Sick of Hearing About Design & China, So we Got on a Plane and Went There
“There has certainly been a great deal of speculation lately regarding the real or perceived rise of Chinese industrial design. We say ‘perceived rise’ to emphasize that their impending world domination in this field is not a foregone conclusion, despite the frequent flurries of listserve chatter and design-conference panel discussions supporting such a notion.” (Bruce M. Tharp and Stephanie Munson – uiGarden.net)
Lakoff’s Women, Fire, & Dangerous Things
OZ-IA 2006 talk – “What every IA should know (…). I think this was the best presentation I have ever given. This is a quite hard topic and somehow it ended up quite hilarious (…)” (Donna Maurer)
David Malouf and Bill Scott on AJAX
UI 11 conference notes – “What’s all the fuss about Web 2.0? Marketing buzz, but really nothing new: All existed separately.” (Jesper Rønn-Jensen – justaddwater)
Interfaces for People, Not Products
“Without cooperation among designers of digital products, the proliferation of complex information systems can lead to unintended consequences – chiefly user fatigue, frustration, and the confusion that results from dealing with a host of variant user interfaces.” (Jonathan Follett – UXmatters)
The Web and Beyond: SIGCHI Conference in Amsterdam
“The Netherlands’ tenth annual SIGCHI Conference took place on Thursday, June 8th, 2006, in Amsterdam. Titled ‘The Web and Beyond’, the conference focused primarily on interaction design for Web 2.0. The conference drew a capacity crowd to the fabulous art deco Theater Tuschinski.” (Pabini Gabriel-Petit – UXmatters)
No Ideas But In Things
“No Ideas But In Things is a library of controls, animations, layouts, and displays that might be a source of inspiration for interaction designers.” (Dan Saffer) – courtesy of elearningpost
Conference Report: The Web and Beyond
“About the so-called Semantic Web Initiative, Jared stated that, as an historian, he wanted proof of its existence. Only when people can show him the Semantic Web will he have an opinion about it. According to Jared Spool, in general, 99.9% of everything is crap.” (Peter J. Bogaards – UXmatters)
Productivity and Screen Size
“A study of the benefits of big monitors fails on two accounts: it didn’t test realistic tasks, and it didn’t test realistic use. Productivity is a key argument for workplace usability, but you must measure it carefully.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)