Re: [IxDA Discuss] This site is not Facebook. This is a website called [...]
We build people? Shit, that sounds HARD. (I mean, if Mary Shelley couldn't do it...) Chris On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 8:08 PM, live human.factor@gmail.com wrote: Um, no Are you surprised to learn of users that aren't digitally savvy? This is for whom you build people On Feb 10, 2010, at 4:35 PM, j. eric townsend wrote: please tell me this is a prank of some sort. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php -- J. E. 'jet' Townsend, IDSA Design, Fabrication, Hacking design: www.allartburns.org; hacking: www.flatline.net; HF: KG6ZVQ PGP: 0xD0D8C2E8 AC9B 0A23 C61A 1B4A 27C5 F799 A681 3C11 D0D8 C2E8 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Thought experiment: Law against usability that's TOO good?
I had a feeling we were both honing in on the same goals, Jaanus, and weren't really too far off. I'm just sensitive to the neutral tool argument because at one time I tried to hold to that reasoning, and was shown how it didn't hold up. But we hold the same values, and I really like that we're thinking about these things, and talking about how to negotiate those complex territories. Chris On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 1:57 PM, Jaanus Kase jaa...@gmail.com wrote: Christine, I agree with what you say and I did not think that aspect through enough when posting. I subscribe to everything that you say; additionally, I like the research that says that our language affects our thinking, and that it has been proven that the thought patterns of different languages are different. Even though language is supposed to be value-neutral, it does affect thinking. One of the most important values attributed to usability that I know of, is that it is generally meant to improve human condition in the widest sense. That is precisely what made me respond to the initial post. If companies are doing a good job with improving human condition with their products, and using these products to accomplish their possibly malicious business objectives, then in my view it is not right to make the products less usable and thereby make the human condition worse than it could be. Instead, the response should be to scrutinize the businesses on the other, backend side, to make sure that they do not abuse their power. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48267 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Thought experiment: Law against usability that's TOO good?
I think I'd have to respectfully disagree, Jaanus. Your position appears to be a variation of what is usually referred to as the neutral tool argument, a position that pops up in many different contexts and situations, from the U.S. NRA slogan, Guns don't kill people, people kill people, to the extrapolation that language or an interface can be neutral window pane of communication in service of whatever task its masters put it to. In academic circles, this idea is widely considered completely disproven, that there are no neutral tools, no such thing as objectivity in journalism, no clear window pane of language that communicates unbiased ideas, that objects themselves cannot exist outside of their socially-constructed context and use, contexts and uses that must always be considered saturated with the values and social mores of the culture that created them. In other words, there are no neutral tools. A hammer or a screwdriver may appear to be objects that can't act with value judgments in and of themselves without a values-saturated agent to execute them, but it is the seemingly invisible or culturally-unconscious values that are most deeply embedded within tools, that in one culture, a handle is obviously where you put your hand, how could anyone put it anywhere else? But another culture can from the outside see deeper signifiers and embedded class assumptions about the tool and its use. That's how they talk about it, in the abstract land of academics. The argument passes muster in common conversation, around NRA people, or just general parliance. Even US journalists who talk about objectivity pay lip service to it in public, even though every course they ever took on the subject opened with it being exposed as an impossibility, that perspective and POV and cultural conditioning leads to even a seemingly invisible tint of cultural assumptions to even the most neutral-tool sounding language. (European journalists rid themselves of the illogic trap a long time ago). So we might ask, can usability exist outside of the business objectives? I don't believe they can. Unspoken assumptions of those business objectives saturate every aspect of the artifact being tested and the usability testing framework itself. Nothing is a neutral conveyor of something else. Or, as Marshal McLuhan pointed out, the kinds of conversations you have by candlelight are necessarily different than the kinds of conversations you have under electric light. The medium is the message. Chris On Sat, Jan 9, 2010 at 4:43 AM, Jaanus Kase jaa...@gmail.com wrote: There%u2019s a difference between usability, and the business objectives for which usability and design is being used. You are talking about business objectives. Usability is a method to achieve those business objectives, and is a general societal concept next to things like Internet, electricity etc. It just is; it does not carry values on its own. Values and meanings are attached to products and their usability through business objectives, agendas and politics. What you are really talking about is oversight so that companies would not abuse their power. That is good and necessary, but is orthogonal from usability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48267 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Anatomy of a Functional Spec
I'd also add that a Revision History is essential, because this will be a living document, and it will be necessary to track changes. RE: Agile lite specs vs. full massive specs, I'd be interested in any discussion on the usability of spec documents from a technical communication standpoint (and here is a rich area for T-Com grad students to research and write papers on). I believe there are a number of usability issues with the standard conventions of the massive waterfall-support specs, both for basic documentation of functionality and interface features, AND their ability to be even remotely usable as living reference documents for future design modifications, or new staff on-boarding, etc. OTOH, Agile lite specs, based on user stories, appear dangerously inadequate for complex sites and projects, esp. sites that are migrated, or have multiple dependencies to track over time. I've used an interesting tool called RallyDev for this on one project, but I supplemented it with some designs of my own, using a wiki, to provide more dynamic and updatable documentation specs. My main thing with wiki spec resource interface designs (I modify the wiki a bit for my specific purposes) is that I want the specs to LIVE and be useful, not just get written to make programmers happy, and have no further uses for stakeholder or team reference. That said, wiki is good for the nonlinear or hypertextual orientation of the document design, but not so useful as groupware, when you have people of all different teams (Creative, UX, CS, Editorial, QA) uploading docs to a central hub and not always handling the doc naming conventions in the best way for the wiki system. Just spinning thoughts. Chris On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 8:42 AM, Siegy Adler si...@scadler.com wrote: In my opinion, the purpose of a functional spec is to describe the application’s functionality and user interface/experience. The spec should enable developers to begin coding the application. Note that I don’t view a functional spec as a ‘design’ or ‘technical’ document. Here’s an outline that I’ve used over the years: Cover Page - includes the application’s name, spec version, date and name of author Table of Contents – makes it easy to locate a section Introduction – summary of the entire application, its features and what’s included in the spec Overview – description of the section’s/page’s functionality Content – functional wireframes (not designed) for all the pages which identifying different states (e.g., first time visitor, returning visitor, etc.). I usually annotate each field with a footnote (e.g., data values, error messages, etc.) and also describe what happens whenever a user clicks a button or link Programming Notes – this is where you can get ‘technical’ and leave notes for the developers Appendix – include any supplemental items (e.g., use cases, etc.) that will help document the application Anybody care to share their ideas? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Gmail drag and drop
If your machine is at all RAM-challenged, the cumulative crap that's being loaded into web pages and web app interfaces is causing curses and crashes for Firefox. I don't even want to think about IE or Safari, because I'm way too dependent on my Firefox functional plug-ins (mainly Delicious bookmarks, but also feedly), but I literally have 1-2 Firefox crashes a night when working at home. Of course, it would help if I upgraded my RAM on my home machine, but I'm too cheap these days, and what does it say about us, if we are loading up web pages with too much CUMULATIVE animations and swooshes and drag and drops etc. and like such as? It's not whether a SINGLE page with an app is doing this to me. It's the fact that I've got multiple tabs and windows open, and if I've got GMAIL open, plus have opened feedly once (so its little widget shows up as I continue surfing), and somebody sends me a YouTube of Vimeo video to look at quick (or say if I open Rachel Maddow's home page on MSNBC, with it's big-ass video player), I am instantly headed for a Firefox crash. I have to say, it is really getting on my last nerve, and if for me, imagine what it is doing to regular, non-designer surfer people! Chris On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 11:35 AM, William Hudson william.hud...@syntagm.co.uk wrote: Hi, Hugh. It's called a 'drag handle' and lots of things have them (toolbars in Windows for example). You need somewhere to click in order to drag something, and since in many cases clicking on the text does something else (opening the email in gmail) a drag handle is handy (as it wereg), although not essential. However, it does have the added benefit of providing a visual cue. Changing the cursor to a drag hand is the coup de grace (but that could be done without the handle if other aspects of the design allowed for it). Regards, William Hudson Syntagm Ltd Design for Usability UK 01235-522859 World +44-1235-522859 US Toll Free 1-866-SYNTAGM mailto:william.hud...@syntagm.co.uk http://www.syntagm.co.uk skype:williamhudsonskype Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985). Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon OX14 2DS. Confused about dates in interaction design? See our new study (free): http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/datesstudy.htm 12 UK mobile phone e-commerce sites compared! Buy the report: http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/uxbench.shtml Courses in card sorting and Ajax interaction design. London, Las Vegas and Berlin: http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/csadvances.shtml http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/ajaxdesign.shtml -Original Message- From: new-boun...@ixda.org [mailto:new-boun...@ixda.org] On Behalf Of Hugh Griffith Sent: 24 July 2009 08:59 To: disc...@ixda.org Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Gmail drag and drop ... Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Gmail drag and drop
To be sure, Chrome would help. Don't have Chrome yet on my Mac. Also, Chrome does not run my ESSENTIAL Firefox plugins: Delicious Bookmarks (I've had my bookmarks, custom browser toolbars by project, and research bibs on the Cloud for more than a year now) and feedly. And I don't know about you, but if you regularly monitor more than 200 feeds, once you try feedly, you don't want to go back, ever. Which means I'm stuck with Firefox, and with designers who think testing their Ajax apps running alone without multiple apps, windows and tabs is sufficient... Use Chrome on my PC at work, no problem, when I want speed. When I actually want to get work done, however, I need my bookmarks, my custom toolbars by project/task, my research bibs, and my feeds. Chris On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 1:10 PM, William Hudson william.hud...@syntagm.co.uk wrote: Christine – I know people are attached to their browsers, but maybe you should try Google Chrome? Pages are going to get more complex (not that I think that is a good idea in itself) and I personally believe the trend is going to be more towards Ajax/JavaScript and away from other RIA platforms like Flash and MS Silverlight. Chrome is reckoned to be about 20 times faster than Internet Explorer at executing JavaScript (Google’s figures!). And, oh – I hate to say this – all of my IE crashes went away when I removed the Google Toolbar. It may not have been the toolbar’s fault, but of course all of these plug-ins can interact with each other. Regards, William *From:* Christine Boese [mailto:christine.bo...@gmail.com] *Sent:* 24 July 2009 17:04 *To:* William Hudson *Cc:* Hugh Griffith; disc...@ixda.org *Subject:* Re: [IxDA Discuss] Gmail drag and drop If your machine is at all RAM-challenged, the cumulative crap that's being loaded into web pages and web app interfaces is causing curses ... Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Digitial newspaper/magazine editions user experience
Just to add one further thought about the non-strict HTML available versions of publications: they often divorce themselves from the URL/Bookmark ecoystem of the web at large, and that is perhaps their largest evil. What is the point of some slick and page-turning interface when they have no URL to bookmark, no way to return from outside the app, and most social bookmarking systems also will require a URL as a coin of the realm. I've seen Zinio and some of these companies/tools, but most of them seem to me like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Chris On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Rob Enslin robens...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks for all your comments and feedback. Judging the responses it appears that the majority of you report (anecdotally and with data) user experiences not living up to their original print versions and expectations. Whilst there are some advantages to be gained (richer content, more visual, hyper-linking, tracking, etc) from electronic versions, looking at alternative options might be better time spent. Alternatives might include mobile (including apps) versions, kindle-type offerings, and existing online improvements. Take aways for me include: interest in digital editions was limited at best (proved by web stats) *Patrick * Ironically, the digital additions probably do better for those papers whose web additions have UI problems or limit their online content: users may bypass the web to go to something more familiar and scannable. *David* there's no evidence to suggest that anything beyond an article rendered in HTML provides any positive experience to the reader. *Jared* Best regards. --Rob 2009/7/14 Jason Pamental jpamen...@addventures.com I agree with what's been written: the web-based experience seems much more worthwhile than the 'digital versions' with their interface quirks. What does seem to be an interesting development are the iPhone versions of things like NY Times: it's really quite good, and appropriate to the medium. A different experience than the web - not as 'browsable' as viewing a whole front page together, but much less clutter when your focus is just on the article itself. I wonder if anyone has tried the Kindle experience with the NY Times? Cheers, Jason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=43670 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -- / Rob Enslin / robenslin.com / twitter.com/robenslin / +44759 052 8890 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The role of detailed footers
I have nothing to add to this thread, except to add momentum to a meme that I hear from time to time, as a better name to call these things, these big footers. My favorite name for the Big Footers is Sasquatch. Please feel free to use it as you see fit. Chris On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 1:49 AM, Viki Pandit merlinvi...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I have noticed that too and I really liked it. Infact strange as it sounds I was up till 3 am in the morning just yesterday redesigning the footer area of my blog(www.merlinvicki.in). I dont think its just SEO. I think the big footer area provides more info for the users and improves the User experience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=41412 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] $705k for redesigning a website???
Yeah, and it's probably shovel ready. Chris On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 3:39 PM, Patrick Neeman p...@usabilitycounts.comwrote: I've been involved with one of these city projects (ironically, one for a city about the same size, reach). You wouldn't believe what you run into. - City government runs slow. Real slow. One project I worked on, I did the IA in March of last year, and they are hoping to launch next month. - You have to scrub all the old content and re architect it. There's NO WAY you can do IA for every page, so you do very high level patterns, hoping the content fits. Or, does anyone want to do a site inventory for thousands of pages? - It's decision by committee. - Training isn't easy because the employees aren't what you see in the private sector (not saying they aren't as smart, their priorities are different). The site 84,000 pages according to Google. They're going to go over that bid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40427 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Where do Gen Y Mom's go online?
You might check out this link: http://digitalmom.razorfish.com/publication/?m=4248l=1 here's some info about it: Razorfish http://www.razorfish.com/ just released the results of a study done in partnership with Cafe Mom that examined how Mom's live in a digital world. Digital Mom http://digitalmom.razorfish.com/ consists of two companion studies. The first study, conducted by Razorfish focuses on how digital moms are adopting social and emerging technologies. The second study, prepared by CafeMom--the largest social networking site for moms-- concentrates on the role that social media play in helping to inform purchase decisions, among other key trends. 1,500 digital moms--defined as women with at least one child under 18 in the home who have engaged with two or more emerging technologies and who have researched, sought advice or purchased a product online in the last three months. Results confirm digital moms have moved beyond email and search, and are now active users of Web 2.0 technologies. The majority of moms are using social networks (65%) and text messaging (56%). More than half of these moms are also gamers, with 52% of them playing games online or via a console. etc... On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 3:08 PM, Heather Anderson phlux...@gmail.com wrote: Does anyone have any research or background in Gen Y Mom's, and where they are going online? Or any type of online behavioral background? Would love to get any info, have a crazy deadline! Smiles, Heather Heather Anderson User Experience Architect m 818.292.2766 f 888.672.6852 aim phluxy Please help save trees, print only if necessary. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute phasing out online HCI program
Sorry to be so late chiming in on this thread. I thought I'd hear something from the RPI faculty about the phasing out of HCI distance program, or clarify what is happened, and I haven't yet. I am a product (PhD) of the same dept and took many of the core classes that are part of this program. This is also the dept that initially invented the field of technical communication and offered graduate degrees in it. Knowing the way RPI works, and the strength and commitment to their offerings (and having at one time been responsible for that entire distance learning web site, in the mid-1990s, mostly just catalog updates, as I could not do too much structurally), I am also familiar with the RPI distance learning system, which, I believe has been around 20+ years now. Not many distance learning programs can say that. It confers very high end masters degrees in specialized engineering, polymer chemistry, really wonky stuff, in addition to t-com and HCI. Not just courses. Entire graduate degrees. So what's going on with this? It was a few years back that the technical communication certificate and master's degree in the distance learning program morphed into the HCI concentration, and I'm guessing what they are really doing is morphing it back to a broader focus. I really don't believe the degree is going away, unless enrollments have fallen way off. RPI is an expensive, private engineering school, and the economy sux right now, so that could be having an effect. But at the same time, there will be a lot of laid off people needing to retool their skill sets. The larger issue, as I remember from the 1990s, was the nature of their distance learning program, which was VERY high quality compared to a lot of these fairly new distance learnning university offerings which are just one step away from lite correspondence courses, if you ask me. RPI has always used elaborate video conferencing with satellite link-ups, even before the time of the web, before the days of WebEx, when professors there wrote the software to run it. Also, it tended to cater to big corporate clients who provided the on-site satellite link for the live interactions in the classroom with mixed face to face students and distance students. In addition, the university always had high standards for computer-supported collaborative work, and studio courses had big project and collaboration components, in which the distance students were expected to participate fully. I know I sound like a PR person, but if you could imagine the elaborate system around all those video teleconferences (now supported on web software, I hear), dedicated distance classrooms with multiple cameras and professor view controls, etc. What I'm saying is it ain't your basic Blackboard setup with a prof on a phone line and some email correspondence. And RPI has been out in front in innovating on multi-disciplinary design, so if they are moving away from the HCI angle, it could be likely that they are gearing up to blaze another trail in a new area. Like I said, I sound like PR, and I was involved in the founding of the RPI EMAC degree program, so I know how they decide to do these things. Absent a major revenue shortfall, that is what I would expect. Chris On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 4:05 PM, sharon sharongreenfi...@gmail.com wrote: I wonder how much of it goes back to findability and information architecture (but I can be a little biased thinking most problems come back to these things). Placement in search engine isn't really high (and didn't even seem them for online hci program and the like) and then the description provided seemed accidental and had an odd subdomained URL that didn't give you the university's name or program in it. I've had a tough time finding programs in most university's convoluted information architecture. This is the URL: http://www.rpi.edu/ewp/distance/course_masters/ms_hum_comp_int.html When you go to the program site you arrive at from some of the more obscure search terms, I didn't see a mention of format (online vs oncampus). There was a link for working professionals. Mmmm...here's the mention: live on-campus and, by electronic means. I guess in the months I spent searching for an online program I never Googled for masters program HCI electronic means. Wow. I found it trough 'distance learning', but you are so right, that term above is ridiculous in this day and age. In my experience, disambiguating on-campus only programs from distance ones was a challenge. Trying to winnow them down via search engine alone was impossible and even as noted above...it was kind of a treasure hunt on their program sites. Agreed! It really is hard to find programs nowadays... Why is noone interested in this program? There are only two online HCI programs to my knowledge - Rensselaer's and Brigham Young University. RPI's name has cachet and prestige. I know some nuclear engineers who graduated from RPI - smart school for
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute phasing out online HCI program
Ach, I spoke too soon. RPI is phasing out ALL distance learning graduate degrees and certificate programs, meaning polymer chemistry, mechanical engineering, all that (all those courses that I had to upload in that damn distance catalog). http://www.rpi.edu/ewp/distance/academics/schedule_projected.html What's important to know is that this page, the projected schedule, is the most important document on the site, from the POV of the Institute, cuz it represents a legally-binding commitment to the students IN PROGRESS. So scanning down this course list, it looks to me like all the HCI courses are still going to be offered thru 2010 or so, but the degree programs are going away. This is the note at the very bottom: Prospective Students Beginning with the Fall 2008 semester, Rensselaer has begun a three year transition to phase out the delivery of degree and certificate programs via distance learning. Please be assured that all distance students will be able to complete their programs as originally planned, and we will work with each student individually to develop their plan of study or account for any changes to their plan of study resulting from this change. If you have not applied or been accepted these programs are no longer available. Chris On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Christine Boese christine.bo...@gmail.com wrote: Sorry to be so late chiming in on this thread. I thought I'd hear something from the RPI faculty about the phasing out of HCI distance program, or clarify what is happened, and I haven't yet. I am a product (PhD) of the same dept and took many of the core classes that are part of this program. This is also the dept that initially invented the field of technical communication and offered graduate degrees in it. Knowing the way RPI works, and the strength and commitment to their offerings (and having at one time been responsible for that entire distance learning web site, in the mid-1990s, mostly just catalog updates, as I could not do too much structurally), I am also familiar with the RPI distance learning system, which, I believe has been around 20+ years now. Not many distance learning programs can say that. It confers very high end masters degrees in specialized engineering, polymer chemistry, really wonky stuff, in addition to t-com and HCI. Not just courses. Entire graduate degrees. So what's going on with this? It was a few years back that the technical communication certificate and master's degree in the distance learning program morphed into the HCI concentration, and I'm guessing what they are really doing is morphing it back to a broader focus. I really don't believe the degree is going away, unless enrollments have fallen way off. RPI is an expensive, private engineering school, and the economy sux right now, so that could be having an effect. But at the same time, there will be a lot of laid off people needing to retool their skill sets. The larger issue, as I remember from the 1990s, was the nature of their distance learning program, which was VERY high quality compared to a lot of these fairly new distance learnning university offerings which are just one step away from lite correspondence courses, if you ask me. RPI has always used elaborate video conferencing with satellite link-ups, even before the time of the web, before the days of WebEx, when professors there wrote the software to run it. Also, it tended to cater to big corporate clients who provided the on-site satellite link for the live interactions in the classroom with mixed face to face students and distance students. In addition, the university always had high standards for computer-supported collaborative work, and studio courses had big project and collaboration components, in which the distance students were expected to participate fully. I know I sound like a PR person, but if you could imagine the elaborate system around all those video teleconferences (now supported on web software, I hear), dedicated distance classrooms with multiple cameras and professor view controls, etc. What I'm saying is it ain't your basic Blackboard setup with a prof on a phone line and some email correspondence. And RPI has been out in front in innovating on multi-disciplinary design, so if they are moving away from the HCI angle, it could be likely that they are gearing up to blaze another trail in a new area. Like I said, I sound like PR, and I was involved in the founding of the RPI EMAC degree program, so I know how they decide to do these things. Absent a major revenue shortfall, that is what I would expect. Chris On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 4:05 PM, sharon sharongreenfi...@gmail.comwrote: I wonder how much of it goes back to findability and information architecture (but I can be a little biased thinking most problems come back to these things). Placement in search engine isn't really high (and didn't even seem them for online hci program
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Usability of accordions
LOL! I love this subject line! But perhaps not for the reason you think. I come from Wisconsin and my grandma played the accordion in a polka band. So not to derail a discussion of interface accordions, but let us pause for a moment and consider REAL accordions! Like, here is my puzzle. If our field had existed at the time that these musical instruments were evolving, would we have told them to toss the design in the ashcan as TOO COMPLEX for any users to master? Look at the humble accordion, for instance. You got a keyboard on one side, funky buttons on the other side (all unlabeled! Oh no! It's worse than blinking 12!), AND you gotta squeeze the damn thing in and out the whole time to make any sounds at all. Plus, it does have a definite tendency to wheeze a bit if you don't know what you're doing, much the same as a clarinet will squeak if you aren't good with the reed yet. AND... it was not designed strictly for professionals, just as that unfretted violin was not. Both have long histories as instruments for blue collar amateurs, to entertain their families, at parties, and so on. Music for the masses, to fiddle jigs (my grandpa played the fiddle, grandma the accordion, and never played together, as far as I know). What of it? Would our field reject most musical instruments as beyond the pale? Could they ever be invented today, or anything remotely like a success? OR would they be more correctly situated as social media, since their folk uses were in settings that were primarily social, the very glue that held communities together? Chris On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Kordian Piotr Klecha kpkle...@gmail.comwrote: No, I don't mean harmoshkas, but boxes with sliding parts, e.g.: http://www.stickmanlabs.com/accordion/ We are going to use such box on the main page (in the bottom of column - not very important content there, but still) and just wondering about interactions. Current proposition is: 1. Accordion auto-switches to the next part after every 5 seconds when mouse pointer is outside the box. 2. OnMouseOver any part-title bar opens this part (with latency 200ms). 3. Clicking on part-title bar opens it too. Especially point 2 is a manner of doubt. Any advices, examples, opinions? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] perceived problems with personas
James, I love where you're going here, and recourse to rigor (and Popper) seems like a neat antidote to a lot of research methods (I'm thinking more about the field of marketing, than anything) that get more than a bit sloppy in their applied versions. So I'm just nailing down some stuff at the end, cuz I wasn't sure exactly where you were going, so forgive me if I've misunderstood what you wrote. Might be good to tease it out a bit more, cuz that's where it gets interesting. Too often, reference to the sciences and properly rigorous research methods equates (in some people's minds) to overly foundationalist assumptions that require generalizable, quantitative data only. I don't believe you are going there, from what you reference at the very end, but that makes me want to push on where you are going. Descriptive, rich, qualitative methods are by definition NOT generalizable. That would be the whole point. One can inductively triangulate data, amass evidence that reinforces emerging categories of data, develop heuristics, and even conduct parallel studies and discover points of intersection between similar qualitative or ethnographic-type studies. So replicate to some extent, but generalize, never. True, people doing multi-modal studies are trying to work with qualitative and quantitative methods in tandem, so you may get some cross pollination there. Content analysis, linguistics, these are rich areas for combining methods, again, to triangulate, or to use emerging qualitative data to develop quantitative hypotheses. Quantitative heads tend toward more restrictive, or limited definitions of what is real research, which methods are most rigorous, yield the best data, and so on. They like to tout generalizability as some kind of Holy Grail that only they can claim, like it gives them some kind of foundationalist claim to capital T Truth. Blah. Not all of them think like this, however. You tend to get that kind of POV more often in journalists who write stories about science, and bias their coverage toward methods they more readily grasp or can easily convert into sound bites. (you'd be amazed at how widespread this POV is among journalists at CNN, for instance--I can speak from experience) To this end, then, journalists unconsciously tend to reinforce misconceptions about real research, real science, which mushes up the whole pseudo-science problem more, as they often tout as authoritative quantitative studies that are so severely limited and short-sighted in their hypothesis development or baseline assumptions as to render their so-called valid and generalizable data utterly worthless. Which is worse: to have a method that is rigorously generalizable, but doesn't actually fit what we find in the world, or a rich data set which hews closely to the actual behaviors of actual people with deep insight and understanding, but should not ever be generalized beyond that level of detail? Which is closer to real small-t truths? Chris On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 9:49 AM, James Page [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi All, I think it may help people here if I inject some theory into this discussion. The first point is that people keep making claims that the method has some scientific validity. For example Liz says that Hopefully my quick elucidation about the original persona creation methodology helps you to see that the mapping of individuals to dimensions of interest is a relatively scientific method Either a method is scientific or pseduscientific. There is no middle ground. Is the distinction only important as academic argument? The answer is no, and it helps to understand a small bit of history to see why. The distinction between science or psedu science came about because there where two political movements that claimed that they where scientific, and by following them would lead to improvement to everybody in society. The two political movements where communism, and national socialism. Karl Poppers, who you could say his early life was upturned by both movements, thought that it is important to qualify what is scientific and what is pseduscientific. [DISCLAIMER] Some members of my family where slightly put out by these movements as well] He came up with the idea that unless a theory has a negative hypothesis and is replicable, then it is not scientific. In one sweep he had disqualified both Marxism, and communism from claim of being scientific. One of sciences that wiped out by this definition was Eugenics. Eugenics was one of the academic justifications of Nazism. Another science to disappear was biotype. This is the idea that you could predict if somebody was a criminal by their body measurement. Back to Persona's and Liz's presentation. She gives an example about Tom. By my count there are at least 21 bits of data points about Tom. Using the example given by Chapman and Milham (which again uses at least 21 data points.
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Can an interaction designer creat (great) interaction without (great) visual design skills?
I don't know if this is a different tack on this topic or not, but I'll throw it out here. I think it is one thing to have visual design skills, and another thing to be current in the field of visual design. I have been a visual designer, going back to the time of print-only publication design (makes me feel long of tooth these days). One thing I did not do was study graphic or visual design at an art school, and my MFA is not in art. However, I have no desire to be a visual designer on the web. There is a lot about print design that still intrigues me, but the idea of only doing web visual design feels to me... blasphemy alert boring /blasphemy. Sort of like, what if all I did as a visual designer was design print stationary letterheads. I know there are people who live to design letterheads, and I don't mean to put down their profession, but I could not do it. I have the skills and understand the basic principles, can use the tools, have taught visual communications grad seminars, etc. That is not the issue. What I get bored with is following the hemlines of contemporary commercial graphic design, particularly on the web. What colors are hot this year? What fonts are in and what fonts are out this year? Trendy design, in other words. There are many things in this world I find fascinating, stimulating. But as with when I worked as a professional photographer and photojournalist, I lose interest in work when it starts feeling formulaic, when I feel like I'm just a hack following the latest trendy fashion. I used to shoot sports, and especially loved shooting fluid movement sports, where action didn't stop and start, like basketball, soccer, rugby. But that bored me eventually, because there's only so many different ways you can put a ball through a hoop. Interaction design fascinates me when content sets are complex, when interactions are like puzzles to solve. Interaction design bores me when design patterns are routine and I see no reason to reinvent the wheel, esp not for a gratuitous flash or graphic effect. If I were doing nothing but visual design for repetitive patterns, I'd be going crazy, I think! Page banners, tab menus, simple outline hierarchies. How many different ways can you as a visual designer put that ball through that hoop? There's nothing you can do but follow the hemlines, watch the rise and fall of this year's font trends, banner color palettes, or 3-d pops. Try to push on it a little. Now that is a skill, to do it really well, just as it is a skill to be an art director on a slick glossy print magazine, or to be the kind of photographer who shoots concept cars in big studios with soft boxes the size of the car, with 8x10 view cameras. That's art school kind of skill, and my visual design skills, while perfectly competent to design and shoot for for a good quality university admissions viewbook and win some awards, won't ever dance at that level. And ultimately, that's why I'm drawn more to interaction design. This kind of design has deeper puzzles to plumb the depths of, bigger problems to wrestle with. I do love beautiful design, but our screens are still small, images display in even smaller postage stamp frames inside them, templates are constantly becoming oppressive (from a dramatic visual design perspective-- I loved doing double-truck full bleed print designs, heavy with photos, 20x30 color posters, etc), and bandwidth concerns are always nipping at our heels. As a visual designer, I still find the constraints of the web too... constraining. Good thing I'm not doing that full time, nothing but visual design, obsessing on fonts, color palettes, pixels, and res. I think I'd be going crazy. Sorry in advance if I am blaspheming overmuch. I mean, because we do still have trendy wireframe fonts, and are rounded corners in this year, or out? Hemlines. Should I wear a miniskirt? Or are the hemlines coming back down again? Chris On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 12:03 AM, Hernandez, Barbara [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all I work every day with multi-talented designers who are the whole package and more. They take our designs from concept to finished art. They are masters of both interaction and visual design (and no you can't have them :)). That said, I have worked on both sides of this argument. I have worked as an interaction designer who relied on graphic artists to create the graphics for my designs. Looking back, and now having worked with the designers on my team, most of the graphics artists I worked with in the past with could function easily as interaction designers. Some of them did - but only on their portfolio sites, not at work. In other cases, I struggled with graphic artists that worked in the print world and didn't get the interactive component so it was near impossible to get the visual design to support the interaction. Is there room for both specializations, sure, IMHO we get great, world class design from designers with talent for both
Re: [IxDA Discuss] What to teach interaction design students
These are excellent points Jon, and many programs sincerely strive to do this. But having worked in such programs through bad economic times as well as good, I have another question to pose to you. What do you do when administrators REQUIRE numbers, and the quality of your students, for various reasons, is not that good, and the majority can't survive the rigors you want to put them through? There are two sides of this, particularly with grad class recruitment efforts and admissions. In good economic times, the primo students are being snagged up straight to industry, so you can end up with weak classes of students that way. And in bad economic times, really bad times, beyond when layoffs send folks to grad or second degree programs, people just don't have the money to spend on an expensive school (esp if student loan sources are completely drying up). There is a sweetspot, I suppose, where bad economic times fill classes with great students, before they start to cull them due to lack of funds. But there's an administrative imperative (you must admit a new class of 15 grad students every fall, for instance) that can be quite demoralizing for a faculty member, I have to say. And then the next thing you know (probably not at SCAD, but elsewhere), you've got a class of students you have to show how to open and close multiple windows and save files on a server for collaborative projects. It's a dilemma, so if you don't have an answer to my question, join the club! If you do have an answer, tho, please share! It will make me feel better. Chris On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 7:43 PM, Jon [GMAIL] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:20:54 From: David Malouf [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] What to teach interaction design students To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] GREAT thread. Before I go all up and theoretical, I wanted to point people to Jon Kolko's work in this regard. He is my predecessor at SCAD as the Prof of IxD there. He has his course materials and other thoughts on IxD education on his site: http://www.jonkolko.com/education.php I've been following the thread, and enjoying the discussion. Having placed ~99% of my 50 or so interaction design undergraduates in interaction design jobs or grad degree programs, it looks like the interaction curriculum I developed with Professor Bob Fee works. That said, the reason it worked so well is because the students I had were passionate, aggressive, interested, and fired up - and the ones who weren't realized quickly that they couldn't hack it in courses that were as demanding as industry. And so the best suggestion I can give to someone structuring an interaction design program [really, any design program at all] is to make it demanding, challenging and difficult, and do your best to establish a reputation for it and yourself as being equally as demanding, challenging and difficult. The students learn to self-select classes based on reputation, and you control quality through word of mouth. After my experience teaching, I'm solidly of the belief that anyone can learn any design skill - any practical ability and set of methods - but not everyone has or can acquire the passion and fire to learn something as challenging and as ambiguous as design. A good curriculum and a good professor exists, essentially, to feed the fire of passion. - Jon Kolko Co-Editor-In-Chief, interactions http://interactions.acm.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] What to teach interaction design students
Jon, I agree with you on all points, and basically operated under those principles. However, there is a fly in the works with a weak class, one I ran into head on. #1: You can't give Cs in grad school. Basically, as a student, if you make more than one C, you're out of the program, or at least on probation and could lose an assistantship, if you have one. Administrators who need to keep their program numbers up for funding would FREAK if Cs were showing up with any frequency. #2: Grad students know this, and will not risk getting even 1 C. If it even remotely looks like they are at risk of getting a C or worse, they'll drop the course, if it isn't a core requirement course. Obviously core requirement courses are different, and there's other stuff to take special care with on those. But, for a case in point, in a technology-intensive, Flash and RIA-interaction design course I taught which was dual-listed, 400-600 (at the time, a new course I had proposed and gotten thru curriculum cmte, so definitely not a core requirement), I had drawn in a number of my engineering undergrads, some very talented honors kids, to work alongside my master's students studyingg IA and interaction design. I thought, cool, I can put them in collaborative groups and they can help each other, Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. The problem? The undergrads ran circles around a very weak class of grad students (to keep the numbers up, administrators had even admitted folks UNDER our previous GRE cutoffs) who could barely manage the technology, but weren't doing well on the design or theoretical issues either. It was a disaster, and the grad students were crashing under the rigors big time. By six weeks into the course, all but one of the grad students had dropped. Meanwhile, the undergrads finished with flying colors, produced an incredible CD of rich and fantastic projects. But boy was I in the doghouse with my administrators. Chris On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 12:03 PM, jon kolko [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I've heard a number of times that some faculty (and program heads) consider their programs as contracts with the students - that you pay a certain amount of money, and you get a degree. Professional programs are often framed this way (those that attract more disciplined and often older students). While I can certainly see the appeal of this (particularly from an administrator's point of view), if a program is accredited, there needs to be a sense of rigorous assessment built into the grading schema. A C has always meant average, and if your students are doing average work, give them average grades. The flipside of aggressive and difficult grading is that you need to be prepared to do aggressive and difficult rationalization, and I know a lot of professors who are turned off by this. But this seems only fair to me - if you give a harsh grade, you need to offer both constructive criticism and a thorough substantiation of the grade. This is no different than a harsh critique - It sucks doesn't cut it in Design, as you have to explain WHY it sucks. So I guess my answer to your question about administrative imperatives is that your grading should be in no way connected to or influenced by that imperative - you can give fair grades and still have 15 students in a class. And I truly think you owe it to all paying students to give fair grades, because when someone who gets straight As and naively thinks they can get a job at a high pressure consultancy has no design skills to speak of, they get a rude awakening during their interview and they begin to negatively taint the reputation of the institution. That isn't fair to the company, to the student, or to the school. And it annoys the pig... :) Jon On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 10:11 AM, Christine Boese [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: These are excellent points Jon, and many programs sincerely strive to do this. But having worked in such programs through bad economic times as well as good, I have another question to pose to you. What do you do when administrators REQUIRE numbers, and the quality of your students, for various reasons, is not that good, and the majority can't survive the rigors you want to put them through? There are two sides of this, particularly with grad class recruitment efforts and admissions. In good economic times, the primo students are being snagged up straight to industry, so you can end up with weak classes of students that way. And in bad economic times, really bad times, beyond when layoffs send folks to grad or second degree programs, people just don't have the money to spend on an expensive school (esp if student loan sources are completely drying up). There is a sweetspot, I suppose, where bad economic times fill classes with great students, before they start to cull them due to lack of funds. But there's an administrative imperative (you must admit a new class of 15 grad students every fall
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End?
What if the whole idea of a revenue model is the wrong question? Coming in from left field here, but does anyone ask, What is the revenue model of the Boston Commons? The town square? The implication is that if something does not have a revenue model, it cannot exist and does not deserve to exist. By this argument, poetry does not exist. Commons do not exist. The odd question here is not WHY users dislike ads, with the presumption that they HAVE to be enculturated to somehow like ads. I dislike cold showers, and all the persuasion in the world will not make me like cold showers. Has anyone stopped to think that perhaps what we are witnessing is something like truth breaking through the dominant (and perhaps oppressive) media programming of an audience, to stand up and say, No, no matter how much melamine you put in my processed box dinner, I do not like it Sam I am! For some reason, I don't feel the need to ask the question of why users dislike ads, any more than I need to ask why I dislike cold showers or processed box dinners. What I have to ask is why people seem to presume that with enough applied persuasion, I can be made to LIKE those things, and that I ought to be made to do so, as some kind of a moral imperative, to be able to sustain somebody else's idea of a business model, when, last time I checked, Town Commons, electronic commons, have sustained themselves just fine any time people feel the need to get together, and share ideas, and talk. The odd thing to me here is that the presumption, the baseline, appears to be How dare they feel the need to get together and share ideas and talk without listening to us tell them to buy things. The nerve of some people! Any other view of what people do when they gather together is framed as beyond the pale, outside societal norms. To that I say, Says who? No business model? What will those people DO when they come together? Just sit around and be wankers and not buy anything?! I just can't imagine what they might do, especially since it might come out of their own heads, instead of being predefined by US. Hmph. Chris On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 8:32 AM, Steve Baty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I was quite happily ignoring this thread until I hit this: I do think that Facebook has yet to produce a meaningful business model. And this is a huge problem. Wasn't for YouTube. Or Skype. Or MySpace. Etc. Looking for multimillion-dollar pay-off problems? I can't but think that being bought out by someone else is not a business model. Not having a revenue model for your business *is* a problem because it indicates a lack of thinking about the future relevance of your business, and it's a failure to secure the future of that business. Sooner or later that's going to bite you in the ass. Regards Steve 2008/9/22 Kontra [EMAIL PROTECTED] I do think that Facebook has yet to produce a meaningful business model. And this is a huge problem. Wasn't for YouTube. Or Skype. Or MySpace. Etc. Looking for multimillion-dollar pay-off problems? -- Kontra http://counternotions.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -- -- Steve 'Doc' Baty B.Sc (Maths), M.EC, MBA Principal Consultant Meld Consulting M: +61 417 061 292 E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] UX Statistics: http://uxstats.blogspot.com Member, UPA - www.upassoc.org Member, IA Institute - www.iainstitute.org Member, IxDA - www.ixda.org Contributor - UXMatters - www.uxmatters.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End?
Yes, thanks Bryan, that actually supports my point, and I was thinking along those lines too. Often, keepers of online social spaces presume that because there are costs for hosting, supporting, upgrading these spaces, they MUST be revenue-focused, as if revenue is the deeper goal, underlying all social associations. But public spaces, discourse spaces, commons, all incur costs, if nothing else, for bathroom cleaning, litter, etc. AND they can also offer support for revenue-producing activities (kiosks for fliers, street musicians with their little cans for money, concerts, speakers, etc.). Revenue is not necessarily excluded from the commons, but is not allowed to intrude upon the commons part of it. An odd example of what happened to town/city social spaces (and is in many places currently being un-done, as it was terrible) was the mall-fication (malification? lol) of the marketplace, removing it from the commons and placing it in a suburban private, enclosed space, highly controlled, with security guards, accessable only by transport, etc. This was a massive encroachment on the idea of a Commons, with little counter movement on behalf of publics, to advocate for the preservation of these kinds of spaces, rather than the rampant privatization (and class-divisions, political and civic speech exclusions) of mall spaces. Some of the effects of those exclusions led to a good deal of the migration online, to online commons, as the public, civic, and political needs sought a new outlet. But we must not presume that the hosts of the new online spaces have civic and political needs in mind, and have to guard such needs as strongly in these spaces as we have to work to reclaim the Commons in the face to face world as well, as an open, democratized space for all, and not privatized, class-segregated, censored spaces. Chris On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 1:24 PM, Bryan Minihan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm not sure if it helps or hinders your point, but playing the devil's advocate: both Boston Commons and the town square have a revenue model. They both require revenue to sustain themselves (keep the grounds clean, sponsor and host events, etc), and typically collect that revenue not from ads, but through local or state taxes. I'd assume the folks responsible for managing those public spaces are pretty keenly aware of their value, and what's required to keep them from being turned into parking lots. Perhaps there should be room for public spaces for the greater good on the Internet, which rise above the need for ad-based or other revenue. Until that's available, though, the revenue-potential of a site goes directly to the heart of its value, today. If a company can't find a way to stay in business, without any other external support (charity, donations), why should any but the most innovative folks invest the time to build a community there, when the site could disappear in six months? - Bryan Christine said: What if the whole idea of a revenue model is the wrong question? Coming in from left field here, but does anyone ask, What is the revenue model of the Boston Commons? The town square? [snip] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=33019 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] Fwd: The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End?
Oh, I suppose, at least as much of a public service project as anyone who gives vast sums to political candidates or college sports teams, and by law can expect nothing in return, but in reality, they reap political favors, ambassadorships, or primo parking spaces on game day and first dibs on the pricey skyboxes. G I mean, technically, venture capital is venture-- the VC venture out to support a project that they think will pay off in some sort of benefit for them, but the benefit is hardly a sure thing. The people who court VC may make them specific promises about what they may deliver, but audiences of millions who WILL buy product X are so much vaporware. VC means you take a risk, and may not see a return. But what might a VC get by supporting a platform rapidly becoming a new Commons? Do they say, OK, I get my stock, make it pay off, and that's it? Or is there a larger, indirect benefit to a VC making an investment in a platform, in that, if the platform itself takes off and reaches exponential adoption levels (becomes the cool place to hang out), the pie of business opportunities grows larger, and new side platforms spring up, etc. blah blah blah? Sometimes, I presume, VC make investments in infrastructure because it behooves VC to make more money off an improved infrastructure. Hence, you do have companies sponsoring highway cleanup (more people shop in cleaner towns), sponsoring stadiums and arenas, slapping their names on all sorts of public works, far beyond the equivalent of a plaque on a park bench. Why did the former CEO of Home Depot build that massive Aquarium in Atlanta again? Was it just for the gate receipts, or was it to invest in Atlanta, to help to make the city itself, and its downtown Commons (Centennial Park, across the street) more of a destination? It's what I could never figure out, 10 years ago, when visiting India (it may be different there now). I never saw a place that so vastly under-invested (and by extension, under-profited) in its own infrastructure. Chris ps I should look up the cost of the Georgia Aquarium, perhaps, to see if it compares to the $496M pumped into Facebook... http://science.howstuffworks.com/georgia-aquarium.htm $290M to build, not sure on maintenance... cost of big fishies, all that. So how did they do it? How did they build habitats for all those animals, and where did they get all the fish? What does it take to keep the water clean and the animals fed and healthy? And how did the aquarium -- a nonprofit organization -- afford all that? In this article, you'll learn the answers to these and other questions. You'll also learn about the aquatic animals that are the aquarium's star attractions. On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 2:18 PM, Jared Spool [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 22, 2008, at 12:44 PM, Christine Boese wrote: What if the whole idea of a revenue model is the wrong question? Coming in from left field here, but does anyone ask, What is the revenue model of the Boston Commons? The town square? I see. So the $496,000,000 that has been poured into Facebook by Microsoft, Li Ka-shing, and the other venture capitalists should be thought of as a public-service project? Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End?
Just to note a different perspective here, since the bias of this professional group may be creating a bit of a blind spot, both about Facebook, and indirectly, about Geocities. I did my dissertation ethnography of a grassroots cyberculture community in the mid-90s. The goal of the study (as for all such studies) was to learn from the COMMUNITY what tools and interfaces and interactions were empowering for the community, and which were not. The community had to teach me, and I avoided imposing my own beliefs about certain tools on their perceptions. I collected data. I can tell you (and this is replicated in many online communities of the day), Geocities and Simplenet, and the others were ESSENTIAL for the community to even to exist, to even coalesce and become empowered to do what they did. They meant EVERYTHING to these grassroots, REAL online communities (as opposed to communities manufactured by marketing people). The SNEERS of professional interface designers meant nothing to them. The grassroots was empowered by a clunky tool, and took it, and exploded, accomplished its goals, and far exceeded them. I'm sure many would say the same of the butt ugly MySpace as well, and Facebook, Tribe, Friendster, et al. So to step back for a moment, to think about real audiences, users, communities, vibrant cybercultures, and how dare they presume to exist and use tools without our benevolent blessing and permission! What nerve of them! G How dare those cats resist our herding! LOL. I like to think about a similar disconnect raised in other times, in other places, as elites cite the superior quality of whatever sophisticated technology they are touting, as a widespread, grassroots wildfire seizes upon a weaker, lesser tool, because it is immediately accessable to them, and can be quickly and easily appropriated for their needs. Funny how sometimes the self appointed high priest class so strongly resists the tearing apart of the curtain to the Holy of Holies. Here's the beginnings of a list: weak pathetic PCs vs. superior powerful mainframes HTML vs. SGML pathetic VHS vs. Beta Apple vs PC Messy Inky Printing Press Books vs. gorgeous, scriptoria-copied, Monk-created illuminated manuscripts 2,000-character sets of hieroglyphs readable only by an elite priest class vs.20+ character syllabic alphabets that could be read by slaves and forment revolution Chris On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 1:56 PM, Benjamin Ho [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I do agree that there is quite a bit of clutter in FB and that there still needs to be work done to it. I haven't had the privilege of using Geocities so I have nothing to compare it to. I think that the fact that Geocities didn't really take off into mainstream was because it wasn't its time. There's a reason for everything. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=33019 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] MooseJaw.com
Whoa! As a longtime REI member, I have to remark that the redesign is a vast improvement. You know, when you been using certain clunky features for so long (because I am devoted to REI), and all of a sudden some of the clunkiness goes away... well, it's a bit like a stuck doorbell when it stops buzzing. At first I thought, well, it's a pretty subtle redesign, until I hit the product pages. Pretty cool. And I was just on a camping trip too, and cursing some of my equipment. Reviews are well laid out also. Chris On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 2:02 AM, J. Scot Angus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Greetings! For those of you out there that enjoy the great outdoors, Moosejaw.com just launched a new site... curious what everyone thinks. REI.com made *huge* steps forward with their recent redesign, and although Backcountry.com is no longer top dog, I'm pretty sure they saw this coming and are working on something hot. Can't wait. j.scot user experience strategist los angeles | washington dc Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] MooseJaw.com
Whoa! As a longtime REI member, I have to remark that the redesign is a vast improvement. You know, when you been using certain clunky features for so long (because I am devoted to REI), and all of a sudden some of the clunkiness goes away... well, it's a bit like a stuck doorbell when it stops buzzing. At first I thought, well, it's a pretty subtle redesign, until I hit the product pages. Pretty cool. And I was just on a camping trip too, and cursing some of my equipment. Reviews are well laid out also. Chris On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 2:02 AM, J. Scot Angus [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Greetings! For those of you out there that enjoy the great outdoors, Moosejaw.com just launched a new site... curious what everyone thinks. REI.com made *huge* steps forward with their recent redesign, and although Backcountry.com is no longer top dog, I'm pretty sure they saw this coming and are working on something hot. Can't wait. j.scot user experience strategist los angeles | washington dc Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Clients are funny
While I can agree that the fold may not be a barrier to users, I would argue that the fold remains a SERIOUS consideration for ad display rates and views, and in search results display. Whether or not users are ABLE to scroll and readily do so does not affect the power of the screen scan on initial page load, esp with high bounce rates being pretty normal. It's that power of the page scan on page load that gives the fold power still, and not anachronistic power because advertisers are slow on the evolution of user behavior. For instance, people have always known they can read entire front page of newspapers, entire newspapers, but that knowledge does not diminish in any way the power of the REAL newspaper fold, given that it shows through the window in the automated machines, or appears at the top of the stack of papers wherever they happen to be up for sale. As a newspaper photographer many moons ago, I had no illusions that my stock went up exponentially every time I landed the dominant front page shot above the fold that carried the page. This same reasoning also figures in the way resumes get out of a slush pile, what they call the 5-second scan. That 5-second scan does not diminish the importance of having substance backing it up within the resume, but it does establish a resume fold of sorts as well. So if I were either advertisers or people trying to reach preferred natural search engine results placement, I would not diminish the importance of the fold any time soon. Chris On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 12:11 PM, mark schraad [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that the fold is no longer an issue for user - and it is very old school thinking. The dreaded scroll avoidance of the 90's is for the most part over. The problem comes in that revenue partners and customers (particularly those who buy ad placements) are significantly behind the curve and continue to use this as bargaining leverage. Granted, the user should be the primary consideration for Ix work, but there are other stakeholders. On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Marty DeAngelo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I wish I could share the screenshot but there's too much proprietary info on it. I understand that not everyone has their browser maximized, but 30% of a 800x600 screen (when their own standards are 1024x768) was what I got a chuckle out of. I doubt that many websites could be usable in a 240 x 180 space -- and expect most users know to increase their browser size when things aren't visible in a partial state. -- Marty -Original Message- From: Nick Gassman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] They only had their browser window open to about 30% of their screen real estate. I wouldn't be so dismissive of what's going on here. If your client only showed 30% of the window, how many users of the site will do so? Do you know? Do you know how many maximise their browser? How many have toolbars installed? If you're designing to a specific resolution, do you assume all users have their browsers maximised? 'The fold' does matter, but usually you don't know where it is for any given user. *Nick Gassman - Usability and Standards Manager - http://ba.com * Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] [Iai-Members] Avatars in the Marketplace
Gravitar as Totem spirit? I dunno. I tend to put pictures of my doggies up, but then I'm already older. Nobody really puts moths up for avatars, do they (like the opening scene in Golden Compass, the book)? Chris On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 6:26 PM, Kim Bieler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Am I the only one seeing similarities between avatars and Philip Pullman's concept of daemons? Especially in the context of how they change as you get older... -- Kim + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Kim Bieler Graphic Design www.kbgd.com + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] [Iai-Members] Avatars in the Marketplace
Yeah, but those are just the folks who haul you out of the Black Star, after Hiro chops you up with his sword! Chris On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 11:27 PM, Angel Marquez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 6:25 PM, Christine Boese [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gravitar as Totem spirit? I dunno. I tend to put pictures of my doggies up, but then I'm already older. Nobody really puts moths up for avatars, do they (like the opening scene in Golden Compass, the book)? Chris On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 6:26 PM, Kim Bieler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Am I the only one seeing similarities between avatars and Philip Pullman's concept of daemons? Especially in the context of how they change as you get older... -- Kim + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Kim Bieler Graphic Design www.kbgd.com + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Rugby.com
So nobody finds it odd that the only people of color visible on the site are relegated to a section called Social Action? This site gives all appearance of being a direct export from Apartheid Nation. Noblesse Oblige, y'all. If the media want to create an overwhelming image of South Africa to aspire to, all they have to do is paint the pretty pictures on the exclusive sites, because people learn from them how to act, aspirationally. Chris On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 8:56 AM, Will Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: I was referring to the Brand - not to the style. When I went to school (a long long time ago), brands weren't allowed - and the only logos students could wear was the school one. No doubt the uniform is required. On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 12:47 AM, Jared Spool [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Being that my offices are a stones throw away from Philips Andover (where G. Bush Sr., Jeb Bush, and G. W. Bush Jr. all went to school) and I drive through the campus every day, I can say they do wear exactly this wardrobe. I'm going to bet that the kids aren't necessarily the buyers in this relationship. There's an entire network of supply chain to get to them. However, without talking with the marketing manager, it would be hard to decide what the biz goals for the site are. Jared On Aug 18, 2008, at 7:07 PM, Will Evans wrote: But, as a showcase, the latency issue may be less than if someone is trying to purchase a complete wardrobe as they get ready to head off to Philips Exeter to meet with Buffy and Bif. (I find it difficult to look at this site without thinking of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTU2He2BIc0) You are partially right - to Ralph Lifschitz chagrin - prep school kids don't wear ralph lauren - their target market is very very different from the bif and buffy folks you see on that showcase site. That said - I want to know what the goals are for the site. Knowing their target audience, i very much doubt they are surfing from the high school dorm room from their macbook up in exeter nh. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -- ~ will Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems - Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel: +1.617.281.128 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] aim: semanticwill | gtalk: wkevans4 twitter: semanticwill | skype: semanticwill - Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Rugby.com
As another former rugby player, I can certainly vouch for that! Chris On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 9:46 PM, Benjamin Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've also had this site sent to me from a few people, but mostly because I play rugby, not because of the design/interaction. The site does look good, graphically. But it doesn't work half the time (as mentioned in other posts). Plus, the guys on the site are definitely not ruggers and would quickly be left pantless and fetching beers while we stole their girlfriends. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stephen Dondershine Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 4:26 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Rugby.com LOL! That's a great video. Wasn't aware of the latency issues when I submitted the site, but if you can ever get past them take a look and you'll find a few cool concepts in there worth thinking about. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32143 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Why Google and SEO Sucks - Findability
Well, except for one thing. The thing that made Google a game-changer, back in the day, was that it ambitiously sought to scan ALL PAGE CONTENTS and LINKS. Previous to Google turning our world into BG and AG (Before Google, and After Google), no search engine wanted all that wasted info in its databases, no search engine had a secret agenda to be a giant Hoover for all data, all books, all maps, all everything, the Book of Life, a Tower of Babel Akashic that would make a neo-Platonist blush! I still believe Google is the ultimate Trojan Horse, ostensibly all about search, but not really. I think highly efficient and godlike search is only a tangential side business to Google's REAL business, to create Borges' Most Perfect Map of Everything, to be the most gigantic of giant data Hoovers and suck up everything (with one big eyeball on the day when AI is actually possible, since I don't think real AI can exist, without Google-levels of data behind it). BG, search engines had much lower expectations, and we were all learning to focus focus focus on our meta-data, our H1s, our page titles. Woo woo. It was do or die time back then. There's no way our concept of a Google Bomb, of linking President Bush and miserable failure, could have ever happened without the giant whole-page Hoover. Old search engines only wanted to index the stuff they wanted to index. They wanted us to Set Priorities. And Hierarchies. They wanted us to screw non-linearity. So here we are, in the land of AG, a landscape created and shaped by desires, and the desires of one large entity to suck up data shaped in a certain way led us to consistently shape our data in a certain way. What would happen to the Web if some mysterious virus erased Google's databases tomorrow, the server farms and databanks, and all their back ups? Would the Akashic continue to exist without the ethers for it to live on? Would Confucious still say It is written.. ? What's so interesting to me is that our current generation of SEO is morphing back into the more focused attention to metadata, both for the hope of the Semantic Web, but also because the Google Hoover may be faltering, may be less godlike than it was when there was less data to suck up. Perhaps Google's vacuum bags are getting full, and the sandbox and the Long Tail are becoming less indexable then they once were, and maybe even Google is secretly throwing out some of those old vacuum bags, without telling us. I mean, sorry Chris Anderson, but the Long Tail could not exist without a Google as a prerequisite. Marshall McLuhan would be the first to tell you that (I'm certain Anderson knows that as well). So the SEO folks are hedging their bets, building new webs that look a lot like the old meta-tag webs of the 1990s, before Google started scanning whole pages, whole books, whole everything. The PR line is that Google is the master index of all indexes, but quietly, in the deep dark margins, maybe some data is falling off the edge of the Known World, maybe some data is falling into the Bottomless Pit, with the requisite weeping and gnashing of teeth. Maybe the Google search results are losing some of their (ssh) authority and precision, the very thing that made something free and wonderful rise up to bury the Lexis-Nexis's of the world in irrelevancy. I don't think it is all about landing on the first page or the first screen of the results. I mean, yes, that's a big deal. But truly, I'm more interested in what ISN'T coming up in the deep results anymore, without so much of a press release announcing that the Hoover may have reached some of its limits, may be deliberately not crawling certain sectors of the Net, may be a less authoritative source for the Data of Everything. Chris ---still waiting for something bigger than the neo-Platonic imitation of the Akashic Records On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 1:21 PM, Dennis Deacon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Will, I would agree that Google is not perfect. However, in this case, the blame cannot be solely on Google. Wikipedia's use of placeholder pages to encourage contribution within its community is highlighting a bad data in, bad data out issue. Based on Google's PageRank algorithm, Wikipedia naturally ranks high due to the number of links into it. Google then views Wikipedia as an authoritative source. Not perfect, but in most cases, pretty darn good. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32046 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Designing vs. Architecting
English teachers AND the NYTimes Book Review shudder in HORROR at the idea of architecting as a verb (or in this case, a gerund, a verbal). E-VILE! We also find the word gift used as a verb perfectly revolting as well. There is a perfectly good verb, to give-- and the idea of some marketer gifting you with something is beyond absurd. Registered Complaint #475. Chris On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 9:17 AM, Will Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So Seth Godin has a new blog post http://tinyurl.com/6rqluo concerning the semantics of designing. vs. architecting which is rather interesting. Here is what he says -- Is architect a verb? I confess. I like using it that way. I think architecting something is different from designing it. I hope you can forgive me but I think it's a more precise way to express this idea. Design carries a lot of baggage related to aesthetics. We say something is well-designed if it looks good. There are great designs that don't look good, certainly, but it's really easy to get caught up in a bauhaus, white space, font-driven, Ideo-envy way of thinking about design. So I reserve architect to describe the intentional arrangement of design elements to get a certain result. You can architect a computer server set up to make it more efficient. You can architect a train station to get more people per minute through the turnstiles. More interesting, you can architect a business model or a pricing structure to make it far more effective at generating the behavior you're looking for. Most broken websites aren't broken because they violate common laws of good design. They're broken because their architecture is all wrong. There's no strategy in place. Stew Leonard's, which used to be my favorite supermarket example, is architected to extract large amounts of money from customers. One example: there's only one route through the store. You start at the beginning and work your way to the end. No one goes there to buy a half-gallon of milk. And he's not going to win any design competitions either... Or consider the architecture of the pricing at 37signalshttp://www.37signals.com/or the architecture of Hotmail's viral marketing campaign years ago. Architecture, for me anyway, involves intention, game theory, systems thinking and relentless testing and improvement. Fine with me if you want to call it design, just don't forget to do it. -- ~ will Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems - Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel +1.617.281.1281 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] twitter: https://twitter.com/semanticwill - Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Cuil
My thought was that the launch generated a lot of interest, so they may have underestimated the load of the new site curiosity traffic. Denial of service-type, just a little overloaded as people check out the potential David to Giant Google. Chris On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 4:08 PM, Maureen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are bugs. 1) This morning I searched on a term (usability) and then switched my preferences to allow for questionable content (by default this is protected) and the same search returned zero results. 2) Recently I did a search which yielded only 5 results on screen, confirmed by the fact that there was only 1 page of search results, further confirmed b the fact that the forward and next arrows were disabled, yet the upper right area said, 88 results for [my search term] 3) Response time for additional results pages was extremely slow. Tried again just now and actually got a message: No results because of high load. Due to excessive load, our servers didn't return results. Please try your search again. Perhaps Cuil was released too early? Regarding the design, I have mixed feelings thus far. I like that there's more info revealed for each result and that there's some small graphical element in the results. However, the layout is less efficient to browse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=31630 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] turning freelance work into a sustainable design business
There's one calculation that is helpful, to figure whether you can actually live as a freelancer. I was a freelance photographer back in the 80s, for instance, and it would have helped me immensely to do this little piece of math, but I was young and had no clue. Figure out what you're gonna charge, on average, per job. Figure out how many jobs at that rate you could conceivably do/finish (depending on time frame) a month. Subtract monthly expenses. Multiply by 12. That's just a quick and dirty reality check, not actual accounting. When the bottom fell out of the photography market, when photos started appearing on CD-ROMs for less than pennies an image, I knew I was destined to lose, no matter what I did, even in best case circumstances. Same for newspaper shooting, killing yourself with long hours, nights and weekends, for something people will throw away every day, if they even see it. No resale value whatsoever. Granted, wedding shooters have benefited from a neo gilded age acceptance of massive charges for wedding photography, a black box combo of both skill and puffery. They make money, and pump the volume in and out the door. The puffery side of the business sort of made me nauseous, as did the feeling that I'd be scamming people out of their money. That's what I get for growing up blue collar. I thought less wealthy people deserved nice wedding pictures too (and fellow grad students, as that was how I made extra money in grad school, doing weddings--if you're working together scraping up beer money, are you going to charge $5K-$10K per wedding? It just felt exploitive, but the shooters who made that shift from the $1K wedding to the $5-$10K wedding got rich--fleecing people, if you ask me). But even if you are in the $5K wedding shooter club, you gotta shoot at least 12 weddings a year to make $60K (before expenses and taxes). The actual shooting takes up the least amount of time in the entire wedding job. But the hard part is, you have to realize that whatever you are wanting to do has to be converted to a unit that multiplies into an annual income. (I applied this test for a friend who was wanting to start a video production service for real estate agents, for instance, and it sobered her up real quick to realize that even pumping the max number of paying jobs in and out the door in a year that any one human could conceivably complete (without relying on subcontractors and increasing expenses), she'd at most be able to clear about $30K a year (a major pay cut for her), for the price she was thinking of charging.) And that's not factoring in a freelancer's dry time between clients, and the fact that there is only so much space in any person's head to give to creative projects at one time, or you have a stress breakdown. Chris On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Ron Edelen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is very little difference between freelancing and having your own business, especially when you freelance from home. Making the transition is not hard, but requires you to maintain simple business habits. Here's what worked for me. 1) Maintaining a killer reputation with the firms (or clients) you previous freelanced with. Referrals from these contacts are critical to keeping a flow of work. 2) Occasionally take work that you may not like to do, as long as it is within your ethical boundaries and minimum budgetary needs. This will keep work flowing in and expand your market/network of clients. 3) Use contracts. Protect yourself, your client, and your ability to represent your work to prospectives. AIGA has a good, free starting point. Look specifically at the Basic terms and conditions, and Supplement 2: Interactive-Specific Terms and Conditions. (http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/standard-agreement) 4) Keep up with all the latest trends in advertising/design/marketing. Even if you are tech-focused and have little interest in campaigns - Starbucks Ideas for example (www.mystarbucksideas.com), which is no more than a blog with a rating system - it is good to be able to know the market, the successful trends, how to apply your knowledge to solutions that have high ROI probability, and be able to sell (talk it up) your abilities to prospective clients. 5) If you are starting a company, think about working with a business partner who can add similar or complimentary offerings to your own. This has been a critical ingredient for me. Your business will grow faster, and you won't go insane trying to do it. Example: someone who can bounce absurd client request (good cop - bad cop), share the day-to-day business tasks, and continually provide alternate perspectives to challenging circumstances. More often than not, a problem can't be solved by the person who created it. You have to weigh the pros-cons between freelance and running your own shop - of which I will let someone else chime in on. I was told that any new business won't see profit for first two to five
Re: [IxDA Discuss] CMS compared (Was: Blogger versus WordPress versus TypePad)
Nobody is speaking up in defense of Typepad, and as a beta tester since it first came out in 2002, I suppose I might note a few points (I manage about 30 Typepad blogs, many migrated from Movable before that, and am getting ready to start working in Wordpress, for a new project). Several things a good designer can do with Typepad that some people seem to struggle with on Wordpress (although I'm not anticipating having any trouble with it myself), which is CSS modifications, and sidebar or menu modifications. I've yet to encounter blog software I can't twist up royally, and use for all kinds of things it was never intended (altho blog software keeps evolving to add plug-ins for things that I've already kludged out earlier, which ends up making my work in vain). So while, design-wise, Wordpress is luring me with wider design possibilities than Typepad, it is only out of my own laziness, because I am convinced that if I took the time, I can adapt ANY site CSS for use in Typepad. But the beauty of blog software is that it is a quick and dirty CMS, and I just don't want to take the time, and I want to move into a completely different look and feel. Typepad has both Custom CSS and Advanced Templates. I actually built all my Advanced Templates before they came out with the Custom CSS features, around about 2005 or so. What was handy for me, and a key point I want to make, is that it was SO EASY (the user interface for content input). I was teaching at the time in Montana, and while we were moving the student newspaper to Expression Engine (powerful, but a difficult user interface for newbies), it was WAY QUICKER to just punt my students all to guest accounts on my Typepad class blog, and have them branch out and start building their own blogs from that. Semesters are too short, esp if you are the kind of professor that also makes students READ wonky stuff and DISCUSS things, rather than just play on the computers all day. That's the rub, eh? Typepad hasn't dominated just because it is easy to use, but because PEOPLE LIKE using it, and that makes them feel encouraged to post, to stick with their blogs, to be enthusiastic as they step up to start a post. McLuhan would point out, the kinds of conversations you have by candlelight are far different than the kinds of conversations you have under fluorescent light. Here we are, interaction designers, and nobody is talking about the subtle colorations the blog input interface brings to the kinds of things one writes about, and how writers FEEL about the interface. One of my Montana students then later took an internship at the LA Times, where he reported to me that they were running Typepad blogs out through the LA Times shell, this before Six Apart even started officially offering the business tools for Typepad. He said he noticed an interesting effect (because he was working with the journalists on these blogs). The journalists would automatically start to prefer putting their stories into Typepad, while procrastinating when they had to approach their regular, official newspaper CMS. I know this as well from CNN, where they didn't have comparative data, but the CMS was such an awkward old clunker, it made ordinary journalists view their interaction with it as a necessary evil. Imagine what happens to writers when you take away the evil part of that. So yeah, I'm lazy, and I just realized the other day that I haven't touched the CSS of my Typepad Advanced Templates in a long time, and they are starting to show their age, and Typepad may be too. Not its user input interface tho. And I also remember this from back in the day, when I was on Radio Userland blogs and migrated THAT design (which was not CSS based, EVIL) to Movable. It was like night and day. But Movable is still powerful, but also showing its age. I just don't trust its guts, cuz it messed up my SQL stuff terribly, and the comment spam on even password-protected blogs was simply unforgivable. But those kids, Ben and Mena Trott, now probably long gone from Six Apart, they had it going on, you know? You know that Movable and Typepad were running their feeds automatically to index.rdf files in the early 2000s. Why are some people having to work to tool up their Wordpress stuff for RDF? I've taken it for granted for almost 8 years. Blah. If you want the best control over your CSS, you can't beat Typepad. Custom CSS is brilliant, even if I've only needed it for teaching. That's just cuz I was too lazy to move out of my Advanced Templates, but if I had to start from scratch now, I'd be in nothing but the Custom CSS stuff. But I am looking forward to a fresh start, and a powerful new Wordpress theme I'm looking to try out. Chris On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 12:08 AM, Elena Melendy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Santiago and Jeff. Thanks for your replies. Jeff, I've barely skimmed the Joomla site but will take a closer look. Santiago: Actually, you've understood my problem exactly. I chose WordPress
Re: [IxDA Discuss] CMS compared (Was: Blogger versus WordPress versus TypePad)
Thanks, Elena. I'm also feeling that Typepad is getting dated, however, and I chart that directly to the disaster that was the Movable 3.0 launch, which was when the entire Movable community started migrating en masse to WordPress and Drupal. That didn't hurt Typepad, but it took most the strongest design energy away from the Movable/Typepad platform, as if a center of gravity shifted. I had an advantage, being a Typepad beta tester, of having 20% off the monthly Pro fee for life, and for years after, any guest I invite also gets my discount grandfathered in (don't know if that still works, but it means $11.95 a month, unlimited blogs, unlimited something else, space, I think). I wouldn't get anything but the pro account. But then I'm looking to spend at least $6.95 a month now, for WordPress hosting, so I figure, six of one... l just suck it up and support my habit. Chris On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 12:03 PM, Elena Melendy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Christine Boese wrote: Nobody is speaking up in defense of Typepad Here we are, interaction designers, and nobody is talking about the subtle colorations the blog input interface brings to the kinds of things one writes about, and how writers FEEL about the interface. If you want the best control over your CSS, you can't beat Typepad. Custom CSS is brilliant, even if I've only needed it for teaching. That's just cuz I was too lazy to move out of my Advanced Templates, but if I had to start from scratch now, I'd be in nothing but the Custom CSS stuff Chris, I'm bowled over by your passionate defense of Typepad! To be fair, though, I think it hasn't been raised as a possibility because in my original post, I specified that I was looking for a free CMS. To get control over CSS and advanced templates in Typepad, I'd have to pay $15/mo. I'm not making any kind of statement about the business model--just about my current budget. I'm definitely interested in the kind of discussion about interface you're describing. It seems to me that one of the reasons Typepad can charge $5/mo for the basic, single-blog, non-customizable feature set is because of the high quality of its UI. When I said that Drupal's interface was easy to use, I meant that it has very sensible architecture. The UI is nothing to speak of, though. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] CMS compared (Was: Blogger versus WordPress versus TypePad)
This came up in a discussion I was in the other day too, about whether blog software is a de facto content management system. My argument here would be, if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. So, like there were lots of people who turned up their nose at HTML back in the early days, because it was such a thin and pale imitation of SGML, a REAL markup language, after all. So why did HTML in effect trump SGML? Could it be because its ease of use enabled far greater widespread distributed or democratized uses than the more powerful and full-featured SGML? For that matter, why would anyone use a PC, a weak, desktop machine, when mainframes are so much more powerful, and do so many more things. Could it be because the ease of use enabled far greater widespread distributed or democratized uses than the more powerful and full featured mainframes and microcomputers? Chris On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 12:15 PM, Elin Sjursen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I wouldn't think of typepad as a cms anymore than I would blogger:) But that said, there is another really neat typepad like publishing system out there - squarespace.com. It is really easy to use and very customizable – it even contains an analytics system. They've just launched a new version. Have a look, Elin On 7/25/2008, Christine Boese [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks, Elena. I'm also feeling that Typepad is getting dated, however, and I chart that directly to the disaster that was the Movable 3.0 launch, which was when the entire Movable community started migrating en masse to WordPress and Drupal. That didn't hurt Typepad, but it took most the strongest design energy away from the Movable/Typepad platform, as if a center of gravity shifted. I had an advantage, being a Typepad beta tester, of having 20% off the monthly Pro fee for life, and for years after, any guest I invite also gets my discount grandfathered in (don't know if that still works, but it means $11.95 a month, unlimited blogs, unlimited something else, space, I think). I wouldn't get anything but the pro account. But then I'm looking to spend at least $6.95 a month now, for WordPress hosting, so I figure, six of one... l just suck it up and support my habit. Chris On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 12:03 PM, Elena Melendy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Christine Boese wrote: Nobody is speaking up in defense of Typepad Here we are, interaction designers, and nobody is talking about the subtle colorations the blog input interface brings to the kinds of things one writes about, and how writers FEEL about the interface. If you want the best control over your CSS, you can't beat Typepad. Custom CSS is brilliant, even if I've only needed it for teaching. That's just cuz I was too lazy to move out of my Advanced Templates, but if I had to start from scratch now, I'd be in nothing but the Custom CSS stuff Chris, I'm bowled over by your passionate defense of Typepad! To be fair, though, I think it hasn't been raised as a possibility because in my original post, I specified that I was looking for a free CMS. To get control over CSS and advanced templates in Typepad, I'd have to pay $15/mo. I'm not making any kind of statement about the business model--just about my current budget. I'm definitely interested in the kind of discussion about interface you're describing. It seems to me that one of the reasons Typepad can charge $5/mo for the basic, single-blog, non-customizable feature set is because of the high quality of its UI. When I said that Drupal's interface was easy to use, I meant that it has very sensible architecture. The UI is nothing to speak of, though. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Information Architect Runs for Office
BTW, check out his source code! Funny little thing in there. I'm tempted to do it, just for the hell of it. Chris On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 3:46 PM, Christopher Fahey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And he's got a great web site, too! http://www.seantevis.com/ I hope nobody feels obliged to discuss his policies or platform. I'm just noting that politics appears to be a new career path option for us. -Cf Christopher Fahey Behavior biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com me: http://www.graphpaper.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Article: Is Google Making Us Stoopid? from The Atlantic.com
LOL! I thought it was on purpose, to reinforce the point of the article! Chris On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 2:47 PM, Gloria Petron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: LOL - sorry about that. :-) Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Article: Is Google Making Us Stoopid? from TheAtlantic.com
gotta wade through all this thick ironizing here do y'all use spray starch to help make the author's point? LOL. Chris On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 3:18 PM, Jackie O'Hare [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Incidentally, I found the article too wordy for the ideas it described, but emotionally satisfying (just like I found 'War and Peace' too wordy, when I have read it long time ago). -- I totally agree. I found myself wondering whether it was done intentionally - as though the author was providing an example of the types of articles that we are inclined to glean for meaning. It seemed a little meta in that way. I also found reading this article online a very interesting experience. I wonder how the experience of reading it would be different if you were reading the print article in the physical magazine. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Article: Is Google Making Us Stoopid? from TheAtlantic.com
Generally, none of those adjectives readily describe Atlantic Monthly articles (which also regularly hew to a requisite length-- 2,000 to 5,000 words-- I used to submit essays, and have the yellowing rejection slips to prove it-- of which readers of the New Yorker and Harpers are also accustomed). Sensationalistic, bad research, bad writing. I've heard the Atlantic criticized for being too conservative, too over-researched, too constipated (that last one comes from me, over the past 20 years), but RARELY would anyone hear it called sensationalistic, and this is old school magazine writing, fact-checked to death over a full month or more. The Atlantic is known for publishing some of the best writing in the country. I'm just saying. Putting the Atlantic Monthly in the same category with, say, a Murdoch publication, begs absurdity. On the other hand, I may have come across a error in it myself, but it may be more along the quibble my old journalism prof had with saying a student graduated instead of was graduated. I take special joy in finding these things, mostly because my wonderful old prof has passed away, and somebody ought to still be able to do what he did, quibble, just to keep his memory alive. Chris On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 4:02 PM, Will Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are so many ways in which this article is bad. Bad research, bad writing, faulty conclusions based on shakey premises. The title alone should shy people away - it's sensationalistic. First - the author has no ability to discern the difference between intellect/intelligence and literacy, or intelligence and focus. This is not merely a matter of semantics. To use the word 'stupid' implies that google indeed reduces I.Q. yet the author never discusses intelligence anywhere in the article - he discusses focus, and literacy. Further, his issue is not with Google qua Google - but with Hypertext. Very, very different things. A well researched criticism of hypertext as a medium, and it's effects on cognition would have been interesting. This was not. On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 3:54 PM, Sebi Tauciuc [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Too long for me. Gave up reading up after two paragraphs. Does this prove the article's point? Sebi On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 10:18 PM, Jackie O'Hare [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Incidentally, I found the article too wordy for the ideas it described, but emotionally satisfying (just like I found 'War and Peace' too wordy, when I have read it long time ago). -- I totally agree. I found myself wondering whether it was done intentionally - as though the author was providing an example of the types of articles that we are inclined to glean for meaning. It seemed a little meta in that way. I also found reading this article online a very interesting experience. I wonder how the experience of reading it would be different if you were reading the print article in the physical magazine. -- Sergiu Sebastian Tauciuc http://www.sergiutauciuc.ro/en/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -- ~ will Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems - Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel +1.617.281.1281 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] twitter: https://twitter.com/semanticwill - Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Article: Is Google Making Us Stoopid? from TheAtlantic.com
I was struck just the other day by a Marshall McLuhan quotation I hadn't looked at in a good long while. It really shocked me out of my perspective, sort of a revisioning, or perhaps, McLuhan might say, with time, I began to recognize the pattern in the media reversal. It was his famous bit about the global village in Gutenberg Galaxy. Understanding Media is always fresher in my head, but like I said, a new perspective, something I was reading in wikipedia, put it to me in another way, not highlighting the interconnectedness of the global village, but rather it's TRIBAL nature, particularly McLuhan's warning (yes, warning) against FEAR as part and parcel of tribal-ness. Namely, I got a dose of post-9/11 McLuhan, which I'd actually read some years before. McLuhan didn't think the global village was such a good thing. Sort of in the Ong sense, he did think it dumbed a culture down, even if he was a big bad old technological determinist. So McLuhan, in his riff on media being the message/massage, made the point it doesn't matter what [Google] says/does, the message is irrelevant. The message OF THE MEDIA is go tribal, go stupid. So you could watch PBS 24/7, McLuhan would argue, and the predominant message you would get is go tribal, go stupid, live in tribal fear. Now how's that for some provocative food for thought? Chris On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 7:02 PM, Will Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: True - But did the writer ever answer or even deal with the title - Does Google make people stupid? What I meant by sensationalistic is that he/editor intentionally choose google to grab readers even if the article had nothing to do with Google search making people cognitively impaired. The article had to do with the nature of hypertext, which I know you know - has been well researched. On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 4:43 PM, Christine Boese [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Generally, none of those adjectives readily describe Atlantic Monthly articles (which also regularly hew to a requisite length-- 2,000 to 5,000 words-- I used to submit essays, and have the yellowing rejection slips to prove it-- of which readers of the New Yorker and Harpers are also accustomed). Sensationalistic, bad research, bad writing. I've heard the Atlantic criticized for being too conservative, too over-researched, too constipated (that last one comes from me, over the past 20 years), but RARELY would anyone hear it called sensationalistic, and this is old school magazine writing, fact-checked to death over a full month or more. The Atlantic is known for publishing some of the best writing in the country. I'm just saying. Putting the Atlantic Monthly in the same category with, say, a Murdoch publication, begs absurdity. On the other hand, I may have come across a error in it myself, but it may be more along the quibble my old journalism prof had with saying a student graduated instead of was graduated. I take special joy in finding these things, mostly because my wonderful old prof has passed away, and somebody ought to still be able to do what he did, quibble, just to keep his memory alive. Chris On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 4:02 PM, Will Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are so many ways in which this article is bad. Bad research, bad writing, faulty conclusions based on shakey premises. The title alone should shy people away - it's sensationalistic. First - the author has no ability to discern the difference between intellect/intelligence and literacy, or intelligence and focus. This is not merely a matter of semantics. To use the word 'stupid' implies that google indeed reduces I.Q. yet the author never discusses intelligence anywhere in the article - he discusses focus, and literacy. Further, his issue is not with Google qua Google - but with Hypertext. Very, very different things. A well researched criticism of hypertext as a medium, and it's effects on cognition would have been interesting. This was not. On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 3:54 PM, Sebi Tauciuc [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Too long for me. Gave up reading up after two paragraphs. Does this prove the article's point? Sebi On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 10:18 PM, Jackie O'Hare [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Incidentally, I found the article too wordy for the ideas it described, but emotionally satisfying (just like I found 'War and Peace' too wordy, when I have read it long time ago). -- I totally agree. I found myself wondering whether it was done intentionally - as though the author was providing an example of the types of articles that we are inclined to glean for meaning. It seemed a little meta in that way. I also found reading this article online a very interesting experience. I wonder how the experience of reading it would be different if you were reading the print article in the physical magazine
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Should persuasion be left to marketers?
Uh, I may be stupid here, but how is it that consumers (users) mentioned below do not contribute to the profitability of the site? Their eyeballs quite literally ARE the profitability. Or is this a which came first, chicken or the egg question? Without eyeballs, do you have profitability? Let me amend that: Without Happy Eyeballs, do you have profitability? Chris On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 4:22 PM, mark schraad [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: IMHO - different tasks require different perspectives and different goals for the site. In my situation where we have consumers (users) that do not contribute to the profitability of the site other than to attract the eyeballs for advertising, the user experience group's mission is somewhat in conflict with that of the ad sales group and to even some extent with the SEO group. Our goal is to match up the site to consumer's research and buying process, not to force them into what the industry or advertiser might be driving. We believe that if the site is compelling, the users will find their way to it, and the CPM's will happen over the long run. The ad folks often want us to design pages to accommodate and attract the advertisers. Meanwhile the SEO staff is wanting to make the page optimal for search engines. While there are similarities, designing for SEO, designing for advertisers, and designing for users will render different pages. Each of these three groups needs to bring their expertise to the table... and let executive management take on that 'god's eye' perspective and render judgement that balances those separate agendas. One of the most disturbing trends that I see is designer's rolling over on the user experience. I see designers that are all too empathetic with the pure goals of profit and the business... trying to take a short cut to immediate and short term profit that only destroys brand awareness, consumer loyalty and inevitably, the longer term sustainability and profitability of the site. This trend can be seen sites like about.com (and plenty of others) that used to have great information and now focus on attracting visitors from search engines and deliver very little value to users. Specific to your question, yes the design team should work to not only the constraints of the business, but the goals within reason. In our case I am using some extensive background in consumer behavior (research primarily from the psych field) and mapping our sites' functionality to typical consumer behavior in our target market. It effects both the interactions and information architecture. So far it has helped in managing the business model in a way that works for both the consumer's goals, and the monetization goals of the business (paper and conference talk to come soon I hope). Mark On Jul 6, 2008, at 3:57 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote: Purely philosophical question: I've been studying social psychology a lot lately, and have become incredibly interested in the persuasiveness of sites and applications—how to make them more persuasive, what makes them so now, etc. But it makes me wonder: Should the persuasive elements of a site design be left to marketers? Assuming you work for a company who has a marketing department and a UX team that are separate from each other, how much should the UX team be involved in the design of persuasive elements? -r- Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Studies on aversion to ATMs for making deposits?
On an unrelated tangent, I stopped writing account numbers on the backs of checks a long time ago, because many people get their checks back (not as many as before, but I remember the day), so you are basically giving out your bank account number to anyone who has written you a check. yeow! Also back in the day, I used to work retail, and used to be in charge of various nightly tills. Many times, I was going by the bank after a late shift with a big bag of cash, change, and checks, to put in the night deposit. Sort of boggles your mind, now, eh? I was in my early 20s and trusted by my employer to carry that kind of cash around at my McJob! And I wasn't even scared to go up to the night deposit window all by myself on my way home. My biggest worry back then centered more around making sure my till matched what the final printout of the cash register said it had to be (if it didn't, I had to fill out a form). At least by then we had employee numbers for each transaction. I remember earlier restaurant tills where 3-4 people were in and out with transactions, but whoever got stuck cashing out the till at the end of the night would get blamed for the errors. So generally, I don't mind using the ATM for deposits, as it seems more secure than those night deposit boxes I drove up to at 1 am. The space feels more safe and protected, and I also get a receipt. In my imagination, the little squirrels that run in the wheels behind the buttons I push spin some kind of rolly thing that prints at least a time stamp and a version of my receipt on the envelope. I like the envelopes. Now if it were a significant sum ($600+ or so), I'd probably want to look the teller in the eye. For a while, I had an account that charged me $2 for every teller visit past 2 a month (that would be right up there with credit cards charging your a billing fee for the pleasure of getting to pay your bill, eh?). Gone are the days when I'd carry $1,500+ cash in a zippered bag after a double header at the concession stand at a semi-pro baseball game... and just ceremoniously dump that sum in a night deposit box at 1 am. Chris On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 9:14 PM, Anjali R Arora [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my area (Jersey City, NJ), Bank of America has recently introduced new ATM machines that are great especially for deposits of checks. I no longer need to write my account # on the back of the check, nor do I need to put each check into an envelope. Instead, once I instruct the machine that I want to make a deposit of a check, I am asked to insert the check in the appropriate slot in the machine; a scan of the check now appears on the screen, once I confirm that this is indeed the check I put in, I am issued a receipt which includes a scanned image of the check! I would be very wary of depositing cash in the ATM, though. -Anjali - Original Message - From: Andrea Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, June 26, 2008 7:16 pm Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Studies on aversion to ATMs for making deposits? To: Fernandes, Fabio (APG) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'd just like to chime in because my experience is inline with Fabio's and it appears positive experiences are in the minority. I use Citibank in NYC and frequently use direct deposit when working with large corporations for long-term assignments, so depositing checks is rarely an issue (or hassle) that I have to manage. I also have immediate access to the funds the day of the deposit. When in-between projects and working for smaller clients, I get a lot of paper checks. For a while in 2002, I really relied on these small client checks as work was scarce and I was living paycheck-to-paycheck. I remember waiting on line at a Citibank location to deposit a check with a teller, I asked her when the funds would be available and she told me it would take a few days for the check to clear. I was a bit distraught and explained that I had a few large payments pending and didn't want any overdraft issues. She suggested next time that I use the ATM since the ATM allowed for immediate access to a fraction of the funds, if not all of it -- based on banking history, account balance, etc. So, basically, if my account had enough funds (or my average daily balance was enough) to cover the amount of the check being deposited, I would have access to all of the check as cash immediately... Since that day in 2002, I have been using the ATMs for deposits and have never looked back. I NEVER use a teller. Granted, although a convert, I can think of much needed improvements to the ATM process. Even though I trust the ATM to give me my money immediately, I don't trust the ATM to be accountable for the transaction. So, I rely on my own process. I make sure that I get a receipt of the deposit - always. And, if the check is very large, I tend to photo copy it before I deposit it. Just
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Is UCD Really Broken?
To play Amen chorus to Charlie, with whom I strong agree, let me add one more important thing UCD is, perhaps the most important thing: UCD is a political stance, a position of political advocacy on behalf of what some may call at worst an oppressed or often overlooked group or class or people: users, co-authors, navigators, creators, etc. And whenever you talk about political advocacy, POWER is part of the equation. Add power to the mix, and the stakes go up, cuz you can give nominal lip service to just about anything, but transferring REAL power, well, that's a much more radical act. A collection of methods can be easily de-fanged, made innocuous to any of the other existing power groups anxious to hang on to their turf (engineers, advertisers, stakeholders, what have you). A collection of methods can be hidden behind, like Hey, we do UCD, we did our due diligence! And UCD must then necessarily have, underlying everything, a position of political advocacy, to find ways to give users voice, to bring users and their empowered social groups into the conversations, to allow them to build virtual worlds in their own image, and to advocate always on their behalf. And more importantly, it must put its money where its mouth is, and make a difference for users. In the immortal words of Dr. Seuss from The Lorax: I am the Lorax, I speak for the Trees! [users!] Chris On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 1:53 PM, Charles B. Kreitzberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi All: In a reply on the original thread (IxDA), David Malouf said: ' UCD is a collection of methods, not the act of thinking of users.' I think that is the core of why this discussion goes on and on. If all UCD is, is a collection of techniques then of course they will become antiquated in time as the profession moves on. However, I do not think of UCD as a collection of techniques or even the 'act of thinking of users. To me it is a philosophy that grew out of the dissatisfaction that many felt with the way software was being developed in the early days of computing. Much software was (and sadly still is) designed by programmers who were not successful in producing usable or desirable products. Much design was also mandated by business people who made decisions based on what pleased them or would forward their specific business goals. Sadly, this too often happens. UCD grew out of dissatisfaction with the outcomes of these development practices and was much more than simply a collection of techniques. It was, and is, a philosophy that argued that we need to focus on users' needs tasks and activities, their mental models, minimizing their learning curve and similar issues. The techniques that were developed over the years are ways to implement this philosophy. You would think that caring about the user would be a no brainer but that was not, and still is often not, the case. Corporations are not relationship oriented. They are not benevolent. They exist to make profit and pleasing their customers and employees is a secondary consideration at best. So getting attention for UCD has been a difficult process. Today the web and the availability of mobile devices have fundamentally changed things. As the web has become a major channel for connecting with prospects and customers, there is much more awareness that you need to please your users to succeed. That's a good thing. The evolution of the web has also altered the way we think about user interactions. It is no longer about one user in front of one computer consuming the information parceled out by a centralized IT command and control structure. We are much more about community, user generated information, and complex social interactions. In that environment, there is no doubt that we should rethink the techniques of UCD which are often cumbersome and may not yield as much as we would like. So, why is this all an issue? We still have a long way to go in convincing the world of the importance of what we do. We are finally getting some traction as the business world sees advantage. We need to present a simple and comprehensible face to the external world and focus on developing the field. Whatever differences we may see between approaches like UCD, ACD, Ix, IA, Ux are only valuable when they lead to clarity and common understanding, not when they lead to confusion and hairsplitting. In my opinion, every interactive design should be useful, usable and desirable. Whatever techniques produce that result are worth understanding and using. So taking the position that UCD is just a collection of techniques and not a philosophy about what's important to creating superb interactive products will surely lead you to discount it over and over. Personally, I find that a bit boring. Charlie === Charles B. Kreitzberg, Ph.D. CEO, Cognetics Corporation
Re: [IxDA Discuss] An alternative phrase to Buy Now?
How about Invite the Product to Come to You? Just adding a little zen to the purchasing flow... G Chris On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 5:32 AM, Andrea Lewis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi - I am currently working on a website for a client in the 'spiritual/healing/meditation space and she has a playful, whimsical yet vibrant, interactive website with guided journeys that unfold insight to one's personal development through a game-like interface where one choses tokens and is able to enter various rooms, environments, etc. The site has about 30k+ registered users, more than half of whom are active each month, with 1/3 of them returning daily and an equal amount spending 20+ minutes on the site with each visit. So, plenty of active users and deep users. Nearly all are female and over 30 years old. Currently, the site offers free audio meditation one can listen to on the site. The new plan (and part of my assignment as a project manager) is to lead a remote development team in the construction of the e-commerce store to sell the audio downloads (and eventually, video downloads of similar content). So far in the RFP, we have been using the term Buy Now as the button to be included in the site, but the owner and I agree that such terminology and any big, red blinking button would be in disharmony with the site. Any suggestions or experience on another term or action oriented phrase that could be used besides BUY NOW? My major concern is confusing an already accustomed audience by introducing a new phrase that is unclear in its direction. So, how do we tell the user she can buy now without using such a commercial and trite phrase? A few I have considered: Add to Cart - works because it is a familiar directive, but also seems disharmonious with the site look and feel. Select Item - might work, feels less purchase oriented and a bit bland... Own It!' - clear directive, but feels a bit too powerful for a gentler, meditation oriented product... I will be thinking about this fantastic and clever button all day as I work on the basic wire-frames for the store - I would appreciate any help and/or suggestions if you have a moment to lend some brainwaves to this one or if you have encountered a similar issue. thanks to all! AL ps - I did search past threads and found the following - http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=19036 - and it was very insightful as well... Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxDA Curriculum (Was: Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals)
I dunno. I'd never say Design Theory has nothing to do with ethnography or usability. To me, that kind of one-way design thinking approach is what got the design field into the blind alley it currently is stuck in, helpless to adapt to precisely what INTERACTIVE design means. That blind alley is the reason we are creating this new field in the first place. I'd say the last thing we'd want to do is put the Artist/Designer back into her high-tower, preparing wondrous creations to unleash upon a grateful and waiting one-to-many monologic world. Chris On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 12:56 PM, Dan Saffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jun 23, 2008, at 9:33 AM, Mabel Ney wrote: I would like to see the Design Theory include an exposure to ethnographic research, 1:1 usability evaluations and how people use screen readers. I see it as something like a hands-on lab for a science course and a way to help students find their passion. Also I feel the writing course should be focused on technical and business writing. Electives could include statistics and analytics. This sounds more like an HCI degree than a design degree. Design Theory has nothing to do with ethnography, usability, or screen readers. Design theory is about the philosophical underpinnings of design and its artifacts and the place of design in the world. It is much more important for design students to be able to create and justify concepts than to evaluate them quantifiably IMHO. The ability to create new, inventive, and well-reasoned products and solutions should be what we're training designers to do. Dan Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxDA Curriculum (Was: Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals)
Don't have time to reply at length right now (and you know my real name is Chris Verbose), but if this will help clarify a position I intend to strongly defend: I was referring to Old School Design vs Interactive Design, and defining that difference PRIMARILY in terms of MONOLOGIC Design vs DIALOGIC Design. Big difference. Massive difference. Makes all the difference in the world. We still have not even begun realizing all of the implications of what this mean, esp. given the quick reactions to what I was putting out there. Horseless carriage-land is not really where we want to be, and doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results... an interactive environment demands an interactive design response, and even more than that (but that latter part is a theory I'm still working out, so it isn't fully hatched yet). But monologic design for interactivity is definitely NOT the Design Capital-T Theory such a program should be teaching. It's a bit like an oxymoron. I understand the need to move beyond UCD, but I'm actually headed in the direction of LESS of a focus on an atomized individual user and more on the social aspects of design. And you can't do social design in a vacuum, the lonely artist designer laboring in a tower. Chris On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 2:00 PM, Uday Gajendar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jun 23, 2008, at 10:24 AM, Christine Boese wrote: I dunno. I'd never say Design Theory has nothing to do with ethnography or usability. To me, that kind of one-way design thinking approach is what got the design field into the blind alley it currently is stuck in, helpless to adapt to precisely what INTERACTIVE design means. Actually, sorry but Dan's right... Design Theory is focused on the philosophical and theoretical foundations of designing: invention, creativity, communication, decision-making, to design something, and it's cultural/social value and place in the world. There maybe some incidental reference to HCI related matters but that's really for a straight-up HCI Fundamentals course, going into the HCI related theories per computer science, psychology, and sociology and anthro knowledge bases. Not sure what you mean by interactive, but the full range of design theories and perspectives, with HCI theories combined provide ample (maybe too much!) fodder to flexibly design compelling products/services/systems for any kind of situation...How to effectively make use those of ideas in action, is the real challenge and comes with years of experience, which this field is still developing... Uday Gajendar Sr. Interaction Designer Voice Technology Group Cisco | San Jose Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxDA Curriculum (Was: Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals)
Sorry with another quick hit, without answering all of Dan's questions, but just a quick reply to one piece of what he raised, below: On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 1:46 PM, Dan Saffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jun 23, 2008, at 10:24 AM, Christine Boese wrote: I'd say the last thing we'd want to do is put the Artist/Designer back into her high-tower, preparing wondrous creations to unleash upon a grateful and waiting one-to-many monologic world. Why is this not a valid means of design? I'll let Andrei and Jim Leftwich do their thing here, but I'll point to Jared's recent keynote: http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2008/04/23/ia-summit-keynote-journey-to-the-center-of-design/ where he notes: The foundations of user-centered design are now disintegrating. Notable community members are suggesting UCD practice is burdensome and returns little value. There's a growing sentiment that spending limited resources on user research takes away from essential design activities. Previously fundamental techniques, such as usability testing and persona development, are now regularly under attack. And let's not forget that today's shining stars, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the iPod, came to their success without UCD practices. I'd just want to note that Google, Facebook, and Twitter above, do practice something I would call Interactive Design (which is not necessarily HCD), in that the SOCIAL element is the center. This is what I call out as the most essential nature of true interactivity, not just branching structures and options for audience-participation, but seeing the social aspect as actually giving power to audiences as true co-creators of the communally-authored virtual landscape. How do these and other similar grassroots or social-centered designs manifest and evolve? Generally, so far in how this is working itself out in cybercultures, it happens with beta releases, and big ears on the part of the platform hosts/authors. They release some of their bread upon the waters, and then watch what the social co-authors do with it, and design from that point on collaboratively, dialogically, with actual users, often of fairly large scale. I'm not talking about design by committee (blah) so much as I'm talking about defining the essence of interactivity as POWER-SHARING, and for Designers to share creation/design power with social forces that will use the platform or designs, DESIGNERS MUST GIVE UP POWER. That's why the old stereotypical model of the lone artist working in isolation is moot. Sure, lone artists can work in isolation, but if the process doesn't turn dialogic with the social forces of the audience for true power sharing and co-creation, then I would argue what you have is pseudo-interactivity, not real interactivity. Ultimately (and I was able to document this in my dissertation in one instance, 10 years ago), the best thing that can happen for true interactivity, is for the audience, the social groups, to rise up and take complete control, pre-empting the designers, the original content creators and interface creators altogether, through poaching or alternative and competing modifications. Chris Dan Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxDA Curriculum (Was: Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals)
Bullseye! Chris On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Will Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd just want to note that Google, Facebook, and Twitter above, do practice something I would call Interactive Design (which is not necessarily HCD), in that the SOCIAL element is the center. This is what I call out as the most essential nature of true interactivity, not just branching structures and options for audience-participation, but seeing the social aspect as actually giving power to audiences as true co-creators of the communally-authored virtual landscape. How do these and other similar grassroots or social-centered designs manifest and evolve? Generally, so far in how this is working itself out in cybercultures, it happens with beta releases, and big ears on the part of the platform hosts/authors. They release some of their bread upon the waters, and then watch what the social co-authors do with it, and design from that point on collaboratively, dialogically, with actual users, often of fairly large scale. I'm not talking about design by committee (blah) so much as I'm talking about defining the essence of interactivity as POWER-SHARING, and for Designers to share creation/design power with social forces that will use the platform or designs, DESIGNERS MUST GIVE UP POWER. Well, if that doesn't sound like the death of the author, ala peanut butter sandwiches, Barthes, and Foucault -- than I don't know what is! If any field has accepted the death of the author, surely it is HCI. As much as many interface designers would like to be treated as Hirsch's author, which would suggest that it is the user's obligation to figure out and proceed in accord with the designer's intentions, the fact is HCI has long embraced the opposite position. The user matters more than the designer, and design research is often largely synonymous with user research. Barzell, Interaction Criticism: A Proposal and Framework for a New Discipline of HCI, CHI 2008. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxDA Curriculum (Was: Importance of, Masters Degree for IxD Professionals)
If paring down a page to a single form field, and peeling away all the clutter that was part and parcel of search portals at the time, was a radical act, a defiant act, on behalf of users. If it was not THE PRIMO example of UCD, I don't know what is. Yes, Google's back end and guts were the value proposition, the fast search, the intuitive results. But the gamble, the biggest gamble Google made, was to dare to stand up for users being more important than advertisers, and to court those users with pure functionality, SEARCH. The devotion to users, by making that search as pure and true and close to the Akashic Records of the Internet is, far and beyond, over and above Google's incredible valuation, a PUBLIC SERVICE on behalf of users that will live on in history, long after Google's founders have been forgotten. Maybe Google doesn't pinch its butt cheeks together and chant Here we are self-consciously doing UCD, (I have no idea one way of the other, although they most certainly hire UX people), but when the net result is to radically SHOW UP those people who do sit around and chant the chant, by advocating even more radically for users and the user experience, all UCD people can do is sit around and feel embarrassed for having sinned and fallen short of the glory of Google. Google is also an innovator in another area that is still under active contention, but it is something I would argue is again, UCD, pure user advocacy. I am referring to the endless Beta releases as a direct business strategy. Calling a product beta invites users, audiences, social groups, to participate in co-authoring the design, because the design is confessedly unfinished, and requires users to bring it to its full beauty, its best UCD completeness, which may never be complete, because Google is redefining the value of a fiction called completeness. That has done more for UCD than any UX process that I'm aware of, because it self consciously makes design social. Chris On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 6:56 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jun 23, 2008, at 3:39 PM, James A. Landay wrote: It seems odd (and in fact dishonest) to me that you cut that part out. He is asking questions here, not making a statement that it is true. And the fact is that there are UCD practices at Google, on the iPod team, etc. (I don't know much about Facebook or Twitter's practice, but I'm doubtful that Facebook doesn't have some UCD going on). Some companies do not want you to believe they practice these techniques so that they can make their designers into superstars and use that in their marketing. Google practices UCD? Really? How so? Their bread and butter with the search engine was built and designed by engineers, pure and simple. I guess Google Apps are user centered design but really... how much is user centered versus how much is working from a wealth of knowledge form the past 30 years of making email, word processors and spreadsheet applications? Sure, a few features here and there are interesting, but those pieces are a small portion of the entire product offering. Apple has been on record as not practicing UCD many times now. They design what they like, pure and simple. Are you saying they are lying? Facebook? Um... have you been inside Facebook and seen how they work? Built by engineers and a bunch of youngin's during Hackathon fests that start in the afternoon and go all night until they get something. In fact, you can watch the Facebook Platform video yourself to see one prominent Facebook engineer say, We basically make a bunch of stuff, throw it against the wall and see what sticks. To my knowledge, Twitter was built organically, hardly planned on how people would use it at all. It just sort of happened from a fun project some engineer started. UCD there? Please show me. For the people who are offended that there are people out there (like me I might add) who shun UCD, well... it's really about time to shut us up by proving how much better products designed with that process are. I have yet to encounter a product that was designed via the UCD methodology that excelled in its product category. I attribute largely to an inherent flaw in favoring users over all else, which are both technology and business concerns. I also attribute it to a phrase I have written on my whiteboard at home: Designers have a process. Designers don't use a process. -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxDA Curriculum (Was: Importance of, Masters Degree for IxD Professionals)
Oh yes, agreed, Dave. However, if the methods are not sufficient to take a large enough step, a radical enough shift of perspective, if they just make incremental changes, half measures, kinda sorta maybes, something has to come along and be daring enough to shift fully into the users' POV. If personas don't get you there, what to do? Personas can help to get you into an empathetic space, to get you into the head of this Other and that Other. Yet in the day of search portals, if no amount of user advocacy was able to displace the power of advertiser advocacy, what rare courage was required to turn down the big checks and leave the biggest portal of all portals, the massive Deep Space Nine of Cyberspace, empty? Full of glorious white space, a design with emphasis, an emphasis that says YOU (user)? Like that movie, where Demi Moore is offered a million bucks to sleep with Robert Redford. Who turns down big checks? Who believes in users more than advertisers? Those who do, practice user centered design far better than those who use the methods and only give users lip service. It's like the debate over what to call something. It doesn't matter what you call it. What matters is what you do. Chris On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 11:16 PM, dave malouf [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Chrstine, UCD is a collection of methods, not the act of thinking of users. So your saying that Google is into UCD I don't find helpful. Heck, Apple does UCD from that perspective, and so does Walmart. The point people were making was around the use of the classic IBM class of UCD practice skills/processes. Andrei, ... I don't want to ruin this otherwise great thread here. If I got some time I'll respond in a separate thread. But let's get back to the point of the thread. At the core, interaction design is about building the frameworks that other disciplines hang their form making on top of. (So yes, I DO still separate interaction from interface, the same way I separate graphics from industrial). I say this because I have seen quite clearly 2 people take on the different roles based on experience and knowledge. This tells me that form making and framework definition are really different. Now this being said, the more I know about form making the more valuable my role is as an interaction designer. Of course, I could say the same about business and technology as well. The reason that prototyping and other form making is required for our education is that the only way to practice interaction design is to build forms around the interactions you are designing and in an educational setting you don't have another department to work with like you do in the real world. Also, while I disagree with the strength of the 37Signal's latest blog post, I do agree in spirit that being able to make things makes the process of designing interactions a heck of a lot easier. ;-) -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30515 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals
True, Kontra, but the challenge comes from a different angle, generally erring on the side of less change, more conservatism. This is why I keep raising the specter of what happened with the industry-norming of journalism degrees, which are not doing the field any favors. Industry-norming is not the best direction for a field to take, if it has any intention of being on the leading edge of innovation. Instead, it would lead the field to permanent follower status, always teaching dated status quo (as you say, that's already a pitfall in academic programs, so consider this dated status quo squared). Has anyone encountered stakeholders or clients who actually challenge you to be MORE out of the box than you already are, instead of less? Regarding failed businesses etc... I'm just speaking from my own experience over many years, but have y'all seen the remarkable number of badly run businesses that have no business still being in business, yet they still make money, IN SPITE OF a series of repeatedly insanely stupid business decisions? I shouldn't be surprised by it anymore, but it still boggles my mind. Success or failure of a business is not the best indicator of good business practices, in any industry sector or discipline. In another part of the thread, someone (sorry, I forget who, Dave I think), raised a contrast between cranking out designs and higher level design skill, noting that if the field's main demand is for the crank out variety, high level preparation can be overwrought or overkill (hope I'm summarizing accurately). That raises an interesting problem of status for designers, and for positioning the field in general. Do we position the profession toward higher level design discussions, and let employers find their design-crank fodder bodies elsewhere, or do we see the demand for design-crank fodder as something we should try to meet by encouraging programs to produce students for this level of work only? Again, the same problem with journalists, where there are two distinct tiers operating in the US, and it is very difficult to cross between them, once you get tracked on one side or the other. One is higher status and higher level reporting and writing, without having to track instantly to management before you start making real money. It is generally fed from Ivy League liberal arts majors with lots of prep school-type connections. This upper class of journalists also sets the national thought agenda for the nation (think Pravda). The other is fed directly from a majority of bread-and-butter state university journalism programs, and the jobs are low wage, for nearly assembly-line type of cranking out stories fodder (the same way one might crank out designs). Those local stories fill the AP news river, and the AP news river allows the majority of corporate-owned chain newspapers and TV stations to operate with teeny staffs of assembly line journalists who do little more than rewrite and repurpose existing AP copy (in design, think design templates and design patterns). They get to do little actual reporting, although they may cover local stories, with an overt imperative not to break anything controversial, because only real reporters are allowed to do that, meaning top tier (many of whom never took a formal press law course in their lives). [this is a massive shift from even 25 years ago, btw] So I ask all of you, is a corporate-industry imperative leading us to stratify this field? Industry pressure is to keep wages as low as possible for the type of work at hand, so the more IxD work can be made into design work that can be cranked, the more positions to do that can be filled with lower cost workers, younger workers, an army of them. Yet that very army's existence, once it does exist (as Dave points out, it doesn't yet), will lead to the disappearance of higher level design jobs, by the conservative force of industry cost-cutting. It will also be a force against innovation (although I tend to be against innovation for the sake of innovation, which can be more gratuitous than functional). Take that movement a step further (and I only bring this up to raise flags, not because I think this will happen), and you have a field that could become like journalism, that would eat its young as fodder for design-crank jobs, with no possibility of advancement, no natural motion into higher wage positions, except to leave the field for something else. I'm just cautioning against this, against turning a field into the assembly line factory workers of the Information Age, destined to be laid off by age 50 or sooner, if you don't leave the field of your on volition before then, whenever your annual salary increases reach a certain level. I'm not saying anybody is doing this. I'm just warning of the pitfall. Chris On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Kontra [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But it doesn't match the rigor of true in-depth intellectual study and analysis and, just being challenged by a
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Examples of Advancements in Design
I'm a bit out of the loop for recent, but just to rail off a few from the top of my head: Moodle, the open source e-learning courseware support platform, has arisen largely from academic research into pedagogical interface design. Most of the best research into advanced VR interfaces and evolving interface conventions have come out of academic research labs. Carnegie Melon is starting to really kick ass in this area too, aren't they? Beyond CAVE and the other usual suspects. The most rigorous HCI and usability testing methods can be found in academia, which is not bound by many of the expediencies that can bias results, such as you find in industry usability practices, which are often very sloppy and possibly invalid most of the time. Then, when you add in the innovations in wearable computing interfaces, ubiquitous computing/ambient interface effects, and interactive cinema interfaces that have come out of places like the MIT Media Lab and GA Tech, I'd say the scale tips way over into academic research as being quite a bit more innovative. You could also count Google coming out of Stanford, right? At a time when everyone thought that search interfaces were cluttered portals, and that no new innovation could come into that area. Take Stanford out of the picture, and would you even have Google? (going back into the day... we could also link Lycos to CMU, and didn't WebCrawler come out of a university as well?) Again, I hearken back to history, but a lot more has come out of NCSA at Champaign Urbana than just Marc Andreessen. Perhaps most significantly, we might notice one interface in particular that DIDN'T come out of academia, or really what anyone would call industry for that matter either: blogs. After the development of the graphical browser at NCSA in 1993, I'd say the innovation brought about by blogs (and not just Dave Winer and RSS) has had the largest effect on the landscape of the Internet. Hum, maybe no. I might have to put Google ahead of blogs and RSS, and social media after that. Think of how we can now divide our universe. For a while, it was pre-web, and post-web. Now, I like to refer to our world as BG and AG, meaning Before Google, and After Google. I think also we are reaching the point where we might also make a division of the world into BB and AB, meaning Before Blogosphere, and After Blogosphere. Chris On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 9:57 AM, J. Ambrose Little [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi folks, Following up on the recent thread about higher degrees in design and such, I find myself very curious to know about how current or past research/higher degrees have already advanced interaction design. Do you all have any examples of, e.g., dissertations, theses, acadmic projects, or professional work from folks with higher degrees that have concretely advanced the field of design? I think of Norman's POET (or DOET :)) as maybe such an example of research having a notable influence (not sure if it was innovative, though--maybe someone with more experience/knowledge of the field could chime in on that point). Also, Designing Interactions has some interesting stories along these lines; interestingly, seems like most of those were spurred more by private (not academic) interests/investment. Have there been more recent innovations that came out of research programs that either have or you think will have notable impact? --Ambrose Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxDA Curriculum (Was: Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals)
Ooh, I love this one! Philosophy of Interaction Design from Heidegger to Benjamin to Bahktin You know what I think is needed for an elective, from a cultural studies perspective? History and Online Cultures in Networked Computer Systems from DARPA to Present (still hitting the early theorists, like Vannevar Bush, Nelson, et al.) Chris On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 11:21 AM, Will Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Amen! This is what I hoped for when I said we could and should advise on we think would be good for the profession. A couple of additions to the Dan's Grad Program: Electives: Introduction to Marketing and Branding Philosophy of Interaction Design from Heidegger to Benjamin to Bahktin Introduction to Linguistics and Semiotics Critical Theory - Formalism to Post-Structuralism Business Process Management On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Dan Saffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jun 22, 2008, at 5:54 AM, Adam Connor wrote: I think it would be great if IxDA came up with a proposed curriculum that could be used by schools to build new offerings in the IxD field. As a thought experiment, here are my dream courses for undergrad and grad (Master's): UNDERGRADUATE Year 1: Sketching and Modeling Introduction to Typography Industrial Design Fundamentals Introduction to Programming Writing Fundamentals Year 2: Intermediate Industrial Design Intermediate Typography Information Design and Visualization Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Design History Year 3: Design Research Digital Prototyping Physical Computing Design Theory Interface Design Year 4: Senior Project Studio: Projects with New Technology Advanced Topics (CD, ID, CS, Psychology, Anthropology) Current Topics in IxD Documenting Systems Ideally, there would be a mix of humanities classes in here as well. GRADUATE Year 1: Refresher Courses (sampler as per undergrad courses) Design Theory Design Strategy Design Research Analysis Business Fundamentals Year 2: Master's Thesis Master's Project Design Management Advanced Topics (CD, ID, CS, Psychology, Anthropology) Current Topics in IxD What's your list? Dan Dan Saffer, M.Des., IDSA Experience Design Director, Adaptive Path http://www.adaptivepath.com http://www.odannyboy.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -- ~ will Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems - Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel +1.617.281.1281 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] twitter: https://twitter.com/semanticwill - Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Examples of Advancements in Design
Thanks Donna! Interesting info and historical perspective. Dunno which part of Google is limited to interaction design, but would we love the basic interaction of a single uncluttered text entry field for searching if it didn't have the screaming fast Google back-end and algorithms behind it? Yet the innovation, over other search predecessors, from a user's standpoint, was the simplified interface, and the willingness to devote all attention to search, rather than the distractions created by portal links and advertisers. However, the history of search is very interesting, and into this mix, I'd also throw U of Minnesota's gopher system, with Archie and Veronica. Funny, isn't it, for those of us who roamed around online in command line, pre-web days, that when you reflect upon them, the absence of search gave life more of an exploring an unknown woods feeling, but now, looking back, I'd say it really was more like exploring an unknown woods while wearing a blindfold. Even with Archie and Veronica. Chris On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 3:38 PM, Donna M. Fritzsche [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Cristine and all, Interesting discussion and points, Actually fairly equivalent precursors to Google were invented pre-1990 by the folks at Thinking Machines (notably, Danny Hillis, Brewster Kahle, Craig Stanfill and David Waltz). The program ran on massively parallel computers on about 5 years worth of the Wall Street Journal. The interface and functionality were pretty similar to Google (and it probably offered some secondary functionality that Google doesn't offer - I don't know enough about the Google algorithm to directly speak to it.) Another point to consider - is - that it is the technology underlying Google that allows its interface to be so simple. (as a note, most people who played a role in TMC's text retrieval project were phd's from MIT, although though it should be mentioned - in light of this set of discussions - that Brewster has a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT). two references: http://battellemedia.com/archives/000712.php http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=7907dl=ACMcoll=portalCFID=33592154CFTOKEN=39196368 Thanks, Donna Fritzsche Information Architect/Ontologist On Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:39:53 -0400, Christine Boese wrote I'm a bit out of the loop for recent, but just to rail off a few from the top of my head: Moodle, the open source e-learning courseware support platform, has arisen largely from academic research into pedagogical interface design. Most of the best research into advanced VR interfaces and evolving interface conventions have come out of academic research labs. Carnegie Melon is starting to really kick ass in this area too, aren't they? Beyond CAVE and the other usual suspects. The most rigorous HCI and usability testing methods can be found in academia, which is not bound by many of the expediencies that can bias results, such as you find in industry usability practices, which are often very sloppy and possibly invalid most of the time. Then, when you add in the innovations in wearable computing interfaces, ubiquitous computing/ambient interface effects, and interactive cinema interfaces that have come out of places like the MIT Media Lab and GA Tech, I'd say the scale tips way over into academic research as being quite a bit more innovative. You could also count Google coming out of Stanford, right? At a time when everyone thought that search interfaces were cluttered portals, and that no new innovation could come into that area. Take Stanford out of the picture, and would you even have Google? (going back into the day... we could also link Lycos to CMU, and didn't WebCrawler come out of a university as well?) Again, I hearken back to history, but a lot more has come out of NCSA at Champaign Urbana than just Marc Andreessen. Perhaps most significantly, we might notice one interface in particular that DIDN'T come out of academia, or really what anyone would call industry for that matter either: blogs. After the development of the graphical browser at NCSA in 1993, I'd say the innovation brought about by blogs (and not just Dave Winer and RSS) has had the largest effect on the landscape of the Internet. Hum, maybe no. I might have to put Google ahead of blogs and RSS, and social media after that. Think of how we can now divide our universe. For a while, it was pre- web, and post-web. Now, I like to refer to our world as BG and AG, meaning Before Google, and After Google. I think also we are reaching the point where we might also make a division of the world into BB and AB, meaning Before Blogosphere, and After Blogosphere. Chris Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxDA Curriculum (Was: Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals)
There are also quite a lot of 5-year Architecture programs. Generally, with these, and somee 4-year programs, you have to complete one year of school outside the program, gen eds, overview courses, and then apply your sophomore year for admission into the program. Those without the grades from the first year are not admitted, so that also sort of screens out people shopping for majors. They have the 1st year overview courses to sample, while the faculty can concentrate on the students who have shown they are committed to the program. For instance, the University of Arkansas Architecture program is a very intense studio experience, where all admitted students get drafting desks and cubes of sorts to build their models etc in one big common area. They put in long hours and work very very hard those 4 years they are in the program, basically living in those cubes, with a tight community of students as well, crits, the works. The program has a really excellent reputation. Chris On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 7:40 PM, dave malouf [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: dmitry, a common degree in the US is the 6yr. med program. Many students enter undergrad knowing they want to be doctors. Why not IxD's? If I can get an MD in 6 yrs (including summers I think), why not a Masters of IxD in 5 years including some intensive work (or required internships) during summers? BTW, Jeff tells a great story and articulated beautifully the reasons for foundations in ID and Visual Design. BTW, one reason design school programs excite me so much that people hadn't mentioned in the other thread that I thought about b/c of this thread is the connection to all of the expressionist design programs in the same school: illustration, fashion, interior, floral, event, etc.ID, Architecture and IxD have the commonality of having really conservative clients as a rule. BTW, another type of course that no one has mentioned that I've seen at ID schools are corp projects. You've got 10 weeks to do a corporate sponsored project. Yea you can fail, unlike a real job, but when done right students really can learn a lot about the real world and what clients expects. I have so much to add in this thread about curricullum but I'll just say that no one mentioned two anthro courses (intro to socio-cultural) and ethnography for anthro design. I do think that a degree in ID (like in Syracuse) or IxD should be a minimum of a 5 yr program. Basically the coursework is the equiv of a double major. As for a masters it should be treated similarly to a masters of ID where if you weren't a bachelor w/ that degree you need to go 3 years so that you can do foundations, otherwise 2. Anyone who did not go through foundations for ID or IxD shouldn't really have a masters degree, b/c they probably didn't actually achieve a masters of craft and design thinking that that year of foundations puts you through. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30515 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] slight out of topic .. which best ixda MFA programs?
Generally, while MFAs can be considered for full professorship and tenure, it is not commonly awarded without a clear national reputation on par with public gallery exhibitions, BIG awards or grants (think MacArthur genius fellows), or, in the case of writing MFAs and others related to that, one or more well-received books. It's a tough case to make in most departments. The professionally-focused journalism and radio-TV programs have an agreement with most university administrators to give tenure to people with just master's degrees, but generally, that is for people who have been quite high up at well-respected places (editor level, like at Wall St Journal, or major metro dailies one step under that). On the other hand, there is a list of journalism programs who had that kind of agreement with the university administration, only to have that pulled out from under them a few years later with a president/chancellor change, as some new ambitious administrator comes in and demands that all departments start counting PhDs and nothing but. I know lots of people who have been blindsided by this happening. Chris On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 8:06 PM, mark schraad [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The great thing about an MFA is that it is still considered a terminal degree in design. Meaning, that is is the most you can get in design. Yes, I know there are few PhD's, but they are far from the norm at this point in time. The upshot here is that you can, if on faculty, be considered for a full professorship and tenure, if that is an option that speaks to you. I seriously considered that route, but I kind of knew that two masters in three years was my limit... and wanted to get back to full time work (thought I loved the learning and open ended nature of academia). Mark On Jun 22, 2008, at 2:02 PM, Jeff Howard wrote: Hi Mat, The only MFA in Interaction Design I know of is at the University of Washington. Carnegie Mellon has a Masters in Interaction Design but it's not an MFA, it's an M.Des. // jeff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30524 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] slight out of topic .. which best ixda MFA programs?
One reason the trend toward PhD is growing has more to do with the level of preparation and lack of maturity students have across the board, coming in from high school at the undergrad level. This only applies in the US, as European and other international education standards are higher. I don't mean to make anyone defensive, as it isn't personal, but anybody who has taught college for 15+ years will tell you the same thing. It is due to an overall decline in literacy levels, an inability to really READ and comprehend, and think critically. So many undergrads are coming to college these days with a sense of entitlement, like they're going to get the grades for showing up and filling the chair. Grade inflation is WAY up, and most of y'all have probably encountered these issues with the level of responsibility you can give summer interns. It takes 'em a couple of years to buckle in, learn to work, and focus, and that's time most degree programs need, just to get students up to the level they have to be at to enter the work force, entry level. Companies are even beefing up their in-house training programs specifically to address this weakness in entry level skill sets. Means more work for us, tho, cuz they need training software interaction design. I personally chalk it up to the dominant socialization of high school cultures, although short attention span media and multi-tasking attitudes don't help students master difficult material and skills very well in undergraduate majors either. I actually think it is equal parts a deficit in literacy and maturity. So many kids (I of course am exempting hard working adult learners, who often suffer in classes with these folks, and frequently lose their cool if they have to be in collaborative project groups with them, when they can't count on group members to complete even the most ridiculously easy tasks) come to college as precious darlings of over-protective helicopter parents, who swoop in to protest every grade given below a B. That's why grade inflation is up so badly, btw. Untenured faculty just can't fight that kind of pressure. Adminstrators call students customers, and the helicopter parents take that literally, demand whatever they want, and get it. So that brings us down to the masters degree becoming the equivalent of what the undergrad degree used to be. However, many schools are having trouble with admissions standards in their masters programs as well (perhaps less so now, with a recession), and sometimes they lower their standards dangerously too, just to keep their numbers up I've seen some weak grad classes at times as well. Across the board, tho, I usually felt sorriest for the returning adult students who needed the credential, which is held up so high over their heads, because they chose to have kids, or go straight to work, or are changing careers, or it is costing them a promotion, or ding-a-ling college grads keep getting hired above them at their current jobs (and they have to train them--this has happened to my brother so many times it isn't funny). It's so tough to stomach, to finally jump in and taken on that degree barrier head on, and get in your classes, and have to sit there with 18-year-olds who think they are still in high school. The worst thing is watching the faces of the adult learners, when they expect to be challenged by the material in the course, as it dawns on them how bone-headedly easy instructors have to make everything, have to spell out every instruction, because if they didn't, the 18-year-olds would just be lost and floundering, and then the helicopter parents would come swooping in. I've been in that position before, and after class, apologized to the adult students, for seemingly insulting their intelligence. It was embarrassing for all of us. Chris On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 8:28 PM, mark schraad [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Great clarification Chris. I guess the larger point was that without an MFA... an MA doesn't put you in that position. And the trend towards the PhD is growing. Most people I know have gone the route of design history or design education. Mark On Jun 22, 2008, at 8:23 PM, Christine Boese wrote: Generally, while MFAs can be considered for full professorship and tenure, it is not commonly awarded without a clear national reputation on par with public gallery exhibitions, BIG awards or grants (think MacArthur genius fellows), or, in the case of writing MFAs and others related to that, one or more well-received books. It's a tough case to make in most departments. The professionally-focused journalism and radio-TV programs have an agreement with most university administrators to give tenure to people with just master's degrees, but generally, that is for people who have been quite high up at well-respected places (editor level, like at Wall St Journal, or major metro dailies one step under that). On the other hand, there is a list of journalism programs who had that kind
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals
The most interesting thing I learned in grad school is that day-to-day practice is saturated with theory, which guides the actions. It is often subconscious or unenunciated theory, but all action is guided by SOME sort of internalized theory, even if it is just a guy over a beer saying I've got a theory about that. The risk is thinking that one's actions are not being guided by SOMETHING, and every something, even the idea, I like this particular shade of orange and am going to use it in every design I do is based on a theory. It may be a personal theory, but it is no less of a theory just because it remains unarticulated as such. That is the illusion of the idea of pure practice. So if you could articulate the theories or rules or guiding principles involved in any given instance of practice, would they stand up to scrutiny? Are their results defensible to justify using those same principles over and over again, to justify using that same design process over and over again? After all, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity, just as an unexamined life is not worth living. It's handy, convenient, to claim that a particular instance of design practice is not effected by theory, to black box one's work (and then a miracle occurs). You don't have to be thinking about the theories every minute while working, but finding and digging up the real theories of actual practice, lore, and what is called common sense (but is actually nothing more than unarticulated and personal or cultural theories) is actually the pursuit I'm most interested in. Theory without results from practice has no use whatsoever, and doesn't just risk outcomes, it is part of the essential nature of theory. If any given theory is unsupportable and indefensible from actual successful practice that means the theory itself IS unsupportable and indefensible. Responsible practitioners have to be empowered to call it out as such, and should be able to make a good case. Again, market forces may be the fly in this ointment, as I said before. Define success. What is good design if the market starts demanding bad design? This is the conundrum I was raising by invoking the problems with journalism as a profession with professional standards. How might you intervene if the market forces in our field, SEO et al, started demanding that the successful designs for our work must all essentially become SPAM, look like spam, taste like spam, must be spam! Will spam then define design success, or will IxDers be able to articulate some supportable reasons why spam-based design is bad design? If it can't, if no principles or theories rise above market forces, the field is vulnerable to the same abuses that have ravaged journalism. Chris On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 8:33 AM, Todd Zaki Warfel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jun 20, 2008, at 9:09 PM, Christine Boese wrote: The best thing grad school did for me was FORCE me to get into theoretical areas that I had natural resistances to, and FORCE me to justify and defend the theories that I wanted to hang on to like sacred cows. The thing that's been missing from this thing is the notion of balance. School teaches you primarily theory, while field work teaches you primarily practical experience. The best designers will be the ones that are equipped with both. If you have a great environment that can teach you theory and experimentation, then perhaps you don't need an advanced degree. If on the other hand you don't have that environment, or you want to teach as part of your profession, getting an advanced degree is a good option to consider. Balance. Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel President, Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. -- *Contact Info* Voice: (215) 825-7423Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog: http://toddwarfel.com http://toddwarfel/ Twitter: zakiwarfel -- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals
Anti-intellectualism had a good run through the 8 years of the Bush administration, but I think it may have finally played itself out. It is just too worthwhile to have the director of FEMA actually have some EXPERTISE in administering emergency services, rather than the cronyism that seemed to guide promotion in a world that disregarded expertise, or rather, as in the case of NASA, saw it as something that could be shaped and molded to a political agenda. Expertise implies professional standards, and ways to articulate those standards. It's easy to stereotype pointy-heads, just as it is easy to stereotype know-nothings, which actually were a political party once, but perhaps best serve the current political climate where terrorism experts findings on WMD, and even Justice Dept legal standards about anti-trust regulations, civil rights violations, even EPA enforcement, have become remarkably fluid and governed more by social networks (cronyism and kickbacks, patronage systems) than by even the standards that exist in records and law. Rigorous critical thinking and reflection can take place anywhere and at any time. I'm not reinforcing a theory/practice dichotomy. I am however, cautioning against casting book learning as the boogeyman and using that as an excuse to plug one's ears and go nah-nah-nah-nah. That, to my mind, is reactionary anti-intellectualism, and it is worse than dangerous. Chris On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 1:31 AM, Angel Marquez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What education teaches you though which I believe no one spoke about is how to think how to teach. education lastly gives you wings to inderstand the impractical. Learning failure as part if a process expressions just for you. hrm...I'm going to have to strongly disagree with the above statement. The entire 'would I hire you with or without a degree' is such rubbish. If that was your rule I wouldn't want to work for you anyhow and you would be doing me a favor and yourself a disservice. How would you know you were making the right choice without trying, which you clearly would not... I think people that swing their degrees around are missing the mark and are just about as bad as religious fanatics that position themselves before the almighty or software manufacturers that repackage open source solutions for profit. knowledge is tantamount... contrary to your mass nurtured trends and hidden agendas your money hungry institutions uphold. the last thing i want to work with is another cliche cookie cut social brick know it all... just kidding lol On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 7:54 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is this all (both threads) really just a question of this point in history? Would I hire an Industrial Designer who doesn't have a degree in ID? Isn't the expectation if hiring a junior graphic designer that they have a degree in visual design? I have always found it interesting that in the UX world we tend to focus on the masters level with very little done at the Bachelor's level. My question to SVA CMU KU is why are there no bachelor of IxD programs next to you MA programs? I totally respect the masters I've met who have no formal education. But I don't see that path as strategicly viable for the total advancement of the discipline or the profession. I do think that one can achieve greatness in practice without going to school. What education teaches you though which I believe no one spoke about is how to think how to teach. education lastly gives you wings to inderstand the impractical. Learning failure as part if a process expressions just for you. Imagine IxD practice 50 years from now. Will anyone practicing IxD not have at least a bachelors in IxD? - dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from ixda.org (via iPhone) http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30391 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals
I like that, the journey-person model. My dad became an electrician 40+ years ago, first as IBEW apprentice, then journeyman, then foreman. So long as we get the benefits that come with it (the union or guild, for instance). Can we join the Freemasons too? I want to have a lodge and wear funny hats and have secret handshakes and decoder rings! I'm being silly, but also serious. If you want to go with a mentoring, apprenticeship, journeyman, master etc model (aspiring always to become the Magician card in the Tarot deck!), then I think we also need what comes with it: Guilds Unions Collective Bargaining (I love what the Screenwriter's Guild was able to work through this past year). Couple of things I wouldn't want, which can come with it: Indentured Servitude The sale of Apprentices Another thing to think about is the evolution of the university model, particularly the rise/influence of German universities in, what, 1700s? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_European_research_universities) I mean, that goes all steampunk and Royal Society, runs alongside the influence of Newton/Leibniz/Goethe, and class runs through it. It is where we get the beginnings of the classic divide between pure science or mathematics and applied science or mathematics, as in, engineering. It's where techne starts to divide off from knowledge-making. What am I saying? Oxford originally evolved from more medieval/scholastic models, and contrasts that focus somewhat by running on more of a mentoring, less on attending a class or lectures. You read law or whatever, at Oxford, attended lectures that looked interesting, and worked closely with a faculty tutor or mentor. Industrialization also contributed to the streamlining or assembly-line-ification of post-secondary education into attendance at mandatory classes. But to go back to an earlier model of the professions, to Guilds, now that may be the way to go! It's where we get gates and gatekeepers and certifications, and hermeticism and secret insider knowledge that is closely guarded, that special way to put the keystone in the arch, etc. It kind of hearkens back to alchemy and alchemists, and less to post Enlightenment scientific method, but science has been heading down that road ever since rich entities (corporations instead of medieval aristocrats) became patrons of sponsored research for pharmaceuticals and other scientific endeavors (like the historical role of Bell Labs)-- with the stipulation that knowledge is made, hidden, and hoarded-- the direct opposite of the Royal Society idea of scientific sharing, replication, and the larger project of knowledge-making. I mean, there could be secret labs right now that have conquered gravity as a limitation in physics, but in secret proprietary research that will never make it into a physics textbook, will never have a chance for an independent researcher to attempt to replicate and verify the findings, etc. etc. Pluses and minuses. To empower a budding profession, one may have to adopt an information/training scarcity model while in our professional practice, working in a distributed or democratized medium that tends to value openness, open source, etc. Paradoxes, everywhere paradoxes. Chris On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 4:43 PM, J. Ambrose Little [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 3:25 PM, dave malouf [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am feeling from some who are arguing against degree need, that they are also arguing against degrees for anyone. Not I. Higher degrees of education have their purpose, to be sure. I would argue that purely organic growth like we have done for the first 2 decades of digital product design is not sustainable, so no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable you are with institutional education, we need some, and we also need new inventive but intentionally designed options as well. You think not? I don't know. This whole thing of specialized professional degrees from universities is a relatively new invention in human history. The journeyman model, even compared to just the general idea of the university, is a much more mature, tried and true model. I tend to think that universities are (and have been for quite some time now) abused into becoming professional training that is better served via the journeyman model. It seems to me that university education is more suited for a good liberal arts foundation and then focusing on research to advance knowledge *per se* (i.e., not to churn out professionals as it has come to be used). Another problem with emerging professions is the rate of change. Universities don't seem to adapt too well, nowhere near the market rate of change. Nor should they, if you ask me. And the funny thing is that everyone seems to acknowledge this but still wants unis to churn out professionals who are in some sense certified and ready to go for professional work. I think this defocuses universities from what
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals
Nah, I'm just dizzy. I think it's the hearing loss that comes with dyslexia. Chris On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 8:10 PM, J. Ambrose Little [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 6:06 PM, Christine Boese [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I like that, the journey-person model. My dad became an electrician 40+ years ago, first as IBEW apprentice, then journeyman, then foreman. So long as we get the benefits that come with it (the union or guild, for instance). [snip] Hmm.. what with this and that anti-Bush political rant, all I can say is truly, you have a dizzying intellect. I'm not at all suggesting the return of the medieval guild but rather a more practicable and honest approach to the problem of creating more, high-quality professionals in this and other emerging discliplines (and letting universities excel at what they do best). There's nothing inherently medieval about the journeyman model, which is really my point--humans have been doing that for, well, for as long as we've had professions. --Ambrose Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals
As someone who really got off on the deep dive, I gotta second what Uday says below. The strongest factors for me were (in order): #3, the Deep Dive. #1 #2: Networking, and name schools. I come from humanities, and never had the kind of engineering connections I craved, because in my undergrad world, engineers and CS folks just didn't talk with humanities people. You gotta get to the grad level, where they foster cross-discipline collaborations, or odd multi-disciplinary people like me show up and seek out those conversations. So once I got in the mix, I saw how much real humanities talent is hidden in the bodies of many engineers, AND how many MORE opportunities flow through the science and technology side of schools that NEVER show up in liberal arts or humanities-focused areas. My strict liberal arts buddies have no idea, and they almost NEVER get visits from REAL recruiters (other than the kind that want you to stuff envelopes or be a financial advisor with no training). That was a massive perspective shift for me, and it blew my head off. Odd, the specialization of graduate school reveals more of the shortcomings of undergraduate silos and specialization. Paradoxical, eh? #4 is important if you've never been exposed to that approach before. For myself, I think it was superior teaching at the name research school that affected how methods and research projects were approached, and later presented at conferences, etc. That was very empowering, to understand learning as the process of making knowledge, a sort of distributed, democratized process, thinking idealistically. Chris On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 3:07 AM, Uday Gajendar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jun 19, 2008, at 9:08 AM, Connor, Adam wrote: The recent thread on the SVA program and subsequent writing about online programs has got me wondering - how important is a Masters Degree in a design related discipline to the success of one's career? Speaking as a Master's degree holder, i'm biased but I'd say the advantages are primarily: 1) Cross-college connections and alumni networking, especially if you go to a brand-name school. Sorry to offend or seem elitist but it's true. 2) The opportunity to do creative, exploratory projects and re-kindle the imaginative spirit that the working world may have killed off (Like Jack I went straight thru from Undergrad to Grad, for various reasons, but I remember my CMU adviser saying he liked folks who returned to school after spending a few years in the real world b/c they were sufficiently angry and jaded and primed to crank out amazing stuff--i'm simplifying a bit ;-) 3) The opportunity to get deep into thinking, reflecting, and diving into the theoretical and intellectual issues that enrich the practice, but we often don't have time for when we got a 12pm deadline for a client and then a proposal due at 5pm. Spending the year or two doing that deep dive (if you really enjoy it--alot of folks admittedly don't) may help cultivate a valuable habit that will make returning to the real world a bit more tolerable and satisfying. The intellectual fodder you gain does provide valuable perspective. At least that's what I tell myself when engineers are clammoring for specs yesterday and I have to design for the PM's delusional use cases :-) 4) And if you've been fumbling around learning it as you go along, grad school offers the chance to learn methods/approaches in a more organized guided fashion (presuming the curriculum is sound and robust!) to push yourself further...and perhaps discover something about yourself you didn't know! Also, in terms of career growth, AIGA and IDSA usually publish periodic studies of salary increases, etc. More and more I see job descriptions (like posted on ixda) that require or recommend Master's... That all said, in the end it's a personal choice and has to be measured against your passion and what you really want to get out of the degree. And if it's right at your stage of life, career, etc. Finally, this article/interview may be of help: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/is-there-a-doctor-of-design-in-the-house (It's about PhD in Design but there's some reference to Master's and advanced degrees in design overall) Thanks, Uday Gajendar Sr. Interaction Designer Voice Technology Group Cisco | San Jose Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals
At risk of sounding like Uday's hallalujah chorus (yo Uday!), let me press on. The best thing grad school did for me was FORCE me to get into theoretical areas that I had natural resistances to, and FORCE me to justify and defend the theories that I wanted to hang on to like sacred cows. So let's think a moment about the nature of true innovation. What is it? Look at two other parallel fields that took two different directions, toward theory, toward practice: mass communications, and journalism. Both presume to study one-to-many forms of communication. Both have thriving graduate programs across the U.S. Let's add to that, anthropology (a field that tends to define the leading edge of both theory and practice, it has its head on straight, imho, where the practitioners often engage in the same information-gathering activities as journalists, but more informed by current theory). Journalism stayed rooted in the world of practice and practitioners in its academic study. The actual field was going through a period of extreme conservatism and retrenchment (e.g. big corporations were buying up and consolidating longstanding journalistic institutions, like 100-year-old newspapers). It laid off reporters, closed news bureaus, dumbed down the product, morphed journalism into something else altogether. Practice-oriented journalism grad programs took the practice in the field as the status quo, and focused on excellence in that practice, sort of like that Kurt Vonnegut story Harrison Bergeron, where the smart kid had a buzzer go off in his ear every half hour, so as not to give him an unfair advantage over the other kids. How do you practice excellence when the lowest common denominator approach is SO VERY LOW? You practice becoming excellent at mediocrity! (I've both taught in these journalism programs--and I respect these professors--I was a graduate of such a program as well... and I've worked in newsrooms where excellence, even in your annual review, means striving to reach the highest levels of mediocrity, to become better at mediocrity than anyone else! Can you tell? I don't think a lot of lowest common denominator thinking, in any regard, even in interface design. It's why I migrated to ideas of many-to-many and narrowcasting and long tails) Mass comm programs at least weren't afraid to hire grad professors who weren't ONLY high level practitioners in the field, and were people who devoted themselves to studying the communication problems at hand, instead of following business-driven practice that may be driving the actual product in the wrong direction (imagine, in interface design, if all we were doing these days were web sites with big horizontally-oriented flash splash pages for corporate clients, because they pay the bills, and the advertisers like it, actual USERS be damned? Now step back and realize, this is a true picture of the glossy magazine industry today, and practitioner journalism programs teach magazine journalism as if advertisers' desires were more important than actual magazine readers). Mass comm also put its emphasis in actual research, with good methods, if heavily quantitative and (gasp) modernist. Anthropology is a field that pushes past a lot of those limitations, focusing relentlessly on PRACTICE, and aligning it relentlessly with THEORY. And that is what pushed me out of my traditional modernist assumptions and comfort zone. I did not go willingly. But this is the idea, of practice that works in line with theory, with theory that HAS to be practical, or else it must be condemned as a non-descriptive theory, and rejected. What is the dare? I think it is it to dare to ask any research question and follow the answer wherever it leads, to try to figure out what real users, what real audiences want and need-- in the face of market forces driving toward hardened arteries of convention away from real users. But the dare is also being bold enough to design with vision first, rather than let the audience tail totally wag the dog, because leadership means being able to think and create one step AHEAD of market forces, to innovate informed by the places a line of thought takes you, because that is actually how audiences move. I still don't wholeheartedly embrace all of postmodern theory. But I would have never been forced to wrestle with it, and defend my own focus on practice, without a grad program pushing me out of my comfort zone. But think of what we are actually trying to do. How about defining real as opposed to fake or pseudo-interactivity? Which do you think dominated the field in the late 1990s? How about defining real as opposed to fake or pseudo innovation? To do that means following an idea OR a design wherever it OR your audience leads you, IN SPITE OF market forces that may actually be leading, or even forcing you, in a much more conservative, less innovative direction. Just my 2 cents. Chris On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Uday Gajendar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Importance of Masters Degree for IxD Professionals
Good question Dave. Let me give it a historical twist. Journalism is a field looking back on 50 years or so of accredited bachelor's degree programs. These days most of the journalists working in the field have bachelor's degrees in journalism, from accredited programs, whether practice-oriented gritty public affairs idealistic programs, or programs that assess existing conditions from the mass comm perspective. Many still debate whether this degree is the best preparation to be a journalist. They enter a field that eats its young, pays poorly, and bears little resemblance to the journalistic ideals they studied. They generally get hired away by PR about the time they start families, unless they're the real Kool-Aid drinkers. Folks in the highest profile journalism jobs all went to the same prep schools and got liberal arts degrees in the Ivy Leagues, and fell into the incestuous network that runs publishing in the US. They didn't need nor generally pursued journalism degrees, unless it was a master's at Columbia. They generally don't tell you that, when you are attending one of those State U utilitarian journalism programs. That's kind of what made Tim Russert such an anomaly. Journalism originally was a self-taught blue collar profession, the cigar-chomping, hard-drinking, ambulance-chasing, macho type of WeeGee and yellow journalism, the muckrakers, and all that. I just lost a colleague this past week whose liver paid the price of living that original journalism life. People grew old in this field tho, or could, if they had the livers for it. They weren't all laid off before they turned 50 or had too much experience and made corporate management nervous by the questions they asked. Which type of preparation served that profession best? It's a great opportunity, to think of the best ways to shape a new profession, as it is beginning to set standards, to decide which fork in the road to go down. I find myself wishing journalism had taken a different fork. Chris On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 10:54 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is this all (both threads) really just a question of this point in history? Would I hire an Industrial Designer who doesn't have a degree in ID? Isn't the expectation if hiring a junior graphic designer that they have a degree in visual design? I have always found it interesting that in the UX world we tend to focus on the masters level with very little done at the Bachelor's level. My question to SVA CMU KU is why are there no bachelor of IxD programs next to you MA programs? I totally respect the masters I've met who have no formal education. But I don't see that path as strategicly viable for the total advancement of the discipline or the profession. I do think that one can achieve greatness in practice without going to school. What education teaches you though which I believe no one spoke about is how to think how to teach. education lastly gives you wings to inderstand the impractical. Learning failure as part if a process expressions just for you. Imagine IxD practice 50 years from now. Will anyone practicing IxD not have at least a bachelors in IxD? - dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from ixda.org (via iPhone) http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30391 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Usage Of Print Friendly Functionality
I use it on every single site that gives me information of value that I wish to save, or read on the subway, or in the bathtub. I do a lot of research online, so that means I use it a lot. I hate killing the trees, but I am ALWAYS printing. And it makes me absolutely SCREAM when I encounter pages that are impossible to print effectively. That may not be the data that you are looking for, but I've never heard of anyone calling a site's Print versions useless before. The very idea makes me break out in hives. Chris On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 1:44 PM, Bob Sampson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does anyone have a link to any good RD on the usage of a Print Friendly link on a website. If it's used at all, if 1% of people click on it, etc. There's a discussion on the guidelines of it's usage... http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=28529 ...but no discussion on IF it's actually used. I just notice that I see it in a lot of mockups we get from ad companies(the kids of design companies that don't do many websites), and I just don't put a print link into any of my mockups, since I figure it's a pretty much useless function. Wouldn't an Open in Word be more useful? Stripping the template out, and having a nice word doc with the content in it. _ Try Chicktionary, a game that tests how many words you can form from the letters given. Find this and more puzzles at Live Search Games! http://g.msn.ca/ca55/207 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] seo and usability
SEO can lead to some odd permutations... I'm not saying it is necessarily good SEO, but I've seen it happen. Example: Jamming up an HTML page title with SEO-specific keywords in the FRONT of the title, and the actual name of the site after a colon or a pipe at the end. Usability Problem: Ultimately, every HTML page title is bookmark copy, whether a browser bookmark or a delicious bookmark. Bookmarking is a helpful user activity when a site has great utility, and when you are planning to make many repeat visits, especially if you designate that bookmark for your toolbar (or in the case of the Firefox delicious plug-in, your toolbars). So the HTML page titles get truncated in many instances: toolbar bookmarks, 3-pane RSS readers, any sort of list view. I mean, nonsensical or generic HTML page titles showing up as gibberish in bookmarks lists should have vanished long ago, they are EVIL. I used to grade down my students a full letter grade if I caught them doing it... in the 1990s. A bookmark is a free ad, after all, and a free ad of the best and highest quality type. But ultimately, a bookmark is a USER UTILITY. And yet, with this new crop of SEO-happy page titles, I find myself with bookmarks that are not gibberish, but are truncated so that all I see are SEO keywords in my bookmark lists, but I can't for the life of me figure out the name of the site those wonderful keywords are describing! Makes it pretty hard for me to make those all-important repeat visits. Chris On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 6:42 AM, AJKock [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Where in particular do you find SEO at odds with good UX? SEO prefers descriptive links, which leads to some people creating long phrases which they link. Usability: I find them less readable and distracting when reading. They are also loaded with keywords which are vague, but descriptive of the content you are going to, but never spesific. Example: Linking to an article on hamburgers by using succulent beef being sacrificed on rolls with green and red salad The problem is that those keywords could have linked to many other things like steakrolls, sandwiches, etc. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Why isn't voice-based UI mainstream?
David Pogue at NYTimes has been out front about how in love with voice systems he is. You can search his past columns. Chris On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 2:36 PM, Jeff Garbers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Most of us old-timers probably expected voice I/O to be a common part of personal computing by now. But here we are in 2008, and I don't see even early signs of voice emerging into the mainstream. Products like Naturally Speaking have some popularity, but my sense is that they're used far more for dictation than any sort of command and response interface. Both Mac OS X and Windows Vista have built-in speech recognition capability, but does anybody use them (or even know they're there)? So my question for the group is: why? Is it due to technical shortcomings, like recognition accuracy and dealing with background noise? Are there social issues, like not wanting to be overheard or feeling silly talking to a machine? Or is it that splicing a voice-based UI into current graphical interfaces just doesn't give a satisfactory user experience? This, to me, is the most intriguing possibility. Voice command today reminds me of the earliest versions of mice for PCs, which generated arrow keystrokes as you moved them around; although they were ostensibly compatible with the existing applications, they just didn't work well enough to justify using them. Could it be that an effective voice-based UI requires a more basic integration into the OS and applications? Perhaps we need an OS-defined structure for a spoken command syntax and vocabulary rather than just expecting users to speak menu items? Why aren't we talking to our computers yet? Should we be? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Why isn't voice-based UI mainstream?
It just struck me, I wonder how much of the resistance to it is probably because of Open the pod bay door, HAL. Another freaky thing hit me the other day, very disconcerting. I listen to public radio constantly at home, every morning. I imagine public radio has many reasons to want to cut costs, but unlike NOAA (the automated weather repeater you get on your weather radio as you drive through thunderstorms and tornadoes cross-country... sometimes I just listen so I can feel like Stephen Hawking is riding with me in the car... if I could just get it to talk about string theory or something fun), public radio would have REALISTIC sounding automated voice announcers, wouldn't they? I really don't think NPR is running segues and other bits from automated voice generators, but the trick of my ear is that I sometimes HEAR it that way. Maybe it is in the nature of the digital signal, I don't know, but either the fake voices being created now are being modeled on the inflections of NPR announcers (segue announcers, not story readers, who are clearly real people), or something about the transmission of those announcer voices is making them sound synthesized. I definitely have a few HAL moments while listening some mornings, that's for sure. Except it is usually that woman's synthesized voice, more like the 411 numbers. Calm and NPR-sounding women. I'm sure they test out great for delivering info in a style to keep us calm while we are being kept on hold. Chris On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 3:43 PM, Jeffrey D. Gimzek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Imagine 4 people in a small office all talking to their computers every 2 seconds to say new windowscroll down. stop...up... select file I think it is mostly social, although everyone i know that has tried voice command has given it up, even when trying home alone in the quiet house, so the tech isnt there either. plus, talking is WAY slower than your hands. On May 13, 2008, at 11:36 AM, Jeff Garbers wrote: Most of us old-timers probably expected voice I/O to be a common part of personal computing by now. But here we are in 2008, and I don't see even early signs of voice emerging into the mainstream. Products like Naturally Speaking have some popularity, but my sense is that they're used far more for dictation than any sort of command and response interface. Both Mac OS X and Windows Vista have built-in speech recognition capability, but does anybody use them (or even know they're there)? So my question for the group is: why? Is it due to technical shortcomings, like recognition accuracy and dealing with background noise? Are there social issues, like not wanting to be overheard or feeling silly talking to a machine? Or is it that splicing a voice-based UI into current graphical interfaces just doesn't give a satisfactory user experience? This, to me, is the most intriguing possibility. Voice command today reminds me of the earliest versions of mice for PCs, which generated arrow keystrokes as you moved them around; although they were ostensibly compatible with the existing applications, they just didn't work well enough to justify using them. Could it be that an effective voice-based UI requires a more basic integration into the OS and applications? Perhaps we need an OS-defined structure for a spoken command syntax and vocabulary rather than just expecting users to speak menu items? Why aren't we talking to our computers yet? Should we be? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Interaction Designer in new Ford Commercial
Blade Runner ref is much appreciated... G Chris On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 1:41 PM, Will Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Exactly. I have [D/d]esigned structures, taxonomies, behaviors, interactions, interfaces, ships on fire off the shoulder of orion, doesn't matter what you call me, soon all these designs will be gone -- like tears in rain. But I do like the quote for all those Design Thinking wankers - will all their strategy power points be in MOMA in 20 years? Nope. Not a one. Ha! I was wondering how I was going to get a blade runner quote in this discussion - and Boom! I designed it in. On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 1:32 PM, mark schraad [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: bait - bite 'cause I probably design so much more than just the interface. Mark On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 1:23 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On May 8, 2008, at 6:42 AM, Dan Saffer wrote: As far as I know, this is the first time an interaction designer has appeared on a TV commercial for a product, much less mention bits of our philosophy. So the guy in the commercial says he designs user interfaces and you translate that into he does interaction design. Even to this day I still find that tragically amusing. Unless of course the folks on the board for the IxDA want to finally acknowledge that to design user interfaces you have to be to do more than just worry about the interaction piece and get into all those other distractions like pixel accurate type, color and composition for the final design plus more. I still don't understand the disdain for calling oneself an interface designer. It is and always has been the logical choice to describe the job since it's also the easiest thing to do to say, I design interfaces therefore I'm an interface designer. This is a rhetorical remark, by the way. But even so, thread hijack commencing in three... two... one... -- Andrei Herasimchuk Principal, Involution Studios innovating the digital world e. [EMAIL PROTECTED] c. +1 408 306 6422 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -- ~ will Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems - Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel +1.617.281.1281 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] collaborative group structures
You left out Scrum, where everybody pretends to work together, but is really just playing rugby G. In the end, they sprint and sprint and sprint, and end up in a big dog pile, with the smallest person squished on the bottom. (that was me, back in the day, because I played hooker) On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 7:45 AM, mark schraad [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is a lot of conversation about working collaboratively on this board. Mostly regarding results and software to facilitate. I have identified four basic structures for group work that I am intimately familiar with. I am curious what people are participating in, and if there are other derivations? A) Group think Multiple people in a group. Disciplines might vary. The group marches forward in lock step... while there may be diverse opinions, the group makes democratic decisions. This is essentially 6 people working as one. B) Group Input This is primarily one lead designer, with a regular cast of others that provide constant or frequent feedback and ideas. The decision process, however, is centralized as the lead has final say and ownership. C) Diverse team This group has distinct roles that are not duplicated such as... IA, UX, Visual, Product, Project, Engineering, Dev... The decisions of general direction are made as a group, specific decisions are made by the designated expert. D) Waterfall This is really group work in name only. Each individual does their specific job in sequence following the lead of either product or project management. Just curious... what do you participate in? What would you prefer? What is been most successful in your experience? And are there other varieties? Thanks, Mark PS - I realize this is rather simplistic... but this venue kind of screams for contrast of ideas. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Portfolios
Just to throw things in a slightly different direction, I'm wondering if folks on this list have an answer to this problem I've run into with both online and electronic portfolios: Do you find a danger, without a walk-thru, that the person you want to see the portfolio doesn't get to the full depth of what you have to show? I see this as almost an inherent problem with interactive navigation and the limitation of the screen boundaries to be able to convey what sort of material is behind any given screen (this is also a problem with non-fiction e-books and electronic textbooks, as compared to their physical counter-parts). It is a reason I have pared back my online portfolio to its simplest elements while keeping a full chronological archive (in a database) of materials that can be linked to for different uses. And it is the reason, as many here have noted, that I tend to trust my print version for greatest persuasive effect. What the screen and interactive links can hide is heft or substance. Thus, with interactive textbooks, for instance, I've found students are quick to say Why are you testing us on X? X wasn't in our assigned reading. Then when you point to it in the assigned reading, they say, I never saw that part. I've abandoned certain really excellent online, interactive textbooks because of this problem. If the student had had a physical textbook, she would know he missed the five pages of summary review material and questions to consider at the end of the chapter because she would be able to SEE the physical pages behind the pages where she had stopped reading. Students can't gauge the difference between a 400-page online textbook and a 200-page online textbook from electronic interfaces. They may understand that one book has more depth, more resources, better appendixes, more case studies, but hidden behind the flat screen, the depth and heft is hidden. The two works appear to be the same because they both are entered through a similar interface following similar interface design and content organization rules. And I've run into the same issue with electronic portfolios. Perhaps the constant in this case is that the people you are usually showing your portfolio to are time-stressed and skimming. Maybe your mileage will vary on this factor, but it is the one thing I've consistently run into, which is that few people I show portfolios to look at portfolios with the kind of detailed examination I'm used to giving portfolios myself (as a former teacher, helping my students develop good portfolios, grading them). So anyway, these days, I'm putting more energy into the print presentation, since I have my chronological database to back everything up. And I'm working up two versions: first, a brief one to customize for a particular job/project need, and a thicker one, with more substantial textual documentation etc., in case I run into someone who isn't skimming and wants to examine the depth of the work, the level of the reasoning, the method of the usability testing, etc. My feeling is that one without the other only tells half the story, and even if all an interviewer does is just lift and feel the heft of the thicker book, at least the fact that I have that level of work to back me up, to dip into as questions arise, conveys more about my work than if I hid that depth behind a single screen interface on the front of a database. I'm curious if others have noticed this effect. Chris On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 5:00 PM, Cindy Alvarez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd agree with that. Lots of products don't make it to market for reasons well beyond the designer's control - and lots of products have a finished state that was nothing like the designer's intent because of exec ex machina. HOW you worked - researched, prioritized, sketched, tested - given whatever your particular constraints were, is what I need to know. Come to think of it, that may explain partially why I get inferior feedback from people presenting paper portfolios in-person -- many people seem reluctant to talk about their constraints (perhaps feeling that it will sound like making excuses?). All design projects have constraints - and sometimes those are HUGE, impassable constraints - but at least you can talk about what you had a chance to do, what workarounds you achieved, and what you would've done under better circumstances. Cindy PS - I'd rather see an online (or offline) portfolio with minimal visuals/deliverables but great ANALYSIS, than to have you bring in deliverables that I suspect you shouldn't be showing me since I'm not under NDA. (All rights reserved - For internal distribution only in the footer = bad idea to show that you don't respect your former employers' IP.) Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe
Re: [IxDA Discuss] undergrad education
Just a quick note about the RPI Distance Learning classes... this is a long-established high level distance learning program, degree-granting, including high level engineering degrees (HCI stuff came later). I think this year or next it will celebrate its 20-year anniversary. (disclaimer: I used to be responsible for its website and all other publications, 10 years ago, so I'm biased) You should know that the RPI program is expensive for a reason, which is that the interactive experience is very comprehensive, with interactive video satellite teleconferencing in special classrooms with multiple cams (lots more schools have this now, I know), collaborative courseware for realtime project work, and excellent faculty attention. It ain't no mail correspondence course masquerading as distance learning, as you see at some universities, in other words. And just to build it up further, let me add that one of the reasons is that RPI is actively involved in NSF research into collaborative groupware designs between face to face and distance individuals and groups (disclaimer, I also worked as an RA on one of those NSF projects), as well as the recipient of MAJOR educational foundation grants into studio vs lecture-style learning, which include distance learning tools. Innovative subject-specific courseware has been developed there as well, for 10 years or more. Few other distance learning programs can boast that they come from that kind of base. Here endeth my commercial for RPI G. Chris On Feb 19, 2008 10:16 AM, David Shaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey Ashley I know that predicament. Here in Portland I have the same issue education wise. I've been looking at RPI in NY and Bentley College in MA. They do have online classes/degrees. Although the one thing I would caution is that you won't get the same class experience with these. But at least you'll get a grounding in human-digital interaction. The other way is to find a local IxDA group in your area and try and find a mentor. You know, that's probably something we need for the IxDA site a mentorship program! Hope that helps a little! David On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:26:28, ashley rovenski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't already have an undergraduate degree - but I'd like to learn more about Interaction Design - trouble is, I already have a job (which I want to keep) and there don't seem to be any really great schools around me (I live in Kentucky). Are there any good online schools or even books/websites (other than this one of course) that I could look into to teach myself? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=25770 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -- Art provokes thinking, design solves problems w: http://www.davidshaw.info Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The Most Frequently Used Features in Microsoft Office
I'm as against bloatware as the next person, although feature overkill is sort of like pornography: you know it when you see it, which means the definition remains completely relativistic. However... I am someone who uses the deep features of software, and usually without reading the manual. I don't want to be pestered with them, but I like that I can find and harness real software power when I want it. But there's a bigger danger to warn of here, the dangers current mass media missteps provide the warning signs for, inadvertently. Lowest common denominator. (are you as sick of reality TV as I am?) When we start lumping all into a mass, as in the mass of mass media, it becomes the demographic of One, the oppressive and tyrannical demographic of the monolith, and excuse me whilest I run screaming from the room. I was drawn to interactive media because it deconstructed the mass of mass media; it dared to say one-to-many is evil and there can be something better, something even better than niche marketing and demographic hair-splitting on speed, something sometimes called many-to-many, but is really about diversity and about resisting the urge to lump audiences into undiscerning categories, even the category of audience, which necessarily constructs those in that category as passive consumers, and not interactive co-creators. That's really all I have to say, except to point up the irony of a term I've seen from time to time, a term that fills me with the overwhelming urge to sneeze bullshit! tangent Consumer-Generated Content. As in, huh?! Who came up with that brilliant term? Will it one day fall into the annals of jumbo shrimp et al? I'm less offended by the term user-generated content, because making use of something is doing something, an active activity. Consumer? A consumer is one who consumes something that is made by someone else. So what the hell is consumer-generated content except what (I suspect) is a marketing industry's deep structure refusal to accept the idea of active participants, CREATORS, makers, speakers with real voices, rather than the dominant marketing desire for compliant, passive, happy with what they are spoon-fed, consumers. (we could dig even deeper for irony here, and note the history of tuberculous gave us a term for what happens when consumers consume themselves... Consumption?) Consumer-generated content, a variation of horseless carriages, the name given to a thing by those who can't accept change except to define it in terms of what is known and familiar in the past, the good old days, the old time religion, when marketing was delivered to audiences assumed to be passive and one-size-fits-all for a mass media compliant consumer who did what he or she was told and liked it! Is it really true traditional media can't deal with this radical idea of active creators talking back to the big media bosses, so we gotta diminish it by calling it by the old names, by defining it completely in terms of what we want these people to be, not what they are? /tangent Chris On Feb 19, 2008 9:18 AM, Marty DeAngelo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At the Adaptive Path UXi conference, they spoke almost specifically about this - the fact that new webapps are coming out that try to give 20% of the functionality that 80% of the users will use instead of being everything for everybody. They used Writely as an example (which has since been bought up by Google) to show that people usually only need a subset of what is offered in Microsoft Word. The presentation made a good point that while those extra features are interesting and even useful in some situations, many people will never use them and have trouble finding what they DO need amidst the broad choices offered. I for one think that the Less is More mentality makes a lot of sense, because the interfaces get so complicated that even veteran users get lost going for features that would be somewhere around 26-50 on the 'most used' list. -- Marty Probably unsurprisingly, these numbers appear to show some kind of Pareto principle usage (20 % of the application commands are used in 80 % of the time). Does your experience support this? [1] http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/02/most-frequently-used-features -in.html -- Jens Meiert http://meiert.com/en/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Thoughts on Alan Cooper's Keynote
I can't really speak directly to the issue being discussed, but I just wanted to add a plug for Desiree Sy's article on this subject in the Journal of Usability Studies, which I read, I think, from a link posted to this list. Took me a while to get to it, but I found it a very interesting discussion. The approach she outlines also would appear to be a lot of hard work to make it work, a lot of juggling, and really dependent on a team being able to keep the overall big vision in mind all the time, as well as consistency issues, while plugging away at the small chunked bits. But in terms of a model of how to try to make it work, there's one possible model (from Autodesk, as mentioned below). Here's the link, in case you missed it the last time it was posted, I forget by whom. http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/upa_publications/jus/2007may/agile-ucd.html Chris On Feb 12, 2008 2:15 AM, Jeff White [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Out of curiosity, have you or Greg ever practiced agile? Not trying to be a pain, but really would like to hear what your experience was if so. Also, one of the sponsors of Interaction08, Autodesk, has been designing award winning user experiences in a very complex product space with agile for more than half of a decade. It can work, and it can fail, just like any other process/approach/methodology. They also enjoy a really positive and happy work environment, and have very little turnover. I've had the opportunity to meet collaborate with Lynn Miller and Desiree Sy - both interaction designers at Autodesk, and they are really doing great design work. What's interesting is that in both of those keynotes, the relationship between designers and engineers was also highlighted. Even when there is time for deconstruction as you mention, that doesn't mean it actually gets built and implemented in the right way. I'm sure this is very different across different types of organizations - boutique design shops vs corporate workplaces comes to mind. My experience with agile has been that if you embrace certain aspects of it, you can really improve that relationship. I've worked in waterfall and I have worked in agile. Quite frankly, each one has its pros and cons. I feel part of our job as designers is to accept that there will be always be less than perfect situations, and learn how to deal with them in innovative and positive ways that result in good user experiences. As a shameless plug, Jim Ungar and I presented on just this Sunday afternoon. I disagree with you that user experiences are not being designed, but just built when it comes to agile. There are ways to do real design in agile - incorporating user research, concept ideation, exploration critique, and true iteration based on things like usability testing and design leadership. It just requires letting go of some old practices and embracing new ones. Jeff On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:06:15, dave malouf [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At the postmortem dinner for the conference on sunday night. Myself Greg Petroff when off on a debate about Agile being good or bad. I find it interesting that BOTH of our pre-eminent keynotes are both talking down agile, YET we as a UX community believe it is still valuable. Yikes! It screams to me the horrible influences we have been forced to assimilate towards (taking some of Bill's juices and running with it) around being under the thumb of engineering all these decades. Through the discussion what became clear was that the term waterfall is associated with RUP (or RUP like processes) and for some reason is equated to documentation. However, the meaning of waterfall to me means ... define before build as per Bill's discussion. Know what you are doing before you green light spending production dollars. What follows that design period does not need to be reams of useless and often mindless paper. On another point. I really disagree with this: In fact, one of the core aspects of UX%u2014delivering what the users need%u2014can be better assured through agile process (IMO) . B/c I think it shows a lack of understanding to what UX is all about--telling a story. A lot of people have already highlighted story telling as a major theme of the conference and I couldn't agree more, but the way to creatively write a story, or create a drama, or event, is to do it through deconstruction. I never really understood what that meant till this conference, and this conversation, but for now at least, it means for me, that I create a vision and then deconstruct it through value statements and other criteria used to make choices. The example is ... The theatrical version of a movie vs. a director's cut. Almost always in process, the director's cut is made first and then it is cut down to fit the theater. If I just build in iterations, there is never a whole, guiding light or prototype from which I can cut away
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Working with Product Analysts/Manager
I'll give a second to that. Jon's whole book is just outstanding. It's also so well-written, it's the kind of book you'd enjoy curling up with on a blustery night! Chris On Feb 11, 2008 9:39 AM, W Evans [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Karen - I would recommend reading the article in Jon Kolko's book Thoughts On Interaction Design, by an interaction designer named Ellen Beldner called Getting Design Done, in which she deals with just that issue of how to work effectively with PMs - especially when they want to own everything in front of requirements gathering - and sometimes wireframes as well. She includes some pretty funny anecdotes about working with some nightmare PMs - Choice quote: I quit that job because the PM was a micromanager who didn't know what he was doing. He took no pride in designing the best software possible; he was unwilling to listen to or consider my expertise; and he told me to do things that I thought were professionally unethical [like essentially copying the UI worflows and designs of a direct competitor]. The article is well worth the price of admission - and the rest of the book is very good as well. - Will On Feb 10, 2008 11:30 PM, mark schraad [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Karen, Over the last couple of months I have been thinking a lot lately about just this issue. Stemming back a few months when the discussion was 'who is a designer' in reference to who gets to make design decisions. I believe that we as designers are painfully cognizent of where we think design starts, and where our expertise and influence should be primary. We as designers just do not understand when product managers and other business managers hire us for our expertise, pay us a lot of money, and then don't follow our precise recommendations (or in some cases override our decision). I would pose that much of that work... from the business development staff to the product managers are design decisions. They are also charged with working to create and develop great product/service... they just don't call it design. The decision to include a specific feature, or to meet a certain spec, well - those ARE design decisions. Try and look at those as the criteria to which you will design. And, if a spec or a requirement is not the best approach, it seems to me perfectly acceptable to challenge that, particularly when acting in the best interest of results and armed with persuasive logic, experience and convincing evidence. No one is going to say they do not want a better user experience. I hear product talk about it as if it was 'their' mantra almost daily. But when push comes to shove, they are tasked with hard short term metrics that they believe need to be met first and foremost. The user experience is, it seems, nearly always for sale in a rigidly structured, metric driven, corporate environment. This is short term thinking. Mark On Feb 10, 2008, at 10:14 AM, karen wrote: I was responding to the Cooper thread but thought this might be a different topic. I agree that spending time on the IxD of a product before requirements are written in theory should result in a stronger, more innovative product. The problem I've run into in my last two positions (ecommerce and now, media) is that the product analysts/managers view any pre-requirements work as their role. They want to do the research, then they write requirements which state how the product should be designed and they are the decision makers during design. Ultimately, they drive the design. And not one of the product folks I've worked with come from the IxD, IA or usability arenas. This is a conflict for me as the product analysts/managers are ultimately concerned with driving revenue not UE. Explaining that a higher quality UE will increase revenue gets lip service but hasn't changed anything. Have any of you had similar experiences? How do you handle it? Thanks for any suggestions, Karen *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL
Re: [IxDA Discuss] home links
The thing that makes me crazy is when sites don't follow the design convention of using the main site branding or logo being a constant link throughout the site to the site's front door. I don't see these pages as being a home as much as I see them as an essential navigational portal into the site. I don't need a home link, so long as the primary logo on the site always goes there. What I mean to say is, neglecting that portal and the navigational structures present in it is tantamount to neglecting any portal, from Deep Space Nine to 90s search engines. They are gatekeepers and also crucial for SEO. But most importantly, to neglect a site's primary portal is to presume that your navigational structures are perfectly understandable for all audiences at all times (even when people surf drunk or stoned?), so they can NEVER get lost, will never need the equivalent of a reset button, which is what a home page really is, for when people try to find something on a site, and get confused and lost along the way, and their only recourse is to go back to where they started and retrace their steps (or, the final fallback position, try Google). Chris On Feb 3, 2008 10:03 AM, Micah Freedman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does anyone have any research and/or rules-of-thumb about the usefulness of putting home in the permanent navigation? I tend to want to leave it off because A) on most sites, I feel like once the user is in the site, there's not really much of a reason for them to go home, and B) The click on the logo to go home pattern seems universal enough that everyone *should* know about it. OTOH, I can easily imagine Aunt Tilly looking for the home link and getting confused if it's not there. Are there times when it should be used? Times when it shouldn't? Times when it's optional? -Micah *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] My View of Interaction Design
Nice work, and thank you for sharing it. I'm just on page 3, and have a quick question about the triangle on 2-3. While I agree with those three constituencies, I'm wondering if you aren't leaving out something pretty major, an omission on par with any of those other constituencies leaving out interaction design. Creative/Art Direction/Editorial may have a say in this matrix, no? Perhaps you would put those folks in the Business side of the triangle. I know there is a political struggle for control of any given interactive project, and the triangle is seldom equilateral, but I'm not sure there are only 3 sides. Aesthetic/Creative design has both art and editorial components, and the people who do this work (see also Apple) are highly protective of their turf, and often are outside professionals, quite apart from business stakeholders. And while we feel IxD is essential (and I do believe that), I also believe we could not do what we do (nor could developers) without a larger aesthetic craft and transcendent artfulness as a higher goal. Personally, I suspect that a world designed by user experience professionals without Aesthetic/Creative concerns in the forefront would look a lot like the aesthetics of the Soviet Union. just my 2 cents, Chris On Feb 2, 2008 7:45 PM, Charles B. Kreitzberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Everyone: I've been an interaction designer for 30 years. It has been an interesting experience to read all the posts on this discussion list about IxD and its definitions. Some of the positions people take are interesting and mind expanding while there are others that I disagree with. I was recently involved in a discussion regarding the definition of UCD. While that discussion did not converge as well as I had hoped, it did inspire me to put down some of my thoughts about interaction design. I am not attempting to create the definition of IxD - just to set forth my definition. I would be most interested in your comments. Because the document was rather long (about 5 pages and 2000 words) I decided to put it into an external document rather than creating a huge post. If you are willing, please take a look at it (http://www.cognetics.com/papers/IxD.pdf) and let me know what you think might be added/changed/improved. If there is enough interest in this I will produce a revised version with your input. Best, Charlie *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Social app popularity begins to decline
Terrific point Jeff, and great choices of examples. Might be good to trot out McLuhan and sense ratios, when thinking about your examples below as well. And, not to put a damper on the discussion or anything, but just to note, since the mid-1990s, CMC researchers have delved quite deeply into most of the quality of community relationships online, the strength of weak ties and a whole host of socio-cultural issues these things raised, including the issue of how to define a real community, if one can. I have a full review of this literature in one of the more boring sections of my dissertation ( www.nutball.com/dissertation), but a livelier account of the issues raised can be found in Stephen Doheny-Farina's book, The Wired Neighborhood (1998). http://www.amazon.com/Wired-Neighborhood-Stephen-Doheny-Farina/dp/0300074344/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=booksqid=1201888662sr=1-1 I'm sure academic HCI researchers at least are busily applying all that previous research to social networks and FOAF, rather than inventing the wheel from scratch. Chris On Feb 1, 2008 12:13 PM, Jeff Axup [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It is fair to point out the deficiencies or differences between various online formats and F2F meetings. However, let me point out that a social network says nothing about the technology or methods being used to support communication or relationships within it. Here's a few examples of 'social networks'. - A group of friends talking in a bar in 100 AD Rome talking about people met while traveling on horseback to trade with other cities - A military commander in medieval Europe communicating by carrier pigeon to his troops - A new American immigrant in 1800 receiving mail via ship from relatives in Europe - A government employee on the US frontier communicating with the home office in New York via telegraph messages. - A group of 1950s housewives chatting on the phone during the day while they are at home working - A modern day businessperson going to a professional group to meet with business contacts who they wouldn't want to spend time with on a personal basis - An engineer working with a remote team in India via a phone connection - A shy teen using SMS to flirt with a girl from school who he otherwise wouldn't feel comfortable around - An astronaut on a space station placing a video call to talk with their new baby for the first time. Who is to say which of these is a real social interaction? Who is to say which of them is most useful or highest quality? They all connect people in networks, and different methods of connecting have different advantages and disadvantages. I think we are focusing a bit too much on the negative side of a very new medium (web-based-social-networking-services) without placing them in the context of many other forms of socialization which we use for different purposes and get variable results with. Cheers, Jeff On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:10:35, Jeff Seager [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jeff Axup said (with what I perceived as a touch of irony, and I think not too seriously): I really like this quote - 'people are, just, well, bored of social networks.' As if humanity will ever be bored of social networks, considering that we have been happily using them for thousands of years. Not like this. To compare this technological simulation to a true social network is to say you've been skydiving because you watched a video that was taped from the point of view of the guy who actually did it. It has some value if viewed with sufficient empathy (we supply that ourselves), but lacks the validation needed for a genuine experience of society. What do Facebook, MySpace, et al *not* have that traditional social networking has? Things like body language, eye contact, genuine social context, validation that you are in fact talking to another 16-year-old like yourself ... In short, they lack the element of trust -- in part because participants have whatever degree of anonymity they choose to have. Whatever other metrics are applied to assess the decline of online social networks, I think this lack of trust will be the bottom line. We'll have heard one too many stories about people who pretended to be something they aren't, and others getting hurt in some way because of it. I do think that online social networks can be a valuable way to reinforce existing social interactions, but it seems unlikely to me that they could ever stand alone. Nor should they. I can't imagine calling any group a society when all their interactions are superficial and transient. Anything that evaporates in a power outage is not a society. Thank you, Murli and everyone, for some very thought-provoking ideas. I'm enjoying your comments very much, in spite of my uncertainty about your existence in real time and space. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Social app popularity begins to decline
I dunno. It appears to me that the biggest sector for manufactured outrage over social media numbers going up or down comes from VC or others (tech media) with such a vested interest in people slathering all over something with mass media-scale obsession numbers that they appear to lose all perspective. No massive numbers, and VC are bored, perhaps because they are offended when people don't behave like utter sheep and move around en masse when their buttons are pushed. Thank god for interactivity, heterogeneity, long tails, diversity, and other things that vex these people so horribly. Anybody who participates in social media, and has over long periods of time (The Well? Remember listservs? Usenet?) understands very well that there are lifecyles for all gathering places. When was the last time you wept over a dead shopping mall with grass growing in the cracks in the parking lot? How long can an active church go on without some doctrine dispute that leads a chunk of the parishoners to split off into a rival congregation? I suspect that the people with the deep pockets are primarily gold prospectors, looking to mine rich veins, and when they discover faster money or better gushers (to mix the metaphors thoroughly), they will move on, and the social networks will remain to give them the finger. Which type of folks would you rather side with? Social networks and the virtual landscapes they have authored preceded the flow of money online, and they persisted through the last crash (imagine that!), and they will persist again, regardless of how crowds migrate and social groups change and morph, who splits off from which church, or which discussion group has the greatest center of SOCIAL gravity (which bears little correspondence to MONEY gravity). Chris 2008/1/31 Jeff Axup [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I really like this quote - people are, just, well, *bored* of social networks. As if humanity will *ever* be bored of social networks, considering that we have been happily using them for thousands of years. It certainly wouldn't be surprising that there would be an upper bound on how much socialization an individual can maintain, and that the need for different types of socialization change throughout the phases of one's life. My guess is that the SNAs that offer more mature services such as finding employment may appeal to a larger audience and see longer-term usage, while those focusing on posting college party photos probably only appeal for a shorter period and see a high-turnover in their user base. I would also expect that there are high-value niche opportunities for SNAs that haven't properly been explored yet. -Jeff Jeff Axup, Ph.D. Principal Consultant, Mobile Community Design Consulting, San Diego Research:Mobile Group Research Methods, Social Networks, Group Usability E-mail:axup at userdesign.com Blog: http://mobilecommunitydesign.com Moblog: http://memeaddict.blogspot.com Designers mine the raw bits of tomorrow. They shape them for the present day. - Bruce Sterling 2008/1/31 Murli Nagasundaram [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Social apps are far more complex than single-user apps. I wonder to what extent a lack of social psych research input into the design of these apps -- the most popular ones having been designed by college undergrads -- is causing their popularity to plateau? To me, this suggests a discontinuity similar to the one that occurred when command line interfaces were displaced by GUIs. Every GUI out there can trace its origins to the the multi-disclipinary, thoroughly grounded research conducted at Xerox PARC. I think it's possible to go only so far by the seat of one's pants. Without GUIs or at least the bastardized compromises that were delivered on the DOS platform in the mid-1980's, PC use would have plateaued in much the way the social apps are slowing down now. The next phase of Social App development might require Sproull, Kiesler, Turoff, Hiltz and others to re-emerge from the shadows. -murli http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/31/myspace_fb_comscore_drop/ 'Facebook fatigue' kicks in as people tire of social networksSeven Two year itch pokeBy Chris Williams http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2008/01/31/myspace_fb_comscore_drop/ → More by this author http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=Chris%20Williams Published Thursday 31st January 2008 15:19 GMT Find out how your peers are dealing with Virtualization http://whitepapers.theregister.co.uk/paper/view/341/reg2?td=toptextlink *Shhh!* Can you hear a hiss? That's the sound of naughty facts deflating the social networking balloon a tad. Whisper it, but numbers from web analytics outfit comScore have confirmed
Re: [IxDA Discuss] SEO and Usability
It also may belie user dissatisfaction with the navigation systems of sites they really want to use, in spite of getting lost or not finding what they may even know is there. I know for years, on many newspaper and major media source sites like CNN.com or MSNBC, I'd try 3-4 times to find an article I'd read before or saw in print and wanted to forward to someone, only to become so vexed and thwarted by the godawful CMS's and lack of permalinks or ability to search all terms, including author, or article text, that I'd just bug out and go to Google, and inevitably, find the article I couldn't locate on the site from the site itself, to save my soul. What if the real reason people do it is interface frustration? Chris On Jan 28, 2008 3:42 AM, Diarmad McNally [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 5 Jan 2008, at 07:10, Peter Meyers wrote: In addition, I think it's very important to usability that we start to consider the entire life-cycle of the consumer, from the moment they sit down at the computer. Over the last couple of years I've noticed an upward trend among usability test and ethnographical study participants to use Google rather than a particular site's navigation, e.g. instead of looking for Flight Times in the left hand nav of the Virgin Atlantic site, they prefer to Google virgin atlantic flight times. This is similar to the increase in users using Google for navigating to popular sites rather than typing in the URL or using favourites/bookmarks as evidenced in the increase of search terms such as Facebook, MySpace etc. This behaviour relies on sites having accurate SEO and may indicate an increasing importance of SEO to provide an acceptable level of usability. Diarmad McNally Interaction Design Studio UK: +44 (0) 7808 297289 Irl: + 353 (0) 85 7888 085 *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Why do crappy interfaces sell?
LOL. Good answers, y'all! And to Jared, I was fondly reminded of the '67 VW Beetle my dad got me as my first car. There was one interface that mattered. He could lift the engine out with one arm (he was an electrician, with years of pulling wire through conduit) and swap it, which was a good thing, because I went through three of them. Several other interfaces didn't matter as much, like the brakes, because I could shift down, you see. And the shifter, because to shift down, I had to learn to double-clutch. (can you imagine parents these days letting their kids run around like that?) And then, on the third engine, the defrost blowers didn't line up with the ducts anymore, so I drove back and forth from basketball practice and games all winter in Alaska scraping the inside of the window. It died for good the night of the senior bonfire after graduation. Lest you are all 21st Century horrified, I should also note that my family also had these same Beetles as the family car in the 60s and 70s, so as kids, my brother and I rode around in the backseat without the seatbelt interface (or kiddie seats), hanging on to those cute little straps. I wonder if the good old Folks-mobile bears any relation to the cheap cars coming in India that many hope will keep entire families from riding around perched precariously on motorbikes. Chris On Jan 25, 2008 6:00 PM, Jared M. Spool [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jan 25, 2008, at 4:34 PM, Christine Boese wrote: A fart in the wind? A fart in the wind, when well placed, can certainly matter. That said, it's the case that the quality of the interface only matters in a selling situation sometime. Having just purchased a car for my 17-year-old, I looked for certain qualities in the vehicle -- interface wasn't one of them. This car is going to live its last year of its life under the control of my son. He will do what it takes to learn its operation. I'll never drive it. Price and reliability were far more important to me. Not all qualities are important to all people all the time. As much as we'd like to think the ones we contribute are always drivers, there are plenty of situations when they have no effect. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Why do crappy interfaces sell?
I've given this idea (that any interface can be learned given enough time) some thought for the past few years, and I have (for now) two direct observations about this idea. #1 What about Blinking 12? Enough time could not save Blinking 12, because there was enough motivation. Actually, these days, I don't even bother putting numbers into the memory of my landline phone anymore, because it is just easier to look up the number on my cell, and then call with the landline (when I'm wanting to make a landline call) #2 In a past life I was a photographer who worked avidly in a good old stinky chemical darkroom (sexy places, those stinky chemical darkrooms... don't ask me why, and don't telll OSHA). I've been out of it for a long time, but I did love the magic of that work, which caught hold of me from about age 12 on when I saw my first image appear in a tray of developer. You could say I was highly motivated to learn the interfaces of almost all darkroom processes, from enlarger operation to the finer points of transferring images through the trays, contrast control, flashing an image while in the developer to solarize it, combining negatives in a single print, trick photography. I actually preferred darkroom work to shooting a lot of the time (never grew to like lugging equipment). Now these days we all know our Photoshop arcana, same difference, and that is fine, but consider the different assumptions made about the usability of darkrooms. I also taught photography and darkroom work for many years, so I hit this head on too. In short, most darkroom processes would not meet even the more power user standards for mass market usability. They were far too imprecise, artful, intuitive, and interdependently extended, for most beginners and many advanced users to even be able to produce an identical print twice (although work in PR, and you will soon learn to do it). What does this mean, as Martin Luther might say? Darkroom processes weren't developed (heh) for the mass market? Neither are many software programs, but that doesn't mean their processes aren't often honed to standard (dumbed down?) usability design patterns. I also had many colleagues in the humanities (journalism) who have raging cases of technophobia. Yet many of these same people would have no hesitation walking into a darkroom and dusting off their rusty skills to make a print. I've told them, when they throw up the wall at me and say BS like blog software is TOO HARD for me to use or how can I be expected to do this (search a database) when I'm no good with computers! that the things I'm asking them to do are actually EASIER technically than working in a good old fashioned sexy stinky darkroom, with far fewer processes to remember, formulas and calculations to apply, or even dexterity required! As you may guess, my arguments get nowhere. I think my bigger question here (if I have one) has to do with our assumptions about lowest common denominators, and how many technological solutions in our world we might be blowing off, just because interfaces are too hard to use. Applying that logic, we might never have developed photography at all, let alone mass market photography, from Brownies to stereoscopic cameras to glass negs and view cameras, flash powder and flash cubes, Instamatics and ordinary people actually able to thread 120 film in old twin lens reflex cameras without accidentally exposing the whole roll? Usability is a great thing, but I don't know if I'm blaspheming the in temple if I say, I kinda miss interfaces that challenged me to master their mysteries and discover their Easter Eggs. Chris On Jan 22, 2008 2:57 PM, Ari Feldman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: i don't have the research to cite but i also suspect that virtually any interface can be learned given enough time. i used to do data entry for custom mainframe software as a summer job and later i beta tested Merrill Lynch's DOS-based brokerage information system in the early 90s. both interfaces sucked but people dumber than the corn in shit were able to master them given enough time... On 1/22/08, Nasir Barday [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But these kind of products have been around for what? 15 years? Bruno, I think that's the very root of the problem: inertia. When there are only one (or few) players in the field, the market for a product tends to mature slowly. The financial and medical industries are classic examples. Especially in these industries, upper management sees a different approach as something that needs additional training and integration work. Never mind that the new thing would make people more efficient and offset the costs. On the customer and the vendor side, they see it all as extra cost that doesn't make sense, especially when there are shareholders to report to. Not sure what the market is for the CD product, but I'm guessing once another company wants a piece of the pie, it'll come up with a slick new
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Why do crappy interfaces sell?
I'll give a witness to the godawfulness of WebCT, Jeff! How terrible is that tool? Let me count the ways. 1. Totally horseless carriage. All it does is strive to reproduce face-to-face old fashioned classroom tools online. 2. Teacher-centered instead of student-centered. When it comes to educational UCD means STUDENT-centered design. Maybe it got adopted more widely because it looked like a teacher's admin tool (a really CLUNKY teacher's admin tool), and teachers make those decisions, but from what I experienced with it (as a teacher in an intensely applied computer-assisted pedagogy classroom), most of the adoption decisions on it were made quite a bit higher up than individual professor- or teacher- level. Probably with an advisory committee, tho. Its servers worked (at least when I used it) and older teachers were immediately comfortable with it because it seemed to give them chalk and a chalkboard. 3. WebCT is Professor Yellow-Note's best friend. The best thing the tool supports is garbage-in, garbage-out memorization-style teaching. If you want to do anything innovative pedagogically, you spend half your time trying to work around or kludge around WebCT. And Blackboard wasn't much better. 4. Take a leaf from MIT's book: when it comes to educational materials, FIREWALLS SUCK. As well as professors who hide away and copyright their syllabi. Way to teach students about the free exchange of ideas, the importance of dialogue and debate in the Public Commons. Balkanize the entire pedagogical landscape already used for decades by teachers who have built careers out of teaching collaboration and collaborative tools, both with students and with colleagues. Teachers could use BLOG software and support more enriching courseware experiences than with all of the tools available in WebCT (except maybe the integration of uploading and downloading Excel to a central administration gradebook tied to the Registrar). Heh. I just had to go off on a rant there for a bit. As you were. Chris On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:33:46, Jeff Seager [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Andrew said: Back to where I started, the effect of a bad interface on, for example, a set of online learning materials, is to be a distraction from the content and a slow-burn frustration for users. This doesn't necessarily have any impact at point of sale. Well said. Especially true for educational software, where tens of thousands of units may be sold before anyone uncovers the flaws. Or cares, even if they do uncover them. Witness the ubiquitous WebCT, which I despise ... well, OK, let's say I really dislike it. It was widely adopted not because it was a great tool for the job, but because it was the best *available* tool and the education community was clamoring for such a tool to make distance learning more feasible -- which WebCT did, in its own clunky way, to the frustration of many students undertaking coursework on the Web. I look forward to the Next Big Thing in that market! It's probably arrived by now. Your point's well-taken about content driving the educational software market, too, Andrew. I think it should, but in this case the content delivery system can be almost completely disregarded -- and the real costs of that disregard (frustration, and ultimately failure) can be passed along to the end user. It isn't a real-world market because the buyers are insulated from the consequences of their flawed decisions. Happens a lot in government, too; that's how we get $900 hammers and $600 toilet seats for the U.S. Air Force. So in partial answer to this thread's overarching question, can we say that crappy interfaces are far less likely to sell when the end user is in control of spending, and can vote with his/her pocketbook? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24918 *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help ..
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Design Masters Thesis Extent of Realization
Good points Dave, and I agree. But, in thinking about what Jonas said (and my own position), I would argue that the strong need to understand the foundations of our medium you mention below must be carefully defined, with the foundations necessarily including equal parts medium (the tools/interfaces) and interactive social behavior (sociological/cultural effects that lead to effective and dynamic community-building). Favor one side or the other, and we fall short, in other words. This was the thing, btw, that first fascinated me when doing my dissertation, when I realized that what I was actually studying was not human-computer interaction (individual interactions) so much as it was what happens at the point where interfaces meet cultures (social interactions), in order to discover how interfaces shape social groups, and how social groups can shape interfaces (on the fly, or collaboratively-authored in a specific social contexts). To my mind, that was how to learn about how larger dynamic and vital virtual landscapes ultimately shrug themselves into being. Chris On Fri, 14 Dec 2007 06:01:44, David Malouf [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Chris and Jonas' sparked an idea for me in this thread. For our work, unless deployed, how do we judge success/failure? I'm sure this can be translated to other degrees of practice. I mean how did we know Bilbao was going to be a success before it was built. Most confidently kept their same opinion before (from the model) that they have after the fact. What allows other disciplines to have a more confident set of judgment that doesn't require the full production of the item in order for it to be envalued? In the case of this cancer community, I mean how does the student judge whether their notions of community building in this context will work? Is it comparative to the successes and failures of other existing communities (related and unrelated)? For me this speaks to a strong need to understand the foundations of our medium so that we can clearly communicate success/failure amongst each other in the theoretical space. So even a partial prototype in my mind only works in the environment of such foundational analysis and maybe lacking that is why those who come from areas that have those foundations are drawn towards completion in order to lay a more accurate judgment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=23446 *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Ethics: Business vs. User
Actually, I heard a retired phone company exec admit that it is true, about the voicemail slowness set up deliberately to up the billing from it. I mean, I heard him admit it in an interview on an PRI news program, and those news programs vet their sources better than most journalism enterprises (slippery slope there, I know). But can I bib cite the exact program date and segment? No. By the nature of orality (and podcasting temporality), my memory tells me it was either the APM Marketplace Money segment, or APM Marketplace. I subscribe to both in iTunes, and I'd say it was in the last six months. That's as good as I can do. Yes, it is ethically slimey, but as technologically possible as those people who work the math for hedge funds to mine and aggregate all the percentages of a cent that can be skimmed from millions of broker float transactions. Chris On Nov 14, 2007 4:59 PM, Christopher Fahey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am going to take a bit of an issue with the premis here. Unless they are showing a measurement that is specific (absolute numbers or percentage) and are distorting those numbers they are hardly out and out telling a lie. You're right that systems can be inaccurate due to technology idiosyncrasies, but the specific story (or rumor) is that the mobile carriers do it deliberately for the purpose of driving up minutes. In which case, it's a lie. The premise of the question, really, is that we designers can be asked by our bosses to design deceptive systems in order to increase company profits. -Cf Christopher Fahey Behavior biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com me: http://www.graphpaper.com *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
