I find this REALLY impressive work on many levels
Thanx for sharing!
In particular it is a great example of RIA design (yes, peeps you have to
download a new plug-in, so what!?!) .
-- dave
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 7:28 PM, J. Ambrose Little wrote:
> Hi folks!
> I thought you'd like to know a
I have to agree with Beetlejuice on this one. In both points.
Especially the one about game design. GD is my own background and
everything we do in our games is about building a narative with the
user. Personal stories, scripted stories, even abstract games like
bejeweled are all about something so
Thanks for the plug for us content strategists, Chris. I don't
disagree with you--it can only help all of us who work in the
interactive space, no matter how we self-define, to talk more about
how we construct narratives. Speaking from a personal perspective,
though, I'd like to see the reverse hap
Thanks all for your feedback.
I purposely left my original question very vague so as not to lead
responses, but I'm particularly interested in the split between what
I tend to describe as technical skills ( wireframing, workshops, user
research and testing, etc. ) and the other stuff ( evangelizin
Technology can fail in a myriad of ways. Without note taking, you risk
losing the information you spend hours planning to collect.
I *always* recommend taking notes (in any form).
I take copious notes. I create a document to help me take notes for each
participant which includes the questions I n
I am looking for examples of Web site workflows that shows the role of
the Information Architect
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org
Unsubscribe http://w
This has been a really good thread as an Adobe employee. Very good insights
into both pros and cons.
If you guys want to talk about Flex or what we've got planned with Flash
Catalyst, a few of us from Adobe are going to be at IxDA in Vancouver and we'd
be happy to chat.
If you want to set some
I'd recommend looking at Morae by TechSmith:
http://www.techsmith.com/morae.asp
Hal Gill, CEA
FGM, Inc.
www.fgm.com
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Rony Philip wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Even in this recession time, I have been given a decent budget for my user
> experience team. I have planned to i
If your team has not invested in Axure yet, now is a good time.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=38056
Welcome to the Interaction De
1. User Advocate.
2. User Advocate.
3. User Advocate.
Seriously though. Someone who can create the most innovative and
beautiful wireframes and prototypes etc. is not as useful as someone
who promotes the end user's views to the larger project team.
A second key role is to interact and often tra
1. Synthesis capacity (to analyze and conceptualize).
2. Visual or aesthetic sensitivity (to imagine and wireframe).
3. Understanding of the environment (to keep in mind the limitations
and possibilities).
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new i
I'm getting back into public speaking and giving a short presentation
next month on my design process in Fireworks, so I thought I'd
collect some questions from the list in advance. I'll be sticking to
prototyping rather than my design process as a whole, but will be
covering my typical workflow fo
On Feb 2, 2009, at 4:40 PM, Katie Albers wrote:
(1) on the few occasions where I've been forced to take notes, I
literally had no idea, later, what had happened. The paper was
undoubtedly much the wiser, I couldn't put anything on it in a
context that made it make sense to me...and I spent
First of all, let me admit that I never take written notes. Never
have. Not in classes and not in my practice. It isn't that I'm bad at
it (apparently I take excellent notes) but my neurological makeup
makes it a very bad idea; I learn almost entirely through my senses,
especially my ears.
I'd completely agree w/Jared's comments below. Good note taking is
very, very important. So important in fact that we developed our own
framework to track everything in. Record anytime you can. I use a
small Leica to photograph any time I can.
On Feb 2, 2009, at 3:48 PM, Jared Spool wrote:
I think hidden cameras are a little on the evil side...
I just read a Koan about a Zen master that was dying and he gave his pupil
his writing and the pupil tossed it into the fire.
I think incognito when nobody knows your coming is the best approach.
Your cover is already blown people are going
I love you guys and your polemics - what ever happened to "it
depends..."
Now it's Note taking is evil and
Eye tracking is voodoo.
RED, ACD, GDD, UCD: It all reminds me of the religious arguments
people used to get into between kung-fu, aikido, aikijujitsu,
shotokan, judo, wingchun, as to
On Feb 2, 2009, at 2:12 PM, Katie Albers wrote:
I feel compelled to reiterate my note-taking plea here: Don't do it!
Note-taking splits your attention and tends to change the behavior
of the subject. It's aurally, visually and actively intrusive.
Note-taking is evil.
Use a tape recorder or a
On Feb 2, 2009, at 11:06 AM, Jamie McAtee wrote:
This is the first time the company has sent anyone to do something
like this.I am hoping it goes well and we can bring back good
information so we can do some more of these visits.
Advice is appreciated!
You've gotten a lot of good advice here
at the risk of sounding like I'm throwing tech at the problem ;-)
I totally agree with the note taking warnings above, and have found
the livescribe pen to be very helpful for handling audio with the
occasional note (synced to the recording)
to reflect and begin writing up, I then usually replay
Here's the details of the role, from the client, which is an interactive
fashion website in Manhattan:
We need an IA/documentation person. We've already done the wireframes, etc,
but now need someone to come in and detail out the functional specs. We
don't need a conceptual person, but a docume
I feel compelled to reiterate my note-taking plea here: Don't do it!
Note-taking splits your attention and tends to change the behavior of
the subject. It's aurally, visually and actively intrusive.
Note-taking is evil.
Use a tape recorder or a web cam or a small video camera you can mount
on
To add to the great advice above:
- Make sure the people you'll be observing are prepared for you to be
there. They SHOULD NOT clear their schedules to be with you. They should
have real, regular work to get done while you're with them and you need to
set that expectation ahead of time
@Elizabeth I was planning on talking to the user after I spend some
time observing them. I am not sure how many people they will really
free up for us so if we have a number of people in that group I might
do a focus group instead.
@Dana What we are trying to do is understand our user base more a
I have found it is generally better to open the day with a group
meeting. No matter how much explaining you do ahead of time, you will
still likely be scheduled to meet with the wrong folks.
The group meeting will allow the managers to have their say and give
them a forum to tell you many things.
I am preparing a presentation and Q-sorting for the STC Summit and would
love to to get some examples of when you have used Q-sorting to learn about
workflow or user priorities in an application context. I will, of course,
credit all sources.
--
Mary Deaton
Deaton Interactive Design
STC UUX Manag
Jamie,
I think this is a super plan. You might want to come up with 2-4
Big Questions that you want to observe for during the individual
sessions. This doesn't seem like very much, but the point is to
observe as much as possible rather than interviewing. Specifics
usually reveal themsel
Hi Rony:
To follow on and support Dana's post ...
Invest the budget back into your people and process (rather than the
hardware alone)
* Training and conferences (to name a few ... )
- http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/conference/2009/
- http://www.uie.com/events/
- http://interaction09.ixd
"That said, eye-tracking gear is so way more expensive than it's worth, so
even if you use the results properly, you're spending way more money than
you should on usability tests and analysis."
I'm so glad you said that. I made that argument to our usability research
group recently, arguing there
Curious as to how long you are planning for the individual interviews.
This may determine you're follow up activity. I think the approach of
watching them in their environment and taking notes first hand is
great. You should be able to fulfill most of your goals with just
that one activity, but wit
I am being given the opportunity to visit a client of our software to
do some user research. I have never been on site with any of our
clients before.
At this client we have 3 user groups two who do different tasks and
one super user who can do everything plus config.
I only have five maybe six
>
> Eye-tracking results have to be put into perspective by about 100 other
> things (metrics, goals, click paths, etc). Without those things, all you
> have are pretty pictures.
>
A clarification:
That said, eye-tracking gear is so way more expensive than it's worth, so
even if you use the resul
>
> One of these days, I'm going to make a "Just Say No to Eye Trackers"
> t-shirt.
>
Now, now, Jared. You know they can be useful—they're just widely
misinterpreted as providing meaningful information all by themselves.
Eye-tracking results have to be put into perspective by about 100 other
thin
I've always wanted to use the vertical:
http://demos111.mootools.net/Fx.Elements
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 7:50 PM, Sara Durning wrote:
> Here's a couple of examples ...
>
> A lightweight accordion that is built with scriptaculous and works
> properly in every browser:
> http://www.aughenbaugh.us/a
I think it's pretty standard to have promo code fields on the globally
available checkout/cart pages (or elsewhere in the purchase path) for
ecommerce sites, and the workaround alternatives that you suggest seem
unnecessary to me. That said, it's probably wise to include the field
for the promo cod
I will buy a bunch of those shirts! It will be a different audience to give
something to than those that now have a copy of the 'Inmates'.
Mark
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Jared Spool wrote:
>
>>
> One of these days, I'm going to make a "Just Say No to Eye Trackers"
> t-shirt.
>
>
___
There are so many other things I would spend money on before spending
it on an eye-tracker:
More staff or interns
Better incentives for participants
More test sessions!
Some deeper research project that would be strategic
Space to do other methods in besides testing
Portable equipment like a
I'm curious if anybody has some thoughts on the addition to promo
codes to ecommerce pages of a site. Our client will have a lot of
email and direct mail campaigns that lead users to input promo codes
to get specific localized savings. We want to make it easy for these
users to access and include t
I'm with Jared on this one...and Ouija boards are much more flexible,
too. You can use them for information on absolutely anything!
Eye trackers rely on a central unproven theory that eyes track to the
point of main interest. A moment's thought about your own behaviors
will show you that's
Seems like you are being a bit harsh Jared -- the equipment/tools do not
generate the predictions and bad predictions are often due to poor choice of
tasks, small samples, or lack of background in analysis and interpretation
methods.
I would suggest getting the new Pulse pen by Livescribe (www.liv
I'll completely second Nik's recommendation for Morae or Silverback.
Things are tight for our budget, so our hopes for Morae were
transferred to settling on Silverback. I prefer Morae's full feature
set, but Silverback still helps us get the job done and has been a
huge benefit to our ent
Speaking as someone who's worked with online taxonomies since 1991, and been
trained in systematics since the eighties, I'd like to point out that there
cannot be a debate between taxonomy and folksonomy. One is a specific
version of the other.
The debate is between pre-determined taxonomies and
On Feb 2, 2009, at 7:04 AM, Rony Philip wrote:
Even in this recession time, I have been given a decent budget for
my user
experience team. I have planned to invest in usability tools/ products
(assets) for our team. E.g. Eye tracker.
One of these days, I'm going to make a "Just Say No to Ey
On Jan 31, 2009, at 5:32 PM, Daniel Szuc wrote:
Hi Andrei:
I did read the article and Jared's point as you put in quotes makes
good sense to me.
Unless I missed your point?
I must have missed something. My apologies for the remark.
I couldn't find the start of the thread, and as such, thoug
Thanks all. Lots of good stuff here, both in comments and direction.
When I have something cogent, will share it.
Hope to see you in Vancouver later in the week.
mm
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Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?pos
Marcus,
Your post mentions which roles for interaction designers but most of
what I could think of fit best in a "skills" category. These are my
top three:
1. Designing interactions best suited to the needs of the user
2. Having strong wireframing and documentation skills
3. Genius presentation a
Hi Rony,
How about Morae or Silverback?
Nik
-Original Message-
From: discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of
Rony Philip
Sent: 02 February 2009 15:04
To: disc...@ixda.org
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Usability Tool
Hi All,
Even in this recession time, I have been given a decent budget for my user
experience team. I have planned to invest in usability tools/ products
(assets) for our team. E.g. Eye tracker.
Could anyone suggest the other tools/products (software or hardware assets)
that I could look into?
c
Allowing but not requiring email address as username seems like a very
good solution to me; it's unfortunately not an option in the project
that I'm working on, but I did advocate for it initially before
getting vetoed. I know I've seen examples of it in the wild, but I
couldn't come up with many w
Nehal,
Yes sorry it's been a hectic week. I have replied off list. It looked
very comprehensive and a very interesting proposal. Reminded me a lot of
the work I used to see from Interaction Ivrea (now Domus).
Sorry again for delay in replying.
Nik
__
Apologies for any cross posting:
IxDA Members who are ready to brave another conference will likely be
interested in a Design Research event we are holding here at Arizona
State University on March 6th and 7th. The info follows:
EXPOSED: A Design Research Exchange
http://www.exposed09.com
Dates
Thank you Yohan, Janna for the references. Have a good day.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37880
Welcome to the Interaction Design
Here's a couple of examples ...
A lightweight accordion that is built with scriptaculous and works
properly in every browser:
http://www.aughenbaugh.us/accordion2/Index.html
This example is vertical and used to navigate the site:
http://www.gallery.ca/caught/
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Email certainly seems to be an easy way to solve the memory issue.
If you do go down the route of using email, then you could think
about allowing users to create email aliases - all of which would
work as a login ID. This would help solve the "which email did I
use" problem, although would reduc
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