ideas
Here Comes the Heresy
I’m going to commit heresy by disagreeing with Donald Norman’s article, “Words Matter. Talk About People: Not Customers, Not Consumers, Not Users.” In it, Norman proposes that we stop dehumanizing the audience for our products by calling them ‘users’ and refer to them as ‘people’. He recognizes the potential problem of there being multiple roles [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )UX of the Alarm Clock
Every morning I wake up frightened. Not for a legitimate reason such as a bear broke into my bedroom or I’ve had a nightmare where I live in a world without tex-mex ; no. I wake up every morning and frantically scramble to turn off the alarm that is so horrifically noisy and obnoxious it [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Negative blockers and tiny gods
It seems so obvious now that it’s laughable, but until I started working in such a large company, I had never realized how key communication and collaboration were in the development process. It was a naïve notion, but I pictured designers mocking up the UI, ‘throwing it over the fence’ (or in this case, the [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Toolbox Series
I’m going to begin a series that will detail aspects and tools of the UX process that I’ve used and some that I’ve come across in my research. This will include (organized according to topic):
Motivations
Interviews
Personas
Scenarios/user stories
Modeling
Activity model
Task flows
Ideation
Paper prototyping
Design studios
Design strategy sessions
Creation
Wireframes
Mockups
Styleguide
Technical Prototypes
Flash
HTML/CSS
Evaluation
User testing
Design principles review
Heuristic evaluation
I’m looking forward to it [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Tufte and the Super Graphic
On monday I was lucky enough to attend Edward Tufte’s seminar “Presenting Data and Information.” Known as the ‘da Vinci of data’, he has a wealth of advice on preparing information to ensure maximum readability as well as how to communicate efficiently in a presentation.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Function before Form
I’ve been browsing around A List Apart lately for some inspiration, and I found this article: A Dao of Web Design. Extremely well written and carefully crafted, this article gave me one of my new favorite quotes:
Firstly, think about what your pages do, not what they look like. Let your design flow from the services [...]
Get Up with the Get Down
I was reading through The Stylesheet, by TradeMark Media, and came across an article about challenges in the web industry. One employee commented that it’s difficult to keep up with the continually changing environment of interactive technology, but it’s also one of the most exciting aspects of being a part of the web industry.
It poses [...]
Uncomplicated
More and more I’ve been checking out Cooper’s blog. It’s all very brilliant, but I especially love how they break design theory down into bite size chunks. They create an ongoing dialogue about design theory for those of us who want to learn more, but don’t necessarily have the time to sit at a coffee [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Activity Theory, Goal-Directed Design, and you
There are several issues that are arising in my work projects, so I’m going to try to talk about the theories that are swirling around in the research world in order to puzzle out my own design dilemmas…
Lately I’ve been doing a little research on the best practice for researching and creating GUIs for software. [...]
Falling from the Sky
While at the same time constructing my portfolio (carefully, carefully- genius can’t be rushed!), I’m working on a few ideas for some flash cartoons. As I’ve said before, Psyop has certainly inspired me in a lot of ways, and I like how they animate abstract ideas. I’d love to do that, and have been brainstorming [...]
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