Re: [IxDA Discuss] Capturing International Addresses

[Adrian Howard]

On 8 Jan 2008, at 15:05, Pankaj Chawla wrote:

> Hi Josh,
>
>> What fields do you present? For example, ZIP Codes are only  
>> applicable in
>> the US...so why present it to the rest of the world?
>
> ZIP codes are applicable in almost all the countries in the world  
> though
> they use slighlty different names (Like Pin Code in India). But since
> ZIP code has become a fairly standard field in address input forms  
> most
> people identify with it and enter their specific country based code.
> One point to remember though is that the code length is different (US
> I believe uses 5 digit number where as in India its 6 and I am sure  
> other
> countries will have a different size).
[snip]

Remember quite a few countries don't just have numbers in their codes  
(e.g. UK has letters and a space too), and other countries don't have  
postcodes everywhere or at all  (e.g. Ireland only has 1/2 digit  
"zone" numbers in Dublin and Cork I think).

International addressing is a PITA :-)

Personally I tend to go for
a) supplying the countries where most of your users live with  
something specific to them and as much validation as you can afford; and
b) a "generic" international form for everybody else with fairly  
minimal validation.

Adrian


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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Post Mortems

[Adrian Howard]

On 9 Jan 2008, at 04:19, Jared M. Spool wrote:

>
> On Jan 8, 2008, at 11:57 AM, Sarah Kampman wrote:
>
>> The seed for the meeting is: "Imagine it's 10mo from now
>> and the project failed. Why did it fail?"
>
> Related note: Scott Berkun talks about a cool technique where you get
> the team to brainstorm on how to screw up the project. Seed question:
> "If we really wanted to, what would be the ways we could make this
> project fail?" Then, you inspect each brainstorm item and talk about
> what you'd do to prevent such a thing from happening.

I've tried this one and found it to be most effective. We got some  
really useful feedback from the customer support and systems folk  
amongst others. Helped us avoid several nasties.

Cheers,

Adrian


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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Capturing International Addresses

[Lucy Buykx]

Another good resource is Franks Compulsive Guide to Postal Addresses. 

http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/postal.html


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24266



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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Need ideas for green-themed prizes to promote "Go Paperless" launch

[Luis de la Orden Morais]

Hi Gloria,

The SunJar is a very interesting gadget and has been wildly advertised by
every other gadget publication around, at least in the UK.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/105-8897920-9414010?url=search-alias%3D
aps&field-keywords=sunjar&x=0&y=0

Good luck and success,

Luis

So now I've got 24 hours to come up with a green-themed prize for the
Relationship Manager who signs up the most clients.
There's very little budget; we're OK with spending up to/around $100 for a
first prize.
We could offer 2nd, 3rd prizes if they're inexpensive, or maybe do a "first
30 people to sign up get a free bowl of soup" approach.




-- 
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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Is user research a band-aid for "the listening deficit"?

[Pankaj Chawla]

On 1/9/08, Jeff White <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>They never seemed to really
> believe us, but as soon as we found a champion to support us and give
> us actual money to redesign their website, we brought in two outside
> consulting firms - one that specialized in research and another that
> specialized in design.

Was the success because you finally found a champion who had the
budget and power to drive the organization towards UCD or was it the
external consultants? I would tend to believe that with such a
champion even you and your team internally would have made the
difference. Most such culture changing success stories have a seed in
a champion at the highest level. Once there is a champion it just is a
matter of time and finding a team either internally or externally who
can implement the vision. In you case it happened to be an external
team but I have seen so many cases where it happened with internal
teams also. The added advantage with internal teams is they are there
to stay and will become the change ambassadors for times to come.

Thanks
Pankaj

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Is user research a band-aid for "the listening deficit"?

[Jeff White]

It was probably a mix of both. The team at that point was myself and
two other peers. We had about 6 months to redesign a site that had
grown over the years to around 10,000 pages of horridly outdated
content. It was a mess to say the least. While doing the redesign, we
had to maintain normal operations for that site, manage other projects
- internal business apps and marketing projects, and handle the
communications plan & training for the new site. The training involved
50-70 content contributors. So, one part was simply a resource issue.
3 guys couldn't handle all that and do the redesign all at the same
time.

The second factor, and I really think this was a huge part of it, was
we simply did not have the credibility built across the organization
to change the culture this drastically. Obviously, our champion had
faith and trusted us, but not all of the stakeholders did. The two
consulting firms were so well pedigreed that credibility was no longer
an issue, and a lot of the internal politics at play went away
quickly. There was simply no arguing with these guys! :-) Also, my
team made it part of the selection process that we be highly involved
with the research - we went and did fieldwork with the research firm
and were equally involved with the design firm as well. During this
time we constantly communicated back to internal stakeholders and
established ourselves as equals with the consultants that they already
highly trusted. By the time the project was finished, our credibility
had gone way up. It went up even further after the site was live for a
few months and the customer feedback and conversion numbers, as well
as employee feedback started coming in. It set us up perfectly to be
the ambassadors of change that you mention, and we were there to stay
and apply the same process to other projects.

Jeff



On Jan 9, 2008 1:14 AM, Pankaj Chawla <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 1/9/08, Jeff White <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >They never seemed to really
> > believe us, but as soon as we found a champion to support us and give
> > us actual money to redesign their website, we brought in two outside
> > consulting firms - one that specialized in research and another that
> > specialized in design.
>
> Was the success because you finally found a champion who had the
> budget and power to drive the organization towards UCD or was it the
> external consultants? I would tend to believe that with such a
> champion even you and your team internally would have made the
> difference. Most such culture changing success stories have a seed in
> a champion at the highest level. Once there is a champion it just is a
> matter of time and finding a team either internally or externally who
> can implement the vision. In you case it happened to be an external
> team but I have seen so many cases where it happened with internal
> teams also. The added advantage with internal teams is they are there
> to stay and will become the change ambassadors for times to come.
>
> Thanks
> Pankaj
>

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Prototyping with Adobe CS3

[Fred Beecher]

On 1/8/08, Miguel Peres <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> To get prototyping "rapid" we make use of a custom component library that
> act like a set of Visio-stencils and if an interaction needs a component
> that is not there, we build it from the ground in an extensible way so it
> can be later used in other prototypes.


Cool! That's what I was hoping for!

In my personal opinion flash is a
> very good tool for prototyping, however, unless you are prototyping basic
> "click and go" applications which can be very easily done with a few
> command
> lines, you must have at least one person with strong actionscript skill in
> your team to get things done "rapid".


...nd that's what I was afraid of. That's why I haven't gone down this
route before. For prototyping to be truly rapid, the prototype needs to be
strongly tied to the UXP deliverables and it must require little special
knowledge to implement.

I guess I'll just hang out and wait for Thermo to see what that can do for
me. : )

F.

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Audio User Interfaces

[Fred Beecher]

On 1/8/08, David Shaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> I'm working on a project (which is a very small physical device)
> needing a UI.  We're thinking of making it an audio interface (words
> and sentences not just sounds).  Has anyone worked on such an
> interface, and are there any resources (or inspiration) out there that
> I can look at?


David... While I haven't worked on such an interface, I love the UPS voice
interface that you get when you call them to hold a package for you. Order
something fun for yourself and check it out. : )

F.

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Audio User Interfaces

[Benjamin Ho]

Try looking at examples of voice interfaces themselves.  For instance,
Infiniti has it in their climate control, Bluetooth phone access and
navigation.
Certain unified communication services also have voice menus.


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24317



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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Need ideas for green-themed prizes to promote "Go Paperless" launch

[Scott McDaniel]

Don't know if this is considered in the same territory as
'plant-a-tree' charities, but there's TerraPass:
http://www.terrapass.com/

Bling!
Scott

-- 
To be the eyes,
and ears,
and conscience
of the creator of the universe;
you fool.   -Kurt Vonnegut

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Need ideas for green-themed prizes to promote "GoPaperless" launch

[Barford, Patricia]

 There are all kinds of things that fit with the paperless motif.  What
about tin water bottles, a litterless lunch kit, bicycle swag?  Check
out a Whole Foods (or is it Whole Earth, I'm from Canada - not quite
sure which) store for interesting ideas. Or look at anyplace that
specializes in earth friendly products.  

Cheers,

Pat Barford
Program Development Consultant


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Gloria Petron
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 2:18 PM
To: IxDA Discuss
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Need ideas for green-themed prizes to promote
"GoPaperless" launch

Hello,
My company's about to roll out our "Go Paperless" option (we're a bank),
which is going to save lots 'o trees and a lot of money.
I'm currently working on the internal email marketing campaign, and to
encourage enrollment, we decided to have a contest. This is last-minute,
of course.

So now I've got 24 hours to come up with a green-themed prize for the
Relationship Manager who signs up the most clients.
There's very little budget; we're OK with spending up to/around $100 for
a first prize.
We could offer 2nd, 3rd prizes if they're inexpensive, or maybe do a
"first 30 people to sign up get a free bowl of soup" approach.

Front runners:
Fabric grocery bags, but not necessarily for first prize.

Already shot down:
Coffee mugs, gift cards, dinner for 2, donations to plant-a-tree
charity.
(I know. For a bank, we're an awful bunch of scrooges.)

Does anyone have any experience with this? Any ideas would be greatly
appreciated!

Thanks & regards,
Gloria

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This email contains confidential information that is proprietary to EPCOR and 
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for the person(s) named in the destination address.  Unauthorized distribution, 
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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Prototyping with Adobe CS3

[Michael Tuminello]

Fireworks CS3 has "rich symbols" and comes with a library of UI  
widgets for various platforms.  its in "common library", accessible  
from the window menu.

there are some articles on prototyping with FW on the site (including  
one I wrote).

MT


On Jan 9, 2008, at 9:06 AM, Fred Beecher wrote:

> On 1/8/08, Miguel Peres <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>
>> To get prototyping "rapid" we make use of a custom component  
>> library that
>> act like a set of Visio-stencils and if an interaction needs a  
>> component
>> that is not there, we build it from the ground in an extensible  
>> way so it
>> can be later used in other prototypes.
>
>
> Cool! That's what I was hoping for!
>
> In my personal opinion flash is a
>> very good tool for prototyping, however, unless you are  
>> prototyping basic
>> "click and go" applications which can be very easily done with a few
>> command
>> lines, you must have at least one person with strong actionscript  
>> skill in
>> your team to get things done "rapid".
>
>
> ...nd that's what I was afraid of. That's why I haven't gone  
> down this
> route before. For prototyping to be truly rapid, the prototype  
> needs to be
> strongly tied to the UXP deliverables and it must require little  
> special
> knowledge to implement.
>
> I guess I'll just hang out and wait for Thermo to see what that can  
> do for
> me. : )
>
> F.
> 
> *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah*
> February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA
> Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/
>
> 
> Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
> To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Boston usability community party

[Susie Robson]

If anyone is interested in the pictures from the Boston Usability
community party that was held last night by many of the local usability
groups, click on the link below. Either the theme of the party was
"close your eyes" or my timing was a bit off in taking some of the
pictures. There were over 180 people that attended and a good time was
had by all.


http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=6k12j0k.b9wxv61k&x=0&y=jl3vlt


Susie Robson
The MathWorks
Sr. Usability Specialist
1.508.647.7685

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Jared M. Spool
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 11:20 PM
To: Sarah Kampman
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Post Mortems


On Jan 8, 2008, at 11:57 AM, Sarah Kampman wrote:

> The seed for the meeting is: "Imagine it's 10mo from now
> and the project failed. Why did it fail?"

Related note: Scott Berkun talks about a cool technique where you get  
the team to brainstorm on how to screw up the project. Seed question:  
"If we really wanted to, what would be the ways we could make this  
project fail?" Then, you inspect each brainstorm item and talk about  
what you'd do to prevent such a thing from happening.

Jared

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com  Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks


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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Need ideas for green-themed prizes to promote "GoPaperless" launch

[Gloria Petron]

Thank you to everybody for these fantastic ideas. I *knew* this would be a
great place to ask!

I'm going to the next step now, which is to present these ideas to our
group.
I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Thanks again!
Gloria



On Jan 9, 2008 9:57 AM, Barford, Patricia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>  There are all kinds of things that fit with the paperless motif.  What
> about tin water bottles, a litterless lunch kit, bicycle swag?  Check
> out a Whole Foods (or is it Whole Earth, I'm from Canada - not quite
> sure which) store for interesting ideas. Or look at anyplace that
> specializes in earth friendly products.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Pat Barford
> Program Development Consultant
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
> Gloria Petron
> Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 2:18 PM
> To: IxDA Discuss
> Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Need ideas for green-themed prizes to promote
> "GoPaperless" launch
>
> Hello,
> My company's about to roll out our "Go Paperless" option (we're a bank),
> which is going to save lots 'o trees and a lot of money.
> I'm currently working on the internal email marketing campaign, and to
> encourage enrollment, we decided to have a contest. This is last-minute,
> of course.
>
> So now I've got 24 hours to come up with a green-themed prize for the
> Relationship Manager who signs up the most clients.
> There's very little budget; we're OK with spending up to/around $100 for
> a first prize.
> We could offer 2nd, 3rd prizes if they're inexpensive, or maybe do a
> "first 30 people to sign up get a free bowl of soup" approach.
>
> Front runners:
> Fabric grocery bags, but not necessarily for first prize.
>
> Already shot down:
> Coffee mugs, gift cards, dinner for 2, donations to plant-a-tree
> charity.
> (I know. For a bank, we're an awful bunch of scrooges.)
>
> Does anyone have any experience with this? Any ideas would be greatly
> appreciated!
>
> Thanks & regards,
> Gloria
> 
> *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah*
> February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today:
> http://interaction08.ixda.org/
>
> 
> Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
> To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe
>  http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines
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> http://www.ixda.org/help
>
>
> This email contains confidential information that is proprietary to EPCOR
> and its subsidiary companies in all respects.  This information is intended
> only for the person(s) named in the destination address.  Unauthorized
> distribution, copying or disclosure is strictly prohibited.  If you receive
> this e-mail in error please delete it immediately.
>

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Arial vs Vernada?

[Jeff Seager]

Well, Andrei, I've thought about this on and off for about a day now
(I really must get a life) and -- subtracting my ego from the
equation -- I do agree with your scathing criticism of that study.

I had liked it because it generally confirmed my own subjective
impressions and experience, which also are unscientific but based on
many years as a fan and a user of good typography in print media --
and several years of experience assisting people with visual (and
other) disabilities. Mea culpa.

So back to the original question, now that we've savaged this study:
Are there valid studies/discussions of this topic available? Benoit
may still want to know. I've found these, for our further
consideration:

# Bringhurst's book excerpted online at http://webtypography.net/

# http://www.webaim.org/techniques/fonts/

# http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm (here,
especially, some of the examples call attention to Andrei's points
about line-length and other results of inexpert testing ... if the
examples shown are an indication of what was tested, 12-point Arial
and 12-point Verdana cannot be reasonably compared using the same
column width because the optimum line length is different for each)

#
http://www.maxkiesler.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the_web_20_big_font_controversy/

All these, including the study from Wichita, have value in focusing
our attention on the way we use typography. If we apply our own
critical thinking skills, we can probably distill all this into a
better understanding. And maybe even design a better study of our
own, if we're so inclined.


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24248



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[IxDA Discuss] OLPC mechanical design

[Alan Wexelblat]

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=218 has a step-by-step
disassembly of the XO laptop, analyzing it from a mechanical design
point of view.  This is only tangentially related to the issues raised
in earlier discussion about defects in the usability of the OS/UI, but
I think it's relevant to consider in terms of the holistic user
experience of the product.  To wit, the best UI design in the world
won't matter if the hardware breaks down in a few weeks.  It appears
that OLPC have done a good job of addressing common problems such as
dust, serviceability, etc.

(Caveat: I'm no hardware designer.  I've never stripped down a laptop
to components before.)

--Alan

P.S. I still intend to write up my personal experiences as the parent
of an XO user.  I'm beginning to see some of the issues that others
have reported.  My boy still hasn't had a chance to interact with a
community of XO users and I'm hoping to include some of that in the
report.

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Prototyping with Adobe CS3

[Bryan Minihan]

In my current project, here's the process I followed:
 - Loose visual conceptual model of the site and its flow, in Visio
(flowchart boxes on the page, no decoration, notes for myself about what
goes where)
 - Rough hand-drawings of major pages that define the experience (free-form,
loose notes and doodles about icons and graphics, some notes about color
themes, font sizes, loose representation of headline-to-body-text
relationship)
 - I did a rough wireframe in Visio to emulate my hand-drawings, but quickly
realized I was going to get a lot farther, much faster, with Fireworks (my
favorite design tool)
 - I mocked up all of my rough pages in Fireworks CS3.  The best thing they
added was the ability to have multiple pages in a single file, with a master
page containing the common header, footer and background.  It took me about
a week to go from rough drawings and wireframes to about 15 well-formed
pages with full graphic treatments.
 - I dove into dreamweaver to define the basic stylesheet with fonts and
general classes for major blocks, headline tags, and common conventions.
 - I created a second Fireworks file to hold common buttons that weren't in
my first mockup, and to preserve the mockup from the slicing I needed to
keep images small (I just need a 1px-wide slice of my background image, so
slicing the mockup would have broken things apart).  Again, Fireworks comes
through with button templates, common library elements, and multi-pages (I
have a page for buttons, backgrounds, photos, images, icons, and
"miscellaneous")

As soon as I had anything to share, I showed it to everyone I could.  I'm
still planning to schedule sessions with users, but until I get my recruits,
I put the design (in Visio, JPG & DHTML form) in front of potential users
and SMEs).

My developers are about a week behind my prototyping, so I'm beginning to
treat their pages with styles and elements from the DHTML prototype.

I always wind up with an DHTML prototype, because that's the only way I can
confidently define and test the interactions I'll need.  In this case, I
redesigned one critical page once I had coded it because I discovered
several ways to make the process more efficient.  I couldn't have done that
in Fireworks without a ton of extra effort, but in DHTML, I have to use the
page myself several hundred times a day.  Once I have to use it for my own
testing, I'm driven to make it faster and more intuitive.

>From start to finish, total effort was about 3 solid weeks, stretched out
over the past 1.5 months.  My developers use "stories" to define experiences
in an agile paired-programming model, so I have found delivering a set of
stories with each prototype helps them see how pages fit together and how
interactions on a page should work.  It also lets me define requirements
that were too difficult to prototype but must be included (i.e. if I forgot
to add "remove" buttons to items in a table, my story would be "The teacher
can add a statistic to the table and remove it by clicking the Remove link
next to the item (not represented in prototype)").  I came from an
old-school business-requirements model of working, but this new story-method
is a lot easier and faster.  We meet once a day and have a deep dive twice a
week, so I'm sure that's helping as well.

Hope this helps... I haven't tried Thermo yet, but will take a look since
your review =].  My biggest problem with the above is I'm much more
productive once I'm in DHTML mode, so it would be nice to attach CSS styles
and HTML tags to Fireworks symbols, so if you exported a page as HTML it
would get you moving more quickly.  Right now you're limited to a kludgy
table-layout export that's a nightmare to rebuild in Dreamweaver (and
disconnects you from your original PNG file).

Bryan
http://www.bryanminihan.com


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Fred
Beecher
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 1:05 PM
To: IxDA Discuss
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Prototyping with Adobe CS3

Hi all,
Ever since Thermo came out, I've started paying more attention to Adobe
products and their potential for use in rapid prototyping. Previously, I've
thought of these products as being massive, teetering piles of features that
need to be "integrated" (read: "made even more complex") in order to produce
effective prototypes. But the UXP I saw demonstrated in Thermo has wreaked a
little havoc with my prejudices.

Have any of you worked with the trio of Fireworks, Dreamweaver, & Flash to
do rapid prototyping? What is your process like? How do you deal with
printed documentation? How do you make your prototyping "rapid" (i.e., do
you/can you create Visio-like stencils)?

Thanks for any insight,
F.

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Capturing International Addresses

[Bryan Minihan]

Very timely thread, as we're revamping our site to allow for international
postal codes in the zip code field.

We plan to allow for different punctuation in zip codes, but does anyone
know if there are any countries with non-numeric postal codes, or that allow
alpha characters in their codes?  Is there an ISO standard or other
reference that explains the nuances we can expect?

Bryan
http://www.bryanminihan.com


-Original Message-
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Hi Josh,

> What fields do you present? For example, ZIP Codes are only applicable in
> the US...so why present it to the rest of the world?

ZIP codes are applicable in almost all the countries in the world though
they use slighlty different names (Like Pin Code in India). But since
ZIP code has become a fairly standard field in address input forms most
people identify with it and enter their specific country based code.
One point to remember though is that the code length is different (US
I believe uses 5 digit number where as in India its 6 and I am sure other
countries will have a different size). So it will make sense to keep the
length open or limit to say 10 digits. 

Cheers
Pankaj


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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Post Mortems

[Bryan Minihan]

Don't forget to include in your brainstorming:  If SOMEONE ELSE really
wanted to, how could they make this project fail?  It helped us raise issues
with our independent hosting group at my last company - we had the app
working in 3 months but took 9 months getting through all of their red tape.
Since we anticipated it everyone knew early on it would be a problem.  Not
that it helped in the long run =]

Bryan
http://www.bryanminihan.com

-Original Message-
On 9 Jan 2008, at 04:19, Jared M. Spool wrote:

>
> On Jan 8, 2008, at 11:57 AM, Sarah Kampman wrote:
> Related note: Scott Berkun talks about a cool technique where you get
> the team to brainstorm on how to screw up the project. Seed question:
> "If we really wanted to, what would be the ways we could make this
> project fail?" Then, you inspect each brainstorm item and talk about
> what you'd do to prevent such a thing from happening.

I've tried this one and found it to be most effective. We got some  
really useful feedback from the customer support and systems folk  
amongst others. Helped us avoid several nasties.

Cheers,

Adrian


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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Boston usability community party

[dave malouf]

Susie,
There is an IxDA group on Flickr. Any chance you can post them there?
-- dave


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24354



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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Capturing International Addresses

[Alexander Baxevanis]

Yes, at least in the UK there is a quite well-defined format that
includes both digits and numbers, e.g. SW1A 1AA.

Cheers,
Alex

On Jan 9, 2008 4:38 PM, Bryan Minihan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Very timely thread, as we're revamping our site to allow for international
> postal codes in the zip code field.
>
> We plan to allow for different punctuation in zip codes, but does anyone
> know if there are any countries with non-numeric postal codes, or that allow
> alpha characters in their codes?  Is there an ISO standard or other
> reference that explains the nuances we can expect?
>
> Bryan
> http://www.bryanminihan.com
>
>
> -Original Message-
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> Hi Josh,
>
> > What fields do you present? For example, ZIP Codes are only applicable in
> > the US...so why present it to the rest of the world?
>
> ZIP codes are applicable in almost all the countries in the world though
> they use slighlty different names (Like Pin Code in India). But since
> ZIP code has become a fairly standard field in address input forms most
> people identify with it and enter their specific country based code.
> One point to remember though is that the code length is different (US
> I believe uses 5 digit number where as in India its 6 and I am sure other
> countries will have a different size). So it will make sense to keep the
> length open or limit to say 10 digits.
>
>
> Cheers
> Pankaj
>
> 
> *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah*
> February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA
> Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/
>
> 
> Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
> To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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>

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Capturing International Addresses

[Caroline Jarrett]

From: "Adrian Howard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
: Remember quite a few countries don't just have numbers in their 
codes (e.g. UK has letters and a space too), and other countries don't 
have : postcodes everywhere or at all  (e.g. Ireland only has 1/2 
digit  "zone" numbers in Dublin and Cork I think).
:
: International addressing is a PITA :-)
:
: Personally I tend to go for
: a) supplying the countries where most of your users live with 
something specific to them and as much validation as you can afford; 
and
: b) a "generic" international form for everybody else with fairly 
minimal validation.

Excellent advice, although I'd add to it:
c) allow your users to overwrite your validation and use the minimal 
(or preferably, no) validation form.

There are many countries where:
- addresses are a political matter and you could offend your users by 
validating them into the 'wrong' address. (E.g., Londonderry / Derry 
in the UK; Galixia / Galicia in Spain)
- the postal authority's preferred addressing format doesn't really 
work in actual life OR
- the postal authority has changed format and the real world hasn't 
changed yet.

For example, in the UK the use of counties is 'deprecated' by the 
Royal Mail but in fact many people prefer to include county in the 
address, especially where towns of the same name exist in several 
counties. On the other hand, many addresses don't include counties 
(e.g., those in London) and people who live in unambiguous towns (e.g. 
Leighton Buzzard, where I live) don't bother to write the county. 
Furthermore, the county names often have two different ways of being 
written ('Shropshire' or Salop'), get changed surprisingly often, and 
can be subject to personal opinion (e.g., some diehards insisted on 
using Rutland even after that county was abolished - and it's since 
been reinstated). All of this is in theory disambiguated by our 
complicated but precise postal codes, but the Royal Mail changes them 
sometimes also.

Caroline Jarrett
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
01525 370379

Effortmark Ltd
Usability - Forms - Content 



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[IxDA Discuss] Working with Business/ Sales teams

[Vishal Iyer]

This particularly relates ad-supported business models etc.

Firstly, how is the UX team (& the product building teams in general)
related to the Business/ Sales teams? The answer to the second
question will probably be a factor of the first, but what's the nature
of negotiations between the two, esp when there is a conflict of
interest (as there often is).

Take a hypothetical example- Sales wants to put a 300x250 in addition
to the already existing banner & tower ads. You believe that it will
be detrimental to the experience, but they respond by saying that its
going to increase revenues by 5%. How would you counter this? Has
anyone employed numbers - like trying to inject traffic projections
into the numbers (based on the different experiences being provided)

Finally, is there any research detailing the effect of different types
of ads on the User Experience. Eg: From an UX perspective, would you
prefer to have a pre-roll ad (like NYT has sometimes) or banner/tower
ads? (of course it depends on that the content is, but some specifics
would be great)

-- 
-Vishal
http://www.vishaliyer.com

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Working with Business/ Sales teams

[Bryan Minihan]

We go with full-page all-Viagra ads, all the time.

Just kidding...

One way you can counter ad-space issues that conflict with user experience
is to set up an A-B test.  Several of the better analytics apps (Omniture
for sure, and probably Webtrends and others) can track AB testing pretty
well.  Put the big ad on one page, route a small % of users to the page for
3 months, then tell Sales they gained 5% in revenue but lost 10% of users
who couldn't find the signin form. 

They don't *know* any more than you do with any accuracy what the result
will be, so test the concept before unleashing it on your ad-weary visitors.
They're better at selling a point, I'm sure, but you have the advantage of
scientific inquiry.

Bryan
http://www.bryanminihan.com


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Vishal
Iyer

Take a hypothetical example- Sales wants to put a 300x250 in addition
to the already existing banner & tower ads. You believe that it will
be detrimental to the experience, but they respond by saying that its
going to increase revenues by 5%. How would you counter this? Has
anyone employed numbers - like trying to inject traffic projections
into the numbers (based on the different experiences being provided)
-- 
-Vishal
http://www.vishaliyer.com



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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Capturing International Addresses

[James Leslie]

 
International forms are a bit of a nightmare to sort out. Starting at the top - 
the name of the person... Many countries/cultures have differing ways of 
stating their name, this article is a lot more verbose than I could be on the 
subject and makes for interesting reading:
http://rishida.net/blog/?p=100

Once you get past the name conundrum you then get into the differing ways of 
formatting addresses. For example, below are the addresses for the British 
Embassy in a couple of different countries:

British Embassy (Finland)
Itäinen Puistotie 17
00140 Helsinki

British Embassy (South Africa)
255 Hill Street
Arcadia 0002
Pretoria

British Embassy (Ireland)
29 Merrion Road
Dublin 4

British Embassy (Washington, USA)
3100 Massachusetts Avenue,
Washington DC,
20008

Home Office (British Embassy equivalent in UK)
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF


Beyond a building number and road, these all have very different formats and 
could each throw up a large number of problems with forcing validation. 

Our only solution to these problems so far has been to tailor forms and/or 
their validation to take account of these nuances. It isn't a particularly good 
way of doing it, but was the most open way we have found of doing it.

James


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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Prototyping with Adobe CS3

[Kim Bieler]

I hope this isn't a dumb question, but are there any prototyping  
tools (Visio, Axure, Fireworks, etc.) that actually give you a usable  
website at the end? I'm just wondering if it's worth spending the  
time applying all this functionality to a prototype, if it's all  
going to have to be re-coded afterwards.


-- Kim

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Kim Bieler Graphic Design
www.kbgd.com
c. 240-476-3129
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +




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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Post Mortems

[thomas lissajoux]

there's lots of good practical advice to get from 'Agile
Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great'
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0977616649/), whether for short iterations
or for big lengthy postmortems.

Thomas


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=24300



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[IxDA Discuss] Icons VS Labels and Localization ...

[Grady Kelly]

Hello Everyone ...

I am designing a softphone application.  We plan to offer the application in
various languages, Spanish, German, Japanese and of course English.  In my
design I opted to use labels for various actions such as "Transfer" "Hold"
"Conference" or "Hangup."  I did this for a few reasons:

 1. Phones use text to describe their functionality already, and people
understand what those actions are.
 2. I figured that it would be easier to translate those actions to the
other languages.
 3. I did not think that the icons would translate themselves well from
one language to another.
 4. With labels in mind, I use context menus to build the actions, so
clicking "Transfer" gives you a context menu with various options like
"contact via dial pad" or "contact via phone book," thus building a sentence
"Transfer contact via dial pad."  This was done because we have clients that
are 55-70 and building the actions that was made sense to them in user
testing.

Here lies my problem,  development is using Adobe Flex, and say that it is
"easier if I used icons instead of labels"  Flex apparently does not support
floating of elements, so like in html/css, as the buttons got longer, the
other buttons would just carry down.  The developers would have to position
(x,y) for every button for every language.

So my questions are:

 1.  Which are better, Icons or Labels? Are icons perceived differently
in different languages?
 2.  Should the development issue dictate whats done?  (I say toughen up
Nancy! and get er' done!)

Now, I have offered a middle ground, that is to mock up each and get
feedback on the icons and the actions, etc.

I am just curious to know what you all think.

Thanks,

Grady Kelly
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.gradykelly.com

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[IxDA Discuss] Gadgets are great... if your customers can figure them out.

[SPatrick]

Here's a good article from The Consumerist... it states that consumers
often return electronic gadgets under the assumption that they don't work,
when in fact, they just can't figure out how they work to the tune of
$14 billion per year.  It just gets easier and easier to find work ;)

http://consumerist.com/342403/gadgets-are-great-if-your-customers-can-figure-them-out

Susan Patrick
User Interface Designer
The Midland Company


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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Prototyping with Adobe CS3

[Fred Beecher]

On 1/9/08, Kim Bieler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I hope this isn't a dumb question, but are there any prototyping
> tools (Visio, Axure, Fireworks, etc.) that actually give you a usable
> website at the end? I'm just wondering if it's worth spending the
> time applying all this functionality to a prototype, if it's all
> going to have to be re-coded afterwards.


Well, Thermo will fit your bill there, if you're trying to make a Flash/Flex
site. But it hasn't been released yet, so...

But I want to bring up another point... I think it's very important that a
prototype *not* be turned into the functional site. In a prototype, you
really shouldn't be building all sorts of functionality. You should be
faking it. Changing design takes so much less time and money than changing
functional code that to intend a prototype for eventual production negates
the money-saving value of prototyping.

F.

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Prototyping with Adobe CS3

[Vishal Iyer]

HTML/ CSS / JS will be your best bet for production ready code. Even a
tool like Dreamweaver tends to add unnecessary code.

As far as your second Q is concerned- there is space for a prototype
only tool. If you're building a small 10 page website (or a simple
tool), maybe not so much...but for complicated ones its a different
story. The trade-off here is that of complexity & domain expertise.
Production ready code is not easy to automate and I'd rather not be
pixel pushing when I'm working on a design problem.

One approach would be to have the front-end developers within the
design team as opposed to the dev. Dunno how they would feel about it,
but its great from a UX perspective because of better control of the
product (esp when the UX & dev don't report into the same manager, as
is common in most large orgs)


> I hope this isn't a dumb question, but are there any prototyping
> tools (Visio, Axure, Fireworks, etc.) that actually give you a usable
> website at the end? I'm just wondering if it's worth spending the
> time applying all this functionality to a prototype, if it's all
> going to have to be re-coded afterwards.


-- 
-Vishal
http://www.vishaliyer.com

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Prototyping with Adobe CS3

[Bryan Minihan]

I agree re: Dreamweaver.  It seems the least offensive in terms of code, but
after 6 years using it, I still can't use its WYSYWIG design editor for
anything predictable.  Its best features are the ability to expand and
collapse chunks of HTML (or any container) to copy and move them around, its
recognition of many (not all) common accessibility gaps (no ALTs, etc) and
file management.  

As far as "production-ready prototypes", I agree that no matter how finished
my prototypes are, the code is merely a suggestion and cheats at all sorts
of things to illustrate flow.  Occasionally I'll deliver small snippets that
solve a problem the developer can't manage, but that's rare.

I know I'm late to the "scriptaculous" bandwagon, but I just realized the
other day it has several VERY convenient tools for DHTML prototyping that
emulate data entry behaviors that otherwise take awhile to "fake".  It
doesn't do everything, and much of what I do doesn't require sliding boxes
and drag & drop, but I'm a fan of it for easing some tedious prototyping
tasks (showing/hiding stuff & emulating form field editing).

Bryan
http://www.bryanminihan.com


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Vishal
Iyer

HTML/ CSS / JS will be your best bet for production ready code. Even a
tool like Dreamweaver tends to add unnecessary code.

As far as your second Q is concerned- there is space for a prototype
only tool. If you're building a small 10 page website (or a simple
tool), maybe not so much...but for complicated ones its a different
story. The trade-off here is that of complexity & domain expertise.
Production ready code is not easy to automate and I'd rather not be
pixel pushing when I'm working on a design problem.

One approach would be to have the front-end developers within the
design team as opposed to the dev. Dunno how they would feel about it,
but its great from a UX perspective because of better control of the
product (esp when the UX & dev don't report into the same manager, as
is common in most large orgs)


-Vishal
http://www.vishaliyer.com


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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Icons VS Labels and Localization ...

[Angel Marquez]

>>1.  Which are better, Icons or Labels?
I think the most appropriate solution is your original plan, text, the
easiest to translate.

Are icons perceived differently in different languages?
Icons are probably as controversial as labels when it comes to
perception. A brilliant icon would be understand by more, I believe.
Why not make the labels icons and use the icon source file for
production the same way you planned on using the label text.

Both of the above questions are dependent on the recipient of the
question and their intent.

>>2.  Should the development issue dictate whats done?
lol, isn't this the nature of the beast? If you can explain what you
want, which you have, their should be no development problem. I would
do some flex research and verify the development claim is valid. I am
leery of absolutes. This is the digital age, if you can explain what
you want, it can be done.

>> (I say toughen up Nancy! and get er' done!)
I agree

completely.

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[IxDA Discuss] Directory of People and Companies (Request for Design Inspiration)

[Arena Reed]

I'm creating a basic (but beautiful and easy to use) web-based directory of
companies and contacts.

Any favorite designs that I might look at to see how other people have
elegantly presented this type of information?

A couple of my favorites:

Get Satisfaction's Company Directory
http://getsatisfaction.com/companies
easy to search and see what's fresh... not exactly the perfect analogy for
what I'm doing but might be close

Core 77 Design Directory
http://www.designdirectory.com/public/company_search_results.asp?specialty=3
A good filtered browsing setup .. a little slow

I would love to see any examples you think of so that I can bounce around
ideas with my team.

Thanks!

ps -- I hope this is the type of post that is appropriate for this forum,
I'm new. :)

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Is user research a band-aid for "the listening deficit"?

[Matthew Nolker]

We recently did a project in the health care field. The overall goal
was to improve the usability of a data collection app that was
supposed to accurately record every step of a detailed, half-hour
long medical procedure. The problem was that for some reason, there
was a unusually high rate of error in the data being entered into the
app by the care giver.

Now, these same users had been complaining to customer support and
account teams -- your normal user listening channels -- about many
aspects of the interface. But fixing those never seemed to fix the
inaccuracy problem. Wasn't until we conducted ethnographic research
that we discovered that the users were hiding a very important issue.
They actually weren't entering data at the time it was collected --
they were waiting for a couple hours, then entering data from (a
sometimes faulty) memory.

They did this for a variety of reasons relating to the interaction
design of the application, and fixing those issues did end up solving
the problem.

But because the users were ashamed to tell us how they were actually
interacting with the app in the field (I think it was a violation of
FDA rules, to some degree, and they felt bad about taking shortcuts),
our client's user listening channels weren't able to provide the
critical insight needed to fix the problem.

I suspect that as long as people are subject to cognitive bias, user
listening alone won't be able to diagnose all usability problems. 


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24074



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[IxDA Discuss] We are looking for a special sponsor

[David Malouf]

One of the sponsors we were holding out for to sponsor our video
capture and publishing endeavor fell through. We feel strongly that it
is part of the IxDA mandate to make sure that our conference is
available to the entire IxDA community whether they attended the
conference or not. We will do these videos, but it will cost us.

To that end we are looking for a sponsor at the Gold or Platinum level
($7500-$12,000) that would want to support this endeavor. Instead of a
booth or an event for their exposure, I believe this exposure is worth
a lot more. We would put a motion graphic piece that the sponsor
provides as part of the intro to every session that is played. These
sessions will be up on our website long after the conference is over
providing a much broader and more influential presence than a booth or
simple logo on the web site.

If you are interested please contact David Malouf at david (at) ixda
(dot) org soon, as time is running out.


-- 
David Malouf
http://synapticburn.com/
http://ixda.org/
http://motorola.com/

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[IxDA Discuss] JOB: Interaction Designer, San Francisco, Recruiter, Full Time

[Eric Manke]

*Title: Interaction Designer*
*Location: San Francisco
Environment: Casual, flexible time
Client: Financial*
*Status: Full-time*
*Rate: 90K - low 100's + bonus + outstanding benefits*

An innovative, global financial institution is seeking an Interaction 
Designer with experience in Web-application interaction design, 
presentation of creative concepts, product development and usability. 
There is no graphic design or programming involved in this role.

This is a unique opportunity to join a small creative group with 
enormous influence in shaping one of the most well-used financial sites 
globally. You will be part of a team that works on standard business 
projects.

*Responsibilities:*
* Gather and maintain business requirements, working with 
line-of-business and segment representatives
* Drive the optimum implementation of functionality with research and 
usability testing
* Conduct task analyses to define user needs
* Develop high-level information flows and navigation systems
* Develop detailed page schematics
* Work with technology and operations teams to determine technology 
needs for given initiatives
* Work with visual designers to ensure the look and feel of given 
initiatives meets intended user interaction
* Participate in developing product prototypes for usability testing
* Participate in usability tests by helping to define methodology
* Represent solutions throughout the company
* Manage outside agencies used during the project

*Requirements:*
* More than five years of Web-application interaction design experience
* Demonstrated knowledge of the product-creation process, particularly 
how it pertains to Web development
* Ability to understand and interpret existing site design and style 
guides, and create effective solutions within those guidelines
* Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively orally, in writing and 
by graphic design with staff and clients, individually and in groups
* Working knowledge of various Web-related technologies (e.g., HTML, 
XML, JavaScript, AJAX)
* Working knowledge of visual-design tools, including Visio, Photoshop 
and Illustrator
* Deadline- and detail-oriented, with strong organizational and 
multitasking skills
* Highly motivated to continuously improve with the ability to motivate 
others
* Ability to thrive under pressure and to adapt to conflict situations

If you feel that you are qualified for this position, please email me a 
Word doc or PDF version of your resume and link to your portfolio. 
Candidates must provide a portfolio, including examples of interactive 
and application work and must be authorized to work in the United States 
on a full-time basis for any employer.

Please note:
*Resumes submitted without a portfolio will not be reviewed.
*Not all resumes will receive a response.

Jessie Stehle
Creative Recruiter
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Site: http://www.cm-recruiting.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jstehle

*If you know of someone who you would like to refer for this position, 
please have him or her email me directly and mention your name. If you 
would like to refer someone confidentially, please mention this in your 
email. I can pay a $1,000 - 3,000 referral fee for each hired candidate.*


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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Working with Business/ Sales teams

[Gretchen Anderson]

One argument I have seen work is the: "bad experience will erode our
(meaning the your/site, not the ad) brand and kill that valuable, if
unquantifiable equity."

This research (http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun04/toomany.html) talks
about how the more adds/choices a person has the less likely they are to
pick on. This would be an argument that while in *theory* you get 5%
more revenue, if advertisiers aren't getting their click-thru rates,
they'll pay less for each add, eating that 5% right back up.

Gretchen

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Vishal Iyer
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 11:04 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Working with Business/ Sales teams

This particularly relates ad-supported business models etc.

Firstly, how is the UX team (& the product building teams in general)
related to the Business/ Sales teams? The answer to the second
question will probably be a factor of the first, but what's the nature
of negotiations between the two, esp when there is a conflict of
interest (as there often is).

Take a hypothetical example- Sales wants to put a 300x250 in addition
to the already existing banner & tower ads. You believe that it will
be detrimental to the experience, but they respond by saying that its
going to increase revenues by 5%. How would you counter this? Has
anyone employed numbers - like trying to inject traffic projections
into the numbers (based on the different experiences being provided)

Finally, is there any research detailing the effect of different types
of ads on the User Experience. Eg: From an UX perspective, would you
prefer to have a pre-roll ad (like NYT has sometimes) or banner/tower
ads? (of course it depends on that the content is, but some specifics
would be great)

-- 
-Vishal
http://www.vishaliyer.com

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Directory of People and Companies (Request for Design Inspiration)

[Angel Marquez]

http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/

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[IxDA Discuss] JOB: Sr. Visual Designer Lead: India/ Bay Area- Persistent Systems

[Chaitrali Dhole]

Hello All,

Persistent Systems Usability Engineering team is looking for Sr. Visual
Designers. Please send your resumes to [EMAIL PROTECTED]

*Location:* Pune, India/ Bay Area, US

*Joining:* Immediate

*Senior Visual Designer (Team Leader)*
*Job Profile*

Plan, design and conduct the complete range of visual design activities
Must be able to direct and manage multiple clients and possibly several
projects for each client. Manage and supervise multiple teams doing project
work.
Speak to clients and make presentations to upper management about the full
range of visual design work

Assist in preparation of project proposals/budgeting and manage resources.
Mentor medium/large groups of visual designers.
A strong background in applying design and usability engineering know-how to
visual design.
Must have experience in working with usability teams and interaciton
designers
Know-how of User Centered Design processes
Job Requirements

Hands-on knowledge of a large range of visual design activities and tools
Bachelors or Masters in Fine Arts/Applied Arts/Design or a short course in
web/multimedia or other related discipline
Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
Ability to manage large project teams
6/7 years of experience and a solid foundation in visual design and in
designing large websites/applications


Send your resumes with sample portfolio to  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Chaitrali Dhole
Sr. Usability Engineer
Persistent Systems,
Sunnyvale, CA

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Prototyping with Adobe CS3

[Matthew Nolker]

Many of the Agile development teams I've seen (that are smart enough
to make an interaction designer a core part of the software
development team) move in the same direction Bryan has. The basic
principle that seems to work best is that the design will be
specified in a format that developers can use. So if it's a
Rails/Ajax application, they're doing their design exploration and
prototyping in dHTML. If the front end is flash, then that is what
the prototype and design are executed in as well. 

I've personally tried many the intermediary steps like the Adobe
products or modeling tools like Caretta or iRise, but eventually
concluded that there wasn't enough spare time to execute 100% throw
away prototypes on Agile projects. 

I also haven't found the single tool that a designer can use to turn
a prototype into a working web application. For some CRUD
applications, I've recently seen situations where an interaction
designer paired with Rails developer produced an amazingly rich
prototype in about 2-3 weeks. In several of those cases, much of the
prototype code base survived into the actual production application.


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24306



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[IxDA Discuss] EVENT: Want to 'watch' the Chicago event live?

[Janna Hicks DeVylder]

Log on now!

Thanks to the good people at Critical Mass, we are able to bring a live
broadcast to a computer near you.

http://alwaysinbeta.criticalmass.com/

topic: Designing for the Mobile Experience

6:30 pm cst - 8:00 pm cst

Janna

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Prototyping with Adobe CS3

[Fred Beecher]

On Wed, 9 Jan 2008 14:54:26, Matthew Nolker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> I've personally tried many the intermediary steps like the Adobe
> products or modeling tools like Caretta or iRise, but eventually
> concluded that there wasn't enough spare time to execute 100% throw
> away prototypes on Agile projects.


While I haven't had the chance yet to do UCD as part of an Agile process, I
have always imagined that a rapid prototype would exist alongside but
separate from the production code. This prototype would be maybe one or two
iterations ahead of the production code, but otherwise would still follow
the same cycle as the code (e.g., one-month iterations... I actually talked
with some folks last night who work this way). This prototype would be
maintained by the UCD person/staff and used exclusively to test interactions
before they went into development.

This situation necessitates the use of some sort of rapid prototyping tool.
I've used Axure for a couple of years now, and while it grows more complex
with every release, it is still simple enough that a non-coding UCD person
can make effective prototypes that yield accurate data in testing. The
rapidity of a tool like this is what makes a throwaway prototype in an Agile
environment possible. Developing a wireframe in Axure doesn't take any more
time than doing so in Visio... the only thing that requires more time is
making the wireframe interactive.

Personally, I strongly believe that prototypes should be throwaway due to
the cost savings of avoiding re-work after code has already been written.
This leaves the designers free to experiment with different interactions
with impunity. Changing design is quick, easy and cheap. If I find a novel
interaction doesn't work, no big deal. I can quickly come up with, prototype
and test a different idea... one that integrates what I've learned from the
previous failure. If I had to work with a developer in order to actually
code this (or, horror of horrors, code it myself) it would take much longer
and be more expensive. Not only would it take my time, but a developer's as
well.

- Fred

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Prototyping with Adobe CS3

[Matt Attaway]

I'm working on a desktop application right now and using Flex/Flash
to prototype it. My process is definitely a work in progress, but so
far it is:

1) Sketch out initial ideas on paper
2) Pop into Flex and create initial dialog/window designs in the
WYSIWYG editor

At this point I have something that looks like the window, but isn't
interactive.

3) Bust out Actionscript and hook up the widgets and fake the
behavior.

At this point I (hopefully) have walking, talking documentation. 

The thing I like about Flex is it pretty easy to create different
test cases by swapping out the XML data. My hope is that these
prototypes can be documentation for the developers and also provide
something tangible for stakeholders to look at. I like the fact that
I can easily share the prototype by sticking a .swf on a web server
somewhere. 

Flex is also nice for creating simple paper prototypes. The design
tool in Flex is very pleasant to use and has most of the basic GUI
patterns covered, so to create a new paper prototype I just draw what
I need, throw together an XML file with the test data,  open the swf
in a browser, and hit print. I haven't figured out a way to use Flex
for printed documentation; our design doc is a wiki so I just embed
links in the wiki to the appropriate prototype.

Flex  lets you create your own re-usable components, so you can build
a library of specialized parts. This definitely speeds up prototyping
once you get them all setup.

The big downside to Flex is if you want more than pretty pictures you
really do need to know Actionscript. If you can code though Flex is
pretty great. This whole Flex based process is new to me and the
company I work for. I'll do a post-mortem on it once we ship. =)


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://gamma.ixda.org/discuss?post=24306



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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Icons VS Labels and Localization ...

[Michael Micheletti]

On Jan 9, 2008 12:04 PM, Grady Kelly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 1.  Which are better, Icons or Labels? Are icons perceived differently
> in different languages?
>

I don't know about better or not, but when faced with the same decision last
year at our company, I worked up a set of icons that could be used on our
controls. It took a long time and many review cycles. We made tooltip text
localizable for the graphical controls. The application originally had the
worst of all worlds: text displayed in graphics on control surfaces.

It's my understanding that using symbols instead of text for controls is
periodically attempted as a way to avoid localization of control surface
text, but that these efforts are not always successful. I ended up doing a
fair amount of research into international symbols along the way to try to
avoid pitfalls.

I might not have made the same decision if I was creating an application for
a kiosk, or for a pop-in-and-out-of-it web page. Ours is a communications
application for trained operators, so it's understood that some hop-on-board
time is needed. I've also had some previous experience designing icon symbol
sets for specialized applications, so I mostly knew what I was getting into.

Unexpected benefit: the eye-candy aspect of making the symbols light up
pretty for the various control states got our dev team excited about the
redesign.

Hope this helps,

Michael Micheletti

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[IxDA Discuss] [Event] Reminder: NYC IxDA - Jan. 24th - Sustainable Interactions

[liya zheng]

Hello Everyone,

Just a reminder from the NYC IxDA team to sign up for our upcoming January
event. There are only 15 spots left.

Sign up now by sending your RSVP to: nyc-rsvp (at) ixda (dot) org.

Hope to see you there!

Liya Zheng
NYC IxDA





ORIGINAL EVENT INVITE---

Come kick off the new year with us at the NYC IxDA's January event.

Panel: "Sustainable Interactions"
Moderated by Robert Fabricant of Frog Design

When: Thursday, January 24, 2008. 6:30 PM.Where: Midtown Manhattan.
Details provided on RSVP, please e-mail: nyc-rsvp (at) ixda (dot) org

Description: Join IxDA NYC and our panelists to discuss how interaction
designers can practice our work in a more sustainable and socially conscious
way. Come and find out what our industry visionaries and experts are doing
in this area and what you can do to change the world for a better tomorrow.
We will get a chance to look at some projects people are doing in service,
product design and eco-visualization.  We will provide an evening of
conversations with the panelists and give you intriguing examples from the
field to challenge the notion of how interaction design can make great
social impact.

Moderator: Robert Fabricant, Frog Design

Panelists:
Allan Chochinov, Core 77 ( www.core77.com)
Jennifer Van de Meer, O2NYC ( www.o2nyc.org)
Sean White, Columbia University  (
www1.cs.columbia.edu/~swhite/)
Tom Igoe, New York University Interactive Telecommunications Program (
http://itp.nyu.edu/itp/flash/profile/IgoeT.html )

Event sponsor:
Access staffing ( http://www.accessstaffingco.com )

If you are interested in getting involved with the NYC IxDA, please e-mail
us at nyc at ixda dot org , or visit our web site at http://www.ixda.org .

Look forward to seeing you again at the event!

Liya zheng
IxDA NYC

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Re: [IxDA Discuss] Arial vs Vernada?

[Jim Drew]

On Jan 7, 2008, at 3:45 PM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:

> It's similar to the problem that happened with typewriters. The lack
> or true typesetting and kerning between letterforms created the need
> to add multiple spaces behind periods to breakup the copy to make it
> more readable, to the degree that now breaking people of that
> technological habit has been difficult for those in certain age
> ranges that learned the rule. The rule is now no longer needed given
> typewriters have been replaced with devices that allow for more
> accurate typesetting.


I'd buy into this if I saw any indication that applications tended to  
put anything but the same size space at the end of a sentence as  
between words.  But they don't seem to.  But maybe InDesign does.  I  
know many DTP apps have the ability to dynamically shift the width of  
spaces in justified text -- and the spacing between letters, too -- to  
improve letter packing or other mechanisms, so assuming that the end  
of a sentence can actually be detected with reasonable fidelity, it  
wouldn't be hard to provide extra width between sentences.

But until I see a whole lot more apps doing it automatically,  
including browsers, the only way to ensure that sentences make  
themselves visually separated for improved chunking and readability  
seems to be to do it manually.  (Or to stop caring.  Nope, can't  
manage that.)

-- Jim Drew
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