Can Hated Design Elements Be Made to Work?
“Once users reject a design technique due to repeated bad experiences it’s almost impossible to use it for good because people will avoid it every time.” (Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox)
Andreas Resmini on Pervasive IA
“(…) it’s not just the Web anymore. There’s bigger game out there for us to design, and I’m going to make a point that attendees walk out of the workshop with three basic fundamental take-aways: they understand why we talk of pervasive information architectures, they know what pervasive information architectures are, and they have the tools to hack them.” (IA Summit 2011)
The European content strategy industry is on the rise
“From the accomplishments of the past two years and the unrelenting momentum of content strategy discourse, it’s safe to say local communities will grow and international events will continue. We’ll probably even learn of one or two more books in the works by the end of 2011. These events will increasingly draw content-minded people of varying kind, who will, in turn, roll ideas back into the businesses they represent. Opportunities will start opening up for CS consultants and agencies alike. Even positions inside larger companies will form as a more cost-effective way to retain and grow internal content strategy processes.” (Destry Wion ~ CS Forum 2011)
Where Innovation Belongs in User-Centered Design
“While user-centered designers haven’t always been the greatest advocates for innovation there is incredible potential for UX professionals to become the champions of innovation and the leaders of holistic design. User experience practitioners are in a unique position to reach out to users and across silos in pursuit of a beautiful user experience. Furthermore, while innovation can come from anywhere only user experience practitioners are equipped to evaluate whether a user population is willing to adopt an innovative idea. Innovation is inherently risky, and usability can mediate that risk through testing. Perhaps greater consideration needs to be given to how innovative ideas are evaluated in order to avoid focusing on the first use, but there is a place for User Experience in an world where innovation is king.” (Jake Truemper ~ Johnny Holland Magazine)
UX is 90% Desirability
“We are part of creating an experience. We are manufacturing something that wasn’t there before. Sure usability is important. Yes, it needs to be designed well. Of course, it should function without a glitch. But, are those really what sell the experience? There’s something more intangible that drives people to products: The desire to use it.” (Francisco Inchauste ~ FINCH)
FYI: TMI: Toward a holistic social theory of information overload
“Research into information overload has been extensive and cross–disciplinary, producing a multitude of suggested causes and posed solutions. I argue that many of the conclusions arrived at by existing research, while laudable in their inventiveness and/or practicality, miss the mark by viewing information overload as a problem that can be understood (or even solved) by purely rational means. Such a perspective lacks a critical understanding in human information usage: much in the same way that economic models dependent on rationality for their explanations or projections fail (often spectacularly, as recent history attests), models that rely too heavily upon the same rational behavior, and not heavily enough upon the interplay of actual social dynamics — power, reputation, norms, and others — in their attempts to explain, project, or address information overload prove bankrupt as well. Furthermore, even research that displays greater awareness of the social context in which overload exists often reveals a similar rationality in its conceptualization. That is, often the same ‘social’ approaches that offer potential advantages (in mitigating information overload) over their ‘non–social’ counterparts paradoxically raise new problems, requiring a reappraisal of overload that takes social issues into account holistically.” (Anthony Lincoln ~ First Monday Volume 16, Number 3)
My So Called Service Design Life
“There is a fierce debate about the relationship between service design (SD) and interaction design (IxD) here in the United States, particularly among interaction designers. The discussion often devolves into hostile crossfire between two camps: one that believes that the service design is a type of interaction design, and another that believes that the two disciplines are separate and distinct. When a teenager is a smart, compelling, interesting, independent, charismatic, hardworking, analytical, talented, humorous, knock-kneed being, a parent would rightly feel a great sense of pride. Interaction designers — and those whose careers, and sources of income are indebted to that practice — have very good reasons to hold strongly to the idea that service design is indeed a chip off the old block.” (Renna Al Yassini ~ Cooper Journal)
App Madness & The Open Web
“Web content is publishing: we’ve been saying it for awhile now, and it’s starting to sink in. And if everyone is a publisher, then we—content strategists and other people who specialize in content work—should be able to advise our clients on their publishing plans, or at least those that cross into the online world. We’ve done so before, in the long push to demonstrate that the web isn’t the same as print, and that dumping print content into a web page serves neither user nor publisher. But in the last two years, the online publishing landscape has undergone a major change, both in perception and reality.” (Clinton Forry ~ Confab 2011 blog)
A Checklist for Content Work
“There’s really only one central principle of good content: it should be appropriate for your business, for your users, and for its context. Appropriate in its method of delivery, in its style and structure, and above all in its substance. As Erin Kissane explains, content strategy is the practice of determining what each of those things means for your project – and how to get there from where you are now.” (A List Apart)
Content Centred Design: A methodology (Part 2)
“I recognize that all web projects are unique is some way and any approach has to be tailored, so in this post I’m going to provide a fairly high level methodology, a methodology however that gives users and content the same emphasis. It has now become the norm that the needs and wants of users are considered at every stage of a project. I want content to have the same recognition.” (Patrick Walsh ~ manIA)
Lean UX: Getting Out Of The Deliverables Business
“Lean UX is an evolution, not a revolution. UX designers need to evolve and stay relevant as the practice evolves. Lean UX gets designers out of the deliverables business and back into the experience design business. This is where we excel and do our best work. Let’s become experts at delivering great results through these experiences and forgo the hefty spec documents. It won’t be an easy road. Culture and tradition will push back, yet the ultimate return on this investment will be more rewarding work and more successful businesses.” (Jeff Gothelf ~ Smashing Magazine)
UX Trends
“Over the past few years, the term user experience has become better known in business, so selling user experience is no longer as hard as it used to be. It’s becoming easier to tell the UX story, because through success stories like Apple, businesses are beginning to see the value of great design. However, there is still a gap between knowing how to make UX operational and how to source and invest in the right skill sets to make great design happen.” (Daniel Szuc ~ UXmatters)
The Dangers of Design by User
“As we’ve mentioned in the past, improperly conducted user research can be a liability that could lead you down the wrong path. These kinds of mistakes are extremely costly and easily avoidable. The trick is to know where the pitfalls lie and ensure that you navigate them properly. This month, we’ll talk about ways to be a critical consumer of user research.” (Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain ~ UXmatters)
Research Methods for Understanding Consumer Decisions in a Social World
“Ultimately, the goal is to understand the entirety of the consumer experience, so we can make the most informed decisions about online strategy, content, and positioning. In this column, I’ll first summarize the findings from Edelman’s article, then discuss how we can apply traditional user research methodology to supporting changes in marketing strategies.” (Michael Hawley ~ UXmatters)
Approaches to User Research When Designing for Children
“Children’s exposure to computing devices depends on a great variety of factors—including cultural traditions, economic power, and family values. But there is no doubt that, in general, children’s access to technological devices and interactive products has increased dramatically in recent years. We are now seeing even higher adoption of technology among children—thanks to the unpredictably intuitive interaction of youngsters with touchscreen technologies and mobile devices that they can carry everywhere and use at any time.” (Catalina Naranjo-Bock ~ UXmatters)
Tough Sell: Selling User Experience
“(…) this kind of a journey is a stretch for some UX professionals. It really does not suit all of us. In fact, you might be turned off by this kind of task, and that’s OK. For those of you who try it, it can be rewarding and a great career expander. You will have added a new skill to your repertoire, and you will likely have professional connections with new parts of your business that you never knew existed.” (Misha W. Vaughan ~ Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 6 Issue 2)
On the scalability of design thinking and transdisciplinary design education
“Interview with Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO, at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2011. Topics include design thinking and India, design,innovation and entrepreneurship driving India’s inclusive growth, transdisciplinary design education and design thinking and designers.” (aabhira aditya)
Open vs. Closed Prototypes
“An open prototype is one that involves the user in a direct way. It is typically something you could hand over to a user. (…) A closed prototype is an experience that users watch, but won’t interact with directly. The lack of direct user interaction can make it harder to learn from a closed prototype.” (Tom Maiorana ~ d.news)
Interaction Eleven: Bruce Sterling Closing Keynote
Interaction Eleven: Bill Verplank Opening Keynote
“Bill Verplank is a human-factors engineer with a long career in design, research and education. As a fresh ME PhD from MIT he worked eight years at Xerox on the testing and refinement of what we now call the ‘desktop metaphor’: bit-map graphics, keyboard and mouse, direct manipulation. For six years, he worked with Bill Moggridge at IDTwo and IDEO doing ‘interaction design’ – bringing the insights from computers to the industrial design of medical instruments, GPS navigation, mobile phones, and new input devices (keyboards, track-balls, mice). From IDEO, he moved to Interval Research for 8 years of innovating design methods (observation, body-storming, scenarios, metaphors) and researching active force-feedback (‘haptics’). (…) He is known for sketching as he talks.” (IxDA – videos)