Conversations with the past: Hermeneutics for designers

Added on 1 December 2014 Peter Bogaards

Allways good to look back into the future. The cultural heritage we can use from.

“When we think about our work as designers, we imagine ourselves with our head in the future, surrounded by latest ideas of how things will be: the natural user interface, the internet of things, self-driving cars, ubiquitous computing. Within this world it’s easy to forget that the future is just a thin sliver on top of an enormous past. All that we think, all we know, everything we can imagine, comes from this past, and has been shaped by thousands of years of human history. We sometimes like to imagine that the future comes to us as a simple continuations of our past activities, but quietly we all know that it’s more complicated. The past is full of unfinished projects, disappeared companies, dusty books and long forgotten heroines. Deep in our past there are thousands of visions of different worlds and different lives. There are the great works of philosophers, painters, sculptors and interaction designers no longer known and no longer understood waiting to be rediscovered.”

(Sjors Timmer a.k.a. @sjors ~ Medium)

The next era of designers will use data as their medium

Added on 1 December 2014 Peter Bogaards

We used to call it Information Visualization of InfoGraphics. What’s in a name.

“The software industry today is in need of a new kind of designer: one proficient in the meaning, form, movement, and transformation of data. I believe this Data Designer will turn out to be the most important new creative role of the next five years.”

(Mark Rolston ~ Wired)

Breaking fresh ground in human–media interaction research

Added on 28 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

It’s that time of the year for trends of the future, so I thought…

“Human–media interaction research is devoted to methods and situations where humans individually or collectively interact with digital media, systems, devices, and environments. Novel forms of interaction paradigms have been enabled by new sensor and actuator technology in the last decades, combining with advances in our knowledge of human–human interaction and human behavior in general when designing user interfaces.”

(Anton Nijholt ~ Frontiers in ICT)

What you know about information architecture, might not be true

Added on 26 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

But as you also know, common knowledge is not as common as you think it is.

“You don’t hear the term information architecture much anymore. There is a lot of talk about understanding the users needs and delivering appropriate content. But, little about how the user finds that content. This is because it is a subject that is thoroughly covered. There are some great books on the subject and so bloggers don’t feel they have much to add. The problem is that when a subject has been so well covered, it moves into the realm of common knowledge. We all think we understand information architecture. Yet, it is a specialist area and the things we think we know may not be correct.”

(Paul Boag ~ Boagworld)

The Patient Experience movement moment

Added on 24 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

The experience movement is moving on. In all countries, industries and institutions.

“For years, the patient experience movement has continued to gain momentum. From a novel concept, there is an emerging consensus that the patient experience is a fundamental aspect of provider quality; one that complements established clinical process and outcome measures but is neither subsumed nor secondary to them. An increasing volume of research as encouraged by publications such as Patient Experience Journal show this to be true. As the expectation of a high-quality patient experience becomes the norm, these developments have brought us to what we call the patient experience movement moment and there is little doubt that the patient experience has become, and is poised to remain, a central concern in healthcare for many years to come.”

(William Lehrman PhD, Geoffrey Silvera MHA, and Jason A. Wolf PhD ~ Patient Experience Journal 1.2)

When Information Design is a matter of life or death

Added on 18 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

Besides medical information, Tufte also showed the disaster with the Challenger (28 january 1986) was due to bad information design as well.

“(…) design and writing has the potential to make a real difference in regard to medical errors and that design, writing, and production of a medicine information leaflet can have a real positive effect on people’s health. The design of medicine information leaflets provides some interesting challenges because they might not be seen as a typical creative graphic design job. Just because they do not contain overly designed text or graphics, however, does not mean creativity is not needed, in fact creativity is usually lacking in leaflets typically produced.”

(Thomas Bohm ~Boxes and Arrows)

The making of a UX designer

Added on 18 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

Learning from the essentials of Greek theatre allways helps any designer for experiences.

“The most successful UX professionals aren’t just good at the basic skills that their profession requires. They are well-rounded, self-aware, empathetic, problem-solving beings. Mastery of these soft skills sets a person apart and makes the difference between being employable and being exceptional. The thing is: many people haven’t really received training to master these skills. There aren’t that many classes that can teach you these skills. But any person who has trained in theater knows that everything you do in theater helps to foster the development of the whole person. And this is how theater has been the making of me as a UX Designer.”

(Traci Lepore a.k.a. @traciuxd ~ UXmatters)

Five things digital marketers should know about user experience

Added on 12 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

Start with five, then another five, then another five, and then…

“User experience is becoming an increasingly popular feature of the digital landscape. But as digital marketers, we don’t always have a clear view of what it is, and how it impacts our work.(…) In this article, I’ll brief digital marketers on some of the fundamentals of user experience, and how it impacts their work.”

(Kristin Low ~ Mashable)

Redefining value, to business and to society

Added on 10 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

Great to see former Vivid Studios director Nathan evolving along.

“All value only emerges in the context of a relationship and the best value lies beyond the qualitative kinds taught to businesspeople (like price and performance). The opportunity to create the most and best value, over the long term, requires us to understand qualitative issues that drive decisions, meaning, and satisfaction. In this way, service design can strategically drive value in businesses (and even NGOs).”

(Nathan Shedroff a.k.a. @nathanshedroff ~ SDN Global Conference videos)

The complexity of the Internet of Things requires experience design solutions

Added on 7 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

Experience as the design holism for humans.

Interview with Claire Rowland: “You can’t treat it as making a single device or making an app; if you do those things in isolation, you may do them individually very well, but you’re not necessarily going to come up with a great overall experience.”

(Mary Treseler a.k.a. @marytreseler ~ O’Reilly Radar)

At the crossroads of chaos and calamity

Added on 7 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

See how IBM is revitalizing Design in its organization.

“In a 1966 memo to all IBM employees, then-Chairman and CEO Thomas J. Watson, Jr. declared, Good design is good business. At that point in history, IBM used design to demystify technology when computing was new. Almost half a century later, IBM is using great design to create enterprise-class products that people love to use to get their work done. Scaling modern design across a portfolio of thousands of products that serve clients in more than 170 countries is much more than a two-pizza team challenge—and we like it that way.”

(Phil Gilbert a.k.a. @philgilbertsr ~ AIGA Gain conference 2014)

Designing to co-designing to collective dreaming: Three slices in time

Added on 6 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

Or how design can make the world a better place.

“Over the past 30 years, almost every aspect of doing design has changed. We still seem to be in the middle of a transition to greater entanglement and complexity, but with greater involvement of people and, hopefully, more value contributed by the design capabilities of many. We can anticipate these uncertainties with hope or fear. But if we can use design thinking, making, and enacting to visualize and explore the future together, then we will be able to harness our collective creativity to serve our collective dreams.”

(Liz Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers ~ ACM Interactions nov/dec 2014)

Connecting government, libraries and communities: Information behavior theory and information intermediaries in the design of LibEGov.org

Added on 4 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

InfoScience meets eGov.

“As e-government grows in scope and complexity, an increasing number of e-government services have surpassed the digital technology access and literacy of many members of the public. The “digitally excluded” often seek information intermediaries — such as public libraries and other community anchor institutions — to bridge their information needs and e-government systems. The purpose of this paper is to examine the phenomenon of user-librarian-agency government interaction within the context of the information worlds framework. In this paper, the authors describe the data — surveys, case studies, interviews, site visits, and usability and accessibility testing — used to analyze the needs of the public, libraries, and government agencies.”

(Paul T. Jaeger, Ursula Gorham, John Carlo Bertot, Natalie Greene Taylor, Elizabeth Larson, Ruth Lincoln, Jonathan Lazar, and Brian Wentz ~ First Monday 19.11)

The rise of the phablet: Designing for larger phones

Added on 3 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

Screen-sizes are not the driving force for designers. Humans are.

“I’ve read many articles lately that tell us the new iPhone 6 series will force all of us to change the way we approach UI design for mobile phones. Well, it may for designers who still focus only on iOS and pretend the rest of the world does not exist. But large-screen, portable devices have been around for a long time, and those of us who design for every platform have been considering them in our designs since at least 2011. In fact, larger, touchscreen, handheld devices were available as far back as the Apple Newton, with its 5.25-inch screen. So far in 2014, about a third of all the smartphones sold have screens that are over 5 inches on the diagonal – even before Apple got on the large-screen bandwagon. Not just worldwide sales either. Even in the US, large-screen phones are a huge force, so you can use information about how people use them today.”

(Steven Hoober ~ UXmatters)

Beyond the blueprint: Strategic service design deliverables

Added on 3 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

Deliverables were called Documents a few decades ago.

“Service design, or the design of value exchange between a service provider (company) and a service participant (customer), is an approach with enormous potential; delivering on that potential requires action. Service design is meant to inspire and direct action in the form of implementation. To make deliverables that drive action, I propose three key considerations.”

(Shahrzad Samadzadeh a.k.a. @shahrsays ~ Cooper Journal)

An introduction to user research techniques: Ways to understand your users and their needs

Added on 3 November 2014 Peter Bogaards

Research is the foundation for design to make informed decisions.

“This guidance provides a broad overview of the methods and techniques available to conduct user research. More detailed guidance on each of these techniques can be found in the links below. User research can be categorised into 2 broad themes: product research and strategic research.”

(Gov.uk)