The UX Bookmark

Ergonomics for Interaction Designers

admin — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:17:48 +0000

The topic of discussion is the increasing value of ergonomics knowledge to the interaction designer. Ergonomics is necessary for 3-dimensional, tangible product design where issues of physical fit and comfort are critical. But for interaction designers in the 2-dimensional world of the display screen, ergonomics has largely been…irrelevant. For example in most cases, interfaces are designed for existing, defined hardware that are out of the control of the interaction designer. But things are changing.

The continuing convergence of digital interfaces with physical products is putting interaction designers in a position where knowledge of anthropometrics, kinesthetics, and other non-cognitive human capabilities is valuable for creating effective design solutions.

Ergonomics for Interaction Designers: Part 1
Ergonomics for Interaction Designers: Part 2
Ergonomics for Interaction Designers: Part 3

Mobile Prototyping Essentials

admin — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 09:23:08 +0000

As the presenter puts it, designers new to mobile interaction design don’t have the domain specific skills or heuristics to lean on. The best way to develop those skills is to prototype early and often. This presentation makes a great 101.

Organizing digital information for others

admin — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 06:17:12 +0000

This short free to download ebook explores how lists, categories, trees and facets can be better used to organize information for others. You also learn how metadata and taxonomies can connect different collections and increase the findability of information across the website or intranet.

Organizing digital information for others

Disclosure: I work for the company that released the ebook. None the less, I have included it here because it I think it deserves to be here.

The UX of Co-Design: Experience Principles for Successful Client Workshops

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:30:45 +0000

While creating the right methods and activities for planning a client workshop is important, what has been especially fascinating is explicitly crafting the workshop-participant experience and recognizing how the participant experience is connected to the overall project success. Some of the experience principles for co-design workshops with client teams followed at Adaptive Path are:

Honor the gathering
Establish shared reference
Evoke the mission
Personalize the purpose
Prepare for excellence
Plan for productive groups
Reveal the forest in the trees
Remember the Enterprise
Be grateful
Bring your piece of the puzzle

The UX of Co-Design: Experience Principles for Successful Client Workshops

Inside The Atlantic: How One Magazine Got Profitable by Going ‘Digital First’

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:30:30 +0000

With consecutive quarterly growth in both print and digital advertising sales, The Atlantic has emerged as a vanguard in an industry harassed by declining ad revenues and falling circulations. And the credit, its executives say, belongs to the ‘digital first’ strategy it embraced four years ago.

Inside The Atlantic: How One Magazine Got Profitable by Going ‘Digital First’

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

admin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:30:59 +0000

As it happens, designing Future Interfaces For The Future used to be the author’s line of work. He had the opportunity to design with real working prototypes, not green screens and After Effects, so there certainly are some interactions in the video which he is a little skeptical of, given that he has actually tried them and the animators presumably haven’t. But that’s not his problem with the video.

His problem is the opposite — this vision, from an interaction perspective, is not visionary. It’s a timid increment from the status quo, and the status quo, from an interaction perspective, is actually rather terrible.

This matters, because visions matter. Visions give people a direction and inspire people to act, and a group of inspired people is the most powerful force in the world. If you’re a young person setting off to realize a vision, or an old person setting off to fund one, you really want it to be something worthwhile. Something that genuinely improves how we interact.

In this rant, he does not talk about human needs or technology. He talks about a neglected third factor that is human capabilities- what people can do, because if a tool isn’t designed to be used by a person, it can’t be a very good tool.

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

What is the Deep-Dive Brainstorming technique?

admin — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:53:14 +0000

Deep-Dive™ is the name of a technique used to rapidly immerse a group or team into a situation for problem solving or idea creation. This approach is often used for brainstorming product or process development.

Originally developed by the IDEO group (a learning design company) for rapid product development, the Deep-Dive technique is now widely and increasingly used for innovation not only in product development, but process improvement and customer service strategies. The method used by IDEO was documented by Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer (of International Institute of Management Development (IMD) business school), who latterly further enhanced the process and sold the rights to Deloitte Consulting in 2006.

What is the Deep-Dive Brainstorming technique?

Breaking Down the Silos: Usability Practitioners Meet Marketing Researchers

admin — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:55:32 +0000

Being a consultant with experience in both traditional marketing research and user experience and usability gives the author a unique perspective on a broad range of issues relating to customer experience. Not only does he have a good idea of what the other discipline does, he is also a practitioner of the other discipline.

However, in attempting to play both roles at once, he often finds that client companies keep these two disciplines locked up in separate silos—usability research within IT and marketing research within the Marketing Services department. This can have a serious impact on the sharing of information relating to customer experience.

Breaking Down the Silos: Usability Practitioners Meet Marketing Researchers

Five Myths about Taxonomy and SharePoint

admin — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:53:56 +0000

Many organizations are finding that leveraging the full suite of capabilities SharePoint offers requires introduction of a new requirement – that of dealing with, managing and exploiting taxonomies. Of course taxonomies are not new, but there is some confusion about where managed metadata services and the term store end and true taxonomy management begins.

There are also some misconceptions about the process of deriving and applying taxonomies in SharePoint. The following are five areas of confusion that we have seen in our engagements and research.

Myth 1: SharePoint now has taxonomy management
Myth 2: Taxonomy is used as metadata and metadata is an IT problem. Therefore taxonomy is best left to the project’s technical resources
Myth 3: Librarians are the best people to handle SharePoint taxonomies
Myth 4: SharePoint taxonomies need to be comprehensive and finely grained
Myth 5: Taxonomies managed in the in the term store can be used everywhere in the SharePoint application

Five Myths about Taxonomy and SharePoint

The 10 best social business metrics for brands

admin — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 12:03:56 +0000

The author presents a round up of 10 of the leading social business scores, indices and levels designed to help brands and organisations assess their social ability and achievements.

Social Brand Index
Vitrue Social Media Index
YourSocialMediaScore
Klout Score
PeerIndex Score
Social Media Reputation (SMR)
Social Business Index
Social Spam Index
TweetLevel
Social Business Maturity Level

The 10 best social business metrics for brands