Re: [IxDA Discuss] [IxDA] Coming to Vancouver
Japadog. Guu. Salt Tasting Room. Rodneys. Granville Island. West Vancouver. -Original Message- From: ixd...@host.ixda.org [mailto:ixd...@host.ixda.org] On Behalf Of Chris McLay Sent: Monday, March 08, 2010 12:24 AM To: p...@usabilitycounts.com Subject: [IxDA] Coming to Vancouver Hi all, I'm heading to Vancouver next week for a holiday and to explore the city and surrounds. Does anyone have any recommendations of things a travelling Interaction Designer must do, or placed they should visit? All suggestions welcome! Thanks, Chris (((Please leave all content below this line))) Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) Discussion! Manage Account .. http://www.ixda.org/user/27323/notifications Discussion Guidelines .. http://www.ixda.org/guidelines -- View original post: http://www.ixda.org/mailcomment/redirect/%3C27323.23977.0.1268030072.22a71cd335038511ca9ca66796fe754a%40ixda.org%3E 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
[IxDA Discuss] Looking for an extra IXDA Registration
I feel a bit like the guy who walks around the Grateful Dead concert parking lot with his finger in the air looking for a ticket :) Anyone not able to make the conference please let me know as I'd love to attend. thanks! Pat Sheridan UX, Three Pillar Global 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
[IxDA Discuss] [JOB] User Interface Designer III - Amelia OH
I am moving West and leaving my position... posted below. User Interface Designer III - Amelia OH Overview: The companies of American Modern Insurance Group are nationally recognized leaders in specialty insurance, and currently serve more than 1.3 million policyholders throughout the country. Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, American Modern Insurance Group is rated A+ (Superior) by the A.M. Best Company, an independent analyst of the insurance industry. Responsibilities: The UI Designer III will design user interfaces and navigation models of form-based, Web applications. This position will apply multiple user-centered design techniques and conduct usability testing. This position will participate in heuristic evaluations. The UI Designer will recommend and conform to UI-related standards as well as participate in the requirements gathering process. Qualifications: Qualified candidates are required to have expertise in information architecture, web design techniques and tools. 5-8 years designing, implementing, and administering web sites for B2B, B2C, and/or B2E audiences is required. 5+ years experience in defining web standards and specifications, such as style guides is also required. Familiarity with the PC insurance industry is preferred. Experience with the Software Development Life Cycle is also preferred. Candidates must have the ability to collaborate with both developers and business subject matter experts. This position must be able to accept criticism of designs, exhibit a willingness to create multiple drafts, and work toward consensus. Position must also be flexible to work within bounds of existing designs. Qualified candidates will have a mastery of HTML, CSS, graphics design. Strong writing skills to produce UI specifications and solid presentation skills is a must. Familiarity with usability testing tools, such as Morae, and rapid prototyping tools is also preferred. A Bachelors degree in Multimedia or Information Design, Human Factors, Psychology, or equivalent UI Design experience is required. Advanced degree is a plus. We provide a competitive salary and benefits package, including profit sharing, matching 401(K), and medical benefits upon date of hire. To apply, please visit at: https://jobs-midland.icims.com/jobs/2088/job?mode=view Thanks! Susan Patrick User Interface Designer III The Midland Company - CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT: This e-mail transmission contains information that is intended to be confidential. It is intended only for the addressee named above. If you receive this e-mail in error, please do not read, copy, or disseminate it. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of the contents of this information is prohibited. Please reply to the message immediately by informing the sender that the message was misdirected. After replying, please erase it from your computer system. Your assistance in correcting this error is appreciated. 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] To spec or not to spec?
I agree with jonathan. Nice specs are wonderful, but with the house approach, does someone have a nicely framed copy of the blueprints in their bedroom? In the end, all that matters is an effective product. Sometimes we forget that. On Oct 16, 2009, at 2:04 PM, jonathan berger wrote: I can’t think of a good reason not to spec. Can you? Its important to plan ahead, but specs are artifacts which can easily diverge from reality as code gets written. Agile processes eschew specs, instead favoring the following: - Individuals and interactions over processes and tools - Working software over comprehensive documentation - Customer collaboration over contract negotiation - Responding to change over following a plan Agile isn't for everyone, but its treated me well so far. Patrick twitter: usabilitycounts | uxlosangeles | cooltechjobs email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346 The last UX books you'll ever need. 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
[IxDA Discuss] [JOB] UI/Product Designer | Austin TX | Bazaarvoice | Full Time
Bazaarvoice (www.bazaarvoice.com), voted 2009s the best place to work in Austin, has an immediate opening for an experienced UI/Product Designer to join our growing team. The SaaS solution you would help design and refine is used by more than 575 brands to collect, display and analyze user-generated reviews, stories and QA. Details on this position and how to apply are located at: http://www.jobvite.com/j/?cj=oxOdVfwds=RefreshAustinJobs and also viewable at our website under the company information and jobs link under Marketing. 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] UI Translation Resource
Victor, I'm told that www.worldwriters.com are very good. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45321 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] How could I deal with my ex-employer for not releasing the design work I\'d done?
We're you a contractor in the US? Did you sign away the copyright? On Jul 20, 2009, at 5:06 AM, Tara Goskie wrote: I have been working for a company creating online software/application for the past years. Recently I got laid off and they disabled my connection to the company's server right away. Since I was a remote employee, I wasn't able to get the design files I'd done for the company. Therefore, I emailed them to ask for a copy for the purpose of creating personal portfolio. They transferred my question among different managers and ended up ignoring my request. I'm really frustrated because I'd been working for this company since I graduated and now I'm losing all the design works I've done, not knowing what I could include in my portfolio in order to move on to the next job. Since I was paid to create the designs, I'm afraid I may not have the rights to request the files. Is there any third person I could contact for assistance? What would be the appropriate way to handle the issue? 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 Patrick twitter: usabilitycounts | uxlosangeles | cooltechjobs email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346 The last UX books you'll ever need. 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
I've talked to a few publishers, and they said that interest in the digital edition (PDF, etc.) was limited at best (proved by web stats). The publishers were interested in recouping some of the advertising costs, but the results were negligible. On Jul 13, 2009, at 9:24 AM, Rob Enslin wrote: ... Does anyone know if research has been conducted (or has conducted research) to support digital editions in terms of a positive user experience (user outcomes)? Or, is it perhaps a notion that large newspapers simply do to offer/repackage their content in a different format? Thanks in advance, -- Rob Patrick twitter: usabilitycounts | uxlosangeles | cooltechjobs email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com 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
[IxDA Discuss] EVENT in Irvine, CA: Surface Demo, June 22 6:30PM
I know it's in the OC (not Los Angeles), but these Surfaces are heavy... Microsoft is holding an event down there, and they will be giving the full dog and pony of that and some other shiny multi-touch technologies. The address is: Irvine Microsoft Center Park Plaza, Suite 1600 Irvine, CA, 92614 (949) 263-3000 Email me offline if interested. We'll be posting more details here (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=gid=1956864 ). Patrick twitter: usabilitycounts | uxlosangeles | cooltechjobs email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346 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] Nice Research on Persona Effectiveness
My experience is that 9 out of 10 times, people make personas improperly, and worse, use them to make or justify whatever design decision suits their fancy that day. But nearly every single person I've seen use them *thinks* they are doing it right. Their using the hammer wrong. Don't blame the hammer. ;) About Personas (and everything else): I think of the mistakes we make generally in the UX community is that we think we're inventing everything for the first time. We aren't, and we shouldn't. There are a lot of tools (like Market Research, used by advertising agencies) that have similar roles in software development. http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing/market-research/1287-1.html , for example. Nothing against Alan Cooper, but a lot of the information in a typical persona is the same as customer profiling. I saw a lot of this during direct mail political campaign work I did before the web, in crafting the message, and that was well before the web. You know, if we had standardized processes for a lot of this, it wouldn't really be an issue. You don't know you are doing personas wrong unless there are guidelines for doing them. The same goes for most interaction design. Unless this happens, will get into these Mac vs. PCs, Personas vs. No Personas arguments until the end of time. Patrick twitter: usabilitycounts | uxlosangeles | cooltechjobs email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346 The last UX books you'll ever need. 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
[IxDA Discuss] Double search boxes? Best practices?
I'm working on a directory site that has company listings (that have to be searched), discussions, and white papers. We have the issue of the double search box i.e. search the company listings in the top right corner, and discussion search in the middle. Are there any best practices out there around that? 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] Double search boxes? Best practices?
- The business wants to show off the vendor listings, - The developer wants separate pages for separate results. - All the topics are separate (meta data is slightly different). On May 14, 2009, at 1:18 PM, Nasir Barday wrote: Not sure that I agree that multiple search fields are an unqualified bad, but I'll concede that they probably aren't appropriate _in this context_, assuming people, discussions, and white papers share the same level of hierarchy. A complement to a unified, categorized search results page could be showing a version of that search results page as a live popup right under the field. This makes sense for well-defined lists like directories, where people know what they want (e.g. I know I'm looking for 'Carly Fiorina'). This lets people quickly get to what they're looking for without waiting for the results page to load first. - N 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 Patrick email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346 | skype: (562) 219-3348 The last UX books you'll ever need. 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] Names are Important (was Wood gatherers...)
Humans? Maybe you. Not me. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40822 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 alignment of the practices and outcomes ofIA and IxD
(Grabbing popcorn, enjoying this from afar.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40789 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] Some of the non-software things that interaction designers do
I hate the word designer, because when people use it, they think web designer i.e. colors, icons, shapes, and not necessarily interactions or social engineering. I think interior designer, website designer, graphic designer, which quite honestly, I think we sit above that. I like Experience Architect is it is about the experience: whether it be a voice system, or a keypad, or a subway car, what's your experience then? Like Ambrose pointed out, many of us do work outside of software that still achieves the goal (writing CRM scripts, coaching users, etc.). It's overarching enough to satisfy multiple constituencies. I think there is a sub divide of titles every once in a while that is a means to an ends for something other than helping the user. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40619 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] Some of the non-software things that interaction designers do
Here's a different way of looking at it depends... From LA Craigslist Ad: We are looking for a talented web designer...We offer a flexible schedule, $14 per hour... ... I never, ever see that $14 per hour number next to the word Architect. Or, show this to your ID's, and ask them if $14 per hour is what their skills are worth. The title is important to convey a) what we do, and b) market ourselves that what we do has some kind of worth. The investment analysts that, uh, ruined the world economy were able to market themselves as worth the money they were being paid. Seth Godin has a great take on this: http://tinyurl.com/cbp48a I don't know about you, but some of this title discussion and how we are perceived outside of our little corner of the world I think is very important. I migrated from the creative design field (I used to be in print) because a) I enjoy this line of work, b) I would hope to think I'm good at it, c) I enjoy bossing around web designers (KIDDING!), and d) the pay doesn't suck. It sure beats being a laid off journalist or print designer. We can all talk about how at the end of the day we're solving the world's problems, but in reality, we aren't. We aren't a doctor, or growing food. For most of us, we build things that have an impact on the bottom line of a company, and that's all (or since when did a web widget save someone's life?). We do it because we like it and it pays well as a perceived valuable service to our clients and companies. Having this discussion is important to protecting and encouraging this thought process. Within the community, it's okay to differentiate. However, outside of the community, we should be SOMETHING so we don't confuse the people that hire us. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40619 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] Its Just UX
I can't spend my own money for so many conferences... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40553 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] When to use icons and when to use text
It really depends on expert vs. novice users. Novice users aren't going to pick up on icons right away. Expert users who use the application 8 hours a day will. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40534 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] When to use icons and when to use text
At a company that developed CRM software (this was years ago), they found through testing of users across several enterprise level customers to get through more calls, functions by having key functions as icons. They dealt with huge call centers. I don't have the numbers with me (that was several hard drive crashes ago), but I questioned their UX work at first too. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40534 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] When to use icons and when to use text
As a followup, I hate icons. So hard to get right... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40534 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] When to use icons and when to use text
Absolutely the latter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40534 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???
I don't have the RFP response, but I do have the deliverables/wireframes/content matrix, and the size of the site. One of the complexities of a site like this is that isn't not just flat HTML -- there are a lot of dynamic forms. Think about it, 83k pages. That's a lot of pages that have to be edited, massaged. That doesn't include the cost of setting up the CMS, building the forms, etc, and scaling for governance. After going through the process with the other city (they were actually at 130k pages), this price is low. And even though the price was off, if they are offshoring, the city is going to be rebidding this out. I think I know one of the firms that bid on it (and list). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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
[IxDA Discuss] Shopping cart design...
Or, the fun of committee decisions... What are people's studies/feelings about quantity box versus a link that reads edit quantity, and then they can change the quantity? 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???
well, it's not 100k per worker -- it's 250k per worker at consulting rates (or splits depending on offshoring)... when considering that's literally three people for a year... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] $705k for redesigning a website???
And the content migration... That's going to hurt, and cannot be done by that team. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] $705k for redesigning a website???
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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] $705k for redesigning a website???
Well, that will play well in Austin, er, Peoria. :) I've quoted that exact project, and the price actually seems low. They must be outsourcing a good portion of that project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Joel Spolsky claims the Program Manager role does UI design... ????
I give it 5-10 years and I predict a major shift in interaction design practice education away from majors and masters and into support tracks and electives for already existing degrees in interactive, industrial, and architecture. -- Agreed. At least to educate those that need enough to get by. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39701 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] Joel Spolsky claims the Program Manager role does UI design... ????
Patrick, I think what Chris, Andrei and I are saying is that hiring tomorrow will not be like hiring from today. -- I disagree. While some of the new grads may have all of the skills listed, that list is fairly daunting for the majority of the IX/UX community. This is an issue that I've seen in the past where they had to separate my role into two roles because they couldn't find anyone who had the skills that I had from a technical standpoint, and this was actually something that my manager said to me, that it was almost too hard to set up a team that was oriented this way: to hire people that had all of those skills, because they were too expensive, or too hard to find. Again, it's how large of an agency you decide the build, and the culture. Most of the agencies I've walked into or worked with could never go with the model of hiring ONLY people with ALL those skills, because they would soon be out of business because they couldn't scale. A business decision vs. a resource decision. --- Personally, if you are hiring, I'd look to hire new grads more than experienced folks, IMHO depending on the size of your team and your current league of managers. --- This is hard. If you're working for an agency, The clients expect to have great talent, thus making it hard to bring someone in to train. If you're working for a company, most companies don't have UX teams large enough to support this. --- I can fly through Visio, Omnigraffle, InDesign. The trouble with most of the interactive applications like Flash is that they are becoming more and not less complex (Actionscript 3). I don't want or think I should need to learn object oriented programming to communicate an idea. I'm not against using a Fireworks (will take a look at it), but for the purposes of communicating an idea, it doesn't have to be perfect, just enough to get the programmers moving. Our work is about communication and making decisions on the appropriate tools, not generating pixel perfect designs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39701 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] Joel Spolsky claims the Program Manager role does UI design... ????
SNIP I don't see it being that much better, visually, than Bugzilla, Mantis, or Trac. Better: Axosoft http://www.axosoft.com/ Trac http://trac.edgewall.org/ TrackIt http://www.numarasoftware.com/ctash.asp?src=google trm=trackit Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel SNIP ...have you used it in a project? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39701 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
[IxDA Discuss] Lightbox modal dialog boxes, your feeling about them?
I'm working on a shopping cart, and at a couple of points we either have to: - Force someone to sign in for credit card security purposes, or... - Want to present options attached to a particular shopping cart item. The question is what do you think about using the lightbox dialog boxes for this? I really don't want to take people away from the shopping experience, and we're trying to guide the user more philosophically than give them more options so they don't drop. Comments? 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] Joel Spolsky claims the Program Manager role does UI design... ????
I'm not saying broading the skills is a bad idea (still a good idea). And I get frustrated when dealing with a UX type that says, well, they do only user researching. Most companies demand more jack of all trades. However... Going for this and hiring a UX team are completely different issues. The question I would ask is, how large is your agency? The larger you get, the harder it is to fill some of those roles with rockstars who have skillz. You can have your HR person list all the skills listed, and then you scare away people that have maybe 80 percent of the skills you need. Hiring is hard, and not everyone fits in a box (for example, I've hired more content types, because I felt they could do better work than visual designers). I think the world needs more generalists. I just wouldn't expect them to be a total expert on every skill, though. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39701 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] Joel Spolsky claims the Program Manager role does UI design... ????
Already wrote him. Wrote a post: http://www.usabilitycounts.com/2009/03/09/the-program-manager-and-how-getting-ux-into-software-way-we-can-is-good/ Look, not all software organizations can support an IA, a UX designer, whatever. That takes a larger software project, and for the vast majority of UX people, they would just be happy working with a SECOND UX person in the same organization. Most of the work out there is in agencies or in contract, so anywhere we can get extra positions (mostly UX with some project management) is good. While it's not a job title, it is a discipline, and our good that we can educate and get better software produced. From THIS website: ...the IxDA network actively focuses on interaction design issues for the practitioner, no matter his or her level of experience. Doesn't that include anyone that wants to learn? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39701 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] Joel Spolsky claims the Program Manager role does UI design... ????
- Regarding the look and feel of FogBugz (or say what you want to say about it...) - It's profitable - It's a great product ... I've used it - It hits its target audience very well I don't know about you, but that's successful UX to me. - Regarding programmers as gatekeepers He's exactly right. Programmers, because of where they sit in the development process, are gatekeepers and have quite a bit of control over the product. And if they tune out the program manager and build something that, well, sucks, it's going to show. Smart programmers will realize this and work as a team, because flipping the bozo doesn't legitimize their answer of, well, I decided to write it my way. Smart company management will say, sure are fire them, because that affects the bottom line. Does this happen alot? No. But I've seen it happen in good companies. - Regarding the program management job title Okay, let's change the job title to ice cream specialist. Joel's looking for someone for the job title for ice cream specialist, and this ice cream specialist has to have five years of user experience, uh, experience. They are going to be managing the process of developing software product. They call people who do user experience design ice cream specialists. And they have to be able to build wireframes and functional requirements in some form. Sounds like IX/UX to me. If it pertains to your experience, and you're getting paid to do the work you live, does it matter what the job title is? The reason Joel calls them that is because of the culture he's worked in. Microsoft had program managers as part of the process, and it worked because they were able to find people to play the role. Sure, some of their products sucked (BOB), but for Joel, a program manager was the perfect role because they were able to build cool Excel macros which the target audience was able to use. Or...effective UX. We get so frustrated with how UX/IX is not respected, and think there should be UX/IX titles in there, yet we never seek to understand the politics and/or structure of the company to figure who's doing the UX/IX, regardless of title or department. The reality is, IAs do the work, BAs do the work, Web Designers (god forbid, sometimes with their lack of understanding of taxonomies) do the work. The important thing is SOMEONE is doing UX/IX work, and they are doing it with SOME kind of process that represents a UX/IX process. That means doing personas (or not), wireframes (or not), ethnographic studies (or not). Personally, I could really care less what the job title is in the end. What I do care about is SOMEWHERE in the job description, there's a like that says, requires 5 to 10 years of information architecture experience. If it says that, we've done our job. --- I saw one of the recaps of IXDA. One of the speakers had a great point: if we can't agree on a job title in front of HR, people will do it FOR us. This is just one example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39701 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] Joel Spolsky claims the Program Manager role does UI design... ????
Andrei's requirements: I can perform most of those tasks to about a 90 percent level (don't even ask me to do high level actionscript though). But, as a person who has hired for UX positions, the requirements described there are impossible to hit in any one person, except for the lucky few (a few on this list). In fact, in my time of building a team of 25, I would have found exactly one person that could have fulfilled those requirements, and that would have been me. We need to have realistic expectations for who fills the roles and what they can do, otherwise we fail in front of our software development peers. For example, we wouldn't expect a software developer to be an expert DBA and an expert in system administration while being a rockstar coder. They exist, but not in the levels needed to support what was just mentioned. And, to the benefit of software developers everywhere, team managers divide up the roles logically because they have figured out how to make the divisions. And that's the crux of this argument and probably why we struggle with the role. While some of us can do many of the different tasks and roles, expecting the whole IX/UX community to be able is not achievable. We don't like to be put into a box, but we have to so we fit within team structures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39701 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] Persona skeptics
From Dan's article... The best personas are really conceptual models, which help you to digest the user research in a coherent way. They put a name and face to an observed pattern of behavior. I'm working with a few startups, and the hardest question for them to answer other than how they are going to make money is who is their target audience. Some of the have money, most of them, not a lot, so they don't have a lot of resources to do proper research. Or their product doesn't have quite a match in the marketplace, or they are doing something relatively new. Even if they are made up, I do think they have some value, because 1) they represent a person instead of an abstract concept, and 2) you can attach features to a person, and ask, would this person really use this feature in this way? Is this feature that important? The truth is they are used more by UX people for clarity than the clients, so that's why they are looked as unnecessary. The marketplace eventually determines who the target market is (the Honda Element comes to mind -- Honda thought it would be hipsters, and now older demographics buy it in larger numbers), so even well researched personas can be wrong. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39645 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] Joel Spolsky claims the Program Manager role does UI design... ????
I've been a program manager. Why do you see this as a threat? I see this as another opportunity. And UX people should know a bit about programming, so they know what they're designing into. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39701 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] Joel Spolsky claims the Program Manager role does UI design... ????
Well, if you've seen the UI for FogBugz, then I guess that shows you what kind of a UI a Program Manager can design. You mean a profitable product? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39701 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] Joel Spolsky claims the Program Manager role does UI design... ????
Since you asked, this is how I see it as an opportunity (pretty much the best once since the invention of sliced bread): While we're all trying to figure out what our titles are (and that's our damn fault, politics and posturing in our community be damned), Joel defined an ADDITIONAL position for us that includes all the most important goals of what we're supposed to do anyways, and it's literally 60 percent of the job (the other 20 percent being a pure fashion choice). So he defined 75 PERCENT of the job relating to UX, the rest to communication, is what we're supposed to be good at anyways. And that job, with manager in it's title, pays very well (more than a typical IA position), and relates directly to ROI of the product, even more so than a product manager position. I've had THAT EXACT JOB TITLE, and it rocks. I did it totally from a UX standpoint. (Raise your hands if you can say the same.) But wait, THERE'S MORE. Not only did he do that, but he defined the ratio of program managers to developers, which is very important, because, well, most of the projects we work on have like one IA to 80 developers. He placed it close to that magical 25 percent UX, 50 percent development, 25 percent QA ratio, and let me tell you, in an agile environment, that ratio is MAGICAL. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! He defined functional requirements IN SOME FORM as important. They could be wireframes. They could be use cases. They could be written on butcher paper. But he defined them as HAVING VALUE IN THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS. (Can you say the same about XP or Scrum?) - He didn't say that an MBA should have that responsibility. - He didn't say that a programmer should have that responsibility. - He said, quote an advocate for the users should have that responsibility. He also said... The number one mistake most companies make is having the manager of the programmers writing the specs and designing the product. This is a mistake because the design does not get a fair trial, and is not born out of conflict and debate, so it%u2019s not as good as it could be. SNIP ...both sides, but especially the program manager, need to be emotionally detached from the debate and willing to consider new evidence and change their opinions when the facts merit it. SNIP Functional specifications are so important one of the few hard and fast rules at Fog Creek is %u201CNo Code Without Spec.%u201D He said he even learned from his own mistakes at his own company, and restructured the role so it would be more effective. I do disagree that anyone out of college can do the UX part; and it's up to us to convince him otherwise than complaining about it here (and I'm going to write to him personally). And there's the opportunity -- letting him know the value. On the other hand, we have to respect his opinion. He runs a very profitable company, larger than most of the people on the group, has the respect of his peers (I can't tell you how many times the developers suggested FogBugz over TFS because of it's ease of use for simplified bug tracking), has a great product line, and sold more books than anyone else on this list, I would guess. He also has a farther reach into the software community than all of us put together. It would be better for us to reach out to him and state our case and build bridges, right? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39701 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
[IxDA Discuss] Multiple Shipping Addresses
Does anyone have any best practices links and statistics for multiple shipping addresses involving the same order? Thanks. Cheers. Patrick email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346 | skype: (562) 219-3348 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] A business case for switching Mac
Somewhere, somehow, you have to highlight the efficiencies of Omnigraffle over Visio, and show that it costs the company money. If you're working for a consultancy, that's going to make it even harder because usually they bill that back to the client. I recently worked for a company that was totally committed to the PC world, and the ENTIRE UX team were Macheads. Personally, I live in both worlds, and I don't see as much of a difference between Visio and Omnigraffle, and actually have work for clients stored in both formats (I run Parallels). I prefer to do work on the Mac, but it's not as much as a dealbreaker for me to work in Visio. As people experienced in software usability, and we should have to experience multiple platforms and be agnostic. But that's just my opinion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38871 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] Long / Large forms
It depends on the user base. If they are repeating the form over and over again, then it should be one page. If it's the first time user who uses it once every four months, a wizard? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38763 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] Good stock imagery resources, anyone?
I have made good use of stock.xchng (sxc.hu). I haven't purchased anything from them, however they have a pretty nice selection of free stock photos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38775 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] Web site workflows and the IA
I had a conversation through email about this. He was asking specifically what's the the UX process within product definition, and how it fits into the general SDLC. I sent him a PDF that outlines some of the steps you can take through it (when you do personas, wireframes, use cases), and when usability professionals are supposed to review development work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38098 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] Web site workflows and the IA
I posted an example of what I sent to him at http://www.usabilitycounts.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38098 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] Separate Navigation labels and page titles
Place's I've worked at, we've skipped levels in the TITLE tag to condense it, but always include the site name, brand name. Witty's fun, but people don't search for witty, unfortunately, and it's best to repeat them for SEO purposes. There's enough room to be witty in the copy of the site. On Jan 30, 2009, at 3:30 PM, John Romano wrote: I¹d love to hear people¹s opinion on how closely navigations titles should match page titles. Patrick email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346 | skype: (562) 219-3348 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] What to do in an environment run by engineers??
When talking about what we care about, aren't we really selling? And the best selling involves using others to sell what we believe in? There are many, many environments that we all work in, but I'm going to generalize into two -- one that's UX focused, and the other than is not. By the time that someone that's a recognized UX expert walks in the door at a client, usually they are already UX focused, or know they need to be because nothing else has worked. You're recognized as a leader in the field, so they're willing to spend some money to listen to your approach. Usually, they are sold because they've read a book or a blog. Sometimes, like places I worked at, we're able to place some simple processes in place, and the process sells it self through higher profitability of the product. There are many, many environments where UX isn't the focus, and even if they have hired someone in that field, they don't know what to do with that person, or the developers aren't interested in UX because it gets in the way of them not being on board. I agree here it needs a team, but again, it's all dependent on the politics of the situation. Most of us haven't written books or blogs, so we don't have that part sold already. I would guess most of us have worked in situations like this, and as one UX friend of mine said, You know, sometimes you just document it, and hope someone pays attention. I guess sometimes we think the process supersedes the results, when all the client or company cares about is the results. But that's just my opinion, experience. Comments? Patrick ... Patrick, I respectfully disagree. Ali, if you do what Patrick suggests, you'll not only fail, but you'll have a miserable time doing so. Your job isn't to *sell* your teammates on anything. It's about teamwork. Find out what the objectives and long-term vision of the team is. Work from there. Jared Patrick email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346 | skype: (562) 219-3348 Click here for the last UX books you'll ever need. 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] What to do in an environment run by engineers??
On Jan 26, 2009, at 3:44 PM, Patrick wrote: When talking about what we care about, aren't we really selling? And the best selling involves using others to sell what we believe in? There are many, many environments that we all work in, but I'm going to generalize into two -- one that's UX focused, and the other than is not. By the time that someone that's a recognized UX expert walks in the door at a client, usually they are already UX focused, or know they need to be because nothing else has worked. You're recognized as a leader in the field, so they're willing to spend some money to listen to your approach. Usually, they are sold because they've read a book or a blog. Sometimes, like places I worked at, we're able to place some simple processes in place, and the process sells it self through higher profitability of the product. There are many, many environments where UX isn't the focus, and even if they have hired someone in that field, they don't know what to do with that person, or the developers aren't interested in UX because it gets in the way of them not being on board. I agree here it needs a team, but again, it's all dependent on the politics of the situation. Most of us haven't written books or blogs, so we don't have that part sold already. I would guess most of us have worked in situations like this, and as one UX friend of mine said, You know, sometimes you just document it, and hope someone pays attention. I guess sometimes we think the process supersedes the results, when all the client or company cares about is the results. And we'd all like to believe everyone wants to be on a team, but that's not always the case. But that's just my opinion, experience. Comments? Patrick ... Patrick, I respectfully disagree. Ali, if you do what Patrick suggests, you'll not only fail, but you'll have a miserable time doing so. Your job isn't to *sell* your teammates on anything. It's about teamwork. Find out what the objectives and long-term vision of the team is. Work from there. Jared Patrick email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346 | skype: (562) 219-3348 Click here for the last UX books you'll ever need. Patrick email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346 | skype: (562) 219-3348 Click here for the last UX books you'll ever need. 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] What to do in an environment run by engineers??
On Jan 26, 2009, at 3:51 PM, Josh Evnin wrote: It didn't take much convincing that this approach would work, and when it succeeded, it bought me at least a little leverage within my organization to try other approaches with other clients. ...and that's selling. You identify a situation where you have an opening, and take it. Patrick email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346 | skype: (562) 219-3348 Click here for the last UX books you'll ever need. 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] What to do in an environment run by engineers??
Get used to it. ;) It's the real world. Your job is to sell them on it. Sounds tough, but it's true. On Jan 25, 2009, at 2:12 PM, Ali Amrohvi wrote: As a User Centered Design graduate I find it quite irritating to be working in an environment where engineers run everything ... Few of them have taken some HCI courses and THATS IT! There is NO qualitative research and both hardware-/software engineers think that their own opinion about the products matter. Reply to this thread at ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37605 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 Patrick email: p...@usabilitycounts.com | blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com cell: (562) 508-1750 | office: (562) 612-3346 | skype: (562) 219-3348 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] Better (was Strategic Interaction Design)
Hi Christina, Sounds like a great book, do you know the author? Whose Body is it Anyway returns a couple of results on Amazon. I'm guessing it is the one by Cecil Fabre? Just want to make sure I have the right one. Thanks, Patrick On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Christina Wodtke cwod...@eleganthack.comwrote: I'm changing threads in hopes for making some people's lives better. Regarding Complications, I first made the connection between this excellent collection of essays on practicing medicine and design when John Zapolski placed Whose Body is it Anyway on the desks of his fellow design managers are yahoo and suggested we read it replacing the word body with design. Reading it, it was clear that the question of design ownership could be seen through the question of treatment choices for a patient. In both cases the doctor and the designer is the expert, but in both cases the business owner/product manager and the patient will live wiht the consequences of those choices. obviously it's a big difference in scale of repercussions. Many of the essays deal with questions of practice, and design is all about practice. I'd say that Better is even more about design, since it's 100% about how can we become better at our practices. For example, his article on the Checklist (also in Better) http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande They are also compelling books in their own right, well written and entertaining as well as educational. On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 3:42 AM, Mike Padgett mike.padgett at fincaso.com wrote: Christina, At the risk of pushing the off-topic thing too far, I read Atul Gawande's Complications a couple of years ago and it was indeed excellent but I confess to being surprised that it might have been highly relevant to design (or rather that I missed that ;-)). Would you mind elaborating just a little on that? I remember reading it for general interest (at the same time as Mary Roach's marvellous Stiff: I think I must have been having a mortality check) and I'm wondering now if I need to take a second look! Thx, Mike --- Mike Padgett www.mikepadgett.com --- Yes. Outliers is good also. If you love these, try Better and Complications by Gladwell's pal Atul Gawnde. HIGHLY relevant to design, despite being about medicine. On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Angel Marquez angel.marquez at gmail.com wrote: Is 'The Tipping Point' as good as 'Blink'? On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr robert at rhjr.net wrote: Wilken's Law: The effectiveness of research is inversely proportional to the thickness of its binding. I couldn't agree more. In fact, Gladwell's book Blink even backs up this idea. Back to the topic now ... -r- Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... discuss at 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 ... discuss at 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 ... discuss at ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Reply to this thread at ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=36909 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
[IxDA Discuss] [IxDA] Looking for a mobile agency...
A friend of mine is looking for an agency experienced in mobile cradle to grave. Send me an email if you are interested. Patrick email: p...@usabilitycounts.com blog: http://www.usabilitycounts.com 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
[IxDA Discuss] Needs based navigation examples?
I'm looking for examples of 'Needs/decision based product navigation'. A simple example www.pantene.com (US) prompts users to identify their hair condition then suggests appropriate products and treatments. I'm particularly interested in examples from the financial sector. Many thanks P. Chamberlin 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] Simple usability lab - suggestions?
I have never used it myself, but you might want to check out: http://silverbackapp.com/ Its a mac app. that allows you to capture both the users movements on the screen and the users facial reactions as well. Of course you would need a Mac (the laptops come with built in cameras). Hope this helps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=34235 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?
Facebook is just now becoming relevant to a mainstream audience--something no other social network has done before. Their traffic and membership continue to grow at a pretty good clip. I don't have the answer for how they can monetize their traffic, but I think moving beyond college students is a smart move. Patrick Barrett -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of jeff lippiatt Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 3:24 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End? Weighing in. Facebook became obsolete a while ago. Soon to become the relic of Yahoo, aka Geocities. All of these sites will eventually fail unless they address something of value. Currently they are all riding the plummet of social entertainment. They have mainly ignored their core audiences: Myspace was music, Facebook was college students and grad students. Both have annoying advertisements that have no context...just battering people over the head to make advertising money on which is steadily declining...How long do you really need to stay on either site to catch up? Not long, because all of the new changes you can get a snapshot of everything now in under 5 minutes. That leaves no incentive to stay on the site. All the widgets and mini-apps that bog down both sites are 99% pointless because people just add and delete them sometimes within hours or minutes. In summation, you can't please everyone any of the time. They abandoned their niches and have been sliding downhill since. Social entertainment is not robust enough to keep users online and engaged. I use both Myspace and Facebook, but am not pleased with either. I use them mostly for keeping up with friends and birthdays and posting pictures of my some what ridiculous but fun cooking antics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End?
They are relevant in that they provide a platform for everyone to get and stay connected with anyone they have ever known. I am defining mainstream as non cutting edge (read fickle) users. By appealing to tech laggards there is less risk that they suffer the fate of Friendster. Inertia will work in their favor. Patrick V. Barrett From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Will Evans Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 10:36 AM To: Patrick Barrett Cc: jeff lippiatt; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End? How are they relevant and how do you define mainstream? Everyone (except me) goes there - for what purpose? I wonder how they might monetize their eyeballs relative to others, and why they even matter? I argue they don't, and they can't. On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 11:32 AM, Patrick Barrett [EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Facebook is just now becoming relevant to a mainstream audience--something no other social network has done before. Their traffic and membership continue to grow at a pretty good clip. I don't have the answer for how they can monetize their traffic, but I think moving beyond college students is a smart move. Patrick Barrett -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of jeff lippiatt Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 3:24 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End? Weighing in. Facebook became obsolete a while ago. Soon to become the relic of Yahoo, aka Geocities. All of these sites will eventually fail unless they address something of value. Currently they are all riding the plummet of social entertainment. They have mainly ignored their core audiences: Myspace was music, Facebook was college students and grad students. Both have annoying advertisements that have no context...just battering people over the head to make advertising money on which is steadily declining...How long do you really need to stay on either site to catch up? Not long, because all of the new changes you can get a snapshot of everything now in under 5 minutes. That leaves no incentive to stay on the site. All the widgets and mini-apps that bog down both sites are 99% pointless because people just add and delete them sometimes within hours or minutes. In summation, you can't please everyone any of the time. They abandoned their niches and have been sliding downhill since. Social entertainment is not robust enough to keep users online and engaged. I use both Myspace and Facebook, but am not pleased with either. I use them mostly for keeping up with friends and birthdays and posting pictures of my some what ridiculous but fun cooking antics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.orghttp://ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=33019 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto:[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]mailto:[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]mailto:[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
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxDA iPhone users straw poll
What I think is most interesting about this straw poll is the number of respondents who choose not to follow these simple instructions: What are the top *3 things* you find yourself doing now with your iPhone If people on this list won't follow user instructions then who will? --Patrick V. Barrett -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Shaun Bergmann Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 10:45 PM To: Todd Zaki Warfel Cc: IxDA List Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxDA iPhone users straw poll Unfortunately, being Canadian I don't own an iPhone yet. However, I've been watching these responses and one of the things that I've really caught from this list (as well as talking to other iPhone users) is that the GPS functionality has really made an impact on the users ability to navigate accurately while driving. So many of the responses are expectedly referencing how the iPhone has changed the immediate personal lives and actions of the device owner, (I don't miss the turnpike exit anymore) but on a much bigger scale, think about how a device like this is actually making an impact when the sheer number of users is taken into account. The GPS functionality seems to be really well designed and heavily used. I am completely enamoured with the idea of sustainable interaction design, and although a pretty much disposable device such as the iPhone misses the mark in many ways, I love the fact that it has most likely reduced fuel consumption and emission when its global scale is taken into account. I would hope that we as a group can always start with the user's needs, and then take a step back and picture how our work will affect ALL the users over time. Shaun On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 6:35 PM, Todd Zaki Warfel [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: In order of use: 1. Use of GPS on things like Google maps, Yelp, and other search related things. 2. Surfing web and email more often 3. Twitterrific to view and update status, whereas previously I just texted to 404-40 or whatever the number is 4. Playing Texas Hold 'em (games) Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel President, Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. -- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog: http://toddwarfel.com 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 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 iPhone users straw poll
1. Email w/o a computer 2. Maps with GPS (got to Ikea the other day without overshooting the exit--first time that happened) 3. Keeping up with the news --Patrick V. Barrett -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Petroff, Greg Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2008 12:07 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [IxDA Discuss] IxDA iPhone users straw poll Quick straw poll question for list members who have iPhones. What are the top 3 things you find yourself doing now with your iPhone that you did not do before and why? --Greg 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] Good Mobile Trends Info
I liked this NY Times piece on designing for small screens called On a Small Screen, Just the Salient Stuff: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/technology/13stream.html?_r=1oref=slogin Patrick V. Barrett -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Petroff, Greg Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2008 7:01 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Good Mobile Trends Info Ok, Post iPhone conversation... Any recent reading material on trends in mobile / smart phones I am looking for blogs, whitepapers, conferences, places for where people are talking about both the IxD and the scenarios of use that are current. --Greg 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
I don't like this grid layout, I can't tell which result is more relevant...the last item in column 1 or the first item in column 2. Lists are unambiguous, girds not so much. Patrick V. Barrett -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Damon Dimmick Sent: Monday, July 28, 2008 12:21 PM Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Cuil I actually find the horizontal / multi column results search a lot more natural in this kind of setting. usually the summary section isn't necessary for most searches, so changing the format to a more blocky, horizontal grouping might actually be beneficial. Since users have to read the results in any case, their eyes are already moving horizontally, so the idea of putting the top results in a shoulder-to-shoulder seems like a natural. There are bad ways of doing that, of course. But from a purely visual (non interaction) design point of view, the entry page seems somehow wrong. Maybe that's just because current vogue and standard is an open, airy, white-space style search page. Right now the major problem seems to be server overload so it is tough to see how responsive the site will be. Andy Edmonds wrote: The UI design is interesting as well. Multi-column search layouts have typically not fared very well at scale, though I personally like them just fine. It seems that avoiding a costly scroll for examining more results would be a win, but people are quite use to a single column and it makes the ad placement tricker. Will Evans wrote: A new clustering search engine? Wall Street Journal article here: * http://tinyurl.com/5b9e9q http://www.cuil.com/ launches today. 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
[IxDA Discuss] proposal writing resources
I'm looking for recommendations on proposal-writing resources (As in a business proposal to a prospective client, not research or grants): books, articles, blogs, you name it. If anyone has any personal advice or recommendations that would be great too. Feel free to send to me and I will summarize and post, or reply directly to the list. Thanks! Patrick 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] Points and Rewards in a Social Networking Site
Timothy, Have you read Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody? He has loads of both theoretically interesting and practically useful insights about social tools, but the last chapter in particular talks about the success of social tools as a function of three criteria: the Promise, the Tool and the Bargain. The Promise is the why, it creates the basic desire to participate. Sometimes the implicit promise (the pleasure of like-minded peoples' company) actually matters more than any explicit one (discussing interaction design) in motivating people to participate. The Tool is the how, it defines the types of interactions that the group will rely on. To this extent, a good social tool is like a good woodworking tool, in that it must be designed to fit the job being done, and it must help people do something they actually want to do. That latter part is critical - the ranks of ditch diggers won't swell overnight simply by designing a better shovel. Also, tools vary in the types of groups they are expected to support. Small groups are effective at creating and sustaining agreement and shared awareness, whereas larger, distributed groups can often generate better answers by pooling their knowledge or intuition without having to come to agreement (wisdom of crowds). By understanding the two basic constraints of group action – number of people and duration of interaction – any given tool can be analyzed for goodness of fit. Finally, the Bargain defines the rules of the road and sets participants' expectations about what is expected of them and what they can expect from others. The Bargain is the most complex aspect of a functioning group, in part because it is the least explicit aspect and in part because it is the one that the users have the biggest hand in creating, which means it can’t be completely determined in advance. So, the answers to your questions are in large part dependent upon these criteria. Is it a small, densely linked group or a larger, distributed community? How strong will the social bonds be among participants and will they persist over time, or will people come together intermittently for brief periods? Are you trying to facilitate sharing (imposes lowest cost to participate), collaboration (harder because it involves participants changing behavior to synchronize with one another) or collective action (requires a group of people to commit themselves to undertaking a particular effort together, and to do so in a way that makes the decision of the group binding on the individual members)? If you have time, I would definitely recommend picking up a copy of Here Comes Everybody - the last chapter focusses on these ideas and also talks about tactical approaches to designing successful social tools (Make joining easy, create personal value for individual users - a la del.icio.us, etc.), some of which would seem to be no- brainers, but then you look at a lot of what's out there and... Anyway, good luck, keep us appraised of your progress. Patrick On May 9, 2008, at 2:47 PM, Timothy Makoid wrote: Hey everyone, I am a student majoring in Information Systems with a concentration in HCI/ID/UX/HF. I'm working on my final project and we are designing a small scale social networking site. Were trying to come up with a sort of gaming system that encourages the users to interact with each other and the site. There are a couple ways to earn points: by taking quizzes based on stories, by sending different forms of greetings to each other, and by setting up goals for each other and achieving them.(Thats what we have currently). Were having a couple issues though. First of all, we are trying to figure out what the logic should be for distributing the points. It is my thought that since quizzes have the benefit of being a fun task that engages the user, they should be worth the least amount of points. (Maybe each correct answer is worth 1) While sending messages, and making dedications to other users should be worth more. The second issue is what the points should be worth. We can not make them worth anything of physical value, as the site is supposed to be realistic and we could not feasibly afford sending out rewards. My thought is that points could be redeemable for site customization. Ex: a. New background images to choose from. b. New css color schemes. c. New videos or stories could be given. We have also toyed with the idea of making the points worth virtual stuff for some sort of virtual world. (Perhaps a virtual garden and with the points you can buy virtual seeds and watch flowers and plants grow over an alloted amount of time, or a virtual house and with the points you can buy virtual furniture to populate it). Finally Im thinking about allowing users to give away a certain amount of points at the end of each month (each user gets an allotted amount
[IxDA Discuss] web-Second Life registration process
I'm working on a project for a client that has a presence in Second Life, but wants their customers to register through their own site first. This is partly so they can customize the user's SL experience, and partly because some of the target audiences may not be familiar with SL. Putting aside the rather large question of whether SL is in fact the appropriate platform for what they're trying to accomplish (which has been raised repeatedly), I'm wondering if anyone can share examples of similar web/SL hybrid experiences. The one I have found thus far that mirrors the approach my client wishes to take is the CSI:NY Virtual Experience: http://alpha.cbs.com/primetime/csi_ny/second_life/ http://csi-ny.reg.electricsheepcompany.com/join-secondlife/csi-ny/avatar The CSI web site has a registration wizard that allows you select a custom avatar, name, etc. Then, when you download and run the SL app, it drops you into a special CSI:NY orientation island that explains the rules of the CSI game. Is anyone aware of any similar registration processes - where the registration takes place partly or entirely outside of SL? Thanks, Patrick 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] Digital Instrument Interfaces
Also, not sure if the JazzMutant Lemur has any connection to the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR), but another great resource if you are interested in novel musical instruments: http://www.lemurbots.org/videoandaudio.html The artist Bjorn Schulke has also created instruments that are triggered by proximity and are weirdly beautiful, almost alien-looking: http://www.bitforms.com/index.php? option=com_contenttask=viewid=29Itemid=58#id=99num=1 :PG On Feb 19, 2008, at 2:24 AM, Loren Baxter wrote: Did anyone else see Daft Punk rocking out at the Grammys? They played the coolest instruments I've ever seen - four multitouch screens with various graphical elements controlling an array of synth and software backend. ( http://tinyurl.com/2krxy9 - the solo three quarters of the way through the video ) Further research uncovered this: the Lemur by JazzMutant ( http://www.jazzmutant.com/lemur_overview.php ). If you're at all into music, sound manipulation, and visualization, take a look. Has anyone here had experience with these or other audio control devices? Any thoughts on the design? These are thought provoking from an IXD perspective - a very different sensory space than your standard UI. 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] Digital Instrument Interfaces
Sony BlockJam: http://www.sonycsl.co.jp/IL/projects/blockjam/ contents.html Yamaha Tenori-On: http://www.global.yamaha.com/design/tenori-on/ What I like about each of these interfaces is that I feel like I could figure out pretty quickly how to use them to make some pretty cool sounds, which might even have the qualities of music, despite the fact that I can't carry a tune in a bucket. The UI abstracts the underlying principles of music composition to a degree where I can make sense of them based on physical mappings in space and variations in feedback. They are like conceptual models that reflect my (limited) understanding of music, as opposed to a traditional instrument (physical/analog or software)'s implementation model UI, which reflects notes, chords, pitch (?) and lots of other things I don't really understand. If you are a virtuoso, or even moderately skilled musician, you'd likely find these interfaces limiting after experimenting with them for a while. On the other hand, by forcing a trained musician to think differently, they might also be valuable sources of insight and inspiration. Patrick On Feb 19, 2008, at 2:24 AM, Loren Baxter wrote: Did anyone else see Daft Punk rocking out at the Grammys? They played the coolest instruments I've ever seen - four multitouch screens with various graphical elements controlling an array of synth and software backend. ( http://tinyurl.com/2krxy9 - the solo three quarters of the way through the video ) Further research uncovered this: the Lemur by JazzMutant ( http://www.jazzmutant.com/lemur_overview.php ). If you're at all into music, sound manipulation, and visualization, take a look. Has anyone here had experience with these or other audio control devices? Any thoughts on the design? These are thought provoking from an IXD perspective - a very different sensory space than your standard UI. 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] Online brochure vs. PDF download
Marianne, Our company izzydesign (izzydesign.com) uses PDF brochures in a Downloadable tools section. When I was involved in designing the site we ran through several rounds of research and decided that we would offer PDFs. There were a few reasons for this: 1. That is what our sales force wanted. The request was to have easy-to-download and print files. 2. PDF downloads were the easiest solution at the time. We already had the files and it was easy to post them for download 3. With our audience and my inability to often successfully implement new technology in an easy to use solution (why I joined this group...needed to learn more) the PDF seemed to be a good fix. All that said there have been some drawbacks. 1. For things like fabric swatches (we need these for sampling of our chairs) PDFs must be extremely large with hi-res files. Our fabric PDFs have been miserable failures 2. The linear fashion doesn't fit web very well. Putting something that has been designed for print online causes some issues. If I want to search and get specific info, it is much more difficult with PDFs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24885 *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] Ratio of designers to developers
For pricing, we've been going with 25 percent requirements gathering, 50 percent development, and 25 percent quality assurance as a starting point for projects. The ratios may change, but I once worked on a team where Product Management was 1, dev was 3, UI design was 1, and QA was 1, and that team ran like a well oiled machine. Patrick -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Billie Mandel Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 11:18 AM To: IxDA Discuss Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Ratio of designers to developers Hey fab folks - So I was at dinner the other night with the technical publications manager here at my company, and he mentioned that the STC had stats on how many documentation people a software company should have per software developer, in order for the tech pubs team to be optimally effective. Do we have anything like that for designers? Anyone done any work determining what the relative size of the design team to the dev team should be overall for a software dev shop? (Yes, I know, it depends, but a ratio range would certainly be useful) Thanks in advance (you'll be helping me build my empire and take over the world, of course) Cheers, - Billie * **** * * Billie Mandel | Manager, User Experience Design Research | OPENWAVE *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] Ratio of designers to developers
I've done that before. You end up training the developers to design in patterns. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Todd Zaki Warfel Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 4:18 PM To: Andrei Herasimchuk Cc: IxDA Discuss Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Ratio of designers to developers On Jan 22, 2008, at 5:07 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: I can't imagine how a team of 3 designers can practically work with a team of 50 engineers. It's called patterns:). Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel President, Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. -- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog: http://toddwarfel.com -- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. *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] Sharepoint
Then, as a group, I would view this as an opportunity to that this poor tool and turn it into something useful. That, my friends, is a consulting opportunity, not a this tool sucks, don't use it opportunity. Content Management Systems in general are misunderstood, and contain way too many disparate features for people to use. That gives the end users a lot of tools, but like any tool, if you use a hammer wrong, it won't work. Blaming it on the tool isn't effective - it's an implementation issue (like any website). What SharePoint works well is as a portal or CMS that replaces some very pricey solutions (Notes, Documentum) with the same features, and a fraction of the cost. Like open source, there will always be added (read: consulting services), so instead of spending it on licensing fees, they can spend it on consulting fees, which means they can spend it on developing an effective information architecture and design. If any of you want to know some of the issues we found, and how we use SharePoint effectively, send me a note. We've skinned it so it looks nothing like SharePoint, and have done it in days and not weeks on some projects. Patrick Patrick Neeman -- speakTECH: Strategize, Design, Deliver Practice Manager, User Experience Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Todd Zaki Warfel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 8:47 AM To: Patrick Neeman Cc: Loren Baxter; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Sharepoint When there's no information architecture, it's a poor tool. There's always information architecture and it gets done w/ or w/o us. It's just that in this case, the IA is typically poor. Cheers! Todd Zaki Warfel President, Design Researcher Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. -- Contact Info Voice: (215) 825-7423 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] AIM:[EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog:http://toddwarfelhttp://toddwarfel/.com -- In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. *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] Sharepoint
I even disagree about some of the points here. I'm at a customer site now (and you wouldn't believe the location) where we are doing requirements for a SharePoint implementation, and we've put such implementations in over 100 customer locations. We also customize it beyond belief (much further than just doing a simple intranet). I can tell you where it's going to break, and we've built or are building social-type networks on it, for Fortune 1000 companies. Does it have limitations? Yep. Can you customize it and make it work anyway you want, even look anyway you want? Yep. I can point to several sites that we've done that you wouldn't even recognize it as SharePoint -- and not small sites, but public facing sites. (Don't even get me started on some of the other open source CMS systems out there...) Patrick Patrick Neeman -- speakTECH: Strategize, Design, Deliver Practice Manager, User Experience Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Bryan Minihan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 8:32 PM To: Patrick Neeman; 'Loren Baxter'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [IxDA Discuss] Sharepoint I have to agree with Patrick, to a point. I felt a little odd having enjoyed it over the past 2 months or so - I must be an idiot or a bad IxD'er if I *like* Sharepoint. We're using a pretty vanilla out-of-the-box V3.0 ASP-provided space, and for the amount of customization we had to do (none), it's served everyone (10 of us) pretty well, with minimal training (about 10 minutes, for 3 folks) required. The caveats are: I came from a mixed BEA Aqualogic/Lotus Notes enterprise portal environment with 110K users and every single bit of both systems were customized beyond belief (to some great extent, by myself, hopefully for the better). Also, I did quite a lot of research into Sharepoint, WebSphere and Aqualogic last year to determine which would be the best fit for our enterprise portal. I concluded that Sharepoint was really best used as a small-team collaboration space, because all of its nomenclature makes sense when you're talking to about 10 people at a time. I noticed very quickly that Sharepoint's ability to create separate spaces to conduct meetings is pretty much a waste of time and not worth the effort to learn it. We ignored it right after we decided it's easier to do in Outlook/email (again, among 10 of us). I've seen a lot of portals, and agree Sharepoint wouldn't scale (from the user's perspective) beyond a very small group very well. On the other hand, its simple, clean spaces and extremely tight integration with Outlook, Office Explorer have saved me ungodly hours of work cobbling file servers, web sites and other tools together. Bryan http://www.bryanminihan.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Neeman Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 9:43 PM To: Loren Baxter; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Sharepoint Have any of you actually implemented it more than once? We have a lot of clients that are very happy with it. It's not for everyone, and it does have some limitations, but we've been able to work around some of them, and push it pretty far. Patrick Neeman -- speakTECH: Strategize, Design, Deliver Practice Manager, User Experience Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Loren Baxter Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 6:10 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Sharepoint Sharepoint is a disaster. Although I've never tried them, I can almost guarantee that there are far better solutions in the same market. It's unusable, breaks easily, and poorly organized. We've had to come up with some pretty interesting workarounds to accomplish simple versioning and document access. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=24692 *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
[IxDA Discuss] Recruiting research participants
My client is a news and entertainment site that is considering expanding their focus from a single genre to covering a variety of related/overlapping genres (sci-fi, horror, mystery, etc.). Accordingly, in addition to their own user base, they want to conduct research with fans of related genres. I'm looking for a firm that can help me screen and recruit participants and handle scheduling logistics. Would be great if they are in the New York area, but not required. Any recommendations? Thanks, Patrick *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] EVENT REMINDER: NYC IxDA - The 7-Minute IxD Soapbox (a.k.a. Pecha Kucha) - Tue, 11/13
We were working on an IxDA version of the Rumsfeld Fighting Technique: http://www.poe-news.com/features.php?feat=31845 On Nov 14, 2007, at 11:33 AM, Robert Barlow-Busch wrote: 4. It appears to me that pointy shoes, both men women, are really fashionable as according to this event. It seems that a few specific hand gestures are fashionable, as well... reaches out for an invisible ball ;-) How was the event, BTW? Did people enjoy it? I'm especially curious because the Waterloo F2F held a similar event last spring and I suspect we could learn from each other's experience. For instance, we had a few suggestions that 10 minutes would be better, but I'm not sure about that: we chose 7 minutes because it's enough time to cover almost any idea, but crazy-short enough that speakers wouldn't be tempted to cover too much ground. Would love to hear from folks who attended the NYC event. -- Robert Barlow-Busch Director of User Experience Terapath Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] *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] Users ability with slider controls
Really? What about using sliders to set threshold values for filtering data on the fly? For example, I quite like how Kayak.com does this with different criteria for airline flights, e.g. - departure time, layover time, price, etc. on the bottom-left: http://www.kayak.com/s/flights.jsp? searchid=iRza_w8B4cB5pz_sZJvocompleted=true On Nov 5, 2007, at 7:28 AM, Jon Baker wrote: Hi, I think sliders are good for selecting approximate values, where there is clear (immediate) feedback as the slider is used. They work well for volume controls or zoom controls which is where they are commonly used. From my experience they are not partcularly useful for precision selecting of a value. With a volume control there is audio feedback and the user is rarely in the position of thinking I want exactly 33dB, rather thay want appoximately the correct volume that is not defening, but can still be heard. With the zoom, the user generally wants to zoom to the point that what they are zooming is large enough for their needs. They are rarely thinking I need to zoom this to 300%. If precise entry of a number is needed then use something else. For rating systems I think the selectable stars work well. As to thumb up thumb down controls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=22044 *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://gamma.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://gamma.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://gamma.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://gamma.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://gamma.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://gamma.ixda.org/help
