UX Archive

Toolglass and Magic Lenses: The See-Through Interface Bier, E. A., Stone, M., Pier, K., Buxton, W. & DeRose. T. (1993). Toolglass and magic lenses: the see-through interface. , 73-80. Eric A. Xerox PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304 (1) of Toronto, (2)University of Washington (TM) are new user interface tools that can appear, as though on a transparent sheet of glass, between an application and a traditional cursor. I.3.6 [ ]: Methodology and Techniques-interaction techniques; H.5.2 [ ]: User Interfaces-interaction styles; I.3.3 [ ]: Picture/Image Generation-viewing algorithms; I.3.4 [ ]: Graphics Utilities-graphics editors multi-hand, button, lens, viewing filter, control panel, menu, transparent, macro 1. We introduce a new style of graphical user interface, called the . Two hands can be used to operate the see-through interface. A set of simple widgets called is shown in figure 1. Click-through buttons. Many widgets can be placed on a single sheet, as shown in figure 2. A sheet of widgets. 2. Multi-Handed Interfaces 3. . Grids

5 Principles of User Experience, Part 1 This is the first of a three-part series highlighting five user experience principles to keep in mind when designing your site. Applying these principles will help provide a great experience for users on your site. After the series we’ll host a live Google+ Hangout On Air on October 9th at 10:30am PT, when we'll put these principles in action by helping an AdSense publisher make UX improvements to their site. Today, we've provided our first two important design tips and techniques to help you identify goals for both your site and its users.1. Step back and first ask yourself, “How can I give my users what they want while getting what I want?” Tips: Some questions to ask yourself when starting out are: How are your users finding your site? No matter what page a user lands on, you only have a few seconds on that first screen with the space above the fold to get their attention and show them what you’re all about. Another thing to keep in mind is the information architecture of your site.

Android Niceties Full Spectrum: 10 Books on Sensemaking for the TED 2012 Bookstore This week, I’m at TED , where I had the honor of curating a selection of books for the TED Bookstore around this year’s theme, . Here are my picks, along with the original text that appears on the little cards in the bookstore, and my blurb about the selection: I believe creativity is combinatorial — it’s our ability to take existing pieces of knowledge, information, insight, and ideas that we’ve gathered over the course of our lives, and recombine them into new ideas. Curation – the purposeful filtration of information – is what fills our mental pool of resources with the most meaningful building blocks of creativity possible. In a way, it’s a sensemaking mechanism for the world, allowing us to see not only why different pieces matter but also how they relate to one another and might fit together. by : Take a closer look here . by : Peek inside the beautiful spreads here . by and : by : Take closer look at these illustrated gems here . , edited by : Read some of the answers here . * by : by :

Wireframing, Prototyping, Mockuping - What’s the Difference? Introduction I’m very happy to welcome you all to the first part of this online course on wireframing and creating design documentation. I hope you’ll all have fun and learn useful, applicable techniques that will make your everyday work life much easier. I’m Marcin Treder and I currently serve as CEO of the popular User Experience Design Application – UXPin, but I’m also a seasoned User Experience Designer and a manager of User Experience teams. In a series of 7 articles I’ll discuss, in detail, methods of wireframing and, in general, creating design documentation. Articles are meant to be highly practical so expect just a little bit of design philosophy and a lot of real life stories. All the examples of design documentation are created in UXPin – the first ever User Experience Design application. Sign up to UXPin for free (14-day trial) to keep up with my examples. Wireframe, prototype, mockup – what’s the difference? – a display house provides a test drive for future residents Wireframe 1.

Content Curation Primer Photo by Stuck in Customs What is Content Curation? Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a specific theme. The work involves sifting, sorting, arranging, and publishing information. A content curator cherry picks the best content that is important and relevant to share with their community. It isn’t unlike what a museum curator does to produce an exhibition: They identify the theme, they provide the context, they decide which paintings to hang on the wall, how they should be annotated, and how they should be displayed for the public. Content curation is not about collecting links or being an information pack rat, it is more about putting them into a context with organization, annotation, and presentation. People and organizations are now making and sharing media and content all over the social web. Content Curation Provides Value from the Inside Out Getting Started

UX Myths Building a Kick-Ass Social Media Dashboard If you are tasked with building a social media dashboard to track your efforts, look no further than this post. I have built many dashboards over the years and as a personal resolution to making my job easier, I decided to cut to the chase and get to the metrics that matter most. That means cutting out the everyday metrics that litter and cloud up the social media manager’s real success story. Now I am not saying that tracking followers, fans, sentiment, etc. is not important, but those are the vanity metrics that tend to give social media a bad name. These type of metrics are great indicators but they don’t really tie back to your business bottom line: driving revenue. With that being said here are the top metrics that I measure here at Marketo on a weekly basis. Referring Traffic from Social Google Analytics is a fantastic way to measure how much traffic is being referred to your website from the various social channels. Conversions from Social This one’s pretty self-explanatory.

UX: Psychology of great design – part 1 The World Wide Web turned 20 in April 2013. In its first 20 years the web matured from a largely static medium into the rich, collaborative and wonderfully interactive medium we know today. As such, the interactions and relationships between users and systems have become increasingly complex. Consequently, web designers need to understand the experience of the website or app they are making. The term ‘user experience’ was originally coined by Don Norman while he was Vice President of the Advanced Technology Group at Apple: “I invented the term because I thought human interface and usability were too narrow. However, in the specific context of the web, the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) defines the term ‘user experience’ rather neatly: “User experience design as a discipline is concerned with all the elements that together make up that interface, including layout, visual design, text, brand, sound, and interaction. > Why is it being made?

Donations Building a fact-based world view Gapminder is a non-profit foundation based in Stockholm. Our goal is to replace devastating myths with a fact-based worldview. Your contribution will help us in our efforts to explain how the world is changing. Help us achieve a fact-based understanding of the world. Yours sincerely, Hans Rosling, Co-founder of the Gapminder Foundation Make your donation now Select your amount: Personal data is handled in accordance with the Swedish Personal Data Act. Network Visualization Immersion by the MIT Media Lab is a view into your inbox that shows who you interact with via email over the years. Immersion is an invitation to dive into the history of your email life in a platform that offers you the safety of knowing that you can always delete your data.Just like a cubist painting, Immersion presents users with a number of different perspectives of their email data. It provides a tool for self-reflection at a time where the zeitgeist is one of self-promotion. It provides an artistic representation that exists only in the presence of the visitor. It helps explore privacy by showing users data that they have already shared with others. The base view is a network diagram where each node represents someone you've exchanged email with. We've seen views of our inbox before and they usually just show simple time series charts and people who you email most.

Assessing Your Team's UX Skills By Jared M. Spool Originally published: Dec 10, 2007 "I didn't realize it required so many different skills," the newly-appointed user experience (UX) team manager told us. Unfortunately, this isn't the first time we'd heard this from a manager. Migrating Away from the Specialists Approach Traditionally, when an organization set out to build a UX team, they did so by recruiting and hiring individuals trained in the various specialties. However, most organizations couldn't afford such a team. Organizations that couldn't afford a team would then "wing it", training the personnel at hand to solve the problems on an as-needed-basis. Yet, over time, the specialties have become better at explaining what they do. Assessing the Team's UX Skills Part of the role of today's UX manager is to ensure the UX team has all the necessary skills, at the best level possible. To help managers with the assessment, we've created a simple 130-point scoring process. The assessment is easy to complete.