Re: [IxDA Discuss] Need for Portal Design Guidelines?
Paul E., I'm very interested in where you're going with this concept. I have been heavily involved in designing for portal over the last 9 months and have found the technology to be too tightly coupled to the interface. A very simple implementation can be accomplished out of the box with most portal software, but anything beyond the most basic configuration has been extremely problematic. I surmise this is a larger issue in enterprise IT departments where UX and IxD is more rare. As our practice becomes more mature within the enterprise, it is no surprise that we are finding that bad design abounds. To Paul B.'s point, I'm not sure that UX guidelines for a portal differ from UX guidelines across the board. A clear way to organize and find documents is an applicable design pattern for portals and non-portals. Portal technology is built on the premise that the system supports personalization by the user (iGoogle). I would be more interested in hearing about design guidelines for personalization of a portal, not necessarily best design practices, which are universal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=47479 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] Design Thinking and The Black Swan
Design thinking is about creating a narrative of activity, or of modeling a behavior and designing solutions that will ensure the expected or anticipated behavior. We typically find ourselves telling a story of how someone experiences or interacts with a physical device or service. Much of what design encompasses is narrative. I have recently been reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and the implications this has on design thinking is striking. The Black Swan theory tells us that we create narrative to try to explain an unexplainable world; we reduce reality to a narrative of comprehensible portions and tailor the narrative to fit our limited model of the explainable. Our natural inclination is empirical. Create a story from our experiences. Are there examples of a design solution that were once thought to be sound, catastrophically failing after performing as expected for length of time? Are there examples of designs that failed and had major negative impact? If so, what role did the designer play in those failures (and the narrative that was created in the process of design) ? Here are some that I came up with: The Titanic not really, user error. The Space Shuttle disaster (1st) - maybe. 9/11 Failure of the process of gathering intelligence. A structural failure - translated: is this a failure in engineering, not design (maybe) A service would be more interesting, but I cannot think of an example. Happy Friday! Chris Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Preparing a presentation on Fireworks
I've been testing a few different prototyping tools including Fireworks CS4. There are a couple of online tutorials at Adobe - the one I remember was with David Hogue from Fluid (dude, where's my hop up!?). It seems like the real power comes with the ability to simulate rich interactions. Clickable .PDF's can be made with Omnigraffle. I recently gave Protoshare and Axure a test drive. The ability to quickly simulate mouse events was *very* easy in Axure, easier than Fireworks. Fireworks definitely allows more flexibility in drawing, but tool switching and general navigation slowed things down. I'm interested to catch this presentation when it is posted. Cheers, Chris Christopher Rivard http://www.chrisrivard.com/ http://twitter.com/clearwired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38092 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Microsites...good or bad?
Microsites that I've worked on have always set out to reinforce the brand, but have originated as some parallel marketing effort - seasonal, new product launch, etc. I'm not a big fan of them - but they can be done successfully and they allow for some creative freedom away from the main site architecture and navigation. Take a look at: https://www.smartwool.com Microsites: http://www.smartwool.com/woolology/ http://www.smartwool.com/phd/ I don't think they detract from the brand experience and there is always a way to get back to the mothership. -Chris aim: clearwired twitter: clearwired www.chrisrivard.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38670 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Microsites...good or bad?
Doug, ### The only way to address this problem is to institute, by corporate dictat, a flexbile content management framework that gives outlet to the entrepreneurial energy that gives rise to them. ### That sounds super-scary! It seems like with a microsite, you can create a sandbox for the marketing folks to play in without diluting the brand or really mucking things up on a primary site. I agree with you that microsites are evidence of brand dilution but I have found they are used as a stopgap when a company cannot (budget constraints) go through a full re-brand or cannot take the time to fully integrate some new product or marketing initiative. That is the most common scenario that I have seen. Some big ships are just too hard to turn. -Chris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38670 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
