Eric Reiss on July 28th, 2010

I confess – I’m for it. And I’ll go even further – I think “making it up as you go along” is one of the greatest, and most important processes of any age. … »

Mac Funamizu on July 25th, 2010

Who has never pulled a push door? Or pushed a door that is supposed to be pulled to open? If it is a basic knob, it’s hard to know which way it opens. … »

Jeff Parks on July 20th, 2010

Today on Radio Johnny, Jeff Parks talks with Paul Kahn, 2010 Keynote for the EuroIA Summit taking place September 24th and 25th in Paris, France at Les Salons de l’Aveyron. Paul shares his experiences working in the field of Information Architecture over the years, how users access and understand information, as well as the many challenges and opportunities for the future of the discipline.

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Seth Snyder on July 16th, 2010

How do YOU design nature? Whether we like it or not, nature evolves, following its own path towards the future. But is it really its own path? It’s probably fair to say that most people agree that Darwinian evolution is still happening today – natural evolution, survival of the fittest, species evolving to best fit their ever-changing environments. But what about the kind of evolution that some may consider, not so “natural”? Man-made species, genetically modified organisms, test-tube body parts, and creatures that have been forever tweaked by human interference.

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Penny Hagen and Natalie Rowland on July 13th, 2010

“To design is to have a ‘project’. Getting the design process moving is to expose and transform this ‘project’ in a conversation with those that it might eventually affect” (Buur, Binder, & Brandt, 2000).

In the early stages of design, rather than evaluate or validate specific user requirements or priorities, we are interested in exploring possibilities. As the opening quote suggests, we seek to engage with the various stakeholders the design project may eventually effect and gain an understanding of the unique design situation from their perspective. In Zimmerman et al.’s  (2004) framework for discovering and extracting knowledge during the design process, this is known as the Discovery phase of design. In this article we introduce Mobile Diaries as a field work method that can be utilised in the early stages of design to immerse into people’s everyday life. … »

Steve Baty on July 10th, 2010

In conjunction with Rosenfeld Media, we’re very pleased to announce the winners of the UX Story competition. Entrants were asked to tweet – in 140 characters or less! – why storytelling is such a powerful tool for UX practitioners. Throughout June the responses came in and, after a tough judging task, the winners were chosen.

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Mac Funamizu on July 9th, 2010

Say your TV remote suddenly stops working and you are trying to change the batteries. Then you remember you changed one of the two batteries just a couple of days ago. Which is it? Exchange one of them with a new one. No, not this one… … »

Johnny Holland on July 7th, 2010

In this round-up of book reviews we are moving from usability testing to business ideas and children. We reviewed Steve Krug’s ‘Rocket Surgery Made Easy’, a collection of essays called ‘Mobile Technology for Children’, 37Signals’ ‘Rework’ and Donna Spencer’s newest book ‘A Practical Guide to Information Architecture.’ … »

Daniel Szuc on July 6th, 2010

Ever asked yourself how you can make more impact on your projects? Instead of reacting to poor product decisions, being in a position to drive real change? … »

Tyler Tate and H. Stefan Olafsson on July 5th, 2010

The implications of Information Foraging Theory on designing user-centered websites have not gone unnoticed. Jakob Nielsen and Jared Spool, among others, have put forth considered recommendations on how to enhance information scent on the web. Most of their guidelines, however, tend to assume that the designer has direct control over the explicit words used in the interface. While this is certainly the case for browse-based websites dependent on site-wide navigation and hyperlinks, it breaks down for search interfaces where both content and navigation are completely dynamic.
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