The web has been around for a fairly long time now, as technology goes, so I think it’s safe to say that there are some examples of good designs. Some of the common tricks of the trade include the ability to help a user understand context (“You are here”,... Read more
On Thursday April 8th I will be headed to the 11th annual IA Summit, held in Phoenix, AZ. I’m really excited about the program, because the subject matter covers both practical and theoretical concepts related to Experience Design topics. I also look forward to chatting with others. It’s amazing... Read more
This Thursday marks the 10th annual IA Summit, held in Memphis, TN. Actually, it begins earlier, but the main conference begins on Thursday. My apologies to friends I will meet there. Being the avid college basketball fan that I am, I feel organizers made a royal blunder by scheduling... Read more
This was the second IA Summit that I’ve attended. Last year I took my wife. It was great because, as parents of twin toddlers, it was a welcome vacation and respite from the responsibilities that parenting entails. Although I willingly chose to spend free time with my wife, I... Read more
One of my posts made it to the corporate blog. Tags: [Blackboard, Partial Recall, usability, interaction design, information architecture, ui, ux, ixd, user experience] Read more
This morning I went to the Apple home page to find one of their commercials. I went to search and noticed that the behavior mimicked Apple’s own operating system and the “suggest” features available in browser search boxes. What I liked is that it not only offered suggested terms... Read more
One of the criticisms of the UX field is that often the concern is to have a product that is usable, but is that all that is needed? Shouldn’t people have a pleasurable experience as well? I haven’t quite found a way to measure this within a usability test... Read more
I’ve decided to pour through my Gmail account to delete and archive old emails that I’ve been too busy to move from my inbox. Sure, I really don’t have to perform this task when I can just archive everything, but I’m pretty anal about categorizing my emails, even if... Read more
I’m not a huge LinkedIn user, but I am impressed that they iteratively work to make their product better and better by targeting better social connection and better user experience. The other day someone invited me to connect (no, not my wife, like the picture depicts), and I was... Read more
This year your peers and industry experts will speak about how topics such as social networking, gaming, patterns, tagging, taxonomies, and a wide range of IA tools and techniques can help as users ‘experience information’. – April 10-14, 2008 (Miami, Florida USA)” – (About the Summit) I went to... Read more
Edward Tufte offers a critique of the iPhone’s interface design (includes video). Tags: [Edward Tufte, Tufte, iPhone, Partial Recall, Apple, interface design, GUI, interaction design, HCI] Read more
I’m not a big fan of the page scroll, unless it is absolutely necessary. The reason I oppose it is that it hasn’t tested well with children. According to Nielsen, “Children rarely scrolled pages and mainly interacted with information that was visible above the fold.” Armed with that knowledge,... Read more
Today, Jakob Nielsen published an article on how to properly use tabs. He uses Yahoo! Finance as his case study. Of note is how Nielsen contrasts guidelines from Apple OSX and Windows Vista. Personally, I too prefer title-style capitalization. Tags: [usability, Jakob Nielsen, usability guidelines, user experience, ux, web... Read more
Just a quick note that the Usability Professionals’ Association (DC Chapter) is organizing a one day conference on Friday, October 12 in DC. http://www.upa-dc-metro.org/conference/2007/index.php This local area usability conference will allow attendees to: LEARN about important trends, cutting edge methods, and case studies in usability and user-centered design. NETWORK... Read more
Forms guru Luke Wroblewski recently discussed the concept of primary and secondary actions in form design: http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/PSactions.asp. After conducting some user testing, it seems as though button placement had more effect than using color to contrast primary and secondary actions. Although there was no clear winner, my vote would... Read more
Yesterday, the local UPA DC chapter hosted,”What I Learned at the Usability Conferences – 2007.” I was part of a panel that represented the following conferences: Information Architecture (IA) Summit March 22-26, 2007, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference May 2007, San... Read more
The University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab is hosting a symposium on May 31 and June 1. Check out the event! Tags: [UMCP, HCI, Partial Recall, ontology, folksonomy, social networks, Jenny Preece, Read more
If you’ve never used a screen reader or seen one in action, the Yahoo! User Interface folks posted this worthwhile video for you to check out… Yahoo!’s Victor Tsaran is both an engineer and a blind computer-user whose interactions with his desktop applications and with the web are mediated... Read more
Is anyone going to the recap of the IA Summit 2007? Unfortunately, I will be unable to but I’d highly recommend going. Here’s the announcement: If you missed the IA Summit in Vegas this year, fear not! DCIA will be holding a redux on Saturday, May 12 at 9am.... Read more
Stephen Anderson offered an inspiring presentation from the IA Summit. [Runtime: 136 slides | Please make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Flash installed on your computer to watch this slideshow. To download it, please visit: http://www.adobe.com/ ] Tags: [adaptive, adaptive interface, interaction design, information architecture, IA... Read more