User Interface

• Most Topular Stories

• UI: Getting the Details Right

  InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

  PJB

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:28 am

  Why 5 and not 7, 9 or 3? "User interface details matter to the overall user experience. Many users may not consciously notice these details on your site yet they do have an impact on the overall user experience. When everything feels just right the perception of your site and brand is improved. In this article, we'll look at 5 different types of UI details you should pay attention to." (Jamie Appleseed a.k.a. @jamieappleseed ~ Baymard Institute)

• Are Design Patterns an Anti-pattern?

  InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

  PJB

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:53 am

  Or, how anti-patterns become dark patterns. "Design patterns are generally considered a good thing, but do they actually help run a user experience group? As a user experience group manager and an observer (and sponsor) of design pattern exercises, I've come to have serious questions about their actual utility. It's not that design pattern libraries are bad, but that in a world of limited resources, it is it is not clear that the investment is worth it. Fortunately, there is a better approach: reaching outside the design group to solve the whole problem." (Stephen Turbek a.k.a.

• Basecamp Next's caching hardware

  Signal vs. Noise

  David

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:45 am

  From the very start, we wanted Basecamp Next to be fast. Really, really fast. To do so we built a russian-doll architecture of nested caching that I’ll write up in detail soon. But for now I just wanted to share where all this caching is going to live as we just installed it at the hosting center. It kinda reminds me of what pictures of a drug raid look like when they lay out all the coke and cash on the table, but this is what 864GB of RAM looks like: Cost of the loot was $12,000.

• Dyson to NY: drop dead

  Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:21 am

  DYSON’S WEBSITE won’t sell me a vacuum cleaner. It claims New York, a U.S. state it provides in its own drop-down menu, is “not a valid state.” I have previously ordered Dyson products from the Dyson website and shipped them to a different address in New York. I have an account and everything. But the website won’t let me ship products to my office. This is just one of about a dozen errors that wasted half an hour of my life today.

• Steve Jobs: People With Passion Change the World

  ZURB

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:40 pm

  Lately, we've been thinking a lot about passion around the offices at ZURB. Where exactly does passion come from? How does an aspiring entrepreneur turn a desire into a passion? So it's no wonder that a recently unearthed vintage video of Steve Jobs talking about passion caught our eye: What Jobs is talking about here is being truly passionate about your work, for your craft. Investing yourself in your ideas when no one else will, when there might not be any financial rewards. We really love his observation, but what really fascinated us was when Jobs says: Those people that are crazy enough…

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  Signal vs. Noise

• Basecamp Next's caching hardware

  David

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:45 am

  From the very start, we wanted Basecamp Next to be fast. Really, really fast. To do so we built a russian-doll architecture of nested caching that I’ll write up in detail soon. But for now I just wanted to share where all this caching is going to live as we just installed it at the hosting center. It kinda reminds me of what pictures of a drug raid look like when they lay out all the coke and cash on the table, but this is what 864GB of RAM looks like: Cost of the loot was $12,000.

• Three years later, Mr. Moore is still letting us punt on database sharding

  David

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:23 am

  Three years ago, I wrote about how improvements in technology keep allowing us to punt on sharding the Basecamp database. This is still true, only more so now. We’ve grown enormously over the last three years but RAM keeps getting cheaper and FusionIO SSD’s keep getting faster. If anything, it seems like recent advances in SSD technology are accelerating and it’s ever more unlikely that we’ll need to shard Basecamp. Basecamp remains a perfect candidate for sharding. Isolated accounts, no sharing between them. Yet the cost in increased complexity is constant while the…

• REWORK passes 200,000 copies sold!

  David

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:43 pm

  We just got our royalty statement from Crown and are pretty excited about the fact that we’ve sold over 200,000 copies of REWORK now. About three quarters of the sales have been hardcover books with audio and ebook splitting the remainder. Thanks to everyone who helped us get here by buying and recommending the book. We are very grateful for your support in getting the word out.

• Basecamp Next: A peek at early iterations of the Projects screen

  Jason F.

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:06 pm

  We’ve been working on Basecamp Next since March 2011 and we’re getting close to the public release. The private beta is now in full swing. Early iterations on the Projects screen We thought it might be fun to share some of the early design explorations for one particular screen, the Projects screen. Basically, the projects screen is a list of your projects. You can create new projects there as well. We explored hundreds iterations of the screen – from small tweaks to fundamental shifts in the feature itself. Only a fraction of the explorations are shown in the video below.

• Give me spark

  David

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:14 am

  Some of the best decisions and designs at 37signals have emerged from intensely contested debates. Not just between Jason and me, but from anyone in the company. When sparks fly, some truly great ideas come to light. The catch is that the heat must arise around the decision itself. Debates go off track when personal biases or old grudges come into play. So long as each party sticks to the merits, adding some fire will only unearth new angles and concerns. This energy is so important to how 37signals operates that I consider it every time we make a hire. Is this person willing to fight for…

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  ZURB

• Imitation is Suicide

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:30 pm

  There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance" That quote has always got me thinking about the difference between innovation and imitation. Take Steve Jobs, for instance. He has been both hailed as an innovator and crucified for being…

• Steve Jobs: People With Passion Change the World

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:40 pm

  Lately, we've been thinking a lot about passion around the offices at ZURB. Where exactly does passion come from? How does an aspiring entrepreneur turn a desire into a passion? So it's no wonder that a recently unearthed vintage video of Steve Jobs talking about passion caught our eye: What Jobs is talking about here is being truly passionate about your work, for your craft. Investing yourself in your ideas when no one else will, when there might not be any financial rewards. We really love his observation, but what really fascinated us was when Jobs says: Those people that are crazy enough…

• ZURB Seeks an Awesome Marketing Lead and a Product Marketer

  25 Jan 2012 | 6:05 pm

  In the past, designers tended to work only with other designers. That's no longer the case in this day and age. Designers who build awesome products need a strong support team. That's something we know firsthand at ZURB, which is why we're looking for a great marketing team to give our designers the support they need. We're looking for a Marketing Lead and a Product Marketer. The dynamics of these two new roles will shape the way we do things here at ZURB. And we're super stoked at the opportunities this dynamic duo will create. Marketing Lead The Marketing Lead will lead (pun fully intended)…

• Test Your Assumptions Before Implementing Them: Introducing Enroll

  25 Jan 2012 | 2:50 pm

  How many times have you heard this said while you’re building a product: Listen, a few customers have requested this already, a number of us here love this feature. Let’s just build this and see how well it does. Analytics will tell us if this is a keeper or not. This is the quickest way to learn if people like the feature. One of our good friends and loyal customers who IPO’d last year (can’t mention their name unfortunately) took this very approach: Build it, launch it, and see how well it does. When I asked him how well this approach worked out for him, three things were apparent:…

• 3 Tips On How To Approach User Testing

  24 Jan 2012 | 2:10 pm

  We've said it once and we'll say it again, get feedback or fail. Spending tons of money to launch a product only to later learn that it's a flop (we're looking at you, Google Wave) is not only a waste of time and money, but it can damage your reputation. You need feedback while building your product. That's where user testing comes in. However, many product designers fear putting their work out in front of would-be customers before it's finished. After all, who wants to expose something they've created to criticism? Who likes to hear where they've gone wrong? Then there's all the work —…

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  Dustin Diaz: JavaScriptr

• Matador: The Obvious MVC Framework for Node

  4 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Yeah, there s already other frameworks out there for Node that do some neat things. But today @dustin and myself launched an MVC Framework for Node.js architected to suit MVC enthusiasts. Introducing Matador! Providing sane defaults and a simple development structure, scaling as your application grows. Features a flexible routing system, easy controller mappings, basic request filtering, and a handy scaffolding tool to get up and running quickly. Rather than explaining more here, have a play yourself. Cheers!

• Sandboxing JavaScript

  2 Aug 2011 | 10:00 am

  Today I fired off a tweet that in some developers eyes may have been controversial But to the point, the task at hand I was trying to solve was to bundle a set of core modules built by Ender along side my own library (that uses Ender), and not populate the global space. More after the jump

• Crouching Ender, hidden command

  22 Apr 2011 | 2:40 pm

  For those of you following Ender (the open micro-to-macro API for composing your own custom JavaScript library), today we have a fresh new CLI (command line interface) that will help you manage your Ender packages. It s pretty rad ( cause, you know, we like it) and it makes it extremely useful when maintaining one Ender project, to another. So without further fuss, let s cut this post short and check out this short video composed by everyones favorite JavaScript hipster and core Ender contributor (heh, there s only two of us), @fat.

• Ender.js - The open submodule library

  4 Apr 2011 | 3:00 pm

  With great excitement it brings me pleasure to announce an all-to-predictable endpoint of recent events ? Ender.js, an open submodule library. Ender is a small yet powerful JavaScript library composed of application agnostic opensource submodules wrapped in a slick intuitive interface. At only 7k Ender.js can help you build anything from small prototypes to providing a solid base for large-scale rich applications.

• Qwery - The Tiny Selector Engine

  23 Mar 2011 | 5:28 pm

  It s true. The world needs another JavaScript DOM Selector Engine. So without further fuss - introducing Qwery - The Tiny Selector Engine. It s a port from where Simon Willison left off with his getElementsBySelector in 2003, and believe it or not, this is exactly where jQuery started. Qwery supports all the basic CSS1 & CSS2 selectors, plus the additional (most important) attribute selectors from CSS3. Additionally it allows multi-selects (div,p) as well as context-aware selectors (like jQuery.find()). Last but not least, it s open source awaiting your valuable feedback to make it leaner…

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  UX Magazine

• Announcing UX Magazine's New Jobs Board

  UX Magazine Staff

  17 Jan 2012 | 5:56 am

  Over the past few years, we’ve heard from a lot of business and hiring managers that they find it hard to find qualified UX professionals and UX-minded businesspeople to fill vacant jobs in their organizations. We’ve also heard from UX pros who say that, in a world where anyone can claim to be able to “do UX,” it’s hard to stand out from throngs of job seekers on high-volume sites such as Monster.com and Indeed.com. We’re therefore pleased to announce that we’ve launched a new jobs board exclusively for the UX community. We believe that UX Magazine’s strong reputation in and…

• App Review: Weathermob - Express How You Feel About the Weather

  Sachendra Yadav

  12 Jan 2012 | 4:32 am

  Weathermob is a niche social networking service for sharing information about local weather, much as Instagram is a service for sharing pictures. It lets you share what you’re feeling about local weather and see what your friends are saying about theirs. A lot of weather apps allow users to share the weather report with Facebook, Twitter, and so on, but what’s interesting with Weathermob is the manner in which it helps the user put together an engaging story. This is a great example how to make a utility application engaging. It takes a basic function—viewing a weather report—and…

• Raising the Bar for Mobile Standards

  Megan Geyer

  11 Jan 2012 | 5:03 am

  During a break in a long research day, I was speaking to a client about a project I was working on to develop iOS standards for a global financial company. Their initial response was, “What, you’re creating something beyond the Apple iOS Standards? What else is there to it?” We ended up having a lengthy discussion about mobile standards—what they are, what they are not, and what they should be. Apple, for instance, does a great job of explaining their touch interaction model and the individual UI elements of iOS, giving examples of when and how they are used. But there’s more to it…

• Trend Guide for 2012 CES

  UX Magazine Staff

  10 Jan 2012 | 5:12 am

  For anyone interested in trends in consumer electronics or in this year's Consumer Electronic's Show (CES), the folks at Upstream have put together an interesting trend guide. In their words: In advance of this year’s show, we’ve created a trend report. We hope it will serve as a valuable guide for visitors, placing the products, services and experiences they see into the larger context of 5 macro-trends:QUANTIFIED SELF & M-HEALTHPersonal biometrics and digital enabled behavior analysis will increasingly let consumers discreetly track and manage their lives more effectively.GESTURAL…

• Paying Attention: The Most Valuable Skill in UX Research

  Juliette Melton

  10 Jan 2012 | 4:02 am

  When you read about UX research you find lots of emphasis on the planning and structure of the research sessions. Where will you do research at a person's home or in a research facility? Will you go through a recruiting agency or recruit from your own network? Are you looking for target users? Can remote methods play a part? These questions are all important in developing a solid research plan, but they don't speak much to the actual experience of asking people questions and listening to what they tell you. You might not hear many people admit that user research can sometimes be boring.

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  Good Experience

• New Gel Video: Alicia Hansen

  Mark Hurst

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:26 am

  Alicia's nonprofit, NYC Salt, provides teenagers in New York with professional-grade skills in photography and other visual communication - thereby helping them succeed academically and professionally. Here Alicia introduces the Gel 2011 audience to two of her students, both of whom entered college later in the year, on scholarships they achieved in large part due to their time with NYC Salt.

• New Gel Video: Marc Abrahams

  Mark Hurst

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:13 am

  The founder of the Ig Nobel Prize describes some past favorites - including some connections to other Gel 2011 presentations. See also Marc's Annals of Improbable Research.

• New Gel Video: Michelle Barwell

  Mark Hurst

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:08 am

  As a psychiatrist for Operation Safety Net in Pittsburgh, Dr. Michelle Barwell delivers mental health care to the homeless - where they live. Here she describes how she goes about this highly unusual and courageous work.

• New Gel Video: James Chan

  Mark Hurst

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:05 am

  Native Singaporean, venture capitalist, and photographer James Chan has seen a tremendous transformation of that city-state as it grew into its present-day success. Here he describes some of the policies that set Singapore apart - and could help other cities succeed.

• New Gel Video: Howard Warren

  Mark Hurst

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:02 am

  Science teacher and explorer Howard Warren describes a unique archaeological treasure within New York City: Dead Horse Bay, an abandoned beach filled with artifacts from a particular moment in the 20th century.

• Photostream from Daylife

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  information aesthetics

• The State of the Union Address 2012 - Infographically Enhanced

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:41 pm

  Similar to the original approach in 2011, this year's State of the Union was made available online in a so-called 'enhanced' version, which basically consisted of a split-screen video that shows President Obama giving his speech on one side, and a large collection contextual information and facts, as well as infographics, on the other. In other words: 1 hour and 5 minutes worth of high-level political facts, captured in 102 unique slides, of which about 26 can be labelled as visualization of some kind. You can watch the 'enhanced' version of the State of the Union 2012 below or at the White…

• Time Maps: Morphing a Country According to its Travel Time

  25 Jan 2012 | 2:30 pm

  In the current age, we tend to think in time rather than absolute distance when estimating our itineraries. Accordingly, the beautiful Timemaps [timemaps.nl] by Vincent Meertens of Graph[s]ic shows the required travel times within The Netherlands by public transportation through morphing its silhouette along a colorful, circular time measure. Users are able to select any train station location (by clicking inside the map), and time of day (via a slider). As a result, the map will expand at night, and shrink in the morning due to the availability of trains. The color coding corresponds to the…

• TEDx Talk on Molecular Animation: Combining Cinema and Biology

  24 Jan 2012 | 2:35 pm

  Right now, while you are reading this article, billions of your cells are busy replicating your DNA information. Although molecules are smaller than the wavelength of light, and thus we have no way to directly observe them, can we still somehow visualize these processes? Biomedical animator and MacArthur Foundation nominee Drew Berry of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research presents in a recent TEDx talk of less than 9 minutes, the state-of-the-art in molecular animation. He shows an accurate representation of the actual biological processes that happen on molecular scale,…

• What Stamen Design Accomplished in 2011 (Cool Maps)

  18 Jan 2012 | 1:48 pm

  Infosthetics readers might know Stamen Design as one of the front-runners and innovators that drove the popularity of data visualization. With works like Oakland Crimespotting, Cabspotting and Trulia Hindsight, they combined the concept of mapping with new kinds of geo-located data. After some mass audience exposure through online live Twitter visualizations alongside various MTV awards, Stamen somehow disappeared a bit from the infosthetics radar. For those who are curious on what Stamen was up to, Erik just published an overview of what they did in 2011 [stamen.com]. Many of their works can…

• Ushahidi: Free Software for Data Collection, Visualization & Mapping

  17 Jan 2012 | 1:12 pm

  Ushahidi [ushahidi.com] is a non-profit tech company that develops free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. "Ushahidi" means "testimony" in Swahili. It was also the title of a website that mapped reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Accordingly, its slogan is "Changing the World - One Map at the Time". Therefore, Ushahidi aims to empower organizations and people all over the world to increase public awareness around social events like elections, local crises or resources. It provides free…

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  UXmatters

• Video Diaries: A Method for Understanding New Usage Patterns

  pabini@uxmatters.com

  23 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  By Paul Bryan Published: January 23, 2012 In my new column, UX Strategy, I’ll explore the growing field of user experience strategy, which combines business strategy with user experience design to build a rationale and a road map for guiding an organization’s UX efforts. This column will address methods and practices that UX Strategists can use to collect data, formulate personas and interaction models, document UX strategies, and create UX road maps. “UX teams are feeling the pressure from all sides to integrate and innovate as they design user interfaces that must span multiple…

• Defining an Interaction Model: The Cornerstone of Application Design

  pabini@uxmatters.com

  23 Jan 2012 | 4:58 am

  By Jim Nieters Published: January 23, 2012 “An interaction model is a design model that binds an application together in a way that supports the conceptual models of its target users.” In March of 2011, I joined HP to lead the User Experience and Front-End Development organization for Consumer Travel. My goal? To design products that transform the future of travel. At the time, eleven UX professionals had already been working on the design for one of our travel applications for several months. Unfortunately, I had to throw the entire design away and start from scratch. Why? In addition to…

• When All On Means All Off

  pabini@uxmatters.com

  23 Jan 2012 | 4:55 am

  By Carol Barnum Published: January 23, 2012 “Here’s my own experience of the problems I encountered with my DVR remote after my recent switch from one cable provider to another.” We hear a lot about the difficulty of getting all of our entertainment devices to talk to each other. Jakob Nielsen once wrote an Alertbox column about this problem, showing the six different remotes he uses to watch TV. Often, people buy after-market, add-on products to remedy such problems—for example, Logitech’s Harmony all-in-one remote, which lets users connect to all of their devices via a single…

• Global UX: A Journey

  pabini@uxmatters.com

  23 Jan 2012 | 4:51 am

  By Whitney Quesenbery and Daniel Szuc Published: January 23, 2012 “The UX research and design professions are seeing a shift that edges us beyond the boundaries within which we live and work.” In our increasingly connected world of 2012, we have more ways of continually learning to better understand, communicate, live, and work with each other, both locally and globally. The old boundaries, borders, and divisions are slowly disappearing, and established systems are starting to break down, making it challenging to learn what this new world means to all of us. When it is easy to become a…

• How Important Are UX Degrees and Certifications?

  pabini@uxmatters.com

  21 Jan 2012 | 6:14 pm

  By Janet M. Six Published: January 23, 2012 Send your questions to Ask UXmatters and get answers from some of the top professionals in UX. In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss whether UX professionals need to have degrees or certifications in areas of study relating to user experience to practice in the field and the value that they provide. In my monthly column, Ask UXmatters, a panel of UX experts answers our readers’ questions about a broad range of user experience matters. To get answers to your own questions about UX strategy, design, user research, or any other topic…

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  A List Apart

• Building Twitter Bootstrap

  17 Jan 2012 | 3:00 am

  Bootstrap is an open-source front-end toolkit created to help designers and developers quickly and efficiently build great stuff online. Its goal is to provide a refined, well-documented, and extensive library of flexible design components created with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for others to build and innovate on. Today, it has grown to include dozens of components and has become the most popular project on GitHub, with more than 13,000 watchers and 2,000 forks. Mark Otto, the co-creator of Bootstrap, sheds light on how and why Bootstrap was made, the processes used to create it, and how it…

• An Important Time for Design

  17 Jan 2012 | 3:00 am

  Design is on a roll. Client services are experiencing a major uptick in demand, seasoned design professionals are abandoning client work in favor of entrepreneurship, and designer-co-founded startups such as Kickstarter and Airbnb are taking center stage. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that design has a massive role to play in the evolution of the web and the next generation of web products. The result, says Cameron Koczon, is that designers have now been given a blank check—one that lets web designers band together as a community to change the way design is…

• A Pixel Identity Crisis

  17 Jan 2012 | 3:00 am

  The pixel has long been the atomic particle of screen based design: a knowable, concrete unit of measurement. But layouts based on the hardware pixel are fast becoming an endangered species. Even the introduction of a new, W3C standard reference pixel, although it promises stability in the long-term, can't help us navigate the current chaos. Consider the two "standard" pixel definitions and 500 "standard" viewports your user's Android device may support. To create designs that transcend platform differences—the promise of the web and standards—you must normalize pixels across devices.

• What I Learned About the Web in 2011

  13 Dec 2011 | 1:00 am

  As the year draws to a close, we asked some A List Apart readers to tell us what they learned about the web in 2011. Together their responses summarize the joys and challenges of this magical place we call the internet. We need to continue to iterate, to embrace change, and challenge complexity to keep shipping. Above all, we must continue to reach out to one another, to teach, to support, to help, and to build the community that sustains us.

• Say No to SOPA

  29 Nov 2011 | 2:00 am

  A List Apart strongly opposes United States H.R.3261 AKA the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an ill-conceived lobbyist-driven piece of legislation that is technically impossible to enforce, cripplingly burdensome to support, and would, without hyperbole, destroy the internet as we know it. SOPA approaches the problem of content piracy with a broad brush, lights that brush on fire, and soaks the whole web in gasoline. If passed, SOPA will allow corporations to block the domains of websites that are “capable of” or “seem to encourage” copyright infringement. Once a domain is blocked,…

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  LukeW | Writings on Digital Product Strategy and Design

• Apple's Numbers in January 2012

  Luke Wroblewski

  23 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  At Apple's October 2011 iPhone launch, CEO Tim Cook shared updated market and sales numbers. Back then Apple had sold 250 million iOS devices. Here's what the story looks like today.A total of 315M iOS devices have been sold. (source)85M of these devices are using the iCloud service Apple rolled out last year. (source)In the fourth quarter of 2011, Apple sold 37.04M iPhones, 15.4M iPads, 5.43M iPods, 1.4M Apple TVs, and 5.2M Macs. (source)iPod Touches made up over half of iPod sales this quarter. (source)Over 600,000 copies of iBooks Author have been downloaded since it was announced last…

• Device Experiences & Responsive Design

  Luke Wroblewski

  23 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  I recently updated my article on Device Classes & Responsive Design for Facebook's HTML5 resource center, which is designed to help developers reach people on desktops, smartphones and tablets using web standards. Check it out on Facebook.Device Experiences & Responsive DesignWhile the task of designing Web applications and sites for multiple devices can be daunting, two techniques can make the process more manageable: classifying device experiences and designing/building responsively. Here’s how these two approaches can work together to optimize interface designs across a wide range of…

• Data Monday: iPhone Closing the Gap

  Luke Wroblewski

  22 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  Google's Android operating system is seeing 700,000 activations a day. Despite this meteoric growth, Apple's iPhone has been gaining on Android in recent smartphone sales in the United States.According to the NPD Group, Apple's iOS moved up to 43% of U.S. smartphone sales in October and November, compared with 26% in the third quarter. Meanwhile, Android’s share of U.S. smartphone sales dropped from a high of 60% in the third quarter to 47% in October and November. NPD data comes from large online surveys weighted to match US demographics and asks recent smartphone buyers what they bought.

• There's a Smartphone Inside

  Luke Wroblewski

  18 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  Technology has a way of eating itself. Products that once seemed like the future get subsumed by the next generation of gadgets. Consider the DVD player now a feature of laptop computers and cars. Or the Instant Messenger client now just a feature on many Web sites and apps. Our latest technical marvel, the smartphone, isn't immune from this trend as a lot of the innovative sensors within smartphones are currently making their way into a new batch of products.The Nest Learning Thermostat has a collection of six sensors inside which measure and track temperature, ambient light, humidity,…

• The Four Horsemen of JavaScript

  Luke Wroblewski

  17 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  I'm not technical enough to understand the full implications of this but it strikes me as very interesting: JavaScript simultaneously running the client, server, data structure, and third party connections of software. Let me elaborate.I spent the last four weeks learning to write code for Node.js and MongoDB. For the unfamiliar, Node.js is an application platform built on a JavaScript runtime and MongoDB is a high performance database that stores "documents" using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). So with Node.js, you can use JavaScript to set up a server and build network apps on it. With…

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  Andy Budd::Blogography Articles

• Web Design Disciplines Explained Through the Medium of Dungeons & Dragons

  andybudd

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:23 am

  First off let me apologise for the laboured metaphor I’m about to inflict on you, but I thought it could be entertaining to try and describe the web design industry using a medium I’m sure you’re all familiar with—Dungeons & Dragons. However I should point out that I’m no D&D expert, having played it last when I was 13. So please don’t leave comments to the line of “you got that all wrong as those character classes were changed in AD&D 2nd Edition, Unearthed Arcana.” or I’ll pull out my +2 broadsword and go Berserker on your ass.

• UX Developer is a misleading and potentially damaging job title

  andybudd

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:58 am

  I was really disappointed to see a recent post from somebody I admire and respect defend the validity of the new UX Developer job title that has been cropping up of late. As well as being misleading, the title, UX Developer has implications that are damaging to the field of User Experience and will hasten the current devaluation of the term. Despite what many newcomers to the industry may think, User Experience Design is a well-defined specialism as distinct from visual or interface design. The practice of user experience design is a specific field of study with its own books, conferences,…

• The Tyranny of the Minimum Viable Product

  andybudd

  22 Dec 2011 | 8:04 am

  I first came across the term Minimum Viable Product when I dropped into a talk by Eric Reis at the Web 2.0 Expo in New Year a few year’s back. As a company that has always worked on variable scope projects, defining a MVP seemed like a great way of managing client expectations. Rather than clients worrying whether your team would deliver something useful, you’d work together to define the smallest thing you could release and it still be a success. You would then guarantee that the client would meet their core business needs, and everything else you manage to deliver in that time…

• Why designers are holding themselves back

  andybudd

  3 Dec 2011 | 7:21 am

  Have you every been in the situation where the client keeps requesting tweaks to the design or changes in functionality? As you sit moving boxes around the page, the budget is slowly draining away and you’re no longer sure whether the project can be completed on target? In these situations what do you do? Some designers will push back on the client, claiming that these changes were never in the agreed brief and that they had only budgeted for 2 or 3 rounds of design. Others will simply swallow the cost in the hope that the changes are almost finished and in the knowledge that…

• Hanging with the Hipsters in East London

  andybudd

  1 Dec 2011 | 1:19 pm

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  Curb Cut

• Picture a Day, Cancer and Disability

  Christopher Phillips

  7 Jan 2012 | 10:23 am

  A photographic essay of someone acquiring a disability. For me, it served as a beautiful reminder of the thin line between the sometimes meaningless categorizations of people who are temporarily able bodied and people with disabilities. Enjoy. (warning: brief nudity and graphic medical imagery) Jeff’s Website

• The Benefits of Captions

  Christopher Phillips

  11 Nov 2011 | 6:17 pm

  Many accessibility efforts to make information more accessible to users with disabilities provide benefits to all users. Calling out these benefits can lead to a decision for accessibility in spite of the benefits provided to users with disabilities. Captions are a great example,here are a few lists outlining some of those: The Benefits of Captioning (sidebar) Benefits of Closed Captioning Benefits of Captioning Who Benefits from Captions Benefits of Closed Captioning & Transcription Ten Reasons to Caption Your Web Videos Even if you are a callous jerk who doesn’t care about the 3.5% of…

• Explanation of Autism from a Blogger with Autism

  Christopher Phillips

  8 Aug 2011 | 9:06 am

  You may feel like you know it when you see it, but do you know exactly what autism is? Lisa Daxer writes in her post titled How to Diagnose Autism, “autism really is a complicated subject”. You should take her word for it, Lisa has Asperger’s syndrome. In the post shed does an incredible of outlining some differences “between autistics and neurotypicals” in three categories: learning and cognition sensory processing language/communication. In the end she acknowledges that: … Unfortunately, it’s just not possible. Autism is a complicated diagnosis to make and a complicated…

• A Credo of Support

  Christopher Phillips

  3 Aug 2011 | 2:46 pm

  Must watch video for anyone who knows anyone with a disability: Read by People with Disabilities Read by a Narrator Full Text Throughout history, people with physical and mental disabilities have been abandoned at birth, banished from society, used as court jesters, drowned and burned during The Inquisition, gassed in Nazi Germany, and still continue to be segregated, institutionalized, tortured in the name of behavior management, abused, raped, euthanized, and murdered. Now, for the first time, people with disabilities are taking their rightful place as fully contributing citizens. The…

• 2011 AHEAD Conference and Changing Attitudes

  Christopher Phillips

  15 Jul 2011 | 12:51 pm

  I’m attending the Association of Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) Conference in Seattle this week. Many of the sessions are typical fare for a disability conference, but I’ve found a strand of conversations pushing the conversation beyond where many disability advocates in attendance are comfortable. I love it. The conference brings together professionals from disability service offices that provide support to students with disabilities in colleges and universities. Here are some of the questions that were asked: How do disability simulations used for disability awareness reinforce…

• 

  InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

• Hans Rosling: The Jedi Master of data visualization

  PJB

  28 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  And who's Darth Vader of visualization? "If there is a Jedi Master of presenting data clearly, visually, and simply, then it is Hans. He proves time and time again, that data are not dull-and when you are trying to change the world, there is no excuse for boring presentations." (Garr Reynolds a.k.a. @presentationzen ~ Presentation Zen)

• Are Design Patterns an Anti-pattern?

  PJB

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:53 am

  Or, how anti-patterns become dark patterns. "Design patterns are generally considered a good thing, but do they actually help run a user experience group? As a user experience group manager and an observer (and sponsor) of design pattern exercises, I've come to have serious questions about their actual utility. It's not that design pattern libraries are bad, but that in a world of limited resources, it is it is not clear that the investment is worth it. Fortunately, there is a better approach: reaching outside the design group to solve the whole problem." (Stephen Turbek a.k.a.

• UI: Getting the Details Right

  PJB

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:28 am

  Why 5 and not 7, 9 or 3? "User interface details matter to the overall user experience. Many users may not consciously notice these details on your site yet they do have an impact on the overall user experience. When everything feels just right the perception of your site and brand is improved. In this article, we'll look at 5 different types of UI details you should pay attention to." (Jamie Appleseed a.k.a. @jamieappleseed ~ Baymard Institute)

• 6 Disciplines for Reaching Customer Experience Maturity

  PJB

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:30 am

  Morphing UX into CX increases organizational complexity by several levels of magnitude. "Most companies say they want to differentiate themselves based on a superior customer experience. But the reality is very few manage to provide an experience that truly differentiates a brand from competitors." (Megan Burns a.k.a. @mbcxp ~ UX Magazine)

• State of Interaction Design: Diverging

  PJB

  24 Jan 2012 | 2:45 am

  Like any other practice, through time professionals gravitate towards different epicentres of expertise. "Interaction Design is reaching a critical point in its history. We have spent the better part of the last half century converging. We have built our entire identity by bringing in other disciplines and practices into our fold. We are often decried as 'land grabbers', but I say it is more about shoring up our knowledge base and practice so that we can be ready for the ever-increasing complexity of the tasks set before us through our acknowledged focus on human behavior as it relates…

• 

  Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

• Dyson to NY: drop dead

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  27 Jan 2012 | 9:21 am

  DYSON’S WEBSITE won’t sell me a vacuum cleaner. It claims New York, a U.S. state it provides in its own drop-down menu, is “not a valid state.” I have previously ordered Dyson products from the Dyson website and shipped them to a different address in New York. I have an account and everything. But the website won’t let me ship products to my office. This is just one of about a dozen errors that wasted half an hour of my life today.

• Accident

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  23 Jan 2012 | 12:32 pm

  CAR JUST HIT ME as I was crossing street. Van carrying old people. Driver didn’t see me. Van struck my head. # I punched door. Driver and passengers stared at me. Time slowed way down. I gestured for driver to pull over.# Asked woman on street if I was bleeding. She said no. Told van driver to leave. He got out, walked over, insisted on seeing if I was ok. # Black man, about 60. Told him I was good, merry Christmas. Shook his hand twice, nearly hugged him. Glad to be alive. # Two hours later: In ER with friend, getting checked after accident. # No concussion, no spinal or brain injury,…

• A List Apart Issue No. 342: A Pixel Identity Crisis; An Important Time for Design; Building Twitter Bootstrap

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  17 Jan 2012 | 11:11 am

  In a triple issue of A List Apart for people who make websites, it’s time for designers to seize the day! Transcend mobile platform differences, harness the power of an open-source front-end toolkit, and band together to change the world: An Important Time for Design by CAMERON KOCZON Cameron Koczon says designers have now been given a blank check—one that lets us band together as a community to change the way design is perceived; change the way products are built; and quite possibly change the world. Building Twitter Bootstrap by MARK OTTO Mark Otto, the co-creator of Bootstrap,…

• Ding dong, SOPA is dead.

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  16 Jan 2012 | 8:27 am

  DING DONG, THE WITCH IS DEAD. For now, at least, the “ill-conceived lobbyist-driven piece of legislation” known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is no more: Misguided efforts to combat online privacy have been threatening to stifle innovation, suppress free speech, and even, in some cases, undermine national security. As of yesterday, though, there’s a lot less to worry about. …Though the administration did [not] issue a formal veto threat, the White House’s opposition signaled the end of these bills, at least in their current form. A few hours later,…

• Selling Design – an online reading list

  Jeffrey Zeldman

  11 Jan 2012 | 9:30 am

  TOMORROW, WHICH IS also my birthday, I begin teaching “Selling Design” to second-year students in the MFA Interaction Design program at School of Visual Arts, New York. Liz Danzico and Steve Heller created and direct the MFA program, and this is my second year teaching this class, whose curriculum I pull out of my little blue beanie. In this class we explore collaboration and persuasion for interaction designers. Whether you work in a startup, studio, or traditional company; whether you design print, products, purely digital experiences, or any combination thereof; whether…

• 

  Bloug

• Meet me (and friends) in Mountain View and NYC

  louisr

  11 Jan 2012 | 11:12 am

  The never-ending Rosenfeld Media UX Workshops tour continues! I'll be teaching my pragmatic approach to information architecture at 500 Startups in Mountain View (March 5); I'll be joined there by Luke Wroblewski (Web Form Design, March 6) and Steve Krug (Do-It-Yourself Usability Testing, March 7). In New York City, I'll be teaching my IA workshop on May 23; Rachel Hinman teaches Mobile Prototyping Essentials on May 24, and Steve teaches his usability workshop on May 25. These are really practical workshops—very small, very hands-on—and a great way to boost your UX team's skillset…

• Upcoming UIE seminar on information architecture

  louisr

  17 Oct 2011 | 4:56 pm

  I'm frustrated. I've taught my full day workshops probably seventy times over the past decade. I've increasingly downplayed what I call "top-down navigation"—you know, main pages, site hierarchies, and the such—in favor of the other two hugely more important areas of IA: search and contextual navigation. You know, the stuff that unlocks your deep content. And site maps and wireframes? I don't think I've addressed them since the second edition of the Polar Bear book. Well, it happened again today. I heard someone mention "IA and search". As if they're separate things. Folks, IA is…

• Updated site search analytics deck

  louisr

  12 Oct 2011 | 11:54 am

  Just presented this one at the Web 2.0 Expo this morning. As part of my program of continual improvement in presentation creation, I've beefed up the practical stuff. Hope you find it useful: Site Search Analytics: 8 things you can do View more presentations from Louis Rosenfeld

• Closing the Findability Gap: 8 better practices from Information Architecture

  louisr

  23 Sep 2011 | 10:11 am

  This is the closest thing I've done to a big picture "what IA is good for and where it's going" talk in a very long while. Hope you find it useful: Closing the Findability Gap: 8 better practices from information architecture View more presentations from Louis Rosenfeld

• Thinking of writing a book?

  louisr

  24 Aug 2011 | 4:16 pm

  Just got asked for the Nth time by a colleague for advice on whether or not they should write a book. Figured I should share my advice, or at least capture it here so I can point folks to it in the future. Here goes: First ask yourself if a book is the appropriate package for your content (and its users).  If it is, ask yourself if you really want to spend at least a year of your precious time and effort to write one. If you do, ask yourself if you want to publish it yourself, or if you see value in having a publisher work with you. Some people can pull off a book on their own; others…

• 

  Putting people first

• Inclusive Design – a people centered strategy for innovation

  Experientia

  25 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  The Norwegian Design Council has published a new resource site about inclusive design, to inform and communicate how this approach can be used as a strategy for innovation and development of more user-friendly products and services for the mainstream market. Note also that the Council will be organising the European Business Workshops on Inclusive Design 2012 on 7-8 June in Oslo, Norway. The two-day sessions are conceived as inspiring, method-based workshops for business organisations and designers.

• The ethnography of robots

  Experientia

  25 Jan 2012 | 8:18 am

  Heather Ford spoke with Stuart Geiger, PhD student at the UC Berkeley School of Information, about his emerging ideas about the ethnography of robots. “Not the ethnography of robotics (e.g. examining the humans who design, build, program, and otherwise interact with robots, which I and others have been doing),” wrote Geiger, “but the ways in which bots themselves relate to the world”. Geiger believes that constructing and relating an emic account of the non-human should be the ultimate challenge for ethnography but that he’s getting an absurd amount of pushback from it.” He…

• Does corporate ethnography suck?

  Experientia

  25 Jan 2012 | 8:16 am

  In this first piece, Sam Ladner examines the different temporal conceptions of ethnographic fieldwork in industry and academia: “Academics frequently criticize corporate ethnography simply as “too short.” But this is just as shallow an insight as is the idea that culture=consumerism. Academics, of all people, should know that culture drives practice. The rapid pace of contemporary corporate life clearly and reasonably demands shorter time horizons for any research project. It is more than obvious that time differs in academia.” Read article Sam Ladner’s post lead to an…

• State of Interaction Design: Diverging, by David Malouf

  Experientia

  25 Jan 2012 | 5:14 am

  In anticipation of the upcoming IxDA Interaction12 Conference taking place in Dublin, Ireland February 1–4, Core77 is bringing us a preview of this year’s event, including this guest post by David Malouf, professor of Interaction Design in the Industrial Design Department at the Savannah College of Art and Design. “In the last year IxD, as a community of practice, has faced its strongest challenge to date. We have shifted from converging and assimilating to a community that is ever rapidly diverging. The divergence is happening along the lines of the gravitational interests from…

• The shift from watching TV to experiencing TV

  Experientia

  25 Jan 2012 | 5:03 am

  As more and more devices in your home get connected to the Internet, the user experience becomes increasingly important. The people at ReadWriteWeb announce that over the coming months they will be exploring the world of User Experience design, by interviewing UX experts and reviewing products that get it right – and some that get it wrong. They will start by looking at how the user experience of televisions is becoming more interactive and what this will mean to your TV consumption habits. We look forward to it.

• 

  Reaction!

• YouTube: One Hour Per Second

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:52 am

  "Every second, one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube. That's 24 hours every 24 seconds... or a decade every single day." Take a look at the video below - and this rather lovely website - for more YouTube-related stats from the Google Data Arts team: [via CR Blog]

• Soundmachines

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:48 am

  Comprising three units that resemble standard record players, Soundmachines translate concentric visual patterns into music:

• The First Cycle

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:45 am

  A stop motion animation from Niels Hoebers visualising the creative production process behind fashion designer Borre Akkersdijk's latest collection:

• LIFECYCLE: 365 days in the life of a bike in NYC

  26 Jan 2012 | 3:01 am

  Last year, Red Peak Branding conducted a unique urban experiment for Hudson Urban Bicycles. On 1st January 2011 they chained a fully loaded bike - complete with bells, basket, lights and so forth - to a post along a busy Soho street. Then, they took a picture of it every day for 365 days. Watch the video below (which cycles through the pics one by one) to see the bike slowly vanish before your very eyes:

• GM Advanced Tech Windows

  26 Jan 2012 | 2:58 am

  Following hot on the heels of Samsung's touchscreen windows come GM's touchscreen car windows:

• 

  Small Surfaces

• The messy fragmented Android universe

  Gabriel White

  23 Jan 2012 | 5:36 pm

  In an interview with Android’s head of design, Mathias Duarte gave the (unimpressive, I think) response to the question of why there are so many different versions of Android in the wild just now: “A lot of those issues really are much more related to the hardware capabilities. Things like just how much memory you have. The reality is, right now Android is growing so quickly, it’s like it was back in the X86 days of PCs. When you got that 286 and were so excited! ‘Yes!’ And then Quake comes along and your 286 just couldn’t do the job. So right now, we have…

• 10 principles for awesome mobile design

  Gabriel White

  23 Jan 2012 | 6:58 am

  Uday Gajendar pulls together a set of 10 mobile design principles distilled from some of the leading mobile designers. “Pivot, snack, bursts: support “snacking” by enabling users to pivot through tasks and information in quick bursts. Remember, the user is not chained to a desk for hours. They are often in a state of “constant partial attention,” multitasking across physical and virtual contexts, sometimes one-handed while doing something else.” Link: Mobile UX Primer: Principles (ghostinthepixel.com)No related posts. Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile…

• Finally, a UI style guide for Android

  Gabriel White

  13 Jan 2012 | 10:25 am

  Finally, a Google has put together a user interface style guide for Android. Better late than never. “It’s not enough to make an app that is easy to use. Android apps empower people to try new things and to use apps in inventive new ways. Android lets people combine applications into new workflows through multitasking, notifications, and sharing across apps. At the same time, your app should feel personal, giving people access to superb technology with clarity and grace.” Link: Android Design (android.com) Nine differences between Android and iOS tablet UI The messy…

• How to write a product design review: Nokia N9

  Gabriel White

  29 Dec 2011 | 1:46 pm

  Critiquing the Nokia N9, running Meego, Dan Hill shows us how product reviews really should be written. “…The skeuomorphic nonsense that incomprehensibly pervades apps like Apple’s own Contacts, Calendar, iBooks, GameCenter, Find My Friends et al – all awkward faux-leather, wood and paper stylings – is is of such questionable “taste” it threatens to damage the overall harmony of iOS with its discordant notes. You cannot derive value from the idle suggestion of such textures on screen; they are physical properties and should be experienced as such, or…

• Luther used social media to go viral

  Gabriel White

  20 Dec 2011 | 10:09 pm

  The Economist takes a look at how the distribution of Luther’s thoughts followed some of the patterns that are very familiar in today’s digital social media universe. “Unlike larger books, which took weeks or months to produce, a pamphlet could be printed in a day or two. Copies of the initial edition, which cost about the same as a chicken, would first spread throughout the town where it was printed. Luther’s sympathisers recommended it to their friends. Booksellers promoted it and itinerant colporteurs hawked it. Travelling merchants, traders and preachers would then…

• 

  Subtraction.com

• Rambling Thoughts on Tumblr, WordPress, Posterous, Pinterest and Blogging

  desk@subtraction.com

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:28 pm

  We just relaunched the Mixel blog yesterday along with a refresh of our main Web site. The main goal was to bring the look and feel of both in line with one another and, specifically for the blog, to create a more editorial-friendly presentation. As I explained in this post, the Mixel blog turned out to be a more text-intensive product than we anticipated, and so we needed a design that would accommodate that. We also needed to switch to a publishing tool that was more suitable for that kind of content. Tumblr wasn’t doing it for us. I wrote about Tumblr a while ago with great…

• The New Yorker: The Man Who Owns L.A.

  desk@subtraction.com

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:58 pm

  Writer Connie Bruck wrote this piece that ran a few weeks ago in The New Yorker about the men behind a plan to build a new NFL stadium in downtown Los Angeles. One of them, Phillip Anschutz, is a politically conservative billionaire seven times over, who made his fortune in oil and gas, real estate, railroads, telecommunications, and sports and entertainment. It’s a fascinating article, even though I’m not particularly sympathetic to his agenda or that of his compatriots. But I did really like this quote from him: “It helps to have your back against the wall. Adversity…

• MindNode Feed Sponsorship

  desk@subtraction.com

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  MindNode is an elegant, easy-to-use mind mapping tool for Mac and iOS. Whether you’re brainstorming for your next project, organizing your life, or planning your vacation, MindNode lets you collect, structure, and expand your ideas. And thanks to built-in Dropbox and WiFi sharing, even your biggest ideas can go anywhere your iPhone does. MindNode is easy mind mapping for your Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Try out Mindnode Pro and MindNode touch today!

• Jorge Chamorro

  desk@subtraction.com

  24 Jan 2012 | 3:24 pm

  This Madrid-based designer has a stunning portfolio that uses a contemporary, intricate take on modernism. He’s also apparently a collage artist, as suggested in this poster he designed for what looks like a show of his collage works. He seems like someone I would like to meet. Visit his site here. To follow me on Twitter click here.

• Airport Runway Screenprints

  desk@subtraction.com

  23 Jan 2012 | 2:26 pm

  Architect and designer Jerome Daksiewicz of Nomo Design has produced these beautifully matter-of-fact poster designs that capture the runway designs of various American airports. You can see them in more detail at this link, or buy prints at their shop. To follow me on Twitter click here.

• 

  UsabilityBlog

• Google+ Add To Circles Interaction: Some Good & Not-So-Good UX

  Paul Sherman

  10 Jan 2012 | 8:12 am

  Google+ Circle Interaction: Some Good & Not-So-Good UX a video by pjsherman on Flickr. This is an impromptu video of me interacting with the Google+ “add people to circles” feature. Like most things we interact with in the world, there’s some good and some not-so-good to the experience. First, the good: 1. The people “cards” are just the right size. The picture is just right also – big enough so I can recognize the person, small enough to fit their name. 2. It was also a smart idea to just show the target’s name (or email if the name is…

• I’ve Found It: The Worst Thermostat Ever

  Paul Sherman

  4 Jan 2012 | 2:39 pm

  I’ve Found It: The Worth Thermostat Ever, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr. After many years of working in user experience, I’ve found the semi-mythical holy grail of poor design: in my grandmother’s condo I encountered the dreaded “which way is which?” thermostat. Just looking at this picture, you might think that pressing the left-facing button would lower the temperature, and pressing the right-facing button would increase it. And you’d be wrong. At least, I think you’d be wrong. If only they were reversed, I could at least deal with that….but…

• When Requirements And Design Lose The Sale

  Paul Sherman

  30 Dec 2011 | 10:00 am

  Here’s a great example of how feature requirements and design have combined to cause a lost sale. Some background: This is the donation page for the Presidential candidate I support. I’m not getting into who it is; those who know me personally can probably guess, and those readers who don’t can visit candidates’ donation pages until they find this example. I’m your typical semi-involved voter: I care a bit about local policitics, I try to vote in every election, but don’t always make the smaller or off-year ones. But I do care about state and national…

• User Experience Design: A Mini-Festo

  Paul Sherman

  17 Dec 2011 | 2:19 pm

  I’m on my way back from my company’s all-hands meeting. After all the excitement and motivation the week inspired, I felt moved to write a UX mini-manifesto. A mini-festo, if you will. Excuse any grammar or spelling issues; I’m composing in Evernote on my phone. I would love to hear my readers’ and followers’ comments on this post. You’re an experience design practitioner. In your organizations, you should be responsible for: Creating an inviting and well-designed initial user experience. Designing and validating: Terminology and…

• eBay: Hah Hah, Made You Think!

  Paul Sherman

  28 Sep 2011 | 8:43 am

  eBay: Hah Hah, Made You Think!, a photo by pjsherman on Flickr. Standard disclaimer: I am a user and fan of eBay. When it comes to user experience, they do lots of things right. Here’s one thing they did wrong: They provided half-hearted, linkless “help” in the form of “to do x, go to [place A] or [place B]“, without including links to those locations. This is a no-brainer and should’ve been coded ages ago. As a result, I had to hunt around for a small but still-annoying period of time before I found where I needed to go. Somebody add that to the eBay UX…

• 

  User Centered

• What day does the week start?

  18 Jan 2012 | 6:08 pm

  This post is meant to serve as a warning to web developers for United States websites.I'm really excited about the new HTML5 Form Elements. Especially the new "date" input type: <input type="date">Unfortunately, the "date picker" (the calendar popup that displays when selecting a date) is just a little too Euro-centric. Opera appears to have implemented the ISO 8601:2004 ($238.00!) standard that the "always reliable" Wikipedia claims is common in Europe**.What does that mean? The week starts on Monday.This site has an example…

• NTSB's Cell Phone Ban

  15 Dec 2011 | 1:44 pm

  There are many issues when it comes to the operation of a motor vehicle. The US National Transportation Safety Board, in a somewhat reaching opinion, have recommended the banning using personal electronic devices (any cell phone usage, etc.) while driving (other than those that support the task of driving, like GPS Nav).Now the NTSB doesn't get to issue reports on driver safety at will but only as a recommendation after an an accident investigation. The reason they were involved in the investigation of this particular Missouri accident was because it involved school buses. As their report…

• Identification for Humans

  25 Nov 2011 | 12:54 pm

  One thing that annoys me about my industry is the insistence in many circles to use Social Security Numbers as standard identification numbers. Sometimes it's the whole number, sometimes it's the first 7, others the last 6. In short, a very personal piece of data is splattered all over the place. (If you don't believe this is a bad thing then you should stick to the AOL Kids Only zone)Now, I know I won't be able to replace this de facto standard but in working on my project, I can do something better. Unfortunately, I'm not a mathematician, so I'm not qualified to…

• Technology for Non-Technologists

  22 Oct 2011 | 7:06 pm

  This older gentleman approached me today in the coffee shop. I had helped him a couple weeks ago connect his Android tablet (by Craig) to the wifi connection. Thus I labeled myself "free tech support." What's interesting is watching him interacting with his device and his profound confusion and misinterpretation.Whoever sold him the device was obviously just trying to make a sale - he paid $100 for it and it's a constant headache.We spent just about 40 minutes working on 'problems', in fact he just Columboed me with just one more thing.I have to admit, many were…

• Trash It

  20 Oct 2011 | 5:28 pm

  Just watched my friend get a new phone. An Android.He, like most, started installing new applications and having fun and then, like most, decided to uninstall some. He kept complaining to me that he couldn't get them to uninstall, he said he'd keep trying and they wouldn't go away. Finally, I asked him what was happening? He explained he was uninstalling it but they wouldn't go away.So I watched him do it. He opened the home menu, grabbed an application icon by pressing and holding, the icon then "floats" as this functionality was used to drop icons on the…

• 

  Veerle's blog

• Foundation: Rapid Prototyping and Building Framework from ZURB

  Veerle Pieters

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:51 am

  Foundation by Zurb, a HTML/CSS framework for any kind of device.

• Typography Effects with CSS3 and jQuery

  Veerle Pieters

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:36 am

  Some ideas to get you thinking about typographical effects with CSS3 & jQuery.

• Swedish Murder Machine

  Veerle Pieters

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:24 am

  The Swedish Murder Machine.via Bandito

• Heartwork

  Veerle Pieters

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:12 am

  Second illustration that I feature here from the Heartwork series.via Allan Peters

• ARTCRANK London 2011

  Veerle Pieters

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:01 am

  My motto each time I’m climbing with my bicycle.via Graham Pilling

• 

  Yu Centrik

• Design for Communication with sketch

  Karine Grande

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:32 pm

  As I was opening a CAMINO chocolate bar, I saw this drawing on the packaging. This got me thinking about how large of a role sketching plays in explaining concepts in our day-to-day lives. In the case of Camino, a sketch is being used to explain the company’s philosophy based on an equation: “Following the rules of fair trade when producing organic chocolate promotes sustainable development.” The approach was described in six words and three drawings on the packaging. I described it in 13 words. Seven less words to be translated in various languages, we already see an advantage…

• TranspoCamp Montreal: A success!

  Joëlle Stemp

  16 Dec 2011 | 10:51 am

  More than 150 participants showed up yesterday at the first TranspoCamp organized in Montreal. A lot of ideas and a lot of creativity came out of it. A real success, thanks to all! Here are a few photos of the day: idées sur une journée typique Workshop on users' journey Workshop on transportation and users' journey Workshop on transportation led by 3 Yu Centrik's experts A lot of people! Workshop on users's journey led by 3 Yu Centrik's experts

• Facebook: more than a social network, a collaborative design tool?

  Karine Grande

  11 Nov 2011 | 3:56 pm

  Facebook as a social media platform to share photos, links, knowledge, experiences, opinions, thoughts, text, articles, events … … Or as a rewarding promotional tool, as a visibility tool for micro-communities (music bands, associations, movements, “like”) … … Or as a tool for games / competitions / quizzes and other fun gadgets … This, we know. But Facebook as an online ethnography tool which can help us understand how users operate in a certain domain, this is less known. Several articles mention social networks as an incredible source of…

• Happy Usability Day!

  Joëlle Stemp

  10 Nov 2011 | 9:34 am

  Today is the World Usability Day (WUD), and 43 countries are celebrating in 172 official events. Montreal is holding a meeting tonight at HEC and we hope to see you there. To celebrate this day with you all, UXalliance has just released a free study on Cultural differences in usability testing (PDF). Happy Usability Day to all UX Professionals and enthusiasts!

• Jay Vidyarthi presenting at Mobile Marketing Conference

  Joëlle Stemp

  11 Oct 2011 | 7:29 pm

  Mobile Marketing Conference is in Montreal, October 27, 2011 and Jay Vidyarthi UX Research Coordinator and UX Designer at Yu Centrik will present on Exploiting Cognitive Bias: Creating UX for the Irrational Human Mind.

• 

  Futile

• Introducing Cthulhu Coffee

  Ryan Lane

  3 Jan 2012 | 3:03 pm

  I set up a quick café press store while I’m trying to find the best source to get some better mugs designed. I’m even thinking about doing a kickstarter to get the initials funds for the first run. Until then, you can visit my little store and pick up a Cthulhu mug or two Related [...] Related posts: The Clover 1 coffee machine

• Happy Holidays

  Ryan Lane

  12 Dec 2011 | 4:48 pm

  We at Futile Heavy Industries have been a bit behind in keeping our blog up to date due to all the amazing stuff going on. So I’d like to wish all of our loyal followers a very happy holidays from us to you. Related posts: Happy Up Here Happy Valentine’s Day Related posts: Happy Up Here Happy Valentine’s Day

• Squish the bug now in HTML5

  Ryan Lane

  17 Aug 2011 | 6:05 pm

  No related posts. No related posts.

• I’m watching you

  Ryan Lane

  17 Aug 2011 | 4:10 pm

  No related posts. No related posts.

• links for 2011-03-14

  Ryan Lane

  14 Mar 2011 | 12:30 pm

  JavaScript Garden (tags: javascript tutorial programming) Related posts: links for 2008-01-23 links for 2007-12-13 links for 2009-09-19 Related posts: links for 2008-01-23 links for 2007-12-13 links for 2009-09-19

• 

  Usability Counts

• Roi Carthy: It’s Not All About the UX. Except It’s All About the UX.

  Patrick Neeman

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:47 am

  A VC that in my opinion gets it right: Code cannot come before UX. Design the experience before you code it. Art takes time and has to be at the core of your product/service. If you don’t have a designer as one of your first three team members, well, in my humble opinion, you’re already in trouble. To illustrate, here are some details I assess when every new venture comes my way: Email structure, word choice, the signature, the amount of deck slides, the weight of the presentation, whether the dollar sign is placed before or after the amount, the choice of stock photography, whether MS…

• Fast Company: Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch

  Patrick Neeman

  25 Jan 2012 | 10:01 am

  A must read: Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions, and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation. A strong culture flourishes with a clear set of values and norms that actively guide the way a company operates. Employees are actively and passionately engaged in the business, operating from a sense of confidence and empowerment rather than navigating their days through miserably extensive procedures and mind-numbing bureaucracy. Performance-oriented cultures possess statistically better financial growth, with…

• UXmatters: How Important Are UX Degrees and Certifications?

  Patrick Neeman

  23 Jan 2012 | 9:48 am

  Great post. It has answers from some of the leading UX practitioners, some of whom don’t have a degree. “A degree or a certificate isn’t going to magically get you respect, make you employable, get you on the speaker circuit, cure acne, or make you more attractive to the love of your life. A degree is not going to instantly improve your UX skills. Only lots and lots of practice can do that. All of the employers of UX professionals that I know—myself included—are looking for experience first and above all. However, that doesn’t mean a degree is useless.” … “Of…

• Are You a San Francisco UX Designer on Twitter?

  Patrick Neeman

  21 Jan 2012 | 3:49 pm

  Ping me. I’m revamping my Twitter lists, and want to add you to one. You can find me at @usabilitycounts.

• Job Posting: Senior Interactive Designer — New York, New York

  Patrick Neeman

  20 Jan 2012 | 9:55 am

  Here’s a job posting that a friend contacted me about (Lingo and Actionscript probably aren’t strict requirements). Ping me if you’re interested. Also, ping me if you’re a visual designer or user experience designer in Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York. Recruiter friends of mine have 10 jobs open. Send me an email at pat@usabilitycounts.com. The Senior Interactive Designer is responsible for developing impactful design options and user interfaces in multiple platforms, including the development of prototypes, selling these ideas internally and to clients, and…

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  21 lives

• Focus on what won’t change

  Etienne Garbugli

  18 Jan 2012 | 6:02 pm

  I recently read that, only

• Don’t shit in your own trail

  Etienne Garbugli

  10 Jan 2012 | 8:08 am

  When I started working as

• Don’t be average

  Etienne Garbugli

  4 Jan 2012 | 4:13 pm

  The reasonable man adapts himself

• Are you building or just surviving?

  Etienne Garbugli

  22 Dec 2011 | 8:24 am

  What are the pillars of

• What’s your assumption path?

  Etienne Garbugli

  20 Dec 2011 | 9:50 am

  The only way to do

• 

  UsabilityPost

• Styling Button Links With CSS3

  Dmitry Fadeyev

  9 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  A fair while back I wrote a post on pressed button states using CSS, which was a tutorial on how to implement a pressed down button effect on custom styled links. In that post I used images to achieve the visual effect. Now that we have good CSS3 support, that method is really out of date. In this post I’ll show you how to achieve the same effect using CSS3, as well as how I’d go about styling the rest of the button. Step 1: the button We’ll assume you have a custom styled link that looks like a button. This is used for links outside of forms that you want to give weight to,…

• Competing With an Archetype

  Dmitry Fadeyev

  9 Dec 2011 | 6:00 pm

  There’s an interesting post over at TechCrunch discussing the current hot topic of the iPad design — or more specifically: how Apple has created a design for a tablet that is so simple and obvious that their competition has no other way forward but to implement their own products the same way, suffering Apple lawsuits in the process. This discussion started when Apple has provided a set of suggestions to Samsung on how they could design their tablet differently so as to not infringe on Apple’s patents. The suggestions aren’t very interesting because they’re not a…

• The Unstoppable Carousel

  Dmitry Fadeyev

  13 Nov 2011 | 6:00 pm

  JavaScript carousels are a nice way to show off multiple products or highlights in the same area of the page. But there is one thing about the badly made ones that annoys me: they have no way to pause the thing. Here’s an example of a product carousel used on the Penguin website: Clicking on a section of the carousel will bring that section into focus, but the carousel is still in rotation mode so it will switch to the next one in seconds. This forces me to have to rush to read all of the text and look at the cover quickly — not a pleasant user experience. Apple gets it right…

• Timeless Fashion

  Dmitry Fadeyev

  10 Nov 2011 | 6:00 pm

  The headline is a contradiction, for what is fashionable cannot be timeless — nevertheless, this is how I see the designs of Jonny Ive, Apple’s chief designer. His original iMac was a work of style. It was made out of shiny, transparent plastic, was full of anthropomorphic curves and came in a variety of colors. Over the years Ive’s designs have moved away from this original explosion of style towards something more restrained, more mathematical. His latest designs are a tribute to Dieter Rams, who sought to produce the timeless through ruthless, methodical elimination. Rams…

• Book review: The Language of Things

  Dmitry Fadeyev

  31 Oct 2011 | 7:00 pm

  Sudjic opens the book with an anecdote about his experience purchasing a MacBook at Heathrow Airport. It was an impulse purchase and the author desrcribes in detail how Apple was able to utilize design to make the product enticing, an almost irresistable buy. All of the individual details of the product—its color, its shape, its packaging—carried some sort of message about it. For Sudjic, the combination of these messages generated the desire to own the item, and so the purchase decision was made. What this book is about is exactly that: how design is more than just about what the…

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  UIE Brain Sparks

• Presenting the UX Immersion 2012 Conference

  Jared Spool

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:27 pm

  Peer into Your Future You’re about to see a project we’ve been working on for several months. A brand new conference bringing the newest, most critical thinking around two separate and important topics: mobile design and Agile development. These experts will dive deep and get to the nitty-gritty details that will make you a stronger and more valuable UX Pro. Agile Process Hugh Beyer – UX Design Inside Agile Development Jeff Gothelf – Lean UX: A Radical Approach to Integrating Design into Agile Dave McFarland – Demystifying jQuery for Agile Prototyping Mobile…

• Noah Iliinsky – The Power of Data Visualizations

  Sean Carmichael

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:33 pm

  [ Transcript Coming Soon! ] A common trap in designing data visualizations is focusing on all the different ways to represent the data, rather than the questions that the data should answer. The presentation of a data set is pointless if it’s not useful, usable, or if people can’t understand it. With so much data to choose from how do you keep the goal of the visualization in mind? How are you sure you’re telling the right story? We turn to Noah Iliinsky when it comes to data visualization. He is the co-author of Designing Data Visualizations and co-editor of Beautiful Visualization.

• Why Agile and Mobile Design Is the Focus at UX Immersion

  Jared Spool

  24 Jan 2012 | 4:10 pm

  In the last two years, the UX world has seen some drastic changes. Our designs, and the processes to get to them, are undergoing a transformation that forces UX designers to rethink what they do. Users’ behaviors change based on how they view digital content. The desktop computer is no longer the norm for reading content and conducting web interactions. As a designer you must think about designing for the plethora of mobile devices now available. It’s not a question of whether to consider mobile design, it’s a matter of actually planning and implementing it now. And how we communicate…

• UIEtips: Why Visualization

  Jared Spool

  23 Jan 2012 | 4:11 pm

  There’s definitely an advantage to having your users understand data and messages through a picture versus reading a series of sentences. Information visualization, when done right, can have a greater impact. In many ways, data visualization will take a message and make it more succinct. A good visualization can simplify the most complicated data, and often provide an interactive component with the user that a string of words can’t accomplish. The right data visualization will save the user time and provide a better experience. In today’s UIEtips, Noah Iliinsky explores what…

• Jeff Gothelf – Lean UX: Getting Out of the Deliverables Business A Virtual Seminar Follow-up

  Sean Carmichael

  20 Jan 2012 | 3:07 pm

  [ Transcript Available ] The goal of Lean UX is to take the focus of user-centered design off of documentation and put it squarely on the experience. The way to do this is to view any design idea as a hypothesis. With a focus on the experience, you can validate or invalidate this hypothesis much quicker. The sooner you reach this validation, the sooner you can focus on designing and building the correct solution. Jeff Gothelf is a firm believer in the Lean UX process. One of the key aspects of Lean UX is how collaborative it is. Jeff says that the separation between design and development…

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  erova notebook

• Now hiring

  Chris

  3 Jan 2012 | 9:48 am

  It’s been almost 6 months since I left the independent life and accepted a position at NASDAQ as what is essentially a product design role, overseeing and responsible for the visual design, information architecture and content strategy of many products and services. Though I’ve been able to do my share of juggling, it’s finally time to bring on someone to help me out. We’re looking for someone who has enough skills and experience to understand how static web sites work, with an emphasis on how screens appear in the browser and other devices, not necessarily how data or…

• Asbury Agile Recap

  Chris

  9 Nov 2011 | 8:53 pm

  On a rain soaked Wednesday a few weeks ago, I traded my desk in Manhattan for a sleek couch by the beach and attended Asbury Agile, a one day single-track conference for “makers and doers in the web industry” in nearby Asbury Park. After not attending a conference or workshop in some time, it was good to get out of the office and here the perspectives, ideas, and insights from other web professionals in the area–many of whom I had yet to meet or had much familiarity with at all (and after spending almost three years in the UX echo chamber, that says something). Overall the…

• Wrapping up Social Media: Social Uprising at NYU

  Chris

  12 May 2011 | 7:54 am

  Continuing my exploration into events outside of the immediate domain of user experience design, I recently attended a panel discussion at New York University that examined the role of social tools in the Middle East and North African uprisings underway in Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and elsewhere. The discussion, Social Media: Social Uprising, was moderated by Helga Tawii-Souri, an assistant professor of media, culture, and communication at NYU, and the panelists consisted of author Clay Shirky, Arab and Muslim issues expert Mona Eltahawy, and WNYC/NPR’s “On the Media” producer Sarah…

• Field Trip: Social Capital and Computer Mediated Communication

  Chris

  7 Apr 2011 | 9:44 pm

  Only a few days from returning from the IA Summit in Denver, I continue attempting to distance myself from focusing exclusively on design lectures back home in the New York and New Jersey area. Whereas last month I ventured uptown to attend a lecture on Erving Goffman and technologically mediated social identities, this time I headed a few miles south to the Rutgers School of Communication and Information to attend another discussion tangentially relevant to my daily work responsibilities as a social interaction design strategist. The School hosted Dr. Gustavo Mesch, a senior lecturer and…

• IA Summit 2011 Wrap Up

  Chris

  5 Apr 2011 | 8:25 am

  Last weekend marked my second trip to Colorado in two months for another design conference. Similar to the Interaction Design Association’s Interaction11 in Boulder, the IA Summit provided unmatched opportunities to meet people, discuss current threats and opportunities within our community of practice, and of course listen to numerous presentations ranging from tactical & practical methods for work to overarching visions of our place in design and business. Much of the programming followed themes of measuring value, understanding and interpreting analytics, and the career path of the…

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  Everyone's Blog Posts - HFI Connect

• City of Los Angeles launches new BETA website with HFI's help

  Taruna

  19 Jan 2012 | 3:00 pm

  The current official City of Los Angeles Website was designed in 1995 and revised in 1998 to be more service-oriented with the creation of 3-1-1 Call Center and Citywide Services Directory. Since then even though the city had used it to disseminate information and provide online services it didn’t update it to provide users an easy and pleasant interaction. The site was complex and finding information on it was difficult.  The low usage reflected that.  So the City’s ITA staff designed and developed a website prototype of www.Lacity.org that provides better access to online services…

• App Review: Weathermob - Express How You Feel About the Weather

  Sachendra S Yadav

  17 Jan 2012 | 5:00 pm

  Weathermob is a niche social networking service for sharing information about local weather, much asInstagram is a service for sharing pictures. It lets you share what you’re feeling about local weather and see what your friends are saying about theirs. A lot of weather apps allow users to share the weather report with Facebook, Twitter, and so on, but what’s interesting with Weathermob is the manner in which it helps the user put together an engaging story. This is a great example how to make a utility application engaging. It takes a basic function—viewing a weather report—and…

• UX mistakes made by financial institutions and how to avoid them (white paper)

  Guy Harvey

  17 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  This paper HFI white paper by April McGee looks at the trends and challenges facing UX designers who are working in the financial sector. In this conversation, April talks about the problems facing financial institutions as they try to design a user experience that will satisfy both customers and corporate goals. Download here: http://www.humanfactors.com/financialUX.asp

• Three Strategies For Industrial-Strength Customer Centricity - Ideas for a competitive digital strategy in the card industry

  Eric Schaffer

  17 Jan 2012 | 2:33 pm

  Published in Ngenuity, Winter 2012 With the increasing tangle of regulations and limits, how can a card business stay profitable? It's tough, to say the least. I was recently evaluating a card issuer's redemption website. The customer retention team had done plenty of usability work. There was little question that a customer could efficiently redeem points for a gift. But I could not help but think how very pathetic it was. The most creative approach was to give away a toaster. Or provide a discount. Sure toasters and discounts will work. But what does it mean to the industry? We see an…

• Interview with Vipin Maheshwary, Lead Information Architect at Lowe's and Certified Usability Analyst of the Month for January 2012

  Guy Harvey

  10 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pm

  Never Stop Improving by Sheldon Kruger Vipin Maheshwary Lead Information Architect at Lowe's   The best web developers did not gain their skills on accident. Just like any kind of art or technical job, it takes years of work, dedication, and experience to reach a high level of performance in the Internet industry. Vipin Maheshwary has been pursuing ways to become a better Information Architect and UX Strategist since his career started 12 years ago. As time passed, it became clear to Vipin that there is a bottom line to any software development process – delivering a product that people…

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  90 Percent of Everything - by Harry Brignull

• An introduction to Web Intents – an interview with Glenn Jones

  Harry Brignull

  20 Jan 2012 | 2:06 am

  Glenn Jones is a Founder/Director of Madgex. Glenn is currently co-organising a Design-Push event on Web Intents in Brighton (25-Feb-2012).If you work in UX and you don’t know much about Web Intents, you’re missing out on a discussion that could have a big effect on the user experience of the entire World Wide Web. This interview should give you an insight into what it’s all about. From an end-user’s perspective, what is a Web Intent and how does it help them do stuff?“Web Intents” is the name of a framework for “web-based inter-application communication and service…

• Why I never use panels provided by remote usability testing services

  Harry Brignull

  17 Jan 2012 | 12:46 pm

  User research. It’s right there in the name. A user is someone who actually uses your service. Equally valid is the idea of a “target user” – someone who doesn’t yet use your service, but has a genuine need that it would fulfil.User research has to involve these people. Otherwise, by definition, it’s not user research.When you use a panel provided by remote usability testing service, you end up gathering data from a bunch of freelancers – professional participants who know the kind of things they’re expected to say. At best, they’ll make a…

• Anatomy of a Hardware Usability Testing Rig

  Harry Brignull

  14 Dec 2011 | 8:35 am

  These days we all know how easy it is to record usability testing sessions on a desktop computer. You can use Silverback on a Mac ($69.95), Morae on PC ($1,495) or you can try one of the many other screen recording tools on the market today.If you need to record research footage from a device that doesn’t support software recording (e.g. a Kindle), then you’ll need to point a camera at its screen. This is simple if you don’t want picture-in-picture: you can make a sled like this, mount a webcam on it and record the footage using any free recording app (like Quicktime). If…

• Nick Disabato on Dark Patterns

  Harry Brignull

  31 Oct 2011 | 6:02 am

  You may have noticed things have gone really quiet on this blog lately – let me reassure you that it is still very much alive. I’ve been taking a short break to focus on some very cool projects at Clearleft, together with fixing up a 150 year-old house in my spare time… and trying to get it all done before the birth of my second daughter. Phew!Anyway, I’ve just discovered this presentation by Nick Disabato on Dark Patterns which he presented at the Web 2.0 expo in NYC last month. It’s very nicely put together, and contains a whole load of new examples. Deceptive UX:…

• Flipping pancakes: the value of competitor evaluation

  Harry Brignull

  19 Jul 2011 | 11:22 am

  A few days ago, a friend of mine told me a story about their first visit to IDEO. At one point in their tour they saw a dozen Design Researchers standing in a makeshift kitchen, each holding a different brand of frying pan, flipping pancakes over and over again. There was one person watching and taking notes on a clipboard.Sounds bizarre, doesn’t it? Almost like a scene from Kitchen Stories. In actual fact, there was nothing weird going on – they’d simply been hired to do some design consultancy for a frying pan manufacturer, and they were doing a competitor evaluation. Some pan…

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  KA+A : Blog

• Rule #7: Heroes are Tyrants Made Cruel by Priests

  Pete Gall

  17 Jan 2012 | 8:55 am

  This is a personal thing for me. But it’s also a conviction that applies to the branding work we do at KA+A. What’s true for individuals happens to be true for organizations. In fact, we’re finding that people tend to join organizations that share their root passions and vices, and that as we work with leaders, we reshape brands, and as we reshape brands, the organization influences lives…and heroes are emerging. If this line of thinking appeals to you – personally or in terms of how you relate to your business – I’d love to hear from you. Rule #7: Heroes are Tyrants Made Cruel…

• Part 3 : Fashion and Technology : Indianapolis

  Janneane Blevins

  15 Dec 2011 | 3:58 pm

  It’s been a few months since I’ve last talked about fashion and tech (see my previous posts here and here), but the topic is ever on my mind. Having linked up with PATTERN, I’ve had the opportunity to become part of Indy’s fashion community and also to help curate some of the monthly meetups. One, that I’m hoping will come to fruition in 2012, is a meeting of the worlds of fashion & tech. Here’s a couple local companies that are leading the way: My Best Friend’s HairIf you’ve spent a day in Broad Ripple, it’s likely you’ve…

• Showtunes: Crafting a User Experience

  Cole Farrell

  22 Nov 2011 | 12:50 pm

  I’m the new guy at KA+A, so I don’t want to split the crowd, but go with me here: I love musicals. The lights, the dancing, the masterful singing voices—for me, there is no artistic experience more immersive or powerful than watching musical theater. Broadway musicals are meant to be experienced live, in an atmosphere where anything could happen and no performance can ever truly be re-created. Thinking about them as a brand, a theatergoer’s interaction with a Broadway musical begins the moment they first order tickets and ends when they are exiting the theater after the…

• Quipol : Social Polling Made Simple

  Nathan Sinsabaugh

  11 Nov 2011 | 1:10 pm

  This week marked the launch of Quipol, an exciting new social polling service that we had the pleasure of working on over the past few months. There’s a sample Quipol below, so make sure you cast your vote. We’re total UI geeks, and we had a seriously fun time designing the user experience, interface, and marketing website. One of the highlights was the opportunity to apply responsive design techniques to an app. The application of responsive techniques to marketing sites is becoming more of a common occurrence, but is still a relatively new phenomena when it comes to web-based…

• Pattern : A New Way of Thinking About & Doing Fashion in Indy

  Janneane Blevins

  27 Oct 2011 | 2:39 pm

  IFC : Fall Trend Report | Image courtesy of Marc McCoy KA+A recently partnered up with Indianapolis Fashion Collective, in an effort to transform the way that Indy is building its fashion community. The Collective had been operating for a year, hosting special events and creating a member-based network that would support and mentor designers, photographers, stylists, models, and fashion professionals in the city. The big vision was to create a live/work fashion district in the heart of Indy. It was a great start, and the right minds were coming together, but the burden of the dream was…

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  The UX Booth

• On site insight: advice from a UX apprentice

  Anne-Marie Florea

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  Everyone’s journey to UX design is unique. For me, it all began in an academic environment that promoted marketing-oriented thinking. Eventually, though, I found myself in an environment that promoted a more analytical approach. The transition between the two wasn’t easy, so I’ve compiled the following pieces of advice for those in a similar position. You see, I was brought up in a country where no one spoke about – let alone taught – user research at university. I studied Communication and Public Relations in Bucharest, and although I remember one class that taught market…

• Using Axure RP to Combat Low Fidelity Impotence

  Kyle Adamo

  17 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  Building chart prototypes is often tedious Have you ever had to create a performance dashboard for a group of stakeholders? This was precisely my task this last fall. Using Axure RP and Google Charts API, I was able to create an interactive prototype that helped our team iterate towards a more informed solution. Low Fidelity Impotence Most designers might sketch a static mockup and call it quits but I – like many stakeholders – suffer from a condition known as Low Fidelity Impotence (don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds). People with Low fidelity impotence have…

• Jumpstart your initial research with a diary study

  Andrew Maier

  3 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  Although I professionally design digital products, I’m fully aware many of those products will eventually function outside of the domain of user experience design. Because of this I’m always a little out of my element when a project begins, when I’m essentially tasked with conducting design research. To reduce overhead, I’ve recently turned to diary studies with surprising success. Questions, questions, questions While some designers may prefer a quantitative approach, I’m quite the opposite – I always try and build a sense of empathy. What should the user…

• How mobile networks and app developers affect the user experience

  Jan le Roux

  20 Dec 2011 | 8:30 am

  Over the last couple of years, “app” development has become one of the most popular topics in the mobile world. Unfortunately, though, most application developers fail to realize how important their job has become: not just in terms of what they can accomplish with a modern phone but in terms of the overall role they play in shaping mobile experience as a whole. I won’t go so far to say that Application developers have lost their way, but I will say that application developers have yet to find it. In the end, app developers have a dramatic effect on everyone’s experience…

• Booth Deal: 67% off Responsive Web Design Course from Udemy

  Booth Deals

  12 Dec 2011 | 8:00 am

  This week only, save 67% on the “Creating Responsive Web Design” course from Udemy. 92 Minute Course for just $49 In this course, you’ll learn to design a website with HTML5 and CSS3 that conforms to multiple screen sizes while maintaining backwards compatibility with older browsers. The course includes 92 minutes of step-by-step video material, as well as HTML, CSS, and Photoshop project files. Buy Now Learn to create a web design that automatically conforms itself to multiple screen sizes. This course will show you a step-by-step process for creating a design that…

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  Mantia

• Señor Sisig

  Louie Mantia

  22 Jan 2012 | 1:24 am

• Social Networks

  Louie Mantia

  3 Dec 2011 | 6:00 pm

  I think there might be more social networks than “social media experts”. First there was Classmates, LiveJournal, Friendster, LinkedIn and MySpace. Then Facebook comes along with a site tailored for current university students. Then came demand for accommodating other groups like high school students, coworkers, and eventually everyone. Facebook succeeded (and created a mass exodus from MySpace) because it catered to a small market first, people that are keen on sharing information with everyone else like gossip, updates, etc. Those people were sick of the teenie-boppers with pink…

• Kermit

  Louie Mantia

  27 Nov 2011 | 12:01 pm

• Hyrule

  Louie Mantia

  27 Nov 2011 | 2:30 am

• iPhone, 3G, 3GS, 4, 4S… 5 or 6?

  Louie Mantia

  15 Oct 2011 | 7:25 pm

  “iPhone” was an obvious choice for the name of Apple’s phone. Everybody and their brother guessed it. Obvious and perfect. When the second iPhone was introduced and included 3G technology, iPhone 3G was another obvious choice for a name. The next phone would be the third, but they already used a 3 in “iPhone 3G,” thus putting themselves in a predicament for the name. Since this phone didn’t have a different physical design, tacking a letter on the end was all Apple could seemingly do. “Speed.” Then, iPhone 4 was announced and sported a new…

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  Cre8pc Usability and SEO Audits Free Quotes Fast Turnaround

• Hiring Web Site Information Architecture – Tips for Better Decisions

  cre8pc

  23 Jan 2012 | 2:12 pm

  Web site information architecture is an additional skill web designers may not have that you may need to outsource for. Information architecture is tied to usability testing and how humans search, sort, classify and order things. This is not the same as site architecture that SEO’s use in their work. Shari Thurow describes what information architecture is for web design, why its so important to design and how it relates to user centered design.  She offers logical examples and a warning about basing design decision on search engine algorithms. Economy blues? Poor conversion rates? Web…

• SES NY Speaker Deadlines and Pre-Agenda Pricing

  cre8pc

  20 Jan 2012 | 3:41 pm

  Today is the last day for pre-agenda discount pricing for those heading for the New York Search Engine Strategies conference in March. The New York conference is very popular, with education, training and networking opportunities in abundance. This is not one to miss! Register today for your pre-agenda pricing, plus another 20% discount. They have also announced speaker deadlines, which are around the corner. Go to SES New York 2012 Deadlines Proposing a session: Jan 31 Speaking submission: Feb 17 Register now for discounts! Economy blues? Poor conversion rates? Web site lost its spunk?

• Save Money on Your Search Engine Strategies Conference New York Trip

  cre8pc

  17 Jan 2012 | 3:08 pm

  I’m thrilled to tell you that as Founder and Owner of Cre8asiteforums, I can offer Cre8asiteforums members 20% off your registration fee for the next Search Engine Strategies Conference to be held in New York City in March. Visit Cre8asiteforums to sign up as a new member and register for the conference using your 20% off code. The New York Search Engine Strategies conference is one of the largest of their global events. This year’s keynote speaker is a true genius! This is your chance to see and hear Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google. Having met and toured…

• Slideshow: Web Design Techniques To Enhance Online Marketing

  cre8pc

  17 Jan 2012 | 2:44 pm

  For those who haven’t seen it, I presented a webcast for the American Marketing Association last June. Here is the free slideshow of the presentation. Aquent/AMA Webcast: How User Centered Web Design Techniques Enhance Online Marketing View more presentations from Aquent Webmaster When a search engine giant such as Google has a large usability department, you can be assured that user experience is vital to online and offline marketing. This webcast session will debunk the myth that search engine marketing “tricks” search engines. Whether you are part of software development…

• Balancing Search Marketing & User Experience: Why Bother?

  cre8pc

  16 Jan 2012 | 1:26 pm

  Yesterday a colleague asked me to find information on software application response times. I responded with some qualifying questions to refine my assistance but what it boiled down was this: the corporate powers wanted to know how much they could fudge things so that an ecommerce software application could roll out into “production” even though it wasn’t ready to effectively respond to customers. Could this be a problem and if yes, who says so? Selling Customer Experience Most online marketers focus on getting web site pages crawled, indexed and ranked high in search engines. If you do…

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  UX Movement

• Faceted Overload: Simplifying the Sidebar Navigation

  anthony

  19 Jan 2012 | 3:08 pm

  The benefit of using a faceted sidebar navigation on your website is that you aren’t vertically constrained by space. You can list as many links in the sidebar as you need. However, this known benefit also has an unknown downside. Listing too many links in your sidebar can lead to faceted overload. This is when the faceted navigation extends below the fold, and overwhelms users with links on the side of the page. This faceted overload makes information harder to find, slows users down and can clutter the page. The reason information is harder to find with an overloaded sidebar is because…

• Productivity Papers: Work Like an Expert, Become One

  anthony

  17 Jan 2012 | 5:09 pm

  Many have wondered whether experts are born or made. If experts were born, it would mean that they wouldn’t have to make an effort to excel in their domain. They would coast through activities without struggles or setbacks. However, study and research on experts has proven that this isn’t the case. Experts may make things look easy when they perform, but the truth is that it takes a lot of work to get there. In fact, it’s not how much you work that’s the defining factor. It’s the way you work that matters the most. Productivity Papers is a system of printable papers that help you…

• Winners of the UserTesting Giveaway

  anthony

  12 Jan 2012 | 12:35 pm

  Usability testing has never been easier with UserTesting. They were generous to offer three UX Movement readers free usability tests. They chose the three people who left most creative responses in how they would use the usability tests. These usability tests will go a long way in measuring your site performance on users. The winners of the UserTesting giveaway are: 1st place – Jessica “We have so much noise on our two most trafficked pages. I want to know where people are getting lost and/or giving up. How they are or are not finding the things they want. Ultimately, I want to…

• Why Scrolling is the New Click

  anthony

  10 Jan 2012 | 12:18 pm

  Which is better for users, scrolling or clicking? This is the question that designers have to think about when they’re designing page flow. Clicking offers users a menu of links that take them to a new page. Scrolling offers users all the content divided into different sections on a single page. Many years ago, clicking was the simple answer to this question. The general thought was that if you made your page too long, users would only view and read the top half and glance over or ignore the bottom half. Today, things have changed. Many users do scroll to the end of the page and have no…

• UX Movement’s Top 10 Most Read Articles of 2011

  anthony

  28 Dec 2011 | 10:00 am

  2011 was an interesting year for UX Movement. There were many articles published. But not all of them got the same amount of publicity. Since the new year is coming, I would like to spotlight the top 10 most read articles of 2011. In order, from most to least read, here they are: Why Rounded Corners are Easier on the Eyes Why Your Form Buttons Should Never Say Submit Why Users Fill Out Forms Faster with Unified Text Fields 9 Things Designers Can Learn from Target’s Checkout Form Why ‘Ok’ Buttons in Dialog Boxes Work Best on the Right Why Users Fill Out Forms Faster with Top…

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  Website Usability Testing: IntuitionHQ.com

• Back to our routine

  timothy

  10 Jan 2012 | 10:06 pm

  We’re getting back to our routine here at IntuitionHQ. The holidays were nice but we have to go back to work sooner or later. Talking about holidays, how was yours? Going on a holiday can be exciting but it isn’t always as easy as it should be. I realised that myself when I checked out some holiday homes. The first thing we preach here at IntuitionHQ is good usability – we are a usability testing service after all. Good usability is a critical aspect of any good design. A usable website should designed with the expectations and experience of users in mind. They want to find…

• City usability and the rise of the parklet

  Nathan

  30 Nov 2011 | 7:18 pm

  We have been in San Francisco for a fortnight now and one of the things that has drawn our attention as we are getting to know San Francisco better are the number of parklets dotting the streets. This is a project run by the city. A parklet is a small but usable piece of public space and usually replaces a parking spot. Parklet on 4th Street, San Francisco Often the parklets have small gardens and seating, the provide a welcome respite from the endless grey sidewalks and roads. The addition of parklets provides the opportunity to pause and relax. What we like most about these parklets is…

• My experience of San Fran (the first week and a bit)

  Jacob Creech

  24 Nov 2011 | 6:04 pm

  Oh, hi there internet, how are you going? It’s Jake here, just wanted to give you a brief insight into our trip to San Fran. We’ve been here for around a week and a half now, and time has just flown by. The first couple of days for me were spent getting everything set up – including of course a Scrum board for planning our actions in San Fran (with one week sprints, if you are curious). We’ve come up with a bunch of valuable actions that we can perform while we are here, and are quickly putting them into action. I’ve been out to a couple of different coworking…

• Our first week in San Francisco

  Nathan

  23 Nov 2011 | 5:45 pm

  What a great week, off the plane and straight into “The Coaching Stance“, met and worked with more than a dozen great people. The highlights so far: the food: tasty, cheap, and plenty of it! toaster waffles,OK, still technically food but in the toaster! the people: friendly, warm and open minded The Mission: Newtown on steroids (amongst other things!) San Fran Agilistas: whoa, so much experience Learning more people are now using agile methodologies to run projects than waterfall So many opportunities to help people with usability What I am looking forward to next week: Burritos…

• If you’re going to San Francisco (for a startup)…

  Jacob Creech

  30 Oct 2011 | 9:04 pm

  As some of you may remember, we’ve won a trip to San Francisco and the time is soon approaching that we will be winging on our merry way. Nathan, the founder of IntuitionHQ, and I (Jake) will be heading over for a month from the 15th of November till the 12th of December. We’ve got a few plans while we are there, but we’d love to take some time to meet our users, potential users and all interested parties while we are in the area. We’d also love your suggestions on what places to go (for business purposes, of course) while we are there. If you run a startup and…

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  Baymard Institute

• UI: Getting the Details Right

  Jamie Appleseed

  24 Jan 2012 | 2:58 am

  User interface details matter to the overall user experience. Many users may not consciously notice these details on your site yet they do have an impact on the overall user experience. When everything feels just right the perception of your site and brand is improved. In this article we’ll look at 5 different types of UI details you should pay attention to. Spatial indicators An easy way to establish virtual space is by using spatial indicators throughout your design. These are essentially any type of indicator that suggests space. This jQuery plugin makes heavy use of spatial…

• Copywriting: How to Write Useful (Yet Intriguing) Headlines

  Christian Holst

  10 Jan 2012 | 2:53 am

  Writing headlines for online editorial content can be a daunting task with conflicting advise. On the usability side people like Jakob Nielsen argue that you must front load information scent in your headlines. The goal is to convey as much useful information on what the article will be about so the user can make an informed decision on whether that is the right page or not. However, these headlines often end up so dull that nobody wants to open the article at all (unless they already know and trust the source). On the other hand, copywriters like Brian Clark claim that the purpose of a…

• Baymard: 2011 and 2012

  Baymard Institute

  27 Dec 2011 | 10:21 am

  Here at Baymard we write three different categories of UX articles: 1) Research & Guidelines, 2) Case studies, and 3) Observations. We know a lot of you started subscribing to our articles during the year (thank you!), so below is a list with some of our favorite articles from each of these three categories in case you missed them (or just want to revisit old favorites): 1) Research & Guidelines Fundamental Guidelines Of E-Commerce Checkout Design – guest article on Smashing Magazine based on our Checkout Usability report 19 Ways to Simplify ‘Sign Up’ – our most…

• UI: Adding Subtle Textures for Depth

  Jamie Appleseed

  6 Dec 2011 | 3:04 am

  More and more sites and applications are using subtle textures to give their design a more distinguished look. The wise use of subtle textures for backgrounds and other elements can add a lot to a design, making it feel more real or physical. A solid color feels very flat in the digital world because it is completely clean, but the second you add a texture, it comes alive – the surface suddenly has depth. Especially apps designed for touch devices seem to be adopting textures – and for a good reason: these apps tend to mimic the real world much more than desktop applications, and in the…

• UI: Thoughts on the New Facebook Timeline Design

  Jamie Appleseed

  16 Nov 2011 | 3:55 am

  The new Facebook timeline is a dramatic departure from the current profile view. There’s many things to like about it: good use of metaphor, a sense of space, and a simple navigation model – all of it presented in an aesthetically pleasing package. This article aims to highlight some of the thoughts and observations we made on first look. It’s a good metaphor The metaphor works really well. A line cutting down the middle of the screen, with all the events from your life tied to it in chronological order, from the day you were born up to the present. A timeline of your life. (Or…

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  Wireframes Magazine

• ProtoShare 6

  Jakub

  13 Jan 2012 | 8:05 am

  ProtoShare has recently gone live with the next version of their online prototyping app. The latest version of the tool takes design conversation to the next level by introducing topics. For one, topics are conversation placeholders which can be pinned to a page. More importantly however, topics can also be subscribed / unsubscribed from by various team members. This now allows collaborators some degree of filtering in terms of what might be relevant to them. Finally, another important characteristic of discussions is the way they elevate two types of conversation properties: decisions and…

• 930 Vintage Vector Ornaments Set

  Jakub

  16 Dec 2011 | 10:20 am

  In addition to the 750 Vector Icons for Web Designers, Vincent has also released 930 Vintage Vector Ornaments as set. The set comes in both EPS and AI files and is filled with ornaments, borders, corners, rulers and flourishes. :) Possibly useful for some projects? The bundle comes at a price of $39. Enjoy. Credits: Vincent Le Moign

• Fireworks Wireframing Kit

  Jakub

  12 Dec 2011 | 7:43 am

  Hannah just started the Fireworks Wireframing Kit resource site. It’s still hot of the press, but the blog is gearing up to be a collection of freely submitted PNG files submitted by the public to help with wireframing. So far there are a few grey scale files already with such components as: modal windows, login boxes, and buttons of various shapes and sizes. Right now you have to download each component individually, as you see fit. Hopefully it’s useful and please feel free to submit something if you have stuff to share. Credits: Hannah Milan

• myBalsamiq

  Jakub

  5 Dec 2011 | 8:06 am

  myBalsamiq has just launched last month and took the web based version of Balsamiq Mockups and extended it with a bunch of collaboration features. The sketchy wireframes can now be uploaded online and organized into projects which can then also be given one of the following four access settings: private, website, blog and wiki. The default setting, “private”, is the most restricted and makes projects only visible to the specified members you share your work with. Whereas “wiki” on the other end of the spectrum is the most open and allows anonymous users to comment on,…

• Cue – Gesture Icons

  Jakub

  23 Nov 2011 | 8:07 am

  PJ recently took another stab at making gesture icons more comprehensible and released Cue under Creative Commons. It’s a proposed system for representing gestures more clearly that makes use of thumb like icons. He explains his motivation for the project in a blog post as well. The icons come in PNG (4 sizes), SVG, Omnigraffle and InDesign formats. Awesome. It’s always great to see explorations in visual language. Thanks PJ! Here is how he puts it: These gesture icons act as roadsigns to an app for interaction way-finding. As expected, there has been a significant collection of…

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  UsabilityPost

• Styling Button Links With CSS3

  Dmitry Fadeyev

  9 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  A fair while back I wrote a post on pressed button states using CSS, which was a tutorial on how to implement a pressed down button effect on custom styled links. In that post I used images to achieve the visual effect. Now that we have good CSS3 support, that method is really out of date. In this post I’ll show you how to achieve the same effect using CSS3, as well as how I’d go about styling the rest of the button. Step 1: the button We’ll assume you have a custom styled link that looks like a button. This is used for links outside of forms that you want to give weight to,…

• Competing With an Archetype

  Dmitry Fadeyev

  9 Dec 2011 | 6:00 pm

  There’s an interesting post over at TechCrunch discussing the current hot topic of the iPad design — or more specifically: how Apple has created a design for a tablet that is so simple and obvious that their competition has no other way forward but to implement their own products the same way, suffering Apple lawsuits in the process. This discussion started when Apple has provided a set of suggestions to Samsung on how they could design their tablet differently so as to not infringe on Apple’s patents. The suggestions aren’t very interesting because they’re not a…

• The Unstoppable Carousel

  Dmitry Fadeyev

  13 Nov 2011 | 6:00 pm

  JavaScript carousels are a nice way to show off multiple products or highlights in the same area of the page. But there is one thing about the badly made ones that annoys me: they have no way to pause the thing. Here’s an example of a product carousel used on the Penguin website: Clicking on a section of the carousel will bring that section into focus, but the carousel is still in rotation mode so it will switch to the next one in seconds. This forces me to have to rush to read all of the text and look at the cover quickly — not a pleasant user experience. Apple gets it right…

• Timeless Fashion

  Dmitry Fadeyev

  10 Nov 2011 | 6:00 pm

  The headline is a contradiction, for what is fashionable cannot be timeless — nevertheless, this is how I see the designs of Jonny Ive, Apple’s chief designer. His original iMac was a work of style. It was made out of shiny, transparent plastic, was full of anthropomorphic curves and came in a variety of colors. Over the years Ive’s designs have moved away from this original explosion of style towards something more restrained, more mathematical. His latest designs are a tribute to Dieter Rams, who sought to produce the timeless through ruthless, methodical elimination. Rams…

• Book review: The Language of Things

  Dmitry Fadeyev

  31 Oct 2011 | 7:00 pm

  Sudjic opens the book with an anecdote about his experience purchasing a MacBook at Heathrow Airport. It was an impulse purchase and the author desrcribes in detail how Apple was able to utilize design to make the product enticing, an almost irresistable buy. All of the individual details of the product—its color, its shape, its packaging—carried some sort of message about it. For Sudjic, the combination of these messages generated the desire to own the item, and so the purchase decision was made. What this book is about is exactly that: how design is more than just about what the…

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  The UX Bookmark

• A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

  admin

  18 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  As it happens, designing Future Interfaces For The Future used to be the author’s line of work. He had the opportunity to design with real working prototypes, not green screens and After Effects, so there certainly are some interactions in the video which he is a little skeptical of, given that he has actually tried them and the animators presumably haven’t. But that’s not his problem with the video. His problem is the opposite — this vision, from an interaction perspective, is not visionary. It’s a timid increment from the status quo, and the status quo, from an…

• What is the Deep-Dive Brainstorming technique?

  admin

  3 Jan 2012 | 8:53 am

  Deep-Dive™ is the name of a technique used to rapidly immerse a group or team into a situation for problem solving or idea creation. This approach is often used for brainstorming product or process development. Originally developed by the IDEO group (a learning design company) for rapid product development, the Deep-Dive technique is now widely and increasingly used for innovation not only in product development, but process improvement and customer service strategies. The method used by IDEO was documented by Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer (of International Institute of Management…

• Breaking Down the Silos: Usability Practitioners Meet Marketing Researchers

  admin

  14 Dec 2011 | 7:55 am

  Being a consultant with experience in both traditional marketing research and user experience and usability gives the author a unique perspective on a broad range of issues relating to customer experience. Not only does he have a good idea of what the other discipline does, he is also a practitioner of the other discipline. However, in attempting to play both roles at once, he often finds that client companies keep these two disciplines locked up in separate silos—usability research within IT and marketing research within the Marketing Services department. This can have a serious impact on…

• Five Myths about Taxonomy and SharePoint

  admin

  14 Nov 2011 | 5:53 am

  Many organizations are finding that leveraging the full suite of capabilities SharePoint offers requires introduction of a new requirement – that of dealing with, managing and exploiting taxonomies. Of course taxonomies are not new, but there is some confusion about where managed metadata services and the term store end and true taxonomy management begins. There are also some misconceptions about the process of deriving and applying taxonomies in SharePoint. The following are five areas of confusion that we have seen in our engagements and research. Myth 1: SharePoint now has taxonomy…

• The 10 best social business metrics for brands

  admin

  6 Nov 2011 | 6:03 am

  The author presents a round up of 10 of the leading social business scores, indices and levels designed to help brands and organisations assess their social ability and achievements. Social Brand Index Vitrue Social Media Index YourSocialMediaScore Klout Score PeerIndex Score Social Media Reputation (SMR) Social Business Index Social Spam Index TweetLevel Social Business Maturity Level The 10 best social business metrics for brands

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  Erin Lynn Young

• Status Message Fail

  Erin Lynn Young

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:39 am

  Dear Microsoft, Thanks for trying, but 26,195 means nothing to me. How many did you start with? How far have you gotten? How much longer do I have to wait? Please throw me (your patient user) a bone here! Love, Erin See also:Writing a Usable Error Message The Right Way to Introduce a New Feature Harvest Knows How To Announce New Features

• Quotes on UX Design

  Erin Lynn Young

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:27 am

  A thread on Quora is accumulating notable quotations about design & user experience.  These are some of the ones I don’t want to lose track of: The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. — Hans Hofmann Questions about whether design is necessary or affordable are quite beside the point: design is inevitable. The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all. — Douglas Martin, 1989 Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. — Antoine de…

• Simple & Smart Opportunity: An Emailed Receipt

  Erin Lynn Young

  25 Jan 2012 | 9:08 am

  “What’s an email address where I can send your receipt?” Such a smart tactic.                 See also:Ning’s Simple, Engaging Welcome Email Sephora Excels with Ratings, Reviews and CRM

• The Best Kept Secret in Mobile Design Patterns

  Erin Lynn Young

  29 Nov 2011 | 7:35 pm

  OK, I’ll admit – it may only be the best kept secret because I haven’t ever really told anyone about it. But basically, iphoneux.tumblr.com is my little spot for quickly posting screen grabs capturing design samples I like from iPhone apps & the mobile web. I’m really just getting started with it, but I thought it was worth sharing.  Check it out. See also:Design Pattern Libraries It’s OK to Tease: Matching Mental Models to Design Patterns Design Pattern: Parallel Experiences

• Why Register?

  Erin Lynn Young

  27 Oct 2011 | 1:22 pm

  I stumbled upon this design sample on a recipe at AmericasTestKitchen.com.  It’s an interesting way to let the user know that registration is required to access the content they want. Does it work?  I can’t make any promises… but, I registered (and their recipes are very, very thorough by the way!) See also:It’s OK to Tease: Matching Mental Models to Design Patterns Design Pattern: Parallel Experiences