The third user: Why Apple keeps doing foolish things

Added on 12 March 2013 Peter Bogaards
UX and HCI facing the business community. Always interesting.

“Apple keeps doing things in the Mac OS that leave the user experience community scratching its collective head, things like hiding the scroll bars and placing invisible controls inside the content region of windows on computers. Apple’s mobile devices are even worse: It can take users upwards of five seconds to accurately drop the text pointer where they need it, but Apple refuses to add the arrow keys that have belonged on the keyboard from day-one.”

(Bruce Tognazinni) ~ courtesy of freegorifero

Why service design is so valuable

Added on 7 March 2013 Peter Bogaards
Whatever it takes: usability, user experience, customer experience, or service design.

“To be able to build sustainable businesses, they need to create real value. That’s why service design is so great. Service design makes use of an analytic, methodical process, but combines this with a creative, exploring and customer focused approach. It combines left and right brain thinking. This makes sure your focus will remain on long term value creation, without neglecting short term results. And not only results for your own business, but for all stakeholders involved. And that’s tough. That requires a change in culture. A culture, where the customer is really king. Where innovation is viewed as a responsibility for the entire company. Where people get the chance to try stuff out, and where they don’t get hanged directly if it does not work. Where management includes creative people and functions like chief experience officer exist.”

(Robbert-Jan van Oeveren a.k.a. @RobbertJan ~ Buro Koos)

How the web designs information

Added on 6 March 2013 Peter Bogaards
Great insight into paper versus digital, online, Web, ‘what-have-you’. Now filter design included.

“On paper, information design is monolithic and paternalistic. It is all about static structures page layouts, indexes, tables of contents all specified by a supervising author. On the Web, information design is distributed and democratic. It is all about filters, about designing filters that work for you, and about designing content to work with the filters. (…) Content needs to be designed for the Web. The filters need to be designed for the content.”

(Mark Baker ~ Every Page Is One)

Service design in government: A systematic approach to designing digital government

Added on 4 March 2013 Peter Bogaards
System thinking connected to design thinking. Deep thinking for government digital services.

Disclosure: I work at Informaat (The Netherlands) ~ “In this ten-minute presentation, the new digital reality and grand challenges facing government are identified, and the way in which Informaat’s systematic design approach can be a solution to meet these challenges is outlined. The guiding principles of this approach are putting citizens at the center of design, applying outside-in thinking throughout, and visualizing as much as possible. By harnessing the power of personas, journeys, ecosystems, dialogues, wireframes and prototypes, government services can be delivered in the best possible manner.”

(Mark Fonds ~ BiRDS on a W!RE)

What is the client’s role in user research?

Added on 4 March 2013 Peter Bogaards
Balancing client and user requirements? Out of balance mostly in fav of client.

“Successful user research involves close collaboration between clients and researchers to ensure that the research focuses on the right issues and provides acceptable recommendations. So, in this edition of my column, I’ll speak directly to the clients of researchers about the steps they should take to stay involved throughout a user research project and ensure its success.”

(Jim Ross a.k.a. @anotheruxguy ~ UXmatters)

How ‘Minority Report’ trapped us in a world of bad interfaces

Added on 27 February 2013 Peter Bogaards
Getting from off the track to on the track.

“And at the end of the day, it’s visual accessibility driving this trend. Hopefully one day we’ll reach the point where filmmakers don’t want computers to look like conducting an orchestra, and we’ll be able to back out of this interface cul-de-sac and find our way forward into a genuinely natural way of using our devices.”

(Christian Brown a.k.a. @DeepOmega ~ The Awl)

Reusable divisions of space: Grids and modular design

Added on 26 February 2013 Peter Bogaards
If it has structure, it can be modular.

“Grids follow the same principle of modularity we’ve been considering the last few weeks. In some ways that seems obvious given the terminology modular grids. In other ways though it isn’t quite as obvious that they’re the same thing. However, when you think about how grids divide space and make it easier for us to make layout decisions, I think the modularity of grids falls right in line with the reusable modularity of components and design patterns. They separate concerns, by dividing the space into modular units. The characteristics of these modular units are reusable and through reuse help us more efficiently place information. Finally, the structure of these units in the grid leads to greater consistency in how content is organized.”

(Steven Bradley a.k.a. @vangogh ~ VanSeoDesign)

Jack of all trades, master of none: Danger for interaction design

Added on 26 February 2013 Peter Bogaards
Wondering why it’s ‘User Experience’ but Interaction Design.

“Interaction design is a young field. At least, that’s what we as interaction designers keep telling ourselves. And of course, in comparison to many other fields we are respectfully young. But I get the feeling that we use it more as an excuse to permit ourselves to have an unclear definition of who we are – and who we aren’t.”

(Jeroen van Geel ~ Core77)

When to apply UX effort in agile

Added on 22 February 2013 Peter Bogaards
Likes to write agile in lower case as well.

“(…) when a UX designer is integrated into an agile team and helps model the business processes, interaction channels, and user behaviours at the start of a project, it gives everyone a clear, common vision of what they’re working with, and it provides a foundation to build upon going forward. When a UX designer asks the right questions during evaluation, the models evolve, the requirements become clearer, and ‘bad ideas’ are caught before it’s too late. And, when a UX designer facilitates group thinking and collaboration on a daily basis, design decisions get made faster and team members have a stronger sense of ownership of the final product.”

(Andrew Wright ~ nForm)

Love, hate, and empathy: Why we still need personas

Added on 22 February 2013 Peter Bogaards
Timeline forgets the very first personas for design: Henry Dreyfuss’ Joe and Josephine (1955).

“These steps (solid research, creative analysis, and compelling presentation and rollout) can bring teams back around to a tool that they badly need. Feel free to dump the shallow personas that people roll their eyes at. It’s time to reengage with empathetic work by making your users real, and letting their real voices be heard.”

(Kyra Edeker and Jan Moorman ~ UX Magazine)

UCD Toolbox: Find, learn and apply methods for user-centered design

Added on 22 February 2013 Peter Bogaards
A great initiative. Now, keep it up-and-running. And fresh!

“We believe that creating objects that people love requires the right tools and methods. In fact, using the wrong method can lead to bad design decisions. But with over 200 methods and tools available, which ones could you use in your situation? That’s why we give you access to a large chunk of the worlds’ created methods, tools, techniques and resources for User Centered Design. We are making all of them searchable and executable. You can even publish your own method.”

(About UCD Toolbox)

The origins of the internet in Europe (1895-2013): Collecting, indexing & sharing knowledge

Added on 21 February 2013 Peter Bogaards
Have I been waiting for this one.

“Brussels, Belgium, Europe, 1895: two men shared a dream of ‘indexing and classifying the world’s information’. Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine’s work foreshadowed the network of knowledge that a century later became the Internet with its search engines! Otlet and La Fontaine aimed to preserve peace by assembling knowledge and making it accessible to the entire world. They built an international documentation center called Mundaneum. They invented the modern library Universal Decimal Classification system. La Fontaine won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913. By 1935, their Mundaneum grew to a staggering 16 million cards covering subjects ranging from the history of hunting dogs to finance! World War II and the death of both founders slowed down the project. Although many Mundaneum archives were stored away, some even in the Brussels subway, volunteers kept the dream alive. The French community government of Belgium brought most of the archives to a beautiful Art Deco building in the heart of Mons near Brussels.”

(Google Cultural Institute)

Web science: A new frontier

Added on 19 February 2013 Peter Bogaards
Scientists getting their heads around the largest information machine mankind ever made.

“During the past 20 years, humans have built the largest information fabric in history. The World Wide Web has been transformational. People shop, date, trade and communicate with one another using it. Although most people are not formally trained in its use, yet it has assumed a central role in their lives. Scientists and researchers cannot imagine their work without it. Governments interface to their citizens using it. Media are seeing the nature of their industry change because of it. Travel, leisure, health, banking, any sector one can think of are changed by what we have created. The Web is now ubiquitous, and like all things that become commonplace, we take it for granted. This is true for the great majority of users. Until recently, it was true for researchers too. Over the past few years, there has been a growing recognition that the ecosystem that is the Web needs to be treated as an important and coherent area of study—this is Web science.”

(Nigel Shadbolt, Wendy Hall, James A. Hendler and William H. Dutton ~ Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society)

How do users really hold mobile devices?

Added on 18 February 2013 Peter Bogaards
How to elaborate on just one facet of mobile devices: portrait versus landscape.

“Everything changes with touchscreens. On today’s smartphones, almost the entire front surface is a screen. Users need to be able to see the whole screen, and may also need to touch any part of it to provide input. Since my old data was mostly from observations of users in the lab-using keyboard-centric devices in too many cases – I needed to do some new research on current devices. My data needed to be more unimpeachable, both in terms of its scale and the testing environment of my research.”

(Steven Hoober a.k.a. @shoobe01 ~ UXmatters)