EuroIA 2006 Berlin revisited
“EuroIA 2006 was a great success. I’ve dwelled a bit on the not-so-good presentations, but I’ll get back with details on the great stuff too.” (Stig Andersen)
Metrics for Heuristics: Quantifying User Experience 2/2
“An information architect’s evaluation of user experience is often highly subjective and gains value with an evidence-based understanding produced by web analytics. User testing and web analytic data are currently the only ways to verify the heuristic assumptions upon which a website is redesigned.” (Andrea Wiggins – Boxes and Arrows)
No more information seeking models please
“Most models of information seeking behavior look at more than behavior, they consider cognition which is quite natural for information activities, except that behavior and cognition are not the same.” (Andrew Dillon – InfoMatters)
The Coming Age of Magic
“(…) I presented a short history of the desktop metaphor as a way of thinking about screen-based user interface design and laid out my thoughts for why magic should be a metaphor for the user experience design of ubiquitous computing.” (Mike Kuniavsky – Orange Cone) – courtesy of adaptivepath
Minimal-Feedback Hints for Remembering Passwords
“Passwords are a widely used mechanism for user authentication and are thus critical to the security of many systems. To provide effective security, passwords should be known to the password holder but remain unknown to everybody else. While personal information and real words are relatively easy for a user to remember, they make weak passwords from a security point of view because vulnerable to informed guessing and dictionary attacks.” (Morten Hertzum – uiGarden)
Experiencing Experience
“Technically, most designers are attempting to design meaning, not experience. The experience of eating a cookie, for instance, can be described in very clear terms. But, capturing the unique meaning which that cookie had for one individual was what made Proust’s madeleine the stuff of great literature. A simple cookie for one person is a trigger for emotion-laden memories for another. But, most often, designers must create experiences for people they don’t know. So, how can designers create opportunities for meaningful experiences for people they don’t know? By paying close attentions to patterns.” (Tom Guarriello – UX Magazine)
Why award-winning websites are so awful
“Practical and functional websites rarely win prizes for design but they do win sales and make profits.” (Gerry McGovern)
What Is User Experience Design?
“(…) the field of user experience design takes a broad approach to the enhancement of products, combining elements from various fields to create an optimal and well-rounded experience. This wholistic methodology is often more adept at helping to reach a set of goals that encompass passive and active user interactions–goals determined both by users and the business or organization.” (Paradyme) – courtesy of usernomics
What’s The Best Way To Communicate Patterns?
“Patterns communicate design ideas from one designer to another.” (Yahoo! User Interface Blog)
Designing Breakthrough Products: Going Where No User Has Gone Before
“Because evolutionary products are far more common than revolutionary products, UCD techniques have focused more on how to approach projects for which the problem space is fairly well understood – both by UX designers and by users. UCD techniques are best at helping us determine how to solve such problems – which is not to downplay the challenges of those sorts of projects. However, the situation is different for breakthrough products, where potential users often have difficulty imagining a solution to a problem.” (George Olsen – UXmatters)
Designing the Mobile User Experience
“One of our biggest challenges in designing mobile services has been our inability to connect with our customers. We’re making the same mistakes we’ve made when designing for other media, but the constraints inherent in mobile devices exacerbate those mistakes. We can overcome this challenge by following the user-centered design process we’ve been advocating and using all along. We should do the user research that’s necessary to understand what users need and deliver meaningful, valuable products and services that integrate well with and enhance our customers’ lifestyles. Put simply, the opportunity for the mobile Web is huge, and UX professionals are the right people to help companies realize this opportunity. It’s yours, take it.” (Richard F. Cecil – UXmatters)
Characteristics of new media in the Internet age
“(…) this article explores new artistic media and forms of expression emerging in the twenty-first century, and the effects of digital networking on them. The article starts with a historical view of the arts and the social changes that accompany them, and features a list of seven characteristics for new media on the Internet.” (Andy Oram)
Adaptive Path’s UX Week Podcasts
“IT Conversations is sharing a selection of presentations from our UX Week 2006 event. Sessions offered up so far: Chiara Fox on ‘Understanding Your Content’, Dan Saffer on ‘What is Interaction Design?’, and, most recently, Steve Portigal on ‘Cross-cultural Research’.” (Adaptive Path)
Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute
“In most online systems, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)
EuroIA 2006 in Review
“(…) there was little or no concession made for the multilingual nature of the event. The conference was conducted in English – which was just as well for me (there’s nothing like being in Europe to make you feel like a neanderthal for speaking only one language) – and understandable as English was the common tongue. Yet I couldn’t help but think that it seemed kind of strange that the proceedings were, well… so English.” (Leisa Reichelt – disambuity)
IA or not IA
“I no longer identify myself professionally as an IA, that is to say, and I’m no longer so terribly interested in attending or presenting at IA-centric events.” (Adam Greenfield – V2)
Form-Content-Essence: Designing Markup for Information Representation
“To define a web-format that addresses existing problems and requirements, and will last, needs a lot of work and consultation. XHTML2 is close to ready now, and will go to last call this year we expect. XForms is already in widespread use. Even if XHTML2 is not available in browsers, it is excellent as a content language that can be transformed on the fly. Several large companies are already doing this. (Steven Pemberton)
IA for Web Developers
“My recent presentation at Web Directions South on Informaiton Architecture for Web Developers is now here live online.” (Thomas Vander Wal)
Redefining Content Management
“Content publishing and management can be extremely complex, and therefore not surprisingly hard to do. Having said that, the biggest problems with content management lie not in that complexity, but in how we approach our solutions.” (D. Keith Robinson – Vitamin)
Changing Approaches to Metadata at bbc.co.uk: From Chaos to Control and Then Letting Go Again
“More and more we expect to break the back of the work with automation while using human brainpower to perfect the results. We will have to harness the power of folksonomies while remembering there is stuff our audience will demand we know about our own content. Most of all, we have to ensure our choices of metadata systems are made with the user in mind.” (Karen Loasby – ASIS&T Bulletin Oct/Nov 2006)