“An elegant design for an information-seeking task is one that leads a visitor through a well choreographed dance, with each turning point a delight along the way” (Author: Leo Frishberg, Source: UX Matters)
Designing User Experiences for Applications Versus Information Resources on the Web
“But how about users with a technical disability: Wireless devices, slow internet connections, old browsers, feed readers, etc. These should be considered as well, as there are probably more people with technological disability than functional disability.” (Source: JustAddWater.dk, Author: Jesper Rønn-Jensen)
The use of “disability” here is misleading. It smells like Jakob Nielsen. However, I very much like the idea of considering all types of users. Better still, I like to think about different types of users in different types of contexts.
Read the posting: One of four web users are disabled users…
Author: Joseph Carrabis, Source: iMedia — “…most people can only pay attention to three to four things at a time, and much of their non-conscious activity is involved in deciding which three to four things get their attention.”
Read about how to manage visitor expectations on your website…
“UPS has a horrible time staffing the facility – resorting at one point to driving vans around low-income areas of Chicago and offering a meal and pay at the end of the day. One person in HR intimated a rumor that in CACH it was a standard question to ask folks about gang affiliations so as not to have them on the same side of the building as their rivals.”
Author: Jeffrey Zeldman, Source: A List Apart — “Wireframing AJAX is a bitch.”
Sorry, but I have to talk about this. Wireframing anything with any interesting and robust functionality is a bitch. Who said that Web 2.0 or Ajax or Flash was going to make life easier for developers? You don’t get power without pain behind the scenes. Sure, the interface might get better and users might benefit greatly, but it is all-but-certain that more heavy lifting is going to be needed to get the job done behind the scenes. Get over it or get out of the way.
Whether you call it “Web 2.0″ or “Ajax” or “Rich Internet Applications” or something else, the web is growing and evolving. That means that designers and developers are going to have to grow up. Of course I want to drive more standardization and utilize more standards. Of course I want life to be better for designers and developers. But, the truth is that you don’t get something for free.
Ajax is a bitch. Web 2.0 is a bitch. Flash is a bitch. You can’t just fall off a log and create something that is jacked up, no matter what people might tell you. These things are less painful the more experience you have. They are less painful the more support you are given. But, you simply must expect some pain. Maintenance. Costs. Training. Testing. P-A-I-N.
The hope is that Web2-Ajax-Flash-Flex-Ruby-37something-Wow-Cool is easy to use by end users. If it ain’t, don’t bother. Don’t use a thermonuclear tool when a pushpin will do the job. Keep it as simple as possible.
On the exact topic of wireframes, it isn’t like wireframers have always had an easy time. Go back to the 1980’s with desktop and mainframe applications. Was it especially easy then? Software applications on standalone PCs are just as much a “bitch to wireframe” as jacked up Ajax and Flash applications. To me this is one giant yawn. Or worse, a simple complaint.
Now, the thing to realize in all of this is that I deeply care about simplicity, quality, and usability. I’m not asking for pain. I’m just being realistic. Folks have tools and they want to use them. Customers expect some jazzy jazz and we’ll drive to their requirements. We’ll do heavy lifting and do what we can about usability and satisfaction in the wild as much as possible.
Now, that was a bit of rant. I went a bit extreme to make a point. Maybe it’ll be heard. Then again, maybe not. We’ll see won’t we.
Source: Design Observer, Author: Michael Bierut — “And from a design point of view? Unbelievably boring. Or, I should say, unbelievably, wonderfully, perfectly, exquisitely boring. To a field that today seems to prize innovation above all else, The New Yorker makes a case for slow design: the patient, cautious, deliberate evolution of a nearly unchanging editoral format over decades. And the case they make is — let’s admit it — pretty hard to argue with.”
(Source: Electric Net, Author: Corey Maple) — “GIS is a technology, not a business process. As a result, taking GIS into the field by itself creates a number of potential challenges. Applications can be too slow, with learning curves that are too steep for rapid acceptance among end-users. To ensure a successful transition, utilities will likely need to implement GIS with integrated field design. When considering your options, it is important to focus first on the end-user — not the solution itself.”
Good: Focus on the user.
Bad: What is GIS? (Not defined in the article.)
“Technophobes will soon be able to pay for tutorials in how to use their iPods at an upmarket London store, even though the manufacturer does it for free in its shop just round the corner.”
(Author: Joshua David McClurg-Genevese, Source: Digital Web Magazine) — “In my opinion, the vast majority of constraints in a Web-based environment are brought about because of the limits of human interaction with technology.”
Authors: Steven R. Thomsen, Joseph D. Straubhaar, Drew M. Bolyard — “In so doing, we argue that online communities are far from the “imagined” or pseudo communities explicated by Calhoun (1991); that they are, in fact, “real” in the very way in which they reflect the changing nature of human relations and human interaction.”
Read about ethnomethodology and online communities…
See also: Ethnomethodology: An Introduction
“Conversation analysts study conversations – of all kinds. They are happy to put under the microscope anything from diagnosing schizophrenia to answering questions in court, and from talking over family matters at dinner to guiding a pilot through fog. All are done through talk.”
Learn more about Conversation Analysis…
p.s. I especially like the basic transcription notation conventions page
Author: Yvonne Rogers — “A core lesson that was learned, however, is that you cannot simply lift theories out of an established field (i.e. cognitive psychology), that have been developed to explain specific phenomena about cognition, and then reapply them to explain other kinds of seemingly related phenomena in a different domain (i.e. interacting with computers). This is because the kinds of cognitive processes that are studied in basic research are quite different from what happens in the ‘real’ world of human-computer interactions (Landauer, 1991).”
The quote above is wonderful. In effect, it states that you can’t necesarily use lab research to answer practical questions. Sure, you might be able to gain some insight but you won’t get great answers without getting your hands dirty.
Great article full of important insights. (PDF, 580k)
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