Re: [IxDA Discuss] Any IVR experts in the house?

A discussion about application personas (as opposed to user personas) touched IVRs earlier this year on my blog http://blog.genstart.dk/2008/11/25/what-would-reality-do/#comment-216751 I googled up some extracts from the mentioned book http://blog.genstart.dk/2008/12/12/bringing-web-apps-to-life-w

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Books or articles that cover analysis of user/design research data well.

oops :) Sorry, Steve! On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 8:48 AM, Jared Spool wrote: > > On Apr 30, 2009, at 11:30 PM, Soo Basu wrote: > > I found this article on Johnny Holland very helpful: > > http://johnnyholland.org/magazine/2009/02/deconstructing-analysis-techniques/ > > > Soo, > > You might want to

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Bill Moggridge says IxD is over. ; -) (not really, but its nice and provocative)

I'd be interested in hearing more about what existing roles Bill contends would be the representatives of what IxD represents. I know that here at MS, the IxD community is steadily growing, but the principles we represent are light years away from being pervasive in other disciplines. I still thi

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Preview of SketchFlow prototyping in Expression Blend 3

I'm really excited for this new functionality. I've been using the Blend 3 preview and *finally* see the value it provides for functional prototyping (especially if you're doing a console app and not a web app, imho.) This is just really tasty icing on the cake. But I do hope I can disable the nav

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Any IVR experts in the house?

You may want to check out this book: The Art and Business of Speech Recognition: Creating the Noble Voice. http://www.amazon.com/Art-Business-Speech-Recognition-Creating/dp/0321154924 It was written by a former professor of mine and it gives some great examples of both greatly and poorly designed

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Has anyone done user testing on a site including Google search solutions for internal site search?

I can tell you how frustrating it was to us Google Search for an educational institution - it was free at the time, but we couldn't get access to the internal search data. Aack! Our population of users was mostly college students and they were able to successfully craft a search string to find resu

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Has anyone done user testing on a site including Google search solutions for internal site search?

A few months ago, we converted to their application for internal site search. Our first 3 users all were irritated because they felt it was a Google search of the internet with our header on the page. (though the styles are different and it uses our site header) The results are all listed with our

[IxDA Discuss] Job: UI Designer (NYC)

If you're interested in this position, please email me directly at is...@adtuition.com. Adtuition is seeking an innovative, self-motivated UI designer. The ideal candidate will be able to create usable, coherent and beautiful user interfaces in a variety of mediums including standard and rich medi

[IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements

Hi, I'm in a transition stage, moving from developer to business systems analyst. In this new role, I'm trying to incorporate some usability guidelines and improve user interaction. I get quite a bit of push back from the developer team members. They claim certain things cannot be done. Howeve

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Any IVR experts in the house?

I geek out on this. Don't know why. I guess I see IVRs and call centers as the easiest opportunity for designing great experiences that provide an immediate impact on the bottom line. We've audited some IVRs as part of a larger sonic branding and identity initiative for clients. I'm not an expert (

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements

Hi Elle, I like your approach, saying: if you (mr developer) can't do it, I will do it myself. In my experience you only have to say/prove it once or twice and professional developers will take the challenge the next time. Nothing is impossible. Some design solutions are expensive, unsecure or fo

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Any IVR experts in the house?

Noel's story of that horrible IVR reminded me of an IVR usability study we ran a few years ago which actually made someone cry and made another user slam down the phone and say she couldn't take it anymore. The test involved asking Walmart employees to call an IVR for a well known investment comp

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements

The real stunner in my experience is to say ... The criteria that you are using in order to determine what to do are different from the criteria I'm using. Your criteria are based on technical insights together with your beliefs about what would work for the user. There's a whole discipline devot

Re: [IxDA Discuss] New Site: Feedback?

Nina/Big Wheel dot Net Can you clarify your potential user(s)? Perhaps a mini profile for your top 3? This will help with feedback. Thanks! Kelly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=41640 ___

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Bill Buxton just might be my design management hero

Bill has become a recent hero in our design/development studio. If you have 20 minutes I would suggest watching this. http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/KEY01 It is just worth it to see him physically demonstrate why it is so important to focus on transition from Step A to Step B versus just focusi

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Number of results displayed per page on mobile device

I wonder what the numbers of people using WAP browsers for your function really are. Are you building with the iPhone in mind? That would seem to be the stronger, growing, market for mobile web. And it doesn't have this concern. I've been doing search pages with variable sets of results for year.

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements

On 30 Apr 2009, at 12:49, Elle wrote: [snip] How do some of you, who have been in my situation, handle these types of resistances, so that your application can be a good and usable one? [snip] The best way I find to get out of these situations is to ask "Why?" - possibly several times (http:

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Any IVR experts in the house?

One thing that may help in building IVR's is better tools to do it. Check this out: http://www.twilio.com/ Super disruptive as anyone can now build telephony with simple web dev skills, and it scales. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements

Sounds like less of a technical issue, and more of a respect issue. You could be a clown transitioning to ringmaster; you could experience the same thing. Read an I/O Psychology book for understanding motivations and finding possible solutions. On Apr 30, 2009, at 12:49 PM, Elle wrote: Hi,

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Any IVR experts in the house?

I've used voxeo to build IVR prototypes in the past. Free hosting, and you can dial into a US number (with a PIN). It was very easy to make a push button IVR in VXML. Voice activation also looked a bit easier than you'd expect... http://evolution.voxeo.com/ Twillo's mark up language looks pretty

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Bill Buxton just might be my design management hero

Nice piece. That happens a lot with clients/colleagues in other disciplines asking for simple black and white answers to issues that have a lot to do with context and many other factors. On the other hand, I would be careful about seeing usability as something that requires a lot of specifi

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Bill Buxton just might be my design management hero

You can slice design into lots of small issues, skills, and knowledge sets... none of which are exclusive domains. I think Bill's point is that design is not one of those. While everybody relates to design and believes they have some capacity to design, not everyone has a comprehensive toolset. We

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Bill Moggridge says IxD is over. ; -) (not really, but its nice and provocative)

Speaking of Bill, anyone notice he just won Cooper-Hewitt's Lifetime Achievement Award? Dan Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To p

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Number of results displayed per page on mobile device

Dev, I'm actually reserving the asterisk and pound keys for zoom functionality with our integrated map (users may swap between list view and map view). William, this is definitely for WAP-only users (we have separate products for iPhone, Android, J2ME). As for using 5 results per page, it's somet

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Number of results displayed per page on mobile device

> In the end, maybe users just don't care about whether they see 9 > results per page? They're more concerned about actual results, not > whether it shows 9 or 10 on a page, right? Right, the critical information is the Page # for backtracking and landmarks. A simple solution is to say "Page 1

[IxDA Discuss] [EVENT] Feedback on IxDA Los Angeles & Yahoo present "Personas SUCK / Personas RULE!"

On Wednesday, April 29th IxDA Los Angeles presented "Personas SUCK! Personas RULE!" at Yahoo! Heartfelt thanks to our speakers: Jill Strawbridge, Adam Korman, all of our amazing local volunteers who made the night possible, and the super helpful facilities team at Yahoo! They are seriously on the

Re: [IxDA Discuss] New Site: Feedback?

The first thing I clicked opened a new window. So I stopped clicking. It was a string of what seemed like gibberish. This will likely be the result for anyone else who doesn't care about you. Which, unless you are making this for your friends, is your target. People who don't care about you. The

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements

There are no such things as technical limitations. That is a cop-out phrase that people use to avoid change. That said. There is such a thing as financial limitations. It is technically possible to build something JUST LIKE a google search appliance but that returns a REAL total number of results.

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements

On May 1, 2009, at 3:32 PM, William Brall wrote: There are no such things as technical limitations. That is a cop-out phrase that people use to avoid change. Huh. Someone better tell the poor electron, which has spent all of its existence trying to move faster than the speed of light and n

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements

On Apr 30, 2009, at 12:49 PM, Elle wrote: How do some of you, who have been in my situation, handle these types of resistances, so that your application can be a good and usable one? Elle, What you're describing is an adversarial relationship with developers. You say it can be done. They s

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements

>>moving from developer to business systems Internal move or company to company? I only ask because if it was internal you would know who you are dealing with. >>They claim certain things cannot be done.If they cannot be done and they have been employed and have say you can be absolutely certain t

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Books or articles that cover analysis of user/design research data well.

Hi Steve Steve Mulder's book, The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web, is excellent. The title doesn't do its depth on analysis justice, but it's the best of the books I've read on analyzing user research, and I've read several of the books o

Re: [IxDA Discuss] Number of results displayed per page on mobile device

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 12:33 PM, Eugene Kim wrote: > Has anyone come across an example of search results which aren't > based on the "base-10" method of displaying results per page? > My current set of thoughts on numbered results with numbers enabled as accesskeys: - A lot of "good" browsers d

Re: [IxDA Discuss] New Site: Feedback?

Agree with Kelly and William. A few questions that you should consider. 1. Your intended goal is to promote yourself, Nina Eleanor Alter or Bigwheel.net (company)? 2. Did you consider the usability or heuristics when you're designing this site? It has a serious UX in the site. Better watch out if

Re: [IxDA Discuss] New Site: Feedback?

Run your url through this:http://validator.w3.org/ Then run mine (I whipped this out to make my friend laugh and send him whacky layouts that he can do his thing to, I said I was trying lay low, no egos...around the same time you posted your site): http://dev.angelrobertmarquez.com/ Anyways, I al