Re: [IxDA Discuss] Painful Registration Flow
On May 27, 2008, at 7:16 PM, Jeff Gimzek wrote: Obviously I will be trawling the IxDA site and BoxesandArrows for this sort of argument, but I was also wondering if anyone has a similar case study that they would care to share/point me to? Marketing Sherpa (cleverly http://www.marketingsherpa.com) is filled with We-updated-our-registration-process-and-saw-$$$-increase type articles. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Usability = Predictability
On May 24, 2008, at 8:54 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote: Usability equals predictability. As in, if you can accurately predict what's going to happen next in an interaction, it's because the action you're taking is understandable, clear, logical, makes you feel confident, etc. If you can accurately predict what's next, the interaction has high usability. If you can't accurately predict what's next, the interaction has low usability. Shoot holes in that statement. Usability is a scale from extreme frustration to extreme delight. Delight, by definition, is something that is surprisingly good. By being surprised, it has to exceed the bounds of predictability. Therefore, Usability != predictability. And remember: Every time you try to define usability, God kills a kitten. Please, remember the kittens. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Forms: One vs Two Email fields
On Jun 5, 2008, at 4:21 PM, Wendy Goodfriend wrote: Can anyone direct me to research discussing the advantages and disadvantages of using one vs two email fields? I am also looking for inline validation code that addresses the one vs two field issue as well. I haven't seen anything formally published. However, here's what we've found in our research at UIE: The problem you're trying to solve is mistyping email addresses. Depending on the audience, context, and design, you can see typos in anywhere from 0.75% to 5% of email addresses entered. (Even here at UIE, we have, on average, 2 out of every 100 email addresses are entered incorrectly. These are designers and developers with a lot of internet experience, so it's not just a matter of sophistication.) Several sites try solve the problem by asking for the email twice. The thinking is that, if the user enters it the same twice, then it must be correct. As people have discussed, that doesn't always happen because more sophisticated users will use cut paste, which will only propagate a typo in the second field, making a false positive. In my opinion, one of the best examples of the 2-field verification is at Fire Eagle. (It's currently invite only and, for reasons I can't explain, I received an invite, so I put a copy of the page here: http://tinyurl.com/5cjaqs ) In this case, it's the reason in the copy that helps people understand why they are being asked twice. One problem with the 2-field verification is that the typo isn't always restricted to the first entry. If the user types it correctly in the first field, but incorrectly in the second field, the validation fails. However, the user *had* typed it accurately the first time and will often feel frustrated that it was the verification that failed. This doesn't improve the user's experience. So, the alternative is a one-field entry. Here, we've found the best way to reduce problems is to make sure the input field and verification display is large. Both the length of the field and the size of the font should be large enough so people can discern characters. For example, does an rn combination look similar to an m character? Does a 1 look distinct from an l? With the right font, size, and field length, the user should spot typos easier. How much does [EMAIL PROTECTED] look like [EMAIL PROTECTED]? Most typos are doubled characters or neighbor keys (a j when the user meant a k, for example). Again, a large, clear verification display will help a lot. Designers, when showing users what they've typed, often don't ask themselves, Is this display going to help a user spot a subtle typo they could otherwise miss? Looking at the verification display for that quality can help reduce errors tremendously. For algorithms, there's limitations to what you can do. You can check for spaces -- they're illegal. You can look at the domain portion and have an validation check that it contains an MX record. You can ensure there's only one @. Beyond that, there's not much else. Hope that helps, Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] what would you call this, a submenu, subtab, or something else?
On Jun 6, 2008, at 3:56 PM, Jason Zietz wrote: What would you call Current Design in this example? Invisible. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] iRise sues Axure for patent infringement
Nobody is gagging you about anything. They are just asking for a no-patent-discussion zone. It's a matter of courtesy. Think of the discussion as second-hand smoke. Jared On Jun 6, 2008, at 6:54 PM, Will Evans wrote: This is neither a freedom of speech or a bill of rights issue. This is a will-I-be-hauled-into-depositio n-and-deposed-on-emails-in-my-inbasket question. Common Jared, this is exactly that. I state now that I have no skin in the game - but I am gagged from talking about it? This is absolutely a bill-0-rights issue. I can't talk about something I want to talk about lest the SS come to my house. On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 6:48 PM, Jared Spool [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jun 6, 2008, at 6:26 PM, Will Evans wrote: Why would any one of us have to bow out to discuss this. It's ludicrous. Last I checked - even with the current administration - most of the bill of rights is still in tact. Or am I naive? 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] [Event] Book Launch Party: Handbook of Usability Testing, 2nd Edition
[ Apologies to those who receive more than one copy of this. ] Greetings, You're invited to attend a party to honor the launch of the second edition of the Handbook of Usability Testing. Where: Cinghiale Restaurant 822 Lancaster Street, Baltimore, MD 21202 When: June 18, 5:30-7:30 RSVP for the event: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/776329/ (RSVPing isn't required, but will help us make sure we don't run out of food or drinks.) Buy the book: http://tinyurl.com/53o56p In 1994, Jeff Rubin wrote the first edition of the Handbook. This became the bible of those of us in the usability world. Now, Jeff Rubin and Dana Chisnell have completely updated it. It's a marvelous edition, filled with insights and useful tips and techniques. It's a resource that every user experience practitioner should have at their fingertips. If you're going to be in Baltimore, either for the annual UPA conference or by choice, you need to stop by and help us celebrate this new edition. Co-author Dana Chisnell will be there, along with UIE's Christine Perfetti, myself, and a whole host of great people from the world of user experience and design. There will also be food, drinks, and door prizes, along with great discussion and probably some funky music. It will be great fun. We hope to see you there, Jared Spool Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Expectations
On Jun 9, 2008, at 6:37 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote: When creating great experiences, it's not so much about doing what users expect. Instead, it's about creating a design that clearly meets their needs at the instant they need it. The article makes a clear case for this statement in the context of what was researched to write it, but the statement itself could be misleading. [...] In other words, when creating great experiences, it may not necessarily be about doing what users expect in the first place, but it is often most certainly about living up to the expectations you explicitly attempt to set through the design. If you label a button Save Now, it better do exactly that. I'm confused. What are you proposing a Save Now button do that would (a) not do what would be what users expect *and* (b) meet their needs at the moment they need it? It's not so much that the Save Now button do what users expect. It's that it do what users need, which, if I'm not mistaken, is to save the stuff now. What's the issue? Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Expectations
On Jun 9, 2008, at 7:19 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote: It's not so much that the Save Now button do what users expect. It's that it do what users need, which, if I'm not mistaken, is to save the stuff now. It's possible I'm just overanalyzing your statement, but when I read it initially, it felt a little unsettling. Granted, I've said many times that it's not necessarily about simplicity, it's about clarity, which is a statement with a similar intent — to point out that one term/phrase is perhaps accurate than the other and encourage people to consider the distinction. Still, something about it just caught my ears wrong. Maybe it's because it sort of ... cancels itself out. As in, the need the user has at a given moment may only exist because you created/encouraged an expectation in the first place, but then you say a good experience isn't about meeting expectations. Hard to articulate, I guess. Just sounded ... off ... somehow. It's ok. I don't mind the discussion. In fact, it's a good thing. I thought this would play into your Activity-Centered Design mantra. After all, understanding user expectations would require studying users, which I thought was against the rules of ACD. Whereas, just looking at needs would be focusing on the goals of the activity. Isn't this a suit that feels comfortable to you? :) Seriously, all I'm trying to say is that if you try to focus on expectations, it's a hit-or-miss proposition. If you focus on needs, you increase the odds of a hit. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] iRise sues Axure for patent infringement
On Jun 10, 2008, at 12:08 AM, Kontra wrote: I assure you if I walked into the lawyer's offices over at Google, Yahoo, Adobe, Microsoft, or pretty much any major Silicon Valley company and informed them that people were discussing and posting patents on it, this distribution list would *lose* every single one of those people as a contributor or subscriber to this list. That may be the practice in those places, but doesn't make it any less absurd. This is information that's publicly available to anyone with a web browser in multiple different ways that are untraceable unless you're under surveillance. How on earth can anyone prove that a person did NOT access such public info? If you recuse yourself from every venue that can conceivably address patents then I've got a cave for you just north of Kabul. Just because you played ostrich on a mailing list does not mean you didn't access it via multiple other ways. Presumption of guilt doesn't require that you prove a negative. You think those lawyers are going to bar you from accessing the Internet at all? It's clear that you don't understand how legal argument works. It works like this: The lawyers, in the discovery phase, ask for every email communication which could have mentioned the patent that landed on your corporation's servers. They paw (using the latest e-discovery technology) through each one and find the email that talks about the patent. They then ask to depose each recipient of the email. Your organization's represented counsel will then try to motion to not have you deposed, but the objection will not be heard (because, basically they have to depose you to find out if your testimony should be struck). Then you spend hours in preparation, where the lawyers tell you exactly how you should or should not answer each of the possible questions they think you'll be asked. Then you'll enter the deposition room and for somewhere between 4 and 12 hours (maybe as long as 18), you'll get asked dozens of different questions, all getting to the same point: could you have been influenced by this patent? Each time, your organization's represented counsel will object on grounds that this testimony is unreliable or not to point or outside the scope of interest. Each time, the opposing counsel will instruct you to answer anyways. A court report (often videotape these days) will record every ah, um, and but. You have to be very careful about your words. One slip and you'll have basically admitted that you did see the patent, you were aware of it, and it *might* have influenced your subsequent work. And that's just the first round. Having just spent weeks pouring through 1000+ pages of similar testimony from corporate executives, IT managers, and other witnesses to render an expert opinion in a case I've been working on, I am completely sympathetic to the what-you-don't-know-can't-be-made-into- incuplatory-evidence train of thinking. Again, folks, as crazy as it all sounds, it's a reality for some folks (not all of us). Please show some courtesy. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] iRise sues Axure for patent infringement
On Jun 9, 2008, at 8:32 PM, Christopher Fahey wrote: For those concerned about the legal ramifications of exposure to competitors' patents, the best solutions seem to be: 1) Quit the list. 2) Quit your company (or client). Oh, that's just silly. There's lots of stuff we don't discuss openly on this list. We don't talk about how much we charge. (It could possibly be seen as price fixing.) We don't talk about clients we dislike. (It could be seen as libel or defamation of character.) We don't talk about how stupid our co-workers or managers are. (It would just be a career-limiting move.) Why is it so important that we talk about this openly? Nobody has said that people who are ok with the conversation shouldn't talk about it at all. Andrei and others have just asked that we do it in a way that doesn't put them at jeopardy. Why is that such a difficult request? I don't understand why this is so hard for some people to grok? Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] iRise sues Axure for patent infringement
On Jun 10, 2008, at 1:21 AM, Kontra wrote: I am completely sympathetic to the what-you-don't-know-can't-be- made-into-incuplatory-evidence train of thinking. Therein lies the issue: what-you-don't-know. Not being on a mailing list that once in a clear blue sky may reference patents is no proof that you-don't-know. There are many other ways that you get-to-know. And my friend if you recuse yourself from all the places that you can learn something, you'd be left so far behind in your profession that I don't know why you'd bother coming into the office. It's a proof of burden thing. It's clear to me that you don't agree. Doesn't make it any less of an issue for other people. Please show some courtesy. I would when your corporate convenience doesn't trample upon the right of others to discuss issues they deem important, and when the arrogance with which this has been presented here is reconsidered. No one is taking away your rights. This is a community. One which, in my opinion, you're just trolling in. What gives you the right to trample upon other people's concerns that a little sensitivity and discretion is in order? I'm hoping those that monitor these discussions put an end to this soon. I fear the list will lose some talented contributors over this insensitive trolling behavior. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Expectations
On Jun 10, 2008, at 12:19 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote: I thought this would play into your Activity-Centered Design mantra. After all, understanding user expectations would require studying users, which I thought was against the rules of ACD. There are no rules. I've talked to users to learn more about activities, but I've also researched them independently. I've also excluded a research phase entirely from many projects, because the breakdown of the activity was obvious and research would have been overkill. Many experienced designers have done this regardless of their feelings on ACD. (Maybe the reason you and I keep arguing about this one is that you haven't understood the preceding paragraph. You're assuming I never, ever research users, and that assumption would be 100% incorrect.) And I thought the reason we kept arguing was because the patent debate wasn't challenging enough. :) I think I understand where you're coming from on the ACD thing. I believe it comes down to knowing if you can trust your gut or not. In the cases where the activity breakdown was obvious, that's where you are trusting your gut. In the cases where you've went out to learn more about the activities, it seems you weren't trusting your gut and thus research occurred. I think that's perfectly valid and makes a lot of sense. Why do research when you already know what you need to know? Where the question, at least for me, comes down is how do you know when to trust your gut? Do you have a gut sense as to when your gut sense is good enough? (Would that be meta-gut?) :) Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Expectations
On Jun 10, 2008, at 2:01 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote: The difference is also a mindset difference. Instead of focusing on goals and such, I focus just on the details of the activity—how it's performed, how it breaks down into tasks and actions and operations, etc. The distinction may be subtle, but I find it changes the way I approach the research pretty substantially. I think, most of the time, focusing on the activity will get you where you need to go. These are localized goals, in a way. I still think there are times when goals will different amongst individuals using the same functionality, and that will influence the details that make up the activity. In this case, understanding the variety of goals will be important to the design process. Did you know that Joshua Porter also appears to subscribe to the tao of ACD? I find that particularly interesting, since he's one of your former disciples. Yes, well, some birds fly farther from the nest than others. We will always love and cherish him, no matter his misgivings. :) Where the question, at least for me, comes down is how do you know when to trust your gut? Do you have a gut sense as to when your gut sense is good enough? (Would that be meta-gut?) The only time this fails for me is when I'm hungry. My meta-gut gets confused. :) Eh—it's all very subjective. There's no way to be sure either way that you do or don't need user research to get a handle on an activity. Sometimes, you do it and find out you didn't need to. Sometimes, the opposite. You have to trust your instincts. Yes, but do you have good instincts on when to trust your instincts? Or is this a Good Judgments come from Experience and Experience comes from Bad Judgments thing? Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Empty search query: what result?
On Jun 16, 2008, at 5:42 AM, Liou Yamane wrote: I have encountered the following problem several times at my current job as a IxD-er without finding a satisfying solution: What to do when a search is executed with no input, thus an empty search query? Concretely, this means hitting the search button next to an empty text field. Hi Liou, With all due respect, I think you are asking the completely wrong question. The instance of blank searches is quite common. In fact, at one major bank, blank queries were the most popular search term. So, it does makes sense to know what to do when nothing is searched for. However, the question you should be asking is: Why would a user search for nothing? What is the sequence of events that would make this happen? (Let alone be a common occurrence?) I'm going to bet that very few users ever think to search for nothing to get *everything*. That's a very programmer way of thinking, but it's unlikely it would actually happen. Have you observed any users who searched for nothing? At the bank that I mentioned above, it was because of the design of the search box. Turns out that it wasn't clear to many users that you were supposed to enter something before hitting the Search button. The result was they'd hit the Search button expecting a screen that would prompt them with something to search for. Instead, entering an blank search query would give users an error message that was silly: The item ' ' is not found. Please choose a more specific search term. The number of people who entered a second search term at this point was very, very small. The designers changed the physical look of the search box, putting in a distinct border and better prompt. The number of blank searches dropped to a very small number. In the case of a blank search, the site now produces a screen that prompts users to take advantage of the search capability and gives some best bets results. Almost every user continues from that page. I recommend you find out *why* you have users entering blank search queries. Once you know that, you'll know what the results should be, I'm betting. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Criteria for Evaluating Websites
On Jun 15, 2008, at 7:23 AM, AmirBehzad Eslami wrote: What articles have written on this subject? In 1997, my colleagues and I wrote an entire book on the subject: http://tinyurl.com/4hx9sz How do you evaluate websites if you're in hurry? It's simple. There's only one question: Can the user accomplish their goal? If the user can accomplish their goal, the site is good. If they can't, it needs to be fixed. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Podcasts...sugestions?
On Jun 13, 2008, at 1:17 PM, Paolo Passeri wrote: I'm trying to find good interaction design, innovation, prototyping, usability...podcasts! You can find our podcasts at http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/topics/podcasts/ I'd like to think they are pretty good... Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Which is a better Navigation Structure
On Jun 16, 2008, at 4:59 PM, Leah Buley wrote: Ok, so maybe a full blown thesaurus is overkill for an office supply site. But you can't convince me that alphabetical order is obsolete. No, it's not obsolete. However, it *is* akin to random order. There are few exceptions where alphabetical order makes sense. These occur when there is only one way to refer to the target object, such as a name of a state, a car manufacturer, or a person. For example, in the xbox 360 index that Mark Young mentioned (http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox360/ ), the names of games are perfect for alphabetization, since there's only one way to talk about Halo 3. However, beyond those very rare exceptions, alphabetical order is random to the user. In our studies, users expect the most likely items to be listed first, grouped by similar items. For office supplies, I'd use a multi-level hierarchy, all visible on the page. You can get a couple of hundred links that way before users become overwhelmed, if you choose your visual presentation and item names well. Alphabetization is a lazy designer's out -- it tells me that the design team isn't interested in finding out what users are really doing on the site. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] [Reminder] Book Launch Party: Handbook of Usability Testing, 2nd Edition
[ Apologies to those who receive more than one copy of this. ] Greetings, You're invited to attend a party to honor the launch of the second edition of the Handbook of Usability Testing. Where: Cinghiale Restaurant 822 Lancaster Street, Baltimore, MD 21202 When: Wednesday, June 18, 5:30-7:30 RSVP for the event: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/776329/ (RSVPing isn't required, but will help us make sure we don't run out of food or drinks.) Buy the book: http://tinyurl.com/53o56p In 1994, Jeff Rubin wrote the first edition of the Handbook. This became the bible of those of us in the usability world. Now, Jeff Rubin and Dana Chisnell have completely updated it. It's a marvelous edition, filled with insights and useful tips and techniques. It's a resource that every user experience practitioner should have at their fingertips. If you're going to be in Baltimore, either for the annual UPA conference or by choice, you need to stop by and help us celebrate this new edition. Co-author Dana Chisnell will be there, along with UIE's Christine Perfetti, myself, and a whole host of great people from the world of user experience and design. There will also be food, drinks, and door prizes, along with great discussion and probably some funky music. It will be great fun. We hope to see you there, Jared Spool Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Which is a better Navigation Structure
On Jun 17, 2008, at 3:25 PM, Diana Wynne wrote: I rely on alphabetical order at the bookstore and the library. Makes me crazy trying to find non-fiction titles when I don't understand the classification system (oh, this is California history, not travel). Oh, really? I've never seen an alphabetical bookstore or library. Most libraries use some sort of cataloguing system, ala Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress. In some sections, such as fiction, it's then alphabetical by author, but as I stated before, that works because there is only one name. Bookstores divide their content by sections. Again, some sections are alphabetical by author, but some are by other means. For example, the cooking section is often subdivided by cuisines, diets, or styles. Biographies are divided by the subject, then by the author. It would be neat to see a completely alphabetical library or bookstore. It would likely be unusable, by both the customer and the folks required to keep it alphabetical. Ditto for record stores, when I still bought music in physical form. Again, unless you shopped in a record that didn't have much a selection, I doubt this was true. Most stores were organized by genre (RB, Pop, Classical). Within genre's, they were sometimes alphabetical by artist, though some sections, like show tunes, would be organized by other content. However, within a given artist, it's unlikely the individual products were organized alphabetically. Most likely, it was random order, though some of the larger collections would order by date of release. But being able to search by name obviates much of the need for this. That's one of the great ironies of all of this. In those cases where alphabetization works, search also works really well. When alphabetization doesn't work so well, search accuracy also starts to decay. So, I still contend that alphabetization, for the most part (but not always), is akin to random order. :) Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Which is a better Navigation Structure
On Jun 17, 2008, at 7:08 PM, Jeff Howard wrote: One of the best reasons I know of to use an alphabetical organization is where egos are concerned--specifically to avoid the appearance of priority when listing names. In that case it's akin to random; the names have to be in _some_ order and it helps to cast the blame on the natural order of the alphabet. If your primary goal for design is to ensure you can cleanly assign blame to an artifact, then I guess alphabetization is good. However, the original context of this thread was for the organization of office supplies. Do people need to ensure that all office supplies are treated equally? Surely, if you want to ensure users get what they need, you'll approach things from their perspective, not from the perspective of whose egos you need to protect. It's clear, watching users, that they are less concerned about equality and fairness in design than by ease of accessing their information. Company employee phone directory: Alphabetize. (Except that important departments or individuals should probably also be at the top in a best bets section.) Company HR Department services: Put in order of most likely needed by the employee. Alphabetization here, while fair, would not help the user in any way. Incidently, literal randomness is a pretty good organization scheme in some contexts; notably survey questions where the order of answers tends to influence selection. No argument there. I never said randomness is bad. I only said that alphabetization, to users, appears random. If randomness is the effect you are going for, alphabetization is a good way to do it. But in most cases I'd say alphabetical is preferable to random (if nothing else exists) because people want things to make sense and they'll try to read meaning into the order no matter what you do. It's more humane to give them something obvious like alphabetical order to hang their hat on. I'm betting that if you had watched as many users approach as many different alphabetized lists as I have in my career, you'd probably come to a different conclusion. In my experience, when users come to a list that alphabetized that isn't a lists of people's names, state's names, or models of cars, they try to find the item they are looking for by starting at the top and working down. As soon as they bump into an item they think is less significant than their target, they pause and wonder how they might've missed the item. This is particularly true if they find something that they think of as similar significance that should be a neighbor of the target item. They don't keep looking because they think it couldn't be later on (or they make a comment about how they don't want to have to scan the entire list just to find their one item). The problem with alphabetization is that it eliminates grouping of neighbors and randomizes the significance. Users aren't interested in searching. They are interested in finding. Order is really important. You need to really understand how user's approach it. Most of the time, alphabetization diminishes the experience instead of enhancing it, from the users' perspective. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Using full categories navbar in SRP, yes or no?
On Jun 20, 2008, at 8:13 AM, Guillermo Ermel wrote: I'm assisting the design team to create an e-commerce website. The website has a few hundred items, with the typical product-category left navigation bar in the home page and listings page, with 10 to 20 categories and probably subcategories. Also typical, when browsing categories with that left navbar, you get the usual you are here visual feedback in it. The website also has a product search input box on every page. Guillermo, If you only have a few hundred items, then you should be avoiding sending people to search. The odds of them entering a term that your engine can match to something they want gets slimmer with the fewer items you have to search for. Instead, it sounds like a multi-level category listing that displays all (or most) of the items will serve you best. I'd recommend you try that approach and not invest too much in the search results. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Google and Usability
On Jun 22, 2008, at 9:35 AM, Adam Connor wrote: here's a brief post on Google's Usability Lab over at TechCrunch. Not a lot of info, but in case anyone is interested: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/22/a-peak-inside-googles-usability-lab/ Yah, this is just one lab. There's several. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Is UCD Really Broken?
Damn. I'm so glad I didn't get sucked into this discussion. Since my name was cited in the original post, I did want to suggest that I've been talking about this problem for years. Most recently, I wrote about it here: Surviving Our Success: Three Radical Recommendations http://tinyurl.com/5z78qs (Unfortunately, a bit hard to find on the unusable UPA web site. And nobody can explain to me why it's a PDF.) And I talked about it here: IA Summit 2008 Keynote: Journey to the Center of Design http://tinyurl.com/5kasbm (Listen to the audio or the slides won't make sense.) Basically, my thoughts are that, for many folks, UCD is a dogma. These people treat it as the only viable way of thinking about product design. However, there is no real evidence to suggest that following UCD dogmatically produces any better designs than ignoring it dogmatically (like Robert seems to want to do). In fact, all the evidence seems to suggest that it's a gestalt effect that any success is derived at all. In either of the above pieces, you'll hear (or read) about my thoughts on how the techniques of UCD are really just the stone in the soup. I believe that something else -- something we never talk about -- is what actually provides the best designs. (Just like it's something else that makes the soup, not the stone.) I'm way to busy this week to actually say anymore than this. I'm glad there's a discussion. People should just consider whether their personal dogmas are really what they think they are. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] And now a completely different take on design
On Jul 2, 2008, at 5:47 AM, dave malouf wrote: To me that doesn't say anything bad about the process. Heck, Apple has had a slew of failures. Fail big! is a designers mantra. Just bounce back and keep going! Apple's Board of Directors wasn't completely replaced. WSJ: A lot of changes are under way at BO after a rocky fiscal year. CEO Torben Sorensen was fired in January. How much rethinking has this meant for design? MR. LEWIS: Our whole board of directors has been fired, which means that the advisory board just wouldn't accept the results. Fair enough. Something at BO is really broken. Think this approach has anything to do with that? Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Hotel Websites: Flagship User Experience
One of the major chains (I think it was Westin, Hyatt, or maybe Intercontinental) was using slo-mo ad campaign they've been running to show how soft their beds are. I'd check with your ad guys before you invest in that route... Jared On Jul 2, 2008, at 9:31 AM, John Gibbard wrote: The bathroom point is interesting. It also made me think about property brochures where it's unfeasible to show the actual rooms (e.g. not built) so they focus on example fixtures and fittings in macro which helps provide an assurance of quality and finish. We've been considering approaches like the slow-mo Ikea [1] how do folks feel about this? [1] http://snipurl.com/2ssj2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=30965 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] examples of HUDs on the web?
On Jun 27, 2008, at 11:02 AM, Meredith Noble wrote: Does anyone have any examples of web apps that use HUDs or Heads-Up Displays to give the user feedback? I'm talking a really light HUD here - basically a little rectangle that comes up in the middle of the screen after the user completes an action, says something like Your widget has been deleted, and then fades away after a couple of seconds. LinkedIn.com uses such a box to verify that you want to accept bulk invitations. Netflix uses layered dialogues for all sorts of interactions, such as showing that you've added something to the queue. Hope that helps, Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Hiding and Disabling Menu Items
On Jul 3, 2008, at 7:26 AM, Elizabeth Buie wrote: Me, I would state it outright: Error messages are *not* the correct way to teach them. Yes, but nothing says Don't press that button better than a couple of electrodes emitting 10,000 volts. They won't make the mistake again, I tell you. 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] Should persuasion be left to marketers?
On Jul 6, 2008, at 3:57 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote: Should the persuasive elements of a site design be left to marketers? It's curious to me that you immediately equate persuasive elements with marketing. Design (good or bad) is *all about* persuasion. Helping a user to see and click on the button that takes them to the next step is a persuasive act. So, I'm assuming that most of the persuasive elements of the site's design are actually in the hands of the designer. Now, over the years, we've looked at this topic closely. Here are some articles we've published on it from year's past: The Search for Seducible Moments (2002): http://tinyurl.com/6b695t Guiding Users with Persuasive Design - An Interview with Andrew Chak (2003): http://tinyurl.com/6lj4xg The Power of Persuasive Momentum (2005): http://tinyurl.com/64m2vy Thinking Beyond Conversion (2006): http://tinyurl.com/ht2bv The Conversion Funnel - Is Your Web App Successful: http://tinyurl.com/yy87uy Persuasion is a critical part of design. In my opinion, it doesn't belong to any particular job title or company department, any more than any other part of the user experience does. Assuming you work for a company who has a marketing department and a UX team that are separate from each other, how much should the UX team be involved in the design of persuasive elements? I think the assumption here is flawed. Our research into great experience design show that if you work for a company that has a marketing department that is so separated from the UX team that they aren't involved in all aspects of the site's design, it's unlikely you'll produce a great user experience on any dimension. Persuasion, at that point, is the least of your worries. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Should persuasion be left to marketers?
On Jul 7, 2008, at 1:19 PM, Robert Hoekman Jr wrote: Granted, most of the marketers I've seen couldn't market their way out of a cardboard box. But they should know a lot about persuasion, no? I've said it before and I'll say it again: People who aren't good at what they do produce crappy results. If a marketer can't market their way out of a cardboard box, why should they know anything useful about persuasion? :) Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Cover Flow-esque examples
They are not blog specific, but check out: http://www.searchme.com and http://www.spacetime.com Both use cinematics transitions, like coverflow does. And for all of you who think that apple invented the coverflow look, think again. It was prominent in a video called the Web Book by Stu Card at (what was then Xerox) PARC in 1996: http://www.sigchi.org/chi96/proceedings/videos/Card/skc2txt.html (If you look hard, you can even find a insert legal term for intellectual property protection that people don't want to know about on it.) :) Jared On Jul 10, 2008, at 12:59 PM, Monique Escamilla wrote: Hi there, Does anyone know of any blog-type sites that are using cover flow similar to iTunes? I've looked at sites like: http://www.celebuzz.com/ http://buzz.yahoo.com/ but my stakeholders want something more shiny and coverflow - esque. Thanks, Monique 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] statistical significance
On Jul 14, 2008, at 2:58 AM, Elizabeth Parham wrote: I have to do a proposal including timings for a solution in which there will be 300 end users of a new system aimed at improving efficiency in the work place by using technology where before things were done on paper or over the phone. What percentage of these 300 do I need to observe in their place of work, interview and so on for the information to be representative of the whole? - I want to get enough information to be able to develop personas and wondered if there were guidelines regarding the numbers and statistics for getting it right. Hi Elizabeth, The answer is quite simple. It's very easy to calculate how many folks to observe and interview to ensure you've learned everything you need to learn. The only problem is, you can't make the calculation until you've already done all the observations and interviews. You just don't have the necessary information to do the calculation. :) Short of that, you want to conduct your observations until you reach what we call, the point of least astonishment. This is the point where, in each subsequent session, you're only seeing things you've seen before. Reaching this point means you have everything you need to build your personas. Until you reach this point, you won't know for sure if you've left something important out. The good news is that it probably doesn't matter too much. While you can make great strides with the initial design, improving efficiency can't be done with only a single release. It has to be done incrementally. That means that you can get away with only interviewing a subset of folks, probably chosen at random. Many of the important inefficiencies and frustrating elements of the current process will emerge and it should be easy to create personas, scenarios, and the innovations you'll need to get major improvements. Without knowing more about who these folks are, what they do, and how the current system works, it would be hard to make specific recommendations. However, you could start with a simple plan that studies 15 end users (5%). Among the first things you'll want to do with your studies is determine if there are others you need to study. Hopefully, after seeing 5% of the population, you'll really have enough sense of what your dealing with to know what else you need to study. Hope that helps, Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] [PLUG] UI13 Conference Sneak Preview Pricing Ends 7/15
[Apologies for duplicated posts] Based on many of the conversations we've had on this list, I know there's tremendous interest in in-depth seminars on interaction design, information architecture, and design strategy. These are just a few of the things we've put on the program for UI13. This week, the pricing for the conference goes up and I wanted to make sure that everyone on the IxDA list had a chance to get in at the lowest available price. So, I'm forwarding the promotion we're using to our clients. Please feel free to tell your colleagues and, by all means, check out the great talent that we've assembled for this year's conference. Jared - o - o - o - Greetings, We've had tremendous response to this year's User Interface 13 Conference. Hundreds of you have already registered, and hundreds more have been calling and emailing us for program details. ( You can see the full program at http://www.uiconf.com ) If you're thinking about signing up, this is the time to do it. After Tuesday, 7/15, the cost to register will go up by $300. Don't miss this opportunity to attend four days filled with insights from the field's greatest experts. UI13 Conference Highlights Since we put together the first User Interface Conference thirteen years ago, the heart and soul of this event is the full-day seminars. At UI13, you'll choose between ten in-depth seminars on today's most important design topics, including interaction design, information architecture, agile development, experience design, innovation, usability testing, Ajax, product strategy, paper prototyping, and visual design. ( You can learn all about the seminars at http://www.uiconf.com ) In addition, I know you won't want to miss the 2008 Spotlight Presentation by none other than Bill Verplank. With more than 30 years of experience in the field of interactive computing, Bill played a seminal role in the formation of modern interaction design techniques. In his presentation, Bill will address Sketching Metaphors, exploring the most important themes from today's world of experience design. Plus, Christine Perfetti and I will present two of UIE's most popular seminars in our UIE Showcase Seminar Day on Thursday, October 16th. Sneak Preview Pricing Ends July 15th Everyone who registers by Tuesday, July 15th, can get in at the lowest price of $1,849 for all four days -- a savings of more than $1,800 off the final walk-in registration price. After Tuesday, 7/15, the cost to register will go up by $300. Don't miss this opportunity to get the lowest pricing we're offering to attendees. You can find out more about the program, including detailed full-day seminar descriptions at http://www.uiconf.com See you at the conference! Jared M. Spool Conference Chairperson User Interface Engineering p.s. Remember to register by July 15th to attend all four days of the conference for only $1,849, which saves you more than $1,800!) Register today at http://www.uiconf.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Pattern Tap : Interface Design Inspiration
On Jul 23, 2008, at 3:27 PM, Christian Crumlish wrote: I also accept that language drifts and even terms of art can change and the success of the pattern meme is going to tend to lead to watering it down, but I'm nonetheless going to try to hold the line on this distinction for now, as I think it's useful. I completely agree with this line of thinking. I think, as a community, it serves us well to be careful of our language. I've been fighting a similar battle with personas versus descriptions- of-people-real-or-otherwise because watering the term down doesn't help its usefulness. I'd like to see more efforts in the community to establish and protect a language we can all use to mean the same things. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Pattern Tap : Interface Design Inspiration
On Jul 25, 2008, at 6:20 AM, matthew Smith wrote: How would you best describe what Pattern Tap showcases? What language would you change or redefine? I'd be interested to see how we can gaurd those terms well, and honor the work of folks like yourself, while hopefully at the same time, offering a bit of expansion to terms like pattern. A collection of designs for inspiration. It's my opinion that general pattern libraries are of limited value. What teams really need are libraries of patterns that have been proven for their users in their specific design contexts. These will include localized thinking, including brand-related issues and details about the things that make their own experience unique, such as voice, tone, and feel. For example, the patterns for KodakGallery.com would be very different from the patterns for Flickr.com, even though they'll have a lot of the same types of elements, because they are trying for very different experiences. I think both teams could turn to a site like PatternTap for inspiration (which I think is your goal), but would create a library of patterns that was unique to their own needs and offerings. That's my take. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Design of forms on web vs paper
On Jul 27, 2008, at 1:34 AM, Jessica Enders wrote: As a matter of best practice, should forms on the web be designed to look like their paper equivalents? Why/why not? My take is simple: The question is irrelevant. In fact, you could as a similar question that would be equally irrelevant: Should forms on the web be design to look like other forms on the web? The real question is Should each form on the web be design to best support the user's experience? The answer would, of course, be Yes. And the next question is the one that's important in your case: How should you best support the user's experience? That's where I'd start. Hope that helps, Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Designing vs. Architecting
On Aug 7, 2008, at 8:44 AM, dave malouf wrote: Wow! it's 2003 all over again. Tog's original post that inspired this organization called on us to be architects. our entire first 6 months of discussions on this list was about why we are designers and not architects. ;-) I refuse to repeat 6 months of ideas that I feel haven't changed and I think Seth's look at this is as a non-designer looking in and doesn't really understand that there is a long and important legacy connecting our work to design and not to architecture, a term which actually has been coopted adn ruined by engineering and other technologist, who have taken a sub-discipline of design and have created a bastardization to help make themselves feel more self-important with actually adding little or no further value. Now I understand that the people see design as look feel, but it is a worthy and important goal for us to evangelize a much more accurate and broader and historical vision of design as being so much more. Just a thought: Are those first 6 months of ideas documented anywhere so those who are new to the field can have the benefit of the thinking behind it? Otherwise we're doomed to revisit this over and over and over and over and over Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] how to present UX to the whole agency
On Aug 13, 2008, at 5:19 AM, alan james salmoni wrote: Just out of curiosity Sam and Jamie (and anyone else), if you were given just 5 seconds to pitch UX to someone in a company, what would you say? Working hard to eliminate frustration from technology and make it all delightful. 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
On Aug 14, 2008, at 10:09 AM, Denton, Gretchen wrote: OMG. Are you a socially irresponsible iPhone user?! The question was what I did now that I didn't do before. I was always socially responsible. The iphone lets me be more socially irresponsible in new ways. It's been a growth opportunity for me. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] IxDA iPhone users straw poll
On Aug 15, 2008, at 8:06 AM, Patrick Barrett wrote: 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? Isn't one of the tenets of Interaction Design to extend the boundaries of current practice and behavior to explore new options? I would think this behavior is right inline with what one would expect from IxDers. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] ING sues PNC over alleged similarities of Web sites
On Aug 15, 2008, at 4:16 PM, G. Jason Head wrote: Interesting enough it has to do a bit with the user interface on the PNC Virtual Wallet site: The site features several orange balls used to highlight products and services PNC offers. ING alleges that PNC's use of the orange balls could confuse customers who associate the orange balls with ING. More info on the Post-Gazette site: http://www.postgazette.com/pg/08228/904608-100.stm Yup. Trademark infringement. Surprised that PNC went ahead with it. Usually these things are settled before the suit is launched. (There's a bunch of steps that ING would go through, starting with a standard Cease Desist letter.) The interesting thing is that you can't easily argue it's a trademark infringement if the elements are functional. By definition, trademark (and trade dress) elements have to be non-functional, which is why we don't see more of these types of suits on web sites. However, that's a defense, which means that PNC will have to spend a lot of money in court to protect the use of the orange balls. That's why I'm surprised it's gotten this far -- I'm betting it's not worth it to keep them orange. But, what do I know? Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] ING sues PNC over alleged similarities of Web sites
Standard disclaimer: IANAL. Everything I know about trademark law and the tests come from the information I've gleaned from lawyers as I've prepared for my expert testimony. I'm sure there is much more I don't know. The following are the eight factors that most courts look at for likelihood of confusion: 1. the similarity in the overall impression created by the two marks (including the marks' look, phonetic similarities, and underlying meanings); 2. the similarities of the goods and services involved (including an examination of the marketing channels for the goods); 3. the strength of the plaintiff's mark; 4. any evidence of actual confusion by consumers; 5. the intent of the defendant in adopting its mark; 6. the physical proximity of the goods in the retail marketplace; 7. the degree of care likely to be exercised by the consumer; and 8. the likelihood of expansion of the product lines. [From this list, you can see why ING has a good reason to be going after PNC. PNC's not got much to stand on here, from my limited exposure to the fact.] Usability testing would only help with #4 and maybe #7. The rest is done by the courts (judge or jury). If only one test passes (suggests a likelihood of confusion), the judge/jury could rule in favor of the infringement. If you were to do usability testing, it would have to stand up through a heavy cross examination. Practically every case I've been solicited on has suggested testing. And it's almost always disqualified because to make it rigorous enough for court would be impractically expensive. So, they tend to just rely on expert testimony -- still expensive, but much cheaper (since you still need the expert testimony to explain and back up the testing). Remember, failing the tests are just a defense. Ideally, you avoid needing a defense, since it's extremely costly. That's why so many cases are settled. Jared On Aug 15, 2008, at 5:19 PM, Charles B. Kreitzberg wrote: Hi Jared: I've often thought that one way to defend this type of suit would be to conduct usability testing to see if, in fact, there was confusion. There was a similar suit against a small company called teracycle by Scotts Fertilizer. Personally, I didn't see the similarity. But it ought to be a question that could be answered empirically. Charlie Charles B. Kreitzberg, Ph.D. CEO, Cognetics Corporation -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jared Spool Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 4:49 PM To: G. Jason Head Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] ING sues PNC over alleged similarities of Web sites On Aug 15, 2008, at 4:16 PM, G. Jason Head wrote: Interesting enough it has to do a bit with the user interface on the PNC Virtual Wallet site: The site features several orange balls used to highlight products and services PNC offers. ING alleges that PNC's use of the orange balls could confuse customers who associate the orange balls with ING. More info on the Post-Gazette site: http://www.postgazette.com/pg/08228/904608-100.stm Yup. Trademark infringement. Surprised that PNC went ahead with it. Usually these things are settled before the suit is launched. (There's a bunch of steps that ING would go through, starting with a standard Cease Desist letter.) The interesting thing is that you can't easily argue it's a trademark infringement if the elements are functional. By definition, trademark (and trade dress) elements have to be non-functional, which is why we don't see more of these types of suits on web sites. However, that's a defense, which means that PNC will have to spend a lot of money in court to protect the use of the orange balls. That's why I'm surprised it's gotten this far -- I'm betting it's not worth it to keep them orange. But, what do I know? Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help 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] ING sues PNC over alleged similarities of Web sites
On Aug 15, 2008, at 8:53 PM, John Vaughan wrote: Cool. The usual flock of parasitic sheissters manages to engineer yet another frivolous lawsuit. So now we can't use round orange shapes Um, no. You just can't use round orange shapes to represent elements of a financial services product and then try to compete against ING who has made round orange shapes integral to their look. Feel free to use round orange shapes for anything else. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] ING sues PNC over alleged similarities of Web sites
On Aug 16, 2008, at 12:49 PM, Jenny Wallace wrote: this actually reminds me of something i brought up to my manager yesterday. i remarked that i wonder if it will ever be the case that companies will trademark things such as their taxonomy. for instance - i could steal shopping.com's categorization and mimic it - would that be wrong or IP infringement? does anybody think it will ever come to this? The answer is No and Yes. Trademark is unlikely for a taxonomy, because it protects the brand. The only reason they'd choose to pursue a trademark case is if the taxonomy because representative of the brand. For example, if it had elements in it that were unique to that business (special brand categories), then it might be a direct piece. However, that might not even work, because one of the rules of trademarks is that the pieces can't be functional in and of themselves. So, since you click on categories, you can't really claim them non-functional. So, I'm thinking that eliminates a claim of trademark infringement. Patents are another possible IP protection and the IP space I'm least familiar with, but if you can claim your taxonomy is a new invention, you can submit it for patent. These days, the patent office waits forever, then approves many of the patents, letting the court system decide if it truly a new invention or not. (They've been accepting patent applications for Yoga positions, so anything is game.) Defending a patent in court is horrendously expensive, so you have to be really serious about protecting it that way. Copyright infringement is probably the most likely. There's precedent for this: Lotus won a case over Bourland for the Lotus 1-2-3 command structure. (There was also an Apple v. Microsoft Look Feel suit that Apple lost, but that was mostly because the judge decided that Apple was reneging on a previous licensing deal.) Copyright protects the expression of an idea and so, it's possible, someone could argue that their taxonomy was an expression and be protected by copyright. There is a notion of fair use, but that's a defense (again -- very expensive to prove), so settlement is more likely. I could easily see something akin to the Dublin Core that is privately developed, thereby protected through copyright. If Shopping.com were to seek protection for their taxonomy, I think copyright would be the most likely method. However, they'd have to demonstrate that their particular expression of the taxonomy was infringed. Being that their taxonomy is very similar to many others, the defendants could argue that it's function and not art, and thereby doesn't pass the conceptual separability requirement. Of course, none of this stops a lawyer from sending a cease desist letter to someone for potentially violating an infringement. (See the fuss that happened with O'Reilly sent CDs to folks holding their own Web 2.0 conferences.) In most cases, the assessment is they have bigger wallets to spend on lawyers than we do, so we have to cease desist because we can't afford to fight. One viewpoint is that this inhibits progress (because lawyers can bully around small creators/ inventors). Another is that it creates more creativity, since you have to be ingenious about your approach to a problem and duplicative. So, I do think it will happen that someone will copyright a taxonomy and try to enforce it. In fact, I'd be surprised if it hasn't happened already. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] ING sues PNC over alleged similarities of Web sites
On Aug 18, 2008, at 9:28 AM, Alan Wexelblat wrote: You would be free to use that taxonomy, provided you did not copy other protected elements, such as visual design - which is what I think the subject-named case is about. The ING / PNC trademark case is about the brand representation implied by the visual design. ING isn't alleging that PNC copied their visual design. ING is alleging that PNC is trying to create confusing in the marketplace by using similar design elements. That's the nature of a trademark case. Just like we often think it's important that people understand the nuances and subtleties between different types of design, I believe it's important that we understand the nuances and subtleties between these different types of intellectual property protections. At some point, we're likely to have a conversation with a lawyer or someone else looking out for our behalf and it would be good to have a solid understanding of the concepts and how they work. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Pandora to possibly shut down?
On Aug 18, 2008, at 5:40 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/15/AR2008081503367.html Discuss. What aspect would you like to discuss? I think that it sucks, because I enjoy Pandora and Last.fm (which I assume will fall prey to the same rules), but it's within SoundExchange's rights to control the license fees and, for some reason, they think this is best for their constituents. Frankly, we've been through this before and SoundExchange is like the dutch boy trying to stick his finger in the dyke. Eventually, a new model will spring forth (probably one where individual artists circumvent the labels and their control structure) and the music will find its way to the consumer. After all, with the exception of the small number of bands that make money through their album sales, bands do better at using music to promote live gigs. That's my take, Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Rugby.com
Having spent a ton of the last 10 years of my life studying the usability of e-commerce sites, I can tell you that it's impossible to discern usability without understanding the goals of the business. It's possible that Ralph Lauren won't measure the success of this site in revenues (because they want to push those through their retail channels and distributors), instead see it as more of a product showcase with a well-if-you-really-want-to-thrust-your-platinum-card- in-our-direction attitude. That said, I can see a pile of things I'd look for in usability testing, such as product descriptions and completeness of the process. But, as a showcase, the latency issue may be less than if someone is trying to purchase a complete wardrobe as they get ready to head off to Philips Exeter to meet with Buffy and Bif. (I find it difficult to look at this site without thinking of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTU2He2BIc0) Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks On Aug 18, 2008, at 2:13 PM, Sterling Koch wrote: I didn't get the errors, but I confirm Shep's latency issues. It's hard to get past that to comment as to the site's usability. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Rugby.com
Being that my offices are a stones throw away from Philips Andover (where G. Bush Sr., Jeb Bush, and G. W. Bush Jr. all went to school) and I drive through the campus every day, I can say they do wear exactly this wardrobe. I'm going to bet that the kids aren't necessarily the buyers in this relationship. There's an entire network of supply chain to get to them. However, without talking with the marketing manager, it would be hard to decide what the biz goals for the site are. Jared On Aug 18, 2008, at 7:07 PM, Will Evans wrote: But, as a showcase, the latency issue may be less than if someone is trying to purchase a complete wardrobe as they get ready to head off to Philips Exeter to meet with Buffy and Bif. (I find it difficult to look at this site without thinking of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTU2He2BIc0) You are partially right - to Ralph Lifschitz chagrin - prep school kids don't wear ralph lauren - their target market is very very different from the bif and buffy folks you see on that showcase site. That said - I want to know what the goals are for the site. Knowing their target audience, i very much doubt they are surfing from the high school dorm room from their macbook up in exeter nh. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Rugby.com
Philips doesn't have a uniform. The kids seem to dress like they've just walked out of central casting. Jared On Aug 19, 2008, at 8:56 AM, Will Evans wrote: I was referring to the Brand - not to the style. When I went to school (a long long time ago), brands weren't allowed - and the only logos students could wear was the school one. No doubt the uniform is required. On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 12:47 AM, Jared Spool [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Being that my offices are a stones throw away from Philips Andover (where G. Bush Sr., Jeb Bush, and G. W. Bush Jr. all went to school) and I drive through the campus every day, I can say they do wear exactly this wardrobe. I'm going to bet that the kids aren't necessarily the buyers in this relationship. There's an entire network of supply chain to get to them. However, without talking with the marketing manager, it would be hard to decide what the biz goals for the site are. Jared On Aug 18, 2008, at 7:07 PM, Will Evans wrote: But, as a showcase, the latency issue may be less than if someone is trying to purchase a complete wardrobe as they get ready to head off to Philips Exeter to meet with Buffy and Bif. (I find it difficult to look at this site without thinking of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTU2He2BIc0) You are partially right - to Ralph Lifschitz chagrin - prep school kids don't wear ralph lauren - their target market is very very different from the bif and buffy folks you see on that showcase site. That said - I want to know what the goals are for the site. Knowing their target audience, i very much doubt they are surfing from the high school dorm room from their macbook up in exeter nh. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -- ~ will Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems - Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel: +1.617.281.128 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] aim: semanticwill | gtalk: wkevans4 twitter: semanticwill | skype: semanticwill - Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] User value or clutter?
On Aug 24, 2008, at 6:16 AM, Rob Enslin wrote: I'm questioning the value (to the website users) of having a permanent count-down clock on the website? Put it in the top 15% of the home page. Nobody ever looks there. It's the perfect place to put things you don't need your users to see. :) Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Clients are funny
On Aug 26, 2008, at 12:39 PM, Robert M. Fein wrote: Does anyone know of a reputable (to ad buyers and marketers) usability report stating that users scroll? and that being below the fold doesn't hurt click thru or uptake (or at least much)? Don't know about it being reputable. But it's been done: http://www.uie.com/articles/page_scrolling/ Wrote it in 1998. Not much has changed since. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Rugby.com
More insight on what they're trying for: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=27601 Rugby.com, up until now a brochure site, joins RalphLauren.com as the retailer’s second e-commerce site for apparel and accessories. The site will provide several interactive Web 2.0 features, including videos that let shoppers click images of garments in the videos to get more product details and the option to make an online purchase. Dynamic product videos are designed to show how apparel items fit and move on a person. “We are thrilled to extend Rugby’s reach to a larger audience,” says David Lauren, senior vice president of advertising, marketing and communications at parent company Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. “Rugby.com presents a dynamic online shopping experience by recreating our unique retail environment in an innovative and impactful way on the Internet— we are engaging our customer like never before.” Rugby.com’s front-end customer experience environment was developed by Ralph Lauren’s Interactive Creative Group with GSI Commerce Inc. supporting the checkout process, a Ralph Lauren spokesman says. A “Make Your Own” feature, for example, will let shoppers customize shirts with particular Rugby logos, color patterns and monograms. 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] Need some help with Drop Down values
On Aug 29, 2008, at 5:56 AM, Sonal Nigam wrote: I would like to know about the drop down values for the forms that I have been creating recently. The values are only Yes and No for the dropdowns varying from 5-9 in number in a single form. I just want to know how best it is to provide the user with a YES, NO and I don't KNOW as the values for dropdown? Any best practices regarding whether the I dont know should or should not be provided to the user? Will it confuse them? Assist them? Hi Sonal, In general, if I were designing forms with Yes, No, and I don't know, I'd probably use radio buttons instead of drop downs. Ergonomically more efficient and cleaner in the design. As Chauncey suggested, if you could share some sample questions, it might be easier to answer your main question. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] How to Post a question
On Sep 1, 2008, at 11:22 PM, Pravat Ranjan wrote: I would like to post some of my questions to answer. Please let me know how could I post my questions in IXDA discussion. You just did. Do it again. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] A New Browser: Google Chrome
On Sep 3, 2008, at 2:27 AM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: True. But the entire web has been like that up to this point. What people make for Chrome by nature works for the other browsers. So there'll be nothing inherently unique for it near as I can tell. The question will seem to ride on pure performance: Is something fast enough to make it worth switching? I mean... outside of that, what the compelling reason for normal users to change? Seriously? This isn't a user switchover play. It's a developer play. That's clear from the comic book which was aimed only at people who could appreciated segmented process management, fast garbage collection, and an integrated real-time compiling virtual machine. Yes, all these things have been around for years. Hell, I had them on my Symbolics 3600 in 1985. What made them cool then and what makes them cool now is that these are grown-up tools for serious development, something that has not been present in the browser space before. And developers *will* do something with them. If we're talking about loading CNN.com 1 second faster than it already does, I'm just not sure. Maybe that's enough? I honestly don't know. (And yes, when I hit CNN.com, the site renders on my MacBook Pro in less than 2 seconds generally speaking.) We're not talking about CNN loading 1 second faster. We're talking about applications more sophisticated than Gapminder (http://tinyurl.com/5o5jsp ) loading and running as fast as CNN.com, not running out of memory, and being stable for days on end. So, whether people migrate to Chrome or not, every browser developer is going to pay attention to how Chrome works and we'll see the good parts go forward. How so? For speed only? Again, what does Chrome provide that is inherently unique? It's very premise is that what you make for it works for other things since it's standards and opensource based, right? The world of sophisticated web app development right now is full of hacks. Some of these are because of browser incompatibility (which Chrome, because it's based on webkit, fixes a little, but not completely). But many of these are because of performance. Hacks take time to implement, debug, and maintain. That's time away from more important activities. Eliminate the need for hacks and you can apply the resources to innovative interactions and technologies. Now, if Google decided to take purposefully *away* from being just another browser, I'd get excited. In this regard, things that you'd need in Chrome would be: * Multiple window support * Sme form of clipboard data transport support, with the ability to go to the OS, other windows, drag and drop to desktop, etc. * Ability to let devs to completely take over all keyboard interaction, no matter what defaults to the browser itself are * OS services that give you access to the hardware; file save, etc. (I don't know enough about Gears, so I admittedly need to catch up on that) * Palette windows and other OS windows like alerts and print dialogs, etc. You need to read up on Chrome and AIR. Between the two, you now have all of these things in some form. (This spring, Adobe was demoing drag drop to/from the desktop, cut paste (using the OS pasteboard servers), file save, local resource utilization (like print dialogs), etc.) It's there. And folks like Nasdaq and Fedex are already developing apps that make use of it. I think this is a key point. I expect that AIR and Chrome are signaling a major change in capabilities for developers. Interaction designers need to be on top of this, so they can be there to help make great designs. Otherwise, we'll be back in the world of we implemented it because we could experiences. Then I'd get excited. Then you can do things that are even more app like while also having a lot of web technologies available to you to round out what you can build from stuff you're already developing for the web (which is lot more than it used to be these days). The trick here that Google has to play is how to make it divergent but not so much, right? How can it move away from normal web browser experiences while still letting people do enough of what they want with a browser? Again, doesn't matter. The fact is that MS won't let the critical features in chrome be absent from IE9. Nor will Mozilla. Doesn't matter if Chrome gets any serious marketshare here. What matters is the proved the underlying tech could be done. And that's how they are selling it. If you know anything about how operating systems work, you'll recognize that they've put all the essential components into the browser. Years ago, someone (was is Marc Andreeson? Maybe Steve Gillmor?) said that the browser will become the next operating system. Chrome seems to have all the essential components of an operating system built in. And yet, they made basically a web browser. Not
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Jazzy point for a UX pitch to a bank
On Sep 3, 2008, at 8:33 AM, Trost Ann-Marie wrote: I'm doing a UX project pitch to a bank. It includes going mobile. Right now, our ppt. is a little flat and wondered if you all might have a jazzy, shazam point or two that has been effective. Our case studies are solid but just no pop on huge ROI of why they need to sign up now (at least at my read of it). Here's my suggestion (based on virtually no information about your project): Rewrite your ppt to make *no* mention of User Experience, Design, or Usability. Also, nuke your case studies. Instead, focus it entirely on things that your client has identified are the critical challenges in their business. Talk about their issues in their language. The largest usability testing project we've ever done ($750,000 for 72 users with a user remuneration budget of $95,000) we won with a 7 page proposal that never mentioned the word usability once. It talked completely about the client's current problems and how, if we knew more about the customers, we could get them to spend more money. (There were no case studies and the About UIE section was 2 sentences long.) If you really want to be radical, nuke the ppt entirely and don't talk for more than 30 seconds in the first 10 minutes of your time with the client. Instead, just keep asking questions and let them explain their issues to you. If you want to be truly as radical as we are, make your 30 seconds of talking be, You guys seem really smart and with-it. You've got a good team and you've done some amazing stuff. I don't see why you think you need us. What could we possibly do for you that you can't do yourselves? Then sit back as they work really hard to pitch to you why they should be your client. That's how we roll. :) Hope that helps, Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] A New Browser: Google Chrome
On Sep 3, 2008, at 11:02 AM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: I think this is a key point. I expect that AIR and Chrome are signaling a major change in capabilities for developers. Interaction designers need to be on top of this, so they can be there to help make great designs. Otherwise, we'll be back in the world of we implemented it because we could experiences. The thing I think you are missing is that Chrome is still a browser. That's the crux of problem. Unless Google makes an explicit break from being a web browser and being more of an application environment, all I see is a 4th browser that I have to worry about for compatibility checking. That's not what the web design world needs right now. Worse, if Google adds new functionality that is only available in Chrome, then we have the Microsoft IE situation from 2000-2005 all over again, and even Microsoft lost that battle. So if Chrome is purely web standards based, what exactly is new about it other than performance? I'm not saying it's not cool. I'm questioning what we're supposed to do with it, and if it's browser #4, I can pretty much tell you not much new is going to be done with it. All we'll do is build stuff that works across all the browsers, and be happy it's faster on Chrome. I'm not sure how that makes for innovative work. If Chrome is a competitor to AIR then LOTS can be done with it. Ok. I get where you're coming from and I think we agree. My understanding is that Chrome is a platform that lets things like Gears and AIR run more effectively. It should be compatible, just more robust and less hacky. Gears and AIR run everywhere (except on my iphone, but that's a different problem), so this just lets them run better. But, we've now left the realm of what I know and are in the realm of conjecture (at least for me). I'll wait and see if Chrome actually is something more than Browser #4. (Does that demote Opera to #5?) Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] A New Browser: Google Chrome
On Sep 4, 2008, at 6:16 PM, Dave Malouf wrote: I should never have to see anything by a reference that says, Gmail. This is just like what is on my desktop that says Outlook. AIR does this, why shouldn't chrome? Gears does this too. That means Chrome does it. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Firefly
I'm so different than you guys. I had immediately come up with a Summer Glau joke and thought, no... I shouldn't. On Sep 5, 2008, at 1:09 PM, Sterling Koch wrote: Same here. The lesson for all usability peeps is, of course, to disuade clients from naming their products after tv shows with near-cult status. - Original Message Sent: Friday, September 5, 2008 9:44:26 AM Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Firefly Me too - I was going to say - definitely purchase it - one of the best shows of the last 10 years. Well worth the price of the dvds. On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 12:38 PM, Evan K. Stone [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: darn. I thought this was going to be about the TV show... ...oh well. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] Interview with Google Chrome Team
For anyone interested in trying to revive the IxDA dead horse called Google Chrome, Steve Gillmor had an excellent interview with the product manager and UI developer. Lots of things we discussed here were talked about in the interview, confirming my thinking on where they are going. Gillmor's synopsis: http://tinyurl.com/5bv645 The audio of the interview: http://tinyurl.com/64bcbz Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Interview with Google Chrome Team
On Sep 6, 2008, at 9:33 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: That's where the breakdown occurs for me. Web apps currently work in an SDI mode, and a fairly limited SDI mode at that. You can't take over the keyboard interaction, you can't make floating palettes or slave windows that are aware of each other to pass data via a common pipe, and you can't do other things like use OS alerts, OS dialogs, etc. And web apps in that SDI model have to worry abut the address bar, the back button, and other browsing interactions resident inside a web browser that have nothing to do with more tool oriented application interactions. Yah, yah, yah. However... First: Gears could do those things and does some of them already. One of the things from the interview I found interesting was that Chrome is optimized for Gears, but Gears is also a middle-ware package for the other browsers. I think that's a fascinating strategy to make things work. Second: I'm betting that somewhere between 65% and 80% of the applications that are built today *could* operate in an SDI model. Granted, it's nice to have floating windows, but apps with those types of interaction modalities are fairly advanced. UPS, for example, doesn't need that kind of interaction model for their WorldShip app, which is sophisticated in functionality, but straight forward in terms of the demand on UI modalities. Even something as sophisticated as Salesforce can get away with an SDI model for 90% of what people try to do with it. (And Flash/Flex/AIR can provide the rest.) Not everyone builds a sophisticated tool for manipulating artwork. Many just build tools for manipulating customer data. But there is a big difference between Chrome being Browser #4 and Chrome being a new application platform that happens to use OpenSource web technologies but plans on making a clean break from being a browser. As I'm sure you might have guessed... I wish they'd do the latter. There's a third possibility, which is what I heard in the interview: Chrome is a stimulus for a competitive response by the other big browser producers. It came out that Sergei Brin/Google would consider Chrome a success if MS IE9 adopted the core components from the Chrome open source set. I think that's really where I think this is heading and why I'm excited about it. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Interview with Google Chrome Team
On Sep 6, 2008, at 8:41 PM, Daniel Szuc wrote: What if Chrome was simply a stepping stone towards a Google OS? What if some of the principles in the Google apps to date suggest not having to rely on the need for deeper functions? One trend is to be able to serve up applications that have a few key simple functions that people use more regularly with the ability to switch on more features as needed. What's interesting about the interview is that the product manager said that the reason there is no Mac or Linux version yet is that they've optimized the existing beta heavily to Windows. He also said that Android, which *is* a Google OS, isn't using Chrome for the same reason. They are using the same rendering engine, WebKit, but have different UIs and components because their OS environment is very different. I thought that was very interesting and telling about Google's view. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Fonts and paper prototyping
On Sep 7, 2008, at 10:40 AM, Will Evans wrote: I would stay away from comic sans, even if completely appropriate for the medium, message and audience if for no other reason than to avoid the scorn of visual and graphic designers. It has, justly or not, acquired the patina of peewee herman caught in the peep show. It has become the 'toughskins' of typefaces. http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1823766 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] What's the right default font size for a website?
On Sep 10, 2008, at 2:47 AM, Yohan Creemers wrote: Font-sizes are easy to test in a usability test and easy to adjust to the test results. This is where one of the big benefits of remote testing come through: You can see the user's screen and browser configurations, to see if they have adjusted their resolution or are using any of the zooming capabilities of the system. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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?
On Sep 21, 2008, at 9:09 AM, David Malouf wrote: So no one has still convinced me that FB is obsolete. I don't think Facebook is obsolete. (I don't even know what obsolete means in this context. Is eBay obsolete? Amazon?) I do think that Facebook has yet to produce a meaningful business model. And this is a huge problem. Sure, it gets a ton of traffic (http://tinyurl.com/3nqov6) and has high average stays (http://tinyurl.com/3nqov6). But few of those 41m people a month actually produce any revenue for the site. Until the site has a mechanism to pay for the servers, the rent, and the almost 1000 employees, I really don't think they have long term prospects. Eventually, the investors will want the 10x returns on their investments. Where is that money coming from? This is where it becomes relevant to IxD, in my mind. Every time Facebook has tried to change the design to open a space for revenue generating functionality, the users have borked. The users have made it clear they don't want ads in their feeds. They don't want Facebook using them as a sales reference (Your buddy, Jared, just bought shoes at Amazon -- you should too!). They want to stay connected, but not pay for that privilege. (Twitter, btw, has the same issue.) So, I don't think they are obsolete. But I don't think they'll make it beyond the next 10 years. Which makes them a passing fad, in my opinion. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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?
On Sep 21, 2008, at 8:35 PM, Jarod Tang wrote: A more interesting model maybe, use the relationship as a foundation of some service, instead of make money directly on it, like, interests group (music experience sharing, other stuffs, ...), and it's more solid to build some bussiness on, by which the recommend mechanism is critical. yes, well, easier said than done. Monetizing that to meet their $15,000,000,000 valuation (or whatever the investors think they are worth today) will be really quite tricky. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Testing / Prototyping a faceted navigation
On Sep 20, 2008, at 9:32 PM, Todd Moy wrote: Let's assume I gave the participant the task of finding the hardcover book Owls of North America by John P. Author. For simplicity's sake, the only navigation entries available are the following facets: Subject, Author, and Format. The participant could start on any of these paths, and at any point filter down on any of the other facets. Now, this situation leads me to think that I need to plan for at least 9 different possible interaction paths (3^3). This could really get out of hand in a non-trivial example, of course. So, I'm interested in seeing how this situation might be approached. Thinking more broadly, I would think that testing something like tag navigation might also incur the same challenge. We've tested faceted navigation with paper prototypes by creating slices of pages for each facet. Also, in the testing, we knew the tasks (since we designed them), so were prepared for the likely facets the participant would choose. You could do the same with an interactive prototype, but it would take a bit of coding effort. That's why we start with paper -- quick return on minimal investment with minimized risk. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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?
On Sep 21, 2008, at 6:48 PM, Kontra wrote: I do think that Facebook has yet to produce a meaningful business model. And this is a huge problem. Wasn't for YouTube. Or Skype. Or MySpace. Etc. Looking for multimillion-dollar pay-off problems? Yah. Skype's worked out real good for eBay. And MySpace was a great investment for Newscorp. The writeoffs they've taken were all in the plan, right? I don't think MS put $124 million into 12% of Facebook so that they'd make it back on a Google acquisition. At least YouTube has advertising opportunities (albeit low) for Google. What's Facebook got? How does Facebook deliver a return to their investors? Or do investors no longer care about getting their money back? Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End?
On Sep 21, 2008, at 1:23 PM, Krystal R.Higgins wrote: Out of curiosity, what's the best revenue-producing social networking site model (MySpace) so far? eBay and Amazon. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End?
On Sep 22, 2008, at 5:34 AM, David Malouf wrote: But Jared, those are businesses that have ADDED social networking (especially the Amazon case) as a means of adding value to their core commerce business. I don't know what added means. eBay, from day 1, had their community and reputation management system. Amazon, from day 1, had their reviews and ratings. Both of these are core social networking features, albeit different than the Can-I-Facebook-You? pickup-line approach. So, your complaint about my bringing up eBay and Amazon is that they started with a viable business model instead of praying one appears to them in a burning bush before the investor money runs out? I guess I'm just lacking the faith that FB's mgmt has. But to be honest, as an end user, if FB can last 10 years w/o a viable business model. I could care less. In 10 years something else will get my attention and so long as I can keep using FB the way I have for free, it serves my needs quite well. So, is that it? FB is just a decade-long experiment to disprove the Dunbar number theory? Once it's outlived its usefulness, we just let it plummet back into the atmosphere and burn? I wonder if anyone has let the investors in on the nature of this experiment. :) Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End?
On Sep 22, 2008, at 11:52 AM, Will Evans wrote: There is a difference between sites that are Social Media Sites, and those that are Social Networking sites, although some do both. To the degree that a site encourages basic user generated content, but little else (ratings, comments, discussions, blog posts, images, video) as opposed to a Social Networking (connecting, friending, messaging) -- Some sites do some mix of networking and user generated content - some more than others - some blogs are really neither. If you can't comment on a post, rate a post, etc - than although it is user generated content - it's not social, for instance Seth Godin's personal blog is neither networking nor media because their are no mechanisms for connection of communication. Blah. Now we're killing kittens. (As in Every time you define a web 2.0 concept, God kills a kitten. Please! Remember the kittens!) So, Netflix lets you review and rate movies. So it's a social media site? And it let's you friend people (or connect to existing friends) and message them with specific recommendations. Does that make it a Social Networking site? BTW, Amazon lets you do the same things. As does eBay. And BankofAmerica.com has some of these features. What *isn't* a social media or social networking site? (See if you can answer that without killing any more kittens. :) ) Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Next previous button order
On Sep 22, 2008, at 10:50 AM, Brett Lutchman wrote: thank you for your private message. And thus ends another episode of As The List Churns. Tune in next week, when we'll hear David say, ... but design is more important than sex! 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?
On Sep 22, 2008, at 12:44 PM, Christine Boese wrote: What if the whole idea of a revenue model is the wrong question? Coming in from left field here, but does anyone ask, What is the revenue model of the Boston Commons? The town square? I see. So the $496,000,000 that has been poured into Facebook by Microsoft, Li Ka-shing, and the other venture capitalists should be thought of as a public-service project? Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End?
On Sep 22, 2008, at 4:05 PM, Fredrik Matheson wrote: In my view, Facebook is an elegant ruse. On the surface, it's a social utility that connects you with the people around you. Further down, it is more likely a machine that motivates regular people to connect, converse and share, and finds a way to extract valuable data from the millions of ongoing conversations. Hee. Who woulda thought all those super pokes and vampire bites would be worth millions some day? Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End?
On Sep 23, 2008, at 3:27 PM, Kontra wrote: Are you saying Skype is/was a pyramid scheme because they sold to eBay? Even if the scheme of the founders and shareholders were to sell their company to a larger entity as soon as they can? With what they know today, do you really think eBay would make the same investment again? Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End?
On Sep 23, 2008, at 9:23 PM, Brett Lutchman wrote: Google has no plans on making an immediate profit off of the companies they absolve. They are buying out all major 'virtual domain' property and services. I have no idea what that actually means. 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?
Apparently, not a disciple of Webster. On Sep 23, 2008, at 10:39 PM, Brett Lutchman wrote: Ahh! I see! In my church the word literally means To own. On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 10:23 PM, Tim Au Yeung [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The confusion doesn't stem from the concept (which is merely another way of expressing monopolist behavior) but the usage of the word absolve. Brett Lutchman wrote: Google has no plans on making an immediate profit off of the companies they absolve. They are buying out all major 'virtual domain' property and services. 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?
Nowadays, people assume absolve means being 'forgiven', but it actually doesnt. And by people, you meant every dictionary. http://tinyurl.com/3kggqo Ok. Let's say absolve means to own in your galaxy. I still have no idea what you're talking about. Jared On Sep 24, 2008, at 5:41 AM, Brett Lutchman wrote: Apparently, not a disciple of Webster. Maybe, Maybe not, the English language has crumbled so much that many definitions have been lost. I'll explain. Absolve- You simply think it's forgiveness or remission of sin. The word actually means: To declare ownership. Long, long ago, not in a galaxy far, far away, the term 'Slave' was an actual job position. These days if I say slave, people immediately think of whites oppressing blacks. If you were to owe me a sum of money but couldn't pay back, you would either be thrown in jail, would have to borrow from someone else to pay me back, sell what you have to pay me back or you could serve me to pay off your debt to me. If you chose to be my servant, I would legally 'own' you as an employee. The term 'absolve' meant I'm taking ownership of you and acquiring your services in order for you to pay back what you owed me. Once the debt was paid off, you had 2 choices, you can either go back to being an independent person or you could enlist for another term as a slave, but this time you would be making a profit. Often times, the relationship of the borrower to the lender grew in these times that the borrower ended up staying with the lender and began to generate a profit. Nowadays, people assume absolve means being 'forgiven', but it actually doesnt. It simply meant you were paying your debt off with your services with an employee status. Same thing today, If I'm a big company and I buy you out, I'm buying your good and bad. I'm buying out your business, services and debt. I've absolved your corporation and everything you have accomplished to date. This is really not that big of a deal. Other words could be used instead of absolve. 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?
On Sep 23, 2008, at 10:09 PM, Kontra wrote: With what they know today, do you really think eBay would make the same investment again? So now all MA has to be done under 20/20 vision? Some business decisions go south. Imagine that! Ok. So where is Facebook going? Is it purely a flip deal where Zuckerberg, et. al. are hoping that the inevitable MA acquirer doesn't do decent diligence? Or is there some semblance of a value statement they can talk to? Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The New Facebook Redesign: The Beginning of The End?
On Sep 24, 2008, at 6:47 AM, Will Evans wrote: Has anyone else read Amy Shuen's Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide and her discussion about Facebook and the the monetization of user generated value streams on social networks? For those interested - it does provide a good understanding about exactly why MS payed what they did for Facebook. I think Shuen's work is brilliant. However, all I see with the MS investment is a Google/Yahoo-acquisition blocker. Any attempts that Facebook has made to produce value beyond selling virtual gifts and poor-response CPM ads has been rebuffed by the users. I don't see how the value of the user relationships turns into capital for the business. It's possible I'm just dense about this and everyone else gets it. But to me, it feels a bit like the house of cards that's been holding up the mortgage biz for the past 6 years. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] Why Understanding Business Models is Important to Ix Designers
Interaction design is hard enough to do when the business model is clear. When the designer knows exactly how making a better design will increase the value of the company, (thereby increasing the chances they'll get a raise if they do a good job,) it's still hard to know what to do. All one has to do is look to Apple to see how this works. When iTunes 6.0 came out in January of 2006, they introduced a feature called the mini-store, which, for all practical purposes, bombed. (http://tinyurl.com/4snt6f ) This past month, in iTunes 8, they reintroduced the same business model, this time with a different interaction design called the Genius. It looks like this new design of the old mini-store is going to be a big contributor to Apple's next year of revenues. (How much? Well, they are now selling more than 1 billion songs each year. The Genius functionality could easily add another 20%-30% on top of that.) Some model, different design, huge increase in revenues. When the business model doesn't match the user experience or (as we've been discussing in the insane-people's-death-match thread, aka Facebook Redesign) when nobody seems to understand what the business model is, the designer can't know if they are helping or hurting the company by creating a better experience for the user. Creating a great experience can be an expensive investment. Unless the designer can clearly show the value of that investment, they'll be constantly fighting the forces of reducing costs to increase profitability. It's always cheaper to produce crap, so if you don't understand how quality factors into long term profitability, crap is what will win. Designers that can't talk to value in the business model also can't explain why they themselves should be on the payroll. This is why understanding the business model is essential to good interaction design. [Sorry if you feel this was an obvious missive, but, from other conversations on this list, I felt it's something that needed to be said out loud.] Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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?
On Sep 24, 2008, at 5:03 PM, Kontra wrote: Google extracts value out of mining network effects (PageRank) which is increasingly the primary source of revenue for smart companies. FaceBook has in just a few years managed to create the largest social network. If you don't think that's going to make FB shareholders happy one day, then just ignore it. Yah, ok. You don't either. :) Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] ADMIN (NOT):!!!!
You can take the admin rights out of the boy, but you can't take the boy out of the admin role... On Sep 24, 2008, at 5:40 PM, David Malouf wrote: Hi everyone, When it comes to IxDA as of Feb '08. I'm a nobody. I have no access to anything technical or official in any capacity what so ever. Sending me all your But my message didn't go through don't help either of us. It fills my inbox unnecessarily, and your requests get delayed. so if you have a problem with the list send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you have a problem with the oranization send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or contact your favorite Board member: http://www.ixda.org/about_leadership.php Plain old regular interaction designer, -- dave 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] Interesting site National Grid Floe
On Sep 23, 2008, at 10:47 PM, Catriona Lohan-Conway wrote: http://www.nationalgridfloe.com/ Anyone know who did it? LBI London? Looks like Mullen here in the states. http://adsoftheworld.com/media/online/national_grid_floe Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] 8 Ways to Save Design Conferences
On Sep 25, 2008, at 1:44 PM, Gloria Petron wrote: by Alissa Walker* * *Show's over, kids! Design conferences have become exercises in regenerated, wasteful spectacle. A self-described conference junkie shows us how to bring back the magic.* http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/conventional_wisdom_eight_ways_to_save_design_conferences_10833.asp From the about the author blurb: Alissa Walker once attended 21 conferences in a 12-month period, honest to god. Boy, what I would give to get my annual schedule *down* to only 21 conferences. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] practice vs. discipline roles vs. people
On Sep 25, 2008, at 12:27 PM, mark schraad wrote: That's odd. Over the last 10 years we have seen exactly the opposite. In spite of better software, making the capabilities more available, deep expertise is valued more in the marketplace than more general skillsets... at least at the tactical level. I wrote about this years ago in a piece called Specialists vs. Generalists: http://tinyurl.com/2oba65 It's a matter of economics. Specialists exists in a world where the economy has enough demand for specialized skills that it can support them. Generalists exist in the rest of the world, where the economy doesn't have enough demand for someone to work in a single area 100% of the time. And, as I said in the piece: Now, don’t make the mistake a lot of folks make and confuse *specialization* with *compartmentalization*. While the former is about having the majority of your experience in a single discipline, the latter is about only having experience in that discipline. While Dr. Margles prefers to work on hands and wrists, he could, if the need arose work on other areas. In fact, if he was the only doctor on the island, you’d want him to be the one to deliver the baby. And his medical training and experience would ensure he does it successfully. A compartmentalist isolates themselves from the other discipline around them, not really learning what they do or how they do it. Compartmentalism is bad for teams, because it means you have to have enough work to keep that individual busy within that discipline, and if needs shift or emergencies crop up, their value is dramatically diminished. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] practice vs. discipline roles vs. people
On Sep 25, 2008, at 8:16 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote: On Sep 25, 2008, at 4:59 PM, Jared Spool wrote: I wrote about this years ago in a piece called Specialists vs. Generalists So what would have to say about generalists who have expertise in more than one area? Would you call that another form of specialization? If I understand the question, I think you're asking about combined specialization. Physiatry is a great example. This is a unique specialization that is made up of three other, previously completely unrelated, specializations: neurotherapy, pain management, and rehabilitation science. It's a growing specialty dealing with the long-term recovery issues from physical and nervous-system trauma. While it was founded during WWII, it wasn't really practiced in any substantive way until the last 20 years or so. (Compare this to anesthesiology, which goes back to the 1840s, or surgery, which has been practiced since about 3300 BC. Physiatry is *new*.) I expect we'll see combined specializations in UX emerging frequently over the next few years. We're already seeing people who specialize in both financial services UI design and user research. Or folks who understand UX activities in gaming environments. Again, the economics will need to make it work. If the gaming industry can afford to hire these specialists and keep them busy 100% of the time, the specialization will flourish. But there has to be enough work within the organization to afford that. Hope that helps clarify it, Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] 8 Ways to Save Design Conferences
On Sep 25, 2008, at 8:54 PM, Catriona Lohan-Conway wrote: question is do you use the same presentation 21 times ;-) Oh, I wish. That would make it so much easier. No, I tend to create 10 or so new ones every year. I travel with 25 GB of presentation files. Sigh. Fortunately, I tend to tell the same jokes in every presentation. That does make it easier. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] 8 Ways to Save Design Conferences
Hah! It's a chinese curse scenario (be careful what you ask for because you might get it) On Sep 25, 2008, at 7:56 PM, mark schraad wrote: show off On Sep 25, 2008, at 7:50 PM, Jared Spool wrote: Boy, what I would give to get my annual schedule *down* to only 21 conferences. 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] practice vs. discipline roles vs. people
Really nicely put, Jonas. I think you're right on the money. This one point jumped out at me: On Sep 26, 2008, at 3:12 AM, Jonas Löwgren wrote: - I think there is a difference between adequate and outstanding interaction design ability. This is true, no matter what you're talking about. There's a difference between adequacy and excellence in architecture, medicine, politics, and management. And it's often overlooked by the foundations of the discipline. How do you identify the excellent within the field? How do you extract what makes them excel? How do you teach those elements to those that are merely adequate (or worse)? This is one of the key things we're looking into for UX. I don't have any answers yet, but I think we've made some progress. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] 8 Ways to Save Design Conferences
Hee. Neither asking for advice nor boasting. The best phrase to describe it might be whining. Jared On Sep 28, 2008, at 8:18 PM, Christina Wodtke wrote: This reminds me of a scene from James Thurber's The Pet Department. It shows a room completely covered with cats, and carries the text: We have cats the way some people have mice. to which the reply is: So I see. However, I cannot tell from your communication whether you are seeking advice or just boasting. On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 4:50 PM, Jared Spool [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 25, 2008, at 1:44 PM, Gloria Petron wrote: by Alissa Walker* * *Show's over, kids! Design conferences have become exercises in regenerated, wasteful spectacle. A self-described conference junkie shows us how to bring back the magic.* http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/conventional_wisdom_eight_ways_to_save_design_conferences_10833.asp From the about the author blurb: Alissa Walker once attended 21 conferences in a 12-month period, honest to god. Boy, what I would give to get my annual schedule *down* to only 21 conferences. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help 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] Site Map - How important is it as a link?
On Oct 1, 2008, at 11:31 AM, Sachin Ghodke wrote: There is this new trend of getting the site map below the fold by listing all the links in the web site but to me i see no point of doing this if the site as perfect navigation. Exactly right. There's a general perception that users *want* global navigation, but if you spend any time watching folks on sites, you quickly realize they are *only* interested in local navigation -- how do I get from *here* to *where I want to be*? So, any effort to add global nav to a page is a senseless waste of pixels. That's my opinion. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Site Map - How important is it as a link?
On Oct 1, 2008, at 4:35 PM, Danna Hudson wrote: There is this new trend of getting the site map below the fold by listing all the links in the web site but to me i see no point of doing this if the site as perfect navigation. The main reason I as an IxD add navigation as text links in the footer is because Search Engine bots eat the links up and it helps with cataloging the website and SEO. http://www.dailyseoblog.com/2007/06/importance-of-footer-text-in-seo/ There's a lot of misinformation floating around the SEO space on how the bots actually work. This is likely to fall into that category. Don't believe everything you read. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Site Map - How important is it as a link?
On Oct 1, 2008, at 9:06 PM, Paul Eisen wrote: There's a general perception that users *want* global navigation, but if you spend any time watching folks on sites, you quickly realize they are *only* interested in local navigation -- how do I get from *here* to *where I want to be*? So, any effort to add global nav to a page is a senseless waste of pixels. Jared, typically when I read your postings, I find myself nodding my head a lot in agreement. Not so this time. Am I misunderstanding what you mean by global nav? Research conducted at a now-defunct company I worked for in the dot com days (Immersant) showed many users commenting positively on seeing the full extent of the navigation - both global and local. Users appreciated gaining a sense of the scope from the global navigation, and, if it's comprehensive, engenders trust. I wonder if that's changed in the past 8 years. But even if it has, IMO the existence of the global nav still plays a critical role in enabling the user to navigate from here to where I want to be reliably and with confidence. I know. People think I'm nuts about this. If you join that crowd, you'll be in the majority. Take comfort in the numbers. Here's the logic: The Big Assertion: Users are looking for something specific on the site. If the user is on the page that has their specific target, then they don't need *any* navigation (either local or global). If the page they're on doesn't have the target content, then they need to find scent (a link with good trigger words) to that content. If good, clear local navigation gets them to target content, then they don't need any global navigation. It's only when the local navigation fails that global navigation comes into play. If the global navigation has great scent, then the user will be ok. But, global navigation is usually pretty general (Products, Solutions), so it's only a process of elimination if it works at all. If users are telling you that they really like your global nav, it's probably because your local nav is really poor. If your local nav was great, then the users wouldn't pay any attention to the global nav. (Of course, if users are going to completely scentless elements, such as Search or the Site Map, it's probably because the scent is practically non-existent for their target content.) I don't know how you measured that users appreciated gaining a sense of the scope from the global navigation, but when users are actually *using* a site, the #1 way to engender trust is to get them to their target content quickly (and make sure that content satiates their needs). Again, I'm in a minority with this opinion. I've only come to it from watching a couple of thousand people work with sites. There are millions who I haven't watched, so, I'm probably missing a big piece of the data. :) Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Site Map - How important is it as a link?
On Oct 2, 2008, at 1:31 AM, Kontra wrote: All this depends, unfortunately, on the definition of what a site map is. No, not really, since the user doesn't have a definition to work from. They only have an expectation based on what they think they'll get when they click on the link. Either they click or they don't. If they click, then it's the expectation, not the definition that matters. If they don't, none of it does. And thus is the nature of rickrolling. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Site Map - How important is it as a link?
On Oct 2, 2008, at 2:18 AM, John Gibbard wrote: Hmm, my only further addition to this would be to say what *harm* does it do to have both a well-thought out primary nav and a strong global footer? It's a safety net after all and if it adds any sense of 'completeness' what's a few pixels at the bottom of the page? Good question. My take: A) it eats up team resources. None of these things are free to conceive, design, develop, and maintain. If they aren't adding value, why make the investment? B) It eats up real estate. Every pixel needs to serve the design. If these pixels aren't adding value, why make the investment? C) It possibly adds confusion. Barry Schwartz has showed us that the more choice we give people, the harder it is to choose, and the less likely they'll be satisfied with their choices. If it's making the experience more complex and less satisfactory, why make the investment? These elements should have to fight for their right to be on the page, not get privilege by default. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Graphics to communicate usability process
On Oct 2, 2008, at 8:46 AM, Guillermo Ermel wrote: What do you people think about the use of theses diagrams to introduce usability in the design and develpment process? Guillermo, Personally, I think you're probably asking the wrong question. I'd like to know more about where this question is coming from. What problem are you trying to solve? What have you tried before and what challenges are you trying to overcome? Using generic notions of usability process to talk about introducing into the design and development process is like saying, Everyone should eat healthy and get exercise. Beyond over-generalized motherhood-and-apple-pie (apologies for the American-centric idiom) notions that every product should be as usable as possible, it's impossible to talk about any specifics without the context of what you're trying to accomplish. The result is an Well, it depends answer -- something I find I hate saying. (We used to sell a t-shirt with this motto, but I pulled it because I felt it was too condescending.) That's why I think you're struggling finding the resource you're seeking. It doesn't really exist beyond inapplicable generalities. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Site Map - How important is it as a link?
On Oct 2, 2008, at 8:30 AM, Sachin Ghodke wrote: What I now feel, I should stick to after reading all this, I would now use SiteMap only while discussing internally the structure/skeleton of the website. This will provide my peers and bosses the overview of the website and what shape its taking. And also publish it to client for making them understand if I have understood the links correctly and if we are on the same page. If we use sitemap for this function I think it has more than served it purpose of being one. Yes, it is unfortunate that, in the world of information architecture, we have both sitemaps and site maps. Some day we'll learn not to overload terms. Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks 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] Ideas for acitivities for users at our annual conference.
On Oct 2, 2008, at 1:57 PM, Benjamin Ho wrote: We're having our annual user conference very soon and we're looking to have an interactive component to our presentation at the end where our users are asked to do something. As for that certain something, we're not sure yet what to do. We had thought of a design workshop but thought that wouldn't be too useful to have 20 some odd people argue about the merits of the design - it's better left to testing. So I'm coming to you fine folks for ideas. What kind of activity we can offer our users that make it entertaining and engaging? I have ideas. Want to give a little more background on your company, the users, and your presentation? I bet one of the ideas I have might match. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Site Map - How important is it as a link?
On Oct 2, 2008, at 6:05 PM, Paul Eisen wrote: Jared said: Yes, but that's a problem with research. Perfect research (which, like anything perfect, is only an ideal) would anticipate all the needs and inform the design thusly. Well, if we're going to get purist, then I'd contend after we've sampled the full population of users with our unlimited time and resources, our perfect research would reveal all of those atypical users who say something like, I'd really love to see an overview of the major sections, so I can insert some rationale here. So, even in the limit, maybe there's a reason to waste those pixels on the global nav. hah! Touche! Right after the More Cowbell crowd, I guess. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Site Map - How important is it as a link?
On Oct 2, 2008, at 6:48 PM, Kontra wrote: All this depends, unfortunately, on the definition of what a site map is. No, not really, since the user doesn't have a definition to work from. Did you even read what I wrote? Yes. 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
