Design. Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design. Lean UX: Getting Out of the Deliverables Business (London IA - Feb 7 2012) Shared Note Taking - Webstock 2012. Designing better user interfaces. Fact vs. Fiction: What Usability is Not. A close friend asked me a few days ago – “You’ve covered decent ground on the science, dimensions, characteristics, design aspects, process and pervasiveness of usability considerations.
How about doing a reverse bit? What usability is not about? Or the myths of usability?” I jumped at the chance. In choosing to write this, I am simply reinforcing the simple concept that it is also necessary to talk about the “NOT” part in a subject as complex as usability. Usability is expensive It is known that Stanford University, Microsoft, IBM, and many others spend tons of resources (money and human) on usability research, which is quite expensive. I agree that it’s not a commodity – that there’s a price to pay. Usability is free At the opposite end of the first misconception, a large number of people believe that usability can be free. Usability is minimalism The concept of minimalism is usually a nice and welcome change in today’s noisy world.
Going minimal is not alone going to get you usability. Sensemaking in a changing world | Designing Change. Passive magic, design of delightful experience. Why is Google Maps on a mobile device so amazing and delightful? Why does Word Lens feel so mind-blowing? Why does a Prius feel so good when you get in and go? Why does it feel satisfying to look down at the lighted keyboard on the Mac? It is noteworthy when the design of an experience is so compelling that you feel wonder and delight. When designed right it feels totally natural, some might even say it is truly “intuitive.”
No training is needed, no set-up, no break in flow, the tool fits seamlessly, improving without disrupting your experience; it’s like a little bit of magic. So how to design the delightful, magical experience? In the digital world magic experiences are more likely to follow technology breakthroughs. I’m using passive to describe input which is largely listening and processing signal which is self-identified, as opposed to active input where signal is initiated by the user with specific intent.
Fully passive input, quietly helping in the background. Redefining Hick's Law. Advertisement Hick’s Law has always been a popular reference point for designers. You’ll find it cited in the endless lists of basic laws and principles that all designers should be familiar with. Given our assumed comfort level with this design cornerstone, I am surprised to see so many people getting it wrong. What we think we understand about Hick’s Law as it pertains to Web design is oversimplified and incomplete.
We need to more deeply investigate what Hick’s Law can do for Web design. In the end, we will see why this design principle is undervalued, and we will see how we have been designing incorrectly for the user’s decision-making process. In order to get there, we need to look at our current approach to Hick’s Law and why it’s wrong. A mess of different size labels for clothing hooks. An Incomplete Definition As it stands today, most discussions of Hick’s Law focus on a narrow portion of Web design. Don’t do this. A Better Perspective Reapplying Hick’s Law Is minimalism your thing? Getting stakeholder buy-in for (Lean) UX: An interview with Janice Fraser of Luxr - We Love Lean | Lean UX, Lean Startup.
Dieter Rams / Selector for 25/25 - Celebrating 25 Years of Design. Dieter Rams Industrial Designer (1932-) Selector for 25/25 - Celebrating 25 Years of Design 29 March - 22 June 2007 As head of design at Braun, the German consumer electronics manufacturer, DIETER RAMS (1932-) emerged as one of the most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century by defining an elegant, legible, yet rigorous visual language for its products. Good design is innovative. Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design makes a product understandable. Good design is unobtrusive. These ten principles defined Dieter Rams’ approach to “good design?. Rams’ objective was to design useful products which would be easy to operate.
Dieter Rams was born in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1932. Founded in Frankfurt in 1921 by the engineer Max Braun, the company had a sound reputation for engineering and for developing new products, including the first combined radio and record player. In 1962 Rams was appointed director of Braun’s team of young designers. Why We Need Storytellers at the Heart of Product Development. There's an interesting question on Quora right now: If you had to pick between an amazing product designer or an amazing engineer to build a new company around, which would you pick and why?
This question reflects a painful problem that is common at both small startups and large corporate organizations. Far too often, teams focus on execution before defining the product opportunity and unique value proposition. The result is a familiar set of symptoms including scope creep, missed deadlines, overspent budgets, frustrated teams and, ultimately, confused users.
A product is more than an idea, it's more than a website, and it's more than a transaction or list of functionalities. Who are the product storytellers? The first goal of a product storyteller is to facilitate collaboration and co-creation. Not only do product storytellers identify the intended product value, they also share and evangelize this story throughout their organizations. Who are the right-brain thinkers? GmbH · Blog · The number seven is not magical, but cognitive capacity limitations are real and relevant (Part 2) GmbH · Blog · The number seven is not magical, but cognitive capacity limitations are real and relevant (Part 1) Five Indispensable Skills for UX Mastery. By Jared M. Spool Originally published: Aug 03, 2010 For practicing User Experience Designers, one of the most important laws isn't Fitts's Law, which helps us understand how to design interactive elements. Nor is it Hick's Law, which describes how long people take to make decisions.
It's Sturgeon's Law, which tells us that 99% of everything is crap. It's easy to produce a poor quality result—anyone without the critical skills is capable of it and there are a ton of those people floating around. Yet if we want to be really excellent at what we do, what are those essential skills? This is exactly the question we set out to answer as we studied the work of the master UX professional. Indispensable Skill #1: Sketching Someone once said that talking about design is like performing interpretive dance about architecture. The masters we talked to gravitate to sketching easily. We're talking back-of-the-napkin quality stuff. We asked each master how they obtained their sketching skills. Memory Inception: Three Keys To Creating A Great User Experience For Your Product. Editor’s note: This guest post is written by Dmitry Dragilev, the lead marketer at ZURB, an interaction design firm whose clients have included Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, NYSE, Britney Spears, and Zazzle.
They are also behind the Web notation products Notable and Bounce. Ever read a great book? What do you remember about it? Maybe a few dramatic moments, some wild story twists, and most definitely the ending. There are millions of books, courses and talks out there about building great products online. It turns out there are three different kinds of moments in your story customers remember: transitions, Wow moments, and endings.
How to plant a memory There are three particular kinds of experiences capable of turning an ordinary moment into a memory that will stick in your customer’s head. 1. These are similar to those surprising plot twists in a story. . ● Ever Skype with your grandparents in a remote village in the middle of nowhere? ● Have you tried to use Facetime on the iPhone yet? 2. 3. The Dirtiest Word in UX: Complexity. It’s hard to read anything about UX without finding a reference to the constant tension between simplicity and complexity. People have strong preconceived notions about the words, especially when it comes to experience design. You don’t have to be a UX practitioner to understand that simplicity is a good thing; no one goes around the office saying, "Alright team, let’s make this application really, really complex!
" Removing that layer of confusion to make the user's goals easy to achieve means making things simple and clear. However, removing confusion doesn't always mean removing complexity—it’s somewhat of a grey area. Sometimes complexity actually isn’t such a bad thing. In this article I'll examine some of the many faces of complexity and explore the balance we need to find for successful solutions.
Is Simplicity Overrated? Although most people would say they seek simplicity in life and products, our actions say something different. The Appearance of Complexity Why are Yahoo!