Marc Rettig on The History (and Future) of Interaction Design

Added on 13 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
Interview excerpt from the upcoming book ‘Designing for Interaction’ – “Thanks to corporations that are learning the value of integrated teams, interaction designers will find themselves more often part of the team from beginning to end, rather than specialists who are called to make sporadic contributions from time to time.” (Designing for Interaction – August 2006) – courtesy of puttingpeoplefirst

Architecture and the Internet: Designing places in cyberspace

Added on 7 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“By looking at physical architecture as a case study and metaphor for organizing space into meaningful places, this paper explores the possibility of organizing Cyberspace into spatial settings that not only afford social interaction, but, like physical places, also embody and express cultural values. At the same time, because Cyberspace lacks materiality, is free from physical constraints, and because it can only be ‘inhabited’ by proxy, these ‘places’ may not necessarily resemble their physical counterparts.” (Yehuda E. Kalay and John Marx – First Monday Special Issue #5)

Live by the Mockup, Die by the Mockup

Added on 6 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Mockup… The term itself brings to mind the duality inherent in this omnipresent design artifact. It’s both a direct representation of a product experience and a shallow portrayal of an interactive system at the same time. Perhaps the term originated with engineers or product managers intent on pointing out that the mockup was just that: a superficial representation that could never compare to the real product they had to build.” (Luke Wroblewski – UXmatters)

The Role and Evolution of Design in Software Products

Added on 6 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Design professionals often decry the lack of importance and investment their companies place on design. After all, most software projects revolve around a product’s engineering, to the ongoing detriment of its design—not to mention the chagrin of so many designers, who wriggle uncomfortably toward the bottom of the food chain. But there is a good reason for this: products can be very profitable without investing a single penny in interface design—at least, beyond the user interfaces the engineers build. Indeed, at least in the early stages of a market or company, resources dedicated to intentional interface design are often a bonus rather than being viewed as a necessity. Sound crazy? Consider the natural and normal evolution of a software product.” (Dirk Knemeyer – UXmatters)

David Sless’s soap box

Added on 6 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“I have a long list of things that I think may interest you, my reader. But there is no way of choosing – not without a conversation – and this is not a conversation. As the title suggests, it’s a soap box. So I shall go where my gut and keyboard takes me. You are of course free to heckle.” (David Sless – CRIA)

Get Out of Your Lab, and Into Their Lives

Added on 4 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“The proliferation of usability labs is a sign of success for the field of user-centered design. Whether it’s a low-rent lab comprised of a couple adjacent conference rooms, a video camera, and a television, or a fully decked-out space with remote-control cameras, two-way mirrors, an observation room, and bowls of M&Ms — more and more companies are investing in such set-ups. Conducting user tests in labs is probably the most common means of getting user input on projects.” (Peter Merholz – Adaptive Path)

Design and Usability for Emerging Telephony

Added on 3 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Designing a product for the future is not a simple question of making two-way technology go faster, last longer, weigh less, or do more. It’s about understanding how devices tap into people’s lives, about how, when, and why we use technology in the ways we do. Design is a tool that helps to envisage our desires as consumers, our expectations as users, and our impulses as human beings. These deep emotional enablers are the ones that tell us how to bring together chips, screens, and microprocessors.” (B.J. Fogg et al. – O’Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference)

LIFT06 Blog

Added on 2 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
Audio/Video Presentations included – “About teaming talented observers, explorers, and builders with people whose work depends on understanding current challenges and creative solutions presented by emerging technologies. Attendees will face cutting edge business models, bold predictions, radical thinking — ideas to inject into their own part of the planet. LIFT has a simple goal: connect people who are passionate about new applications of technology and propel their conversations into the broader world to improve life and work.” (LIFT06)

Fundamental Forms of Information

Added on 1 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Fundamental forms of information, as well as the term ‘information’ itself, are defined and developed for the purposes of information science/studies. Concepts of natural and represented information (taking an unconventional sense of representation), encoded and embodied information, as well as experienced, enacted, expressed, embedded, recorded, and trace information are elaborated. The utility of these terms for the discipline is illustrated with examples from the study of information seeking behavior and of information genres. Distinctions between the information and curatorial sciences with respect to their social (and informational) objects of study are briefly outlined.” (Marcia J. Bates)

Rules for labelling buttons

Added on 1 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“The consequence of the two rules may be that you end up with buttons with labels that are longer than a single word. I think that’s much better than striving for single words that are either confusing (as they might be in our example) or infuriating (as in the many dialog boxes that inform me that some program has done something truly ghastly to my computer, and then expect me to click ‘OK’ as if I’m happy about it).” (Caroline Jarrett – Usability News)

Euro IA Summit Wrap-Up

Added on 31 January 2006 Peter Bogaards
“This was an excellently organized and successful first European IA summit. It gave Europe a platform to show its unique accomplishments, raised awareness of how much IA is going on in Europe, and ultimately put European IA on the IA map without being a subset of the North America summit. (…) there was a definite need to recognize the European identity framed by what Europe can potentially do better than, say, the U.S., such as with mobile technology or with multilingual and multicultural issues. This awareness of a divide was perhaps the single negative aspect one could attribute to the summit, and it was also one of the most revealing. Europe needn’t live in the shadow of North American summits, but will Europeans harness their unique competencies?” (Deborah Gover – Boxes and Arrows)