Partial Recall

Links for 2011-12-14

Rob Fay — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:24:13 +0000

The Messy Art Of UX Sketching [Smashing UX Design - Dec 13, 2011] – Many articles discuss the power of sketching and why you should do it, but they don’t go into the how or the methods involved. Sketching seems straightforward, but there are certain ways to do it effectively. In this article, we’ll cover a collection of tools and techniques that I (and many other UX and design folks) use every day.
A Cane For The Blind Improves Social Interactions, Sunday Strolls [Co.Exist] – As scientists make slow and steady progress on sensors to help the blind see and move, this cane helps them say hi to friends.
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design [Worry Dream - Nov 08, 2011] – This matters, because visions matter. Visions give people a direction and inspire people to act, and a group of inspired people is the most powerful force in the world. If you’re a young person setting off to realize a vision, or an old person setting off to fund one, I really want it to be something worthwhile. Something that genuinely improves how we interact.

Links for 2011-12-01

Rob Fay — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:23:14 +0000

The Anatomy of an Experience Map [Adaptive Path - Nov 30, 2011] – Experience maps have become more prominent over the past few years, largely because companies are realizing the interconnectedness of the cross-channel experience. It’s becoming increasingly useful to gain insight in order to orchestrate service touchpoints over time and space.
Using Storyboards and Sentiment Charts to Quantify Customer Experience [UXmatters - Nov 07, 2011] – In the fields of user experience and service design, we use storyboards to illustrate our solutions, so clients can walk in the shoes of their customers, staff, or community and see our solutions as we see them. Storyboards are appealing at an aesthetic level, but are trickier to use in persuading clients who are more used to cold, hard numbers, charts, and tables. Offering more tangible measures of customer sentiment helps clients make connections between the experiences we depict and the sorts of technology, financial, and resource decisions that are necessary to make those experiences happen.
Team WhiteBoarding with Twiddla – Painless Team Collaboration for the Web – Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Browse the web with your friends or make that conference call more productive than ever. No plug-ins, downloads, or firewall voodoo – it’s all here, ready to go when you are. Browser-agnostic, user-friendly.

Links for 2011-11-03

Rob Fay — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:22:11 +0000

How our social circles influence what we do, where we go, and how we decide (Video) [Adaptive Path UX Week 2011 - Aug 25, 2011] – In this talk, you will hear stories that illustrate the social patterns in our lives, and how businesses can use that knowledge to build new products, market themselves in more relevant ways, and create experiences that people value. Paul will share stories about how people we are close to, and people we’ve never met, may or may not influence us, and explain how norms learned from people’s local culture impact how much they can be influenced. His goal is for you to walk away with concrete ideas about building great products built around social behavior.
UX, It’s Time to Define CXO [UX Magazine - Oct 28, 2011] – But now that the CXO title has been around for a few years, I ask you: what does the CXO really do and how have things changed for us? How have we, as a profession, taken ownership of this role? What are you doing differently now that you have a CXO in your organization, and does that CXO even have a UX background? Furthermore, how do we ensure the CXO seat is filled by UX, and what skills does someone need to fill it?
An Event Apart: Design Principles [Functioning Form - Oct 24, 2011] – In his Design Principles presentation at An Event Apart in Washington DC 2011 Jeremy Keith outlined the design principles behind the World Wide Web and how they continue to shape its future. Here are my notes from his talk:

Links for 2011-10-20

Rob Fay — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:19:22 +0000

Getting the first click right [Measuring Usability - Oct 19, 2011] – Few things affect task success more than the navigation of website. If users can’t find what they’re looking for, not much else matters. If it were easy to get the navigation right, there wouldn’t be books and a profession dedicated to it.
First impressions matter in life and that’s also the case with website navigation. Research has shown that when users first click is down the right path, 87% eventually succeed. When they click down an incorrect path, only 46% eventually succeed.
The 10 principles of interaction design [.Net - Oct 19, 2011] – I got my start as an interaction designer during the first internet bubble. Since then I’ve worked on interactive marketing and products for everything including finance, automotive, electronics, packaged consumer goods, pharmaceuticals and healthcare. In that time and experience I have come to know that there are a few key things that make good interaction designs and designers. Here are 10 of them.
Storyboarding & UX – part 2: creating your own [Johnny Holland - Oct 17, 2011] – When thinking about storyboarding, most people fixate on their ability – or perceived inability — to draw. What is far more important is working out the point you wish to make with your storyboard, and the actual story that will carry that point from your storyboard across the room and into the hearts and minds of your audience. In this article explores the value of establishing a reason for the storyboard first, and then how you can create a storyboard using the thinking you’re already using and the skills you already have.

Links for 2011-10-06

Rob Fay — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 13:36:11 +0000

Sunni Brown: Doodlers, unite! [TED - Mar, 2011] – Studies show that sketching and doodling improve our comprehension — and our creative thinking. So why do we still feel embarrassed when we’re caught doodling in a meeting? Sunni Brown says: Doodlers, unite! She makes the case for unlocking your brain via pad and pen.
Conversation Techniques For Designers [Smashing UX Design - Sep 29, 2011] – In this article, we’ll examine the role of conversation in the design process, and how the words we use shape the products we ship. We’ll outline nine ways by which designers can maintain a consistent design conversation during a project, helping to create a better product.
Organize anything, together. | Trello – Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what’s being worked on, who’s working on what, and where something is in a process.

Links for 2011-10-04

Rob Fay — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:35:35 +0000

Shelf Life of Social Media Links Only 3 Hours [Hubspot - Sep 08, 2011] – When it comes to link sharing in social media, it turns out it’s not about where you share it — it’s about what you share. New research from URL shortening service bitly focuses on how long a link is “alive” before people stop engaging with it and whether it matters what kind of content it is or where it was shared. Winners are using direct links (instead of shorteners) and Youtube.
Design Research: Why You Need it [Cooper Journal - Mar 03, 2003] – A design research phase consists of three main activities: stakeholder interviews, domain research, and user interviews. Some combination of all three makes for a successful phase. The length of each activity depends on the complexity of the product. More is always better, but effective design research can be gathered in a relatively short amount of time. Typically, one to three weeks is sufficient for most business and domain products, while complex enterprise systems with multiple interfaces require a longer research period.
How Good Designers Think [Harvard Business Review - Apr 26, 2011] – Firstly, good designers don’t tend to think about consumers; they think about people and what they want and need. Secondly, good designers like observing — really looking at what people do rather than simply relying on what they say they do. Thirdly, they bring expertise in other categories and industries to bear on problems in others. Fourthly, good designers look at what might all change in the short, medium and long-term, by engaging with the best trends and forecasting intelligence. And lastly, good designers pressure test their conclusions by consulting with other cultural interpreters from a broad range of other disciplines.

Links for 2011-08-19

Rob Fay — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:32:45 +0000

Social Design [Facebook Developers] – Social Design is a way of thinking about product design that puts social experiences at the core. Create these social experiences with the features available on Facebook Platform.
Google Web Fonts – Hundreds of free, open-source fonts optimized for the web.

Links for 2011-08-05

Rob Fay — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:43:06 +0000

Observing Customers Drives Innovation [ZURB - Aug 02, 2011] – Innovation comes from observing customers. That’s all. You’ll find tons of product opportunities to capitalize on by observing how people are accomplishing everyday tasks. OXO comes to mind as a company that drives innovation from observing their customers.
The Eight Pillars of Innovation [Think Quarterly by Google - Q3, 2011] – Our growing Google workforce comes to us from all over the world, bringing with them vastly different experiences and backgrounds. A set of strong common principles for a company makes it possible for all its employees to work as one and move forward together. We just need to continue to say “yes”and resist a culture of “no”, accept the inevitability of failures, and continue iterating until we get things right.
An Empirical Evaluation of the System Usability Scale [International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (Volume 24, Issue 6) - Jul 30, 2008] – This article presents nearly 10 year’s worth of System Usability Scale (SUS) data collected on numerous products in all phases of the development lifecycle. The SUS, developed by Brooke (1996), reflected a strong need in the usability community for a tool that could quickly and easily collect a user’s subjective rating of a product’s usability. The data in this study indicate that the SUS fulfills that need. Results from the analysis of this large number of SUS scores show that the SUS is a highly robust and versatile tool for usability professionals. The article presents these results and discusses their implications, describes nontraditional uses of the SUS, explains a proposed modification to the SUS to provide an adjective rating that correlates with a given score, and provides details of what constitutes an acceptable SUS score.
A CRAP way to improve usability [Userfocus - Aug 01, 2011] – Visual design is often dismissed as eye candy. In fact, we can use four key principles of visual design to create more usable interfaces. These principles are Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity.

Links for 2011-06-22

Rob Fay — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:42:03 +0000

Usability Testing with 5 Users [Alertbox - Mar 19, 2000] – Some people think that usability is very costly and complex and that user tests should be reserved for the rare web design project with a huge budget and a lavish time schedule. Not true. Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.

Links for 2011-06-09

Rob Fay — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:41:11 +0000

What Do You Have to Do to Get Your Way? [UX Magazine - May 19, 2011] – UX Magazine attended the 2011 IA Summit in Denver this year to interview conference speakers and attendees. In this video, interviewees respond to the question:When you’re working on a project, what do you have to do to get your way?
The Fight for Better Experiences: Are you winning or losing? [UX Magazine - Jun 11, 2011] – UX Magazine attended the 2011 IA Summit in Denver this year to interview conference speakers and attendees. In this video, interviewees respond to the question:In the fight for better experiences, are you winning or losing?