Notes
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 )Concocting an Experience
My senior year of college I took a class entitled American Food in the hopes that it would involve a lot of eating. Instead it was a large amount of discussion, reading and writing on the subject of food and culture. Despite my inner glutton’s initial disappointment, I gained an appreciation for food beyond its [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None 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 )Toolbox Series: Scenarios and User Stories
Scenarios
I think a quote that sums up the essence of scenarios can be found within Dan Saffer’s Designing for Interaction:
“Scenarios provide a fast and effective way to imagine the design concepts in use. In a sense, scenarios are prototypes built of words.”
Taking a persona, you can create some different scenarios for your user to walk [...]
BA vs. UxD: Beyond Thunderdome
A co-worker challenged me (not in the traditional duel sense) to define what the difference is between a Business Analyst and a UX Designer. I replied with my stock answer of, “BA’s define business requirements and UX Designers define user requirements.” “What’s the difference between business requirements and user requirements? Doesn’t the user comprise [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Toolbox Series: User Interviews
As I was writing this entry, I realized that I had even more to add to the ‘toolbox’…so keep in mind that this is an overview at best of user interviews and there are tons of books out there dedicated to this subject alone. My large influences for this section would have to be Designing [...]
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 )Applying UX to the coffee pot
It was a wise designer who once said, “It’s ultimately the little things that drive you crazy.” I can’t remember where I read that, but it definitely made a lightbulb appear above my head. One would think the trip to crazy town would be caused by the fact that you were involved in a traffic [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 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 [...]
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