Re: [IxDA Discuss] Metrics for mobile websites/apps
Make sure to check out AdMob's analytics product: http://analytics.admob.com/home/ They provide an advertising platform, but I think the analytics product is free (even if you don't use them for ads). They were recently bought by Google. -Adam On Feb 18, 2010, at 11:05 PM, Hilary Bienstock wrote: Hi, all, I'm going to be gathering some metrics for a site meant to be accessed by mobile phone. (Users will follow a link sent to them in a text message or email.) So I need to understand what types of metrics can be collected by a service like Omniture, Webtrends, or Google Analytics specifically for mobile devices. Anyone have any good resources? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Interaction Design vs Interactive Design
My experience has been that people usually use the term interactive design in the context of marketing and advertising, where interactive distinguishes an agency or service from traditional print, billboard and/or TV marketing advertising. So, in very broad strokes, if interaction design is designing products services, interactive design is using an interactive medium to sell products services. -Adam On Feb 3, 2010, at 2:42 PM, Richard Carson wrote: Hi Folks, I am trying to understand and there are some confusion between the two. Are they the same field of design? Is there a clearly defined difference between the two? Richard Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Could use some eyes on this chart
This orientation and numbering is much easier to follow, but a few things still stand out for me: 1. Using timelines implies that the dates are laid out to some sort of scale, but they aren't. For example, the distance between 1642 and 1646 (4 years) is about the same distance as between 1646 and 2059 (419 years). So, it looks like the placement of dates on the timelines is driven by the text layout of the associated descriptions. Instead, I think you need to first lay out the dates on the timeline in a way that makes sense without the descriptions (which doesn't have to be exactly to scale), then find a way to add the text descriptions within that framework. 2. That the alternate timeline is at an angle suggests that time is progressing at a different rates on the two lines, but it seems that's not the case, since 1627 lines up vertically. Either it needs to be clearer that time is progressing at different rates, or just use parallel lines. 3. It seems the dotted line for the targeted return should drop down to the original timeline. Regards, Adam On Feb 2, 2010, at 2:51 PM, Tom DellAringa wrote: Took a lot of your comments into account, as well as some of my own thoughts. I tried to vastly simplify things. Here is an update, be glad to hear any thoughts. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/48702/timeline2.jpg Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Mac apps for a recent convert ...
Welcome to Mac! OmniGraffle: Visio replacement. OmniGroup has a bunch of other great software, too. http://www.omnigroup.com/ For stencils, check out http://graffletopia.com/ SnapzPro: Screen capture recording, if you need more than the tools built in to the OS. http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/ xScope: An assortment of little tools, mostly related to screen dimensions. http://iconfactory.com/software/xscope/ Art Directors Toolkit: Another assortment of small tools, mostly for working with color dimensions. http://www.code-line.com/ MAMP: Self-contained Apache/MySql/PHP. Not really design software, but since you mentioned Coda, I thought you might want to check it out. http://www.mamp.info/ Regards, Adam On Jan 29, 2010, at 8:47 PM, Grady Kelly wrote: As a UI/Ux/Ix Designer, what software should I take advantage of? I used Fireworks on a PC, so now I am using it on a mac. I decided to use Coda over Dreamweaver. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Active/inactive state of physical buttons
I worked on a car stereo project 7 or 8 years ago where we used exactly this concept (we called it contextual luminescent feedback). At the time we couldn't find examples that really did this in any sort of sophisticated way either, but we ran with it anyway because we thought it was compelling appropriate for what we needed. For all sorts of reasons it never was built, but as it played out in the detailed design, it seemed pretty successful. There are some simplistic examples (some vending machines indicate the availability of an item by lighting up the button that you press to get it), but I think that's probably not quite the same as what you're describing. On Nov 17, 2009, at 2:55 PM, Dan Zollman wrote: Hi all, I'm considering a pattern in which each button lights up when it's active/available and gets dark when it's inactive/unavailable. There are certainly many devices with buttons that light up in order to reflect the on/off state of a particular feature (e.g. caps lock key), or of the device itself. However, I can't think of any examples where lighted buttons reflect availability rather than state. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] A vision for the 10-finger desktop
There are a lot of nice things in the concept. It would be great to see this on a tall, rather than wide, screen. If you stack the windows vertically rather than horizontally, you wouldn't need to have that sideways text, which kind of drives me nuts. Or, like the iPhone, have a display that you can rotate and have the UI adapt appropriately. I've always wanted this to become mainstream for desktop displays. The basis of much of Apple's multi-touch technology (laptop trackpads, iPhone) was from buying out Fingerworks. They had some interesting products (like a keyboard replacement that also serves as one, big gesture input device) that had a lot more power than what Apple has used in their products so far. You can still get a lot of info about their old stuff here: www.fingerworks.com. It will be interesting to see how they integrate this over time and if they start to make more substantive changes to the desktop OS (like in your proposal), rather than just handy shortcuts (like they do now with the laptop trackpads). On Oct 12, 2009, at 6:25 AM, Clayton Miller wrote: Over this past summer, I finally produced an eight-minute motion graphic piece detailing the problem and my proposed solutions. The video and some more background information are here: http://10gui.com/ What do you think? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Article on Number of Usability Test Participants
I just re-read this and want to clarify what I meant by ...usability testing isn't a good way to measure (or improve) product quality... I meant this in the sense that it's an inefficient way to find defects in the execution, but a good way to find defects in the decision making (it's broken vs. it doesn't make sense). On Oct 2, 2009, at 10:02 AM, Adam Korman wrote: There are a couple of points I wanted to follow up on in this discussion: Will Sanbury talked about how usability testing is not meant as a replacement for QA. I think this is a really important point -- usability testing isn't a good way to measure (or improve) product quality, but it is a good way to find out if you built the wrong thing. In this context, using terms like sample size and margin of error are just not that meaningful. My practical experience has been that usability testing just a few participants usually uncovers enough issues to keep the development team plenty busy. If you test with 5 people, 80% of them encounter a bunch of the same issues, and it takes the team several weeks to fix those issues, what good does it do to keep running the same test on another 25+ people to identify additional issues that only 10% will encounter that the team doesn't have the capacity to work on? As Steve Baty said, it's much more effective to test iteratively with small numbers than run big, infrequent studies. On Oct 2, 2009, at 4:51 AM, Thomas Petersen wrote: If we are talking wireframes or any other replacements for the real thing whatever you will find have very little if anything to do with what you find in the end. I basically agree with this, except I would say that testing wireframes isn't really usability testing. -Adam Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Subject: Re: What are your principles for making digital products/services
I think where the tension lies is that while aesthetics play a role in usability, there isn't a two-way correlation between aesthetics usability. In other words, making something more usable requires attention to aesthetics, but the reverse isn't true and focusing on aesthetics alone won't necessarily make something more usable (it may make it less so). Depending on how you're measuring success, that may or may not be okay. One thing that's tricky about this is that while designing and developing new products (especially software) it can be hard to distinguish at a glance between things that are usable+beautiful vs. things that are just beautiful, and it can be easy to get seduced by the latter and be stuck with something that's not usable. -Adam On Sep 24, 2009, at 11:14 AM, Dave Malouf wrote: I think we can say that the Aesthetic over Usability has some logic holes in it. I think I felt that emotion over logic wasn't enough, or did not articulate well enough in practice and felt that the a over u articulation hopefully would do that. So I'll concede for now that the dichotomy fails and we can move on. I won't concede though that there are areas of aesthetics and emotion that are not included under even the broadest definition or focus of usability. -- dave On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 9:19 AM, Jared Spool jsp...@uie.com wrote: On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 4:52 AM, Gilberto Medrano gmedr...@gmail.comwrote: And even the motivational power of connotation serves a function in design. I just can't separate aesthetics from usability that easily. And that was my point. Going back to David's original principal of Beauty over Usability, I too am having trouble seeing the tension between the two. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Subject: Re: What are your principles for making digital products/services
I'm not advocating doing things poorly, just saying that these things (usability, aesthetics, beauty, delightfulness) aren't on/off propositions. And, while they are intertwined, there is some slack. It is possible (and may sometimes be appropriate) to fiddle with design elements that make a product more aesthetically pleasing but less usable (without making it unusable) and vice versa. I have a Nooka watch that's a little bit hard to read but it is delightful. If it were more usable, it would lose its appeal. The default desktop images on Mac and Windows make it harder to read/find things on the desktop, but they (arguably) make interacting with the computer more delightful than a solid color would. The switches in the center console of the Mini Cooper aren't the most usable design for their functions, but they contribute to the overall delight of that driving experience. How you measure success for these products is different than how you would probably measure success for a time punch clock, a medical device or a forklift (which is not to say that that aesthetics do not play a role in their usability). I'm also not trying to argue that there is always a tradeoff between aesthetics and usability, but that it's not so black and white as more usable = more delightful = more successful, in part because there is no single measure of success. -Adam On Sep 24, 2009, at 2:46 PM, Jared Spool wrote: On Sep 24, 2009, at 4:27 PM, Adam Korman wrote: I think where the tension lies is that while aesthetics play a role in usability, there isn't a two-way correlation between aesthetics usability. In other words, making something more usable requires attention to aesthetics, but the reverse isn't true and focusing on aesthetics alone won't necessarily make something more usable (it may make it less so). Depending on how you're measuring success, that may or may not be okay. Yah, not sure I buy that either. I think doing something poorly (whether usability or aesthetic design) will result in undesirable outcomes. For a designer (vs. an artist), I think it's clear that they are both tied together intimately. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] nice read: On Apple's connection with the consumer
I think this view is rooted in a misunderstanding of what personas are and what they are meant to be used for. Among other things, personas are a way to represent research about the commonalities among your user's goals and behavior patterns in a manageable way. I find it hard to believe that there is research that bears out that you have 50 completely distinct sets of high-level goals and behavior patterns among your users (or that if you do, that these people can all be successfully served by one product). I know that personas aren't the only way to approach these questions and they are not the only tool you need to create a successful product, but they can definitely work for mass consumer products. -Adam On Sep 22, 2009, at 11:10 AM, mark schraad wrote: On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 11:57 AM, Jack Moffett jackmoff...@mac.com wrote: There is a big difference between designing for the general populace (consumer products and the majority of web services) and designing for a specific domain. I think that missing this distinction is in part what drives those debates over the usefulness of UCD. It is also one a principal renders personae of little use to some of us. When you have 30 million uniques a day... its a little hard to capture useful specificity. What am I going to do with 50 personas? And five won't work either. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Adobe Fireworks for wire framing
On Sep 16, 2009, at 6:58 AM, Brian wrote: why would I use [Fireworks] over using Photoshop or InDesign? This is how I think about where Fireworks fits relative to other Adobe apps: - InDesign is great for creating documents - Photoshop is great for working with bitmap images - Illustrator is great for working with vectors for print - Fireworks is great for working with vectors to create bitmap images for the screen They all do other (and often overlapping things), but that's a very high-level view. Another way to look at it is that over time Photoshop has added vector tools, while vector and bitmap tools have been in Fireworks' DNA from day one. A few of the things that I find make Fireworks great for wireframing: 1. Pages, states and layers. You can share layers across states and states across pages. And you can show or hide shared layers/states in different states/pages. Not sure if this makes sense in the abstract, but it's really handy and probably the main reason I use Fireworks. 2. Styles. Update a style and you can easily update all objects with the same style. 3. Symbols. Create a symbol then drop pointers to it wherever you need it. When you edit the symbol, all the instances get updated. Symbols be very simple (a button with 9-slice guides that allow you to smartly resize it for any one instance), or they can be very sophisticated (a button with a normal, highlight and default state and variable text for the label). There are lots of other little (and big) things, but these three stand out for me as particularly helpful for wireframing (and creating final art, too). -Adam Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] How trendy is UCD? Are we critical enough about it?
Dave, It seems that you're arguing that the tools and point of view of UCD aren't relevant because you are now interested in a different class of problems that is broader than designing products. Where I have trouble with your argument is when you say that the scale of design problems has changed radically in the last 3 years. I think it's more likely that the scale of problems that you (and many other designers) are thinking about has changed in that time, and you're finding that UCD is less relevant as a way to approach solving those problems. That's fine, but it doesn't mean that UCD doesn't provide a useful way to approach other kinds of problems (the kinds of design problems which UCD grew up trying to address, and which are still around) or some tools to offer for these bigger challenges. Many technology/product companies (and designers) have no interest (or business) in addressing the kinds of larger scale design issues that you are talking about. In these environments, there are usually very few people who look deeply at the problems/solution from the user's point of view, and if UCD brings more attention to the people who use the products, that's good. I don't believe that UCD alone creates great and successful products (or businesses), but it can be an important part of the mix. Regards, Adam On Sep 12, 2009, at 11:47 AM, Dave Malouf wrote: No one is saying that UCD processes have had no success for the areas they have tried to work in. However, I am saying that the scale of our design problems have changed radically in the last 3 years and that traditional UCD formal processes do not scale with these problems. and This is but one example. This is the level that Apple is working at, when it creates whole new cultures with their products services. This is what is going to be required to deal with global political, economic, and environmental issues. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Interaction design versus Instructional Design
I haven't read anything about the relationship of the fields, but I did get my start working as an Instructional Designer for about 3 years before getting into Interaction Design, so I've thought about this a little bit. There are definitely similarities and parallels in the work, especially the up-front process of doing contextual research to understand what people are trying to achieve and identifying patterns of behavior. That's ultimately done to help devise solutions that help people achieve their goals. This very high-level description of activities and aims applies equally to both fields. My own experience as an instructional designer (which I didn't have any formal education in) was that I didn't have a good process for explicitly synthesizing the results of the research into something like personas or illustrated mental models, but the approach and intent of that up-front work was roughly the same as it is in product design. Knowing what I do now about mental models and personas, I can see how these would have been incredibly valuable tools in instructional design. The little bit of coursework and reading I did as an instructional designer focused mostly on task analysis and documentation (as well as pedagogy and the psychology of learning). Of course, all of these things are also useful and applicable in interaction design. As for the artifacts or end products we create, although they are quite different (training materials that indirectly help people achieve their goals in one case, and products that more directly help achieve goals in the other), there are again many parallels related to figuring out how to best facilitate the success of your audience/ users. In both cases you are creating mediated experiences and tools that rely heavily on clear communication to achieve an end. -Adam On Jul 22, 2009, at 11:02 AM, Bryan Clover wrote: These two fields seem very related. In fact, one could argue that instructional design is really the precursor to interaction design. Both involve in-depth needs analysis, both are focused on defining user's needs and goals, both involve gathering user feedback via usability testing. In my eyes, Interaction design is nothing more than the Instructional design process without the need for creating content that can actually teach and train people. Has anyone come across any good articles for comparing these two? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Security question: plain text entry or masked?
Another take on this is to consider who can see this info after it's entered. Is it used only for me to confirm my identity online, or are the answers to these security questions viewable by any random customer service rep who looks up my account? Part of the expectation that's created by masking a password field is that the password will remain private and secure -- that no one can actually see it. So, masking the field might create a false expectation of privacy and security that could be dashed later if someone contacts your company by phone and finds out that just about anyone at your company has access to their* sensitive info. And as for online banking -- I have accounts with several financial institutions that use these kinds of security questions. They all show these fields in plain text. Regards, Adam * Or should I say his/her? On Jul 23, 2009, at 3:40 PM, Anthony Hempell wrote: This is for creation of an online account at a major NA wireless provider. The account would contain most of that person's personal information, so I consider it high security, perhaps just below that required for online banking. Since it is for a wireless provider, there's a good chance they may be using a mobile device to enter this information. My gut reaction was that b/c of the sensitive nature of the personal information, my expectation was that this info would be masked. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Product training and orientation: anything surprising/interesting?
Common Craft creates some great explanatory videos. Here's one example: http://www.commoncraft.com/twitter On Jun 2, 2009, at 1:27 PM, Gretchen Anderson wrote: Looking for some inspiration about how to orient people to a UI in a novel way. Of course, no training should be required, but there's some legal reasons why we need to do it for a project. Anyone seen any cool vids/demos/tutorial modes out there lately I could check out? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Specific kind of faceted search example?
It's hard to tell without the specifics, but this might be similar to your challenge: http://www.tigerdirect.com. A good example of how they deal with filters is to go down the path of browsing for hard drives. You can keep adding filters by clicking on items in the left rail/ navigation area. As you get deeper in, they start to construct a breadcrumb trail of filters you've added. I wouldn't say it's a great experience, but they've made an attempt at handling some of the things it sounds like you are dealing with. I'm not sure how clear it is to people, but they are doing some useful things. -Adam On May 7, 2009, at 11:46 PM, Johan Sjöstrand wrote: Hello. We're currently designing a faceted search / guided search with some very specific challanges: [snip] We're currently thinking you need to make one big pick. Structure the filters on at least two levels so they're not all on the same. That would make things much easier. But we are still open to the suggested design until proven otherwise. Have anyone of you seen an example of what is described here? I know I haven't.. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Five things Interaction Design probably isn't
On Mar 26, 2009, at 4:33 AM, dave malouf wrote: Coming in VERY late (for me). 1. I DO think this is a definition problem. Or more accurately a lack of consensus around both definition and practice. [snipped a bunch of stuff] Now putting all this into context, I believe if I was to come up with a real definition at this point... There's already a great description of interaction design here: http://www.ixda.org/about_interaction.php . It is well written, thoughtfully crafted and can be found in a handy place (highlighted on the home page for the Interaction Design Association). Rather than start from scratch again (and again) to define interaction design, this seems like a good point of reference for what it is we want to promote. And, PR within our own community is probably the first priority! Regards, Adam Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The Save Icon rut
Alan Cooper talks about this at length in About Face (chapter 17 is Rethinking Files and Save). Regards, Adam On Mar 19, 2009, at 11:49 AM, Coryndon Luxmoore wrote: Strictly speaking save as a function is a holdover from the day that computers were not capable of retaining a running list of all edits and storing them in real time. So in my mind the question is if we remove the need to save a file how do I mark a significant point in the creation of a file? --C Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Prototyping tools resources
I'll try to put some concrete feedback around the basic criticism. Because of the criteria you've chosen, the chart has a bias in favor of prototyping using the tools that are the same (or closest) to how the product will eventually be built. Tools that are the same or similar to what will be used to build the final product always score the best, and there's a drop-off whether you use more or less sophisticated tools. By this measure, the chart shows that there's never a good reason to create a paper prototype or click-through screenshots. In fact, by choosing the term Acceptable as the middle rating, you are suggesting that paper and click-throughs are always unacceptable prototyping methods (because their average rating in all cases is less than acceptable). I think there are two important criteria that might start to balance things out: (a) degree of specialized skills required to develop the prototype and (b) level of effort to build and maintain the prototype. If you have to hire someone to build prototypes, that may not be an acceptable investment to get optimal results. That said, I still think there's a bigger problem with the slant in favor of reusability. It's been my experience that the more time and effort you invest in a realistic, reusable prototype, the more of a vested interest you have in believing that you already have the right answer. In other words, if you've spent a lot of time creating assets (graphics, code, behavior) that you expect to reuse in the final product, the more attached you become to those assets. When there is no expectation that the assets for the prototype will be reused, development of the prototype is faster and it's easier to toss things out that are wrong or don't work as expected. Now if you already know you're right, a hyper-realistic prototype with reusable code and graphic assets may be useful. This brings up an important missing piece from the chart, which is any discussion of the goal of creating the prototype and how different mediums may be more or less appropriate for different goals. If your goal is to test overall concepts, I think this chart is totally misleading. If the goal is to test if your concepts are possible given the technology, the chart seems more reasonable. -Adam On Feb 28, 2009, at 6:49 AM, Jeremy Kriegel wrote: Interesting chart, but I think it is a gross oversimplification of the utility and applicability of tools. There are valid situations where the reality is diametrically opposed to your evaluation. Unless you have something specific in retort, then I think you just did what you are accusing me of. I'm open to feedback or hearing countering opinions even if it doesn't necessarily change my mind, but making a blanket statement about what claim is a blanket statements doesn't seem very useful. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Touchscreen Buttons
There were already some good responses on the other questions, so I'll jump in on the right-hand biasing question. The short reply is yes, it is important to think about the physical issues related to where controls appear on a touchscreen, especially for something that's a larger form factor (i.e., not hand-held). Things like reach, strain, and what is obscured while reaching for the controls should be important concerns. In one product I worked on (with a 15 touchscreen), in field observation we noticed that a lot of users would use the product while sitting and resting their on arm on their elbow or forearm, pivoting it to interact with the touchscreen rather than lifting the whole arm. In that context, it made sense to consider how we could place controls on the screen to avoid making people lift or move their whole arm too much. So, we put the primary navigation (tabs) along the right side of the screen and biased having most buttons/controls appear in the bottom half of the screen. This tested well, even with a lefty, who we specifically asked about it. She naturally used her right hand to press the tabs on the right side of the screen without any trouble or concern. We were pretty good about sticking close to the 3/4 minimum size guideline -- if finer accuracy were required it might have been harder for her to use her right hand for this. She used her left hand for most other interactions. We only placed controls that were infrequently used in the top 1/3 of the screen, and rarely used controls in the top-left corner. Imagine placing a frequently used control in the top-left of the screen where you have to reach up and across your body and obscure the whole screen to press it. We also didn't put any controls in the top-right of the screen -- we reserved this area for important status messages, knowing it would never be obscured by the user while interacting with the product. Regards, Adam ... Adam Korman a...@flexid.com On Feb 11, 2009, at 7:47 AM, Jeff Millington wrote: 3) Any experiences with right-hand biasing of the GUI when using a 7 LCD? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Interaction Designer vs User Experience Designer vs User Interface designer
While trying to avoid the discussion of defining any of the terms, I thought I'd write about what I've seen (from my personal experience and job seeking) in the marketplace in terms of job titles. Interaction Designer, User Experience Designer and User Interface Designer are usually interchangeable job titles -- you usually don't see more than one of these job titles within an organization. I haven't seen the title User Experience Architect used as much as the others, but I think it's in this class. There may be differences in what people with these titles do at different companies, but you probably couldn't tell based on the job title alone. Information Architect is sometimes interchangeable with the above titles, but is occasionally a separate function (i.e., some places have Information Architects instead of any of the above, while other places have both IA and UX roles). Usually a Manager or Director of Interaction Design or Information Architecture has only Interaction Designers or Information Architects reporting to them. A Manager or Director of User Experience may have people with any of the above titles reporting to them, but is more likely to also have User Researchers and Visual or Graphic Designers reporting to them. This seems to support the notion that User Experience is emerging as an umbrella term in practical usage. Regards, Adam On Feb 10, 2009, at 12:53 AM, Batyah Rubin wrote: Hi, Can anyone tell me the difference between these three titles: - Interaction Designer - User Experience Designer - User Interface designer Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] all small or add caps?
I won't repeat a lot of the other good comments, but will add that in terms of making sure the word mark is distinctive, the specific letterforms involved play a big factor. In your example, the all lowercase once may not be very distinctive because none of the letters have ascenders or descenders, and the characters are all similar width, whereas these all lowercase wordmarks have distinctive letters involved: ups, abc, adidas, flickr, facebook, bp, ebay, jamba juice, att. On Feb 7, 2009, at 5:39 PM, Janna wrote: I am working on rebranding and a new logo for my company. I have been considering using all small letters. Today, I had a discussion with a designer more visual than I, who sad that using caps at the beginning of words is more memorable - but many of his examples included drive by's -- seeing the logo on trucks or billboards. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Usability testing on the cheap- Silverback, ?
I've used Morae in the past. It's sort of like Silverback (from what I can see on the site), but more sophisticated. Main differences: - it's Windows based - in addition to recording sessions, you can stream live to observers' computers - it has tools for annotating sessions and creating graphs, reports, etc. - it's a lot pricier than Silverback http://www.techsmith.com/morae.asp -Adam On Jul 29, 2008, at 12:45 PM, Michael Dunn wrote: Hey all, I'm doing some research on different tiers of usability testing, and I love the new Silverback app that Clear Left just put out ( http://www.silverbackapp.com/) as a potential lower-end solution (we already have partnerships in place for the high-end services). Are there any other apps like Silverback out there? What do you guys use? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] **VL-JUNK** Re: Confirm password field - Superfluous?
Since your users don't have email, it sounds like the plan is to use the hint (and response) to directly gain access to the account. So really you're creating two paths to sign in, and you're asking your users to come up with two passwords instead of one. First, consider dropping one of the two sign-in paths (i.e., just have the main password, don't put any strength requirements on it like minimum length, etc. OR just have the hint/response to sign in). The path you're down has a lot of cognitive load to sign up (remember username, create remember password, create remember hint and answer). Second, if showing the second password in plain text during sign up isn't a concern, why not show the main password that way too (or instead)? This should reduce the worry that you can't check if it was mistyped during sign up by not having that confirm password entry. Finally, if there's really not that much at stake, is a password even necessary? This may be too drastic, but maybe not. -Adam On Jul 10, 2008, at 12:29 PM, Steven Chalmers wrote: @ Jeremy White - Regarding availability of e-mail. Jeremy, you guessed correctly that these users do not have e-mail. I believe that the best way to justify my design is to consider the following design criteria (which I should have included in my first post): 1) This is a low security risk application 2) The users do not have e-mail 3) We want to lessen the load on our internal help desk for password resets. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Visual indication of a partially selected group
The standard Mac OS behavior is to indicate partial selection with a horizontal line instead of a check mark. I think this is more successful than the greyed out check mark that a couple of people mentioned, since the greying may make the control look unclickable (unless that's what you want). Clicking on a partial checkbox acts like select all. I think there's a similar Windows standard, but I can't remember if it's a horizontal line or something else (I seem to remember a dot or square? not sure...). The horizontal line might be problematic if your tree control uses pluses (+) and minuses (-) for expanding/collapsing the tree because you'd have one visual cue for two distinct controls, which could cause confusion. Mac OS uses right-facing and down-facing triangles for expand/collapse, which avoids this issue. -Adam On May 13, 2008, at 8:30 AM, David Mathew wrote: Are there any good conventions for displaying a partially selected checkbox? I have a tree of checkboxes and I'm trying to think of the clearest way to show the user an indication that a parent checkbox is in one of the following three states: 1. All of its items (child checkboxes) are selected/checked 2. Some but not all of its items are selected (partially selected, ie some child checkboxes are checked and some are not) 3. None of its items are selected (no child checkboxes are checked) Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] JOB: Interaction Designer, LA area, Ripple, Full Time
*** If you're interested, please don't reply to this address, instead email me here: adam[at]rippletv.com *** Position: Interaction Designer (full-time, mid or senior level) Company: Ripple (www.rippletv.com) Location: El Segundo, CA (Los Angeles area) *** Description *** Ripple is looking for a full-time mid- or senior-level Interaction Designer. You will design web-based applications that help people to buy time on our networks, give access to our partners to manage their networks, and enable Ripple employees to effectively run our entire advertising and content system. Although we have some version 1.0 products up and running, this is a chance to get in relatively early and shape the future of some exciting products. Things you should like to do (and be good at): - Discover and interpret requirements - Create and work with personas - Write scenarios and storyboards - Draw boxes and arrows - Organize information - Design work flows, behaviors, and interactions - Design new products from scratch - Maintain and improve existing products - Clearly communicate your design in writing and in person - Work well with researchers, product managers and engineers Helpful, but not necessary: - Ability to create simple production-ready graphical elements for the web (layout elements, widgets) - Experience designing advertising and/or content management systems *** About Working at Ripple *** - Ripple is a good place to work - Our office is located in El Segundo, CA (Los Angeles area) - We offer competitive pay, stock, and benefits *** How to Apply *** Please do not reply to this address. Send your resume and portfolio/ work samples to Adam Korman -- adam[at]rippletv.com *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 http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
