Understanding the Value of Constructive Discussion in the Design Community Design Informer What would Feynman do? - Fabulous Adventures In Coding No one I know at Microsoft asks those godawful "lateral-thinking puzzle" interview questions anymore. Maybe someone still does, I don't know. But rumour has it that a lot of companies are still following the Microsoft lead from the 1990s in their interviews. In that tradition, I present a sequel to Keith Michaels' 2003 exercise in counterfactual reasoning. Interviewer: Now we come to the part of the interview where we test your creative thinking. You are in a room with three switches that each control a different light fixture in another room. RPF: That seems straightforward. Interviewer: Um. RPF: Then I could obtain an inexpensive digital video camera and put it on a dolly with a sufficiently long rope attached to it. Interviewer: I forgot to mention that once you enter the room with the lights, you are not allowed to come back to the room with the switches. RPF: That is an unusual constraint that perhaps you ought to have mentioned earlier, but I'll go with it. Interviewer: Right.
Rising Sun 10 Tips to master the art of “status updates” « Surendra Phatak's Blog What forms an ideal status update on a social network? Specifically a professional social network like LI? What makes people comment on discussions/ shares/ or for that matter just simple updates? I do not really know but as I am working at it, I am able to learn the finer tricks of the trade. Shorter than a tweet You status update should be like a mini skirt. The imperfection I might sound strange here but it should be just short of complete or perfect. Interesting Vs important I have seen lot of not so important status updates getting lot of traction because they are interesting. In Installments Never try to do it all with one status update. Be Human If God posted an update, the obvious reaction would be just to like it, cause that all humans can do. Be genuine A curse that comes with being human. Be consistently inconsistent Consistency is desirable, predictability is not. Give and you shall be given There is no give and take. Have a view (valid and not stupid) Rules and exceptions Like this:
My Best Advice for Conducting User Interviews In a previous life, I was a Professional Writing major and part-time journalist. I contributed to my school’s student newspaper, as well as the faculty and staff newspaper, and almost every week for two years, I wrote an arts column for the Pittsburgh City Paper — Western PA’s leading alternative newsweekly [read my old clips]. As a result of all that reporting, I became adept at interviewing people to get a good story. That skill has certainly served me well as a user experience designer, and now unsurprisingly, conducting user interviews is my absolute favorite part of this wonderful job. I’m in the thick of user research on my current project for House Party, and along the way I’ve been reminding myself of all sorts of best practices to squeeze out the most evocative insights from my participants. Perhaps the maxims that work so well for me will make you a more effective interviewer, too. Set the schedule yourself Factor in breaks Recruit more participants than you need Record the sessions
Encrypting Cookies in the Browser Cookies are a convenient, often necessary way to maintain state and data in web applications. Since this is well known, cookies are a target and potential vulnerability you have to be aware of when developing for the web. There are various ways to go about improving cookie security. Attacks on cookies Cookies are stored locally on a computer, usually in clear text. Cookies are generally set server-side using the ‘Set-Cookie’ HTTP header and sent to the client. Another common attack, cross-site scripting (Xss for short), is when some client-side code, usually JavaScript, is injected into a web page and executed without the user’s knowledge. Encrypting cookies in your browser My company, CompletelyPrivateFiles.com, provides encryption solutions for the web. The API works by combining a random, dynamically assigned ‘seed-key’ with a generally weaker user or application secret (like a password) to generate a strong 256-bit key. Now, you’re ready to read and write encrypted cookies. Summary
Top 6 Help Design Patterns for iPhone Apps User Experience Designers usually aim to make application interfaces intuitive and easy to use without relying on help or a manual to guide the user through how to use the app. However, there are times when an interface is most effective and efficient to use once some initial behaviors are learned. In these cases, designing an application to be completely intuitive upon first-time use can be impractical or detrimental to repetitive use. There are also times where a quick introduction on how to use an app simply makes the user feel more comfortable interacting with it for the first time, and is not a reflection of a poorly designed interface. iPhone applications that introduce new, innovative interaction models or that allow the user to access a wide range of information or complete several tasks often use first-time use help screens to help users learn how an app works. 1. A demo animates a series of screens showing the primary functions of the application. Examples: Considerations: Pros:
Optimizing a Screen for Mobile Use Summary: A single mobile screen with almost no features still required 10 design changes to meet usability guidelines for mobile websites. During our recent Asia-Pacific tour, we took the opportunity to conduct several usability studies. Sometimes we tested regular websites to update seminars such as Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability. One of the mobile sites we tested was AllKpop.com, which covers a topic of seemingly great fascination in many Asian countries: Korean pop stars. AllKpop.com mobile site, as tested in Hong Kong. AllKpop does many things right: Most important of all, it supports a task that's perfect for mobile use : celebrity gossip. However, the site doesn't follow all the guidelines for mobile usability, so we decided to create an alternative design that did: Our proposed redesign of AllKpop's mobile homepage. Our redesign included 10 major changes: As this example shows, even a small mobile screen has room for many user interface intricacies. Full Report
FlaggedRevs The Flagged Revisions extension allows for Editor and Reviewer users to rate revisions of articles and set those revisions as the default revision to show upon normal page view. These revisions will remain the same even if included templates are changed or images are overwritten. This allows for MediaWiki to act more like a Content Management System (CMS). Download[edit | edit source] You can download the extension directly from the MediaWiki source code repository (browse code). One of the extensions tags Not all extensions have tags. Go to the tags listClick the name of the tag you want to downloadClick "snapshot" The latest version of one of the extensions branches Each extension has a master branch containing the latest code (might be unstable). Go to the branches listClick the branch nameClick "snapshot" A snapshot made during the release of a MediaWiki version. This might be unstable and is not guaranteed to work with the associated MediaWiki version. Download snapshot Definition Labeling
The Nano-Second SignUp :JDallCaps Have you noticed how easier signing-up has got. Or is it because I spent a lot of time in the clunky Triassic era of world wide web – and it all looks easier to me now. Either way, easy is in. Here is a hand-picked collection of some sign-up pages, that, for me, redefines the words: quick, simple and easy. With 5 fields to fill in and a couple of clicks, Virb.com (another visibly neat portfolio/media sharing site) ranks amongst the easy sign-ins, though that isn’t good enough! With 5 fields and a click (and the friendly language) good’ol twitter is comparable to Virb, but then there are better examples… In the same league of fields & clicks as the preceding examples, image sharing and bookmarking site Imagespark.com also has a sparse clean look that gives a sense of brevity and simplicity. Tumblr.com, takes the idea of easy to the next level with its clear, large type, icons and just 3 fields and 2 clicks away from getting your very own blog. Kontain, is simplicity redefined.
UX Designer as Product Owner UX and Product Owner: The two-headed beast! For the past 4 months I’ve been functioning as the Product Owner for my Scrum team. Interestingly, I’m also the UX designer for the team. Many articles point to the challenges, at times seemingly insurmountable, that this dual-role creates. While those challenges are indeed rearing their, err, challenging heads, let me recap how the team has worked through them. Challenge #1: There is not enough time to be the PO and the UX person Both roles are full-time jobs. The answer is to get those obligations pulling in the same direction. Challenge #2: developers need constant direction about what’s coming in each iteration. The UX designer, working in parallel with the rest of the team, is constantly providing assets, answers, and feedback. The way I’ve handled this is by splitting my time in the iteration. But wait! Challenge #3: Approval cycles can be notoriously long. To solve this challenge I’ve had to become a UXPOlitician (hot!). [Jeff]
The Untold Story of How My Dad Helped Invent the First Mac | Co.Design Jef Raskin, my father, (below) helped develop the Macintosh, and I was recently looking at some of his old documents and came across his February 16, 1981 memo detailing the genesis of the Macintosh. It was written in reaction to Steve Jobs taking over managing hardware development. Reading through it, I was struck by a number of the core principals Apple now holds that were set in play three years before the Macintosh was released. Much of this is particularly important in understanding Apple's culture and why we have the walled-garden experience of the iPhone, iPad, and the App Store. Even better, I found some sometimes snarky comments Jef had made to the memo as part of the Stanford Computer History project. Apple Learns to Own the Entire Experience Reading the memo, we see that Apple was struggling with an explosion of fragmentation with the Apple II: This is the exact problem that Google Android now faces. To combat fragmentation, for the Macintosh: Interesting Sound Bytes Introduction
The Cognitive Style of Unix One of the most deeply held beliefs in the culture of *nix (and everything that springs from it) is that the steep learning curve pays off. Yes, the tools seem cryptic and “hard-to-use”, with hardly any crutches for the beginner. But if you stick with it and keep learning you will be rewarded. When you grok the power of economical command lines, composability and extensibility, you’re glad you didn’t run back to the arms of the GUI on the first day. It was worth it. There is another belief that goes deeper, and it is the reason that after decades of existence and millions of newbie-suffering-hours, the learning curve has not become any easier, or gone away. I recently came across some research which rigorously backs up this line of thinking. Dr. He frames the issue in terms of internalization vs externalization. However, Nimwegen’s studies reveal the following curve: From the paper: (emphasis mine) Their recommendation is less assistance:
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