Archive for January, 2005

uiGarden Launches

Thursday, January 13th, 2005

“After eight months hard work, with firm and persistent conviction, heartfelt passion and generous support from friends, the first issue of uiGarden, - the bilingual webzine dedicated for professionals in the UI and usability related field is finally published.”
Visit the site…
Feel free to also read Usability Around the Globe: Resources. It was published in 2000 […]

Designing the relationship between content and locales

Thursday, January 13th, 2005

Peter Van Dijck — “When you start designing the relationship between content and locales, you’ll often find that the structure you come up with is different for different types of content. Technical support information may be translatable directly in a one-on-one translation. You might not sell exactly the same products or services in all markets, […]

How the Mac was born, and other tales

Wednesday, January 12th, 2005

ZDNet — “Blogging is changing the way people communicate. Are you a blogger? No. I think people overrate blogging. I think the overall phenomenon to me is Web pages. Blogs are just Web pages, a certain stylized form of Web page. Much of the blogging is driven by egotism.”
Read the interview…
p.s. Read two interviews (Matthew […]

A del.icio.us study

Tuesday, January 11th, 2005

“Working within the constraints of a very limited data sample, this study attempts to identify some of the information management and meaning construction practices of an online distributed classification (a.k.a. free tagging or ethnoclassification) community. Specifically, this study seeks to investigate the social and communicative practices that emerge when users are encouraged to share web […]

Big, Stark & Chunky

Tuesday, January 11th, 2005

A List Apart — “Research shows that low-vision people need dramatically different web design. CSS lets you give them what they need.”
Read the article…

2004 Usability Salary Survey

Tuesday, January 11th, 2005

“Report outlining the results of a usability salary survey for usability, HCI and user experience design professionals jointly conducted by Tania Lang from Peak Usability and Pabini Gabriel-Petit from Spirit Softworks in March/April 2004.”
Learn more about the survey…

Taxonomies, Folksonomies & Controlled Vocabularies

Tuesday, January 11th, 2005

Gilbane Report Blog — “There is an enlightening discussion going on between Lou Rosenfeld, Clay Shirky and others on the utility of folksonomies as used by Flickr and del.icio.us, vs. subject-matter-expert developed taxonomies. As one of the commenters has pointed out, this is not an “either/or” issue.”
Read the posting…

Testing Theories versus Obsessive Description

Tuesday, January 11th, 2005

“[Leonardo da Vinci’s] approach to science was an observatory one: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail and did not emphasize experiments or theoretical explanations.” (reference)

What Makes a Design Seem ‘Intuitive’?

Tuesday, January 11th, 2005

UIE — “Once you understand how ‘intuitive’ works—what makes someone perceive a design to be intuitive—it becomes easier to make the decision as to whether an intuitive design is worth the extra effort. The knowledge your users have when they arrive at the design (current knowledge), what knowledge they’ll need to complete their tasks (target […]

Two views of user research in industrial design

Monday, January 10th, 2005

Orange Cone — “Comparing Nokia to DeWalt is interesting: one talks about functionality, the other with emotion, but they’re both making consumer products and both dealing very much with both. What’s interesting to me is how the corporate culture of the two groups has defined the approach to design and the shape of the end-product.”
Read […]

“This Works!” Conference

Friday, January 7th, 2005

I’ve been having this fantasty of setting up a “This Works!” conference. Here is how it would work.
1. At the conference, everyone is forced to present something. I believe that every person has something to share that is unique and wonderful. Everyone is capable of talking about something: tools, tips, techniques, etc.
2. At the […]

Saturn: Product Will Reign

Thursday, January 6th, 2005

Bob Lutz (GM Vice Chairman) — “Rest assured, in Detroit, the media will tell me what they think of the new Saturns and the new design direction — they always do. But I’d like to hear what you think. So please feel free to provide your input to this blog.”
Here’s what I posted as a […]