Have
Have
Making
Here’s
World
Designing
This
Designing
In
Forms
No doubt web forms are all around us, so the need for knowledge and skill to design them well should be great. I certainly can’t seem to get enough of these books. Continue reading
Peter Morville at Semantic Studios has compiled an extensive list of ways to create deliverables to communicate uX designs. He writes about this in User
The article contains a list of 20 techniques with links to further reading on each. To make it easier to find suitable techniques he also made a Treasure Map (pdf) so it’s easier to see what your options are. Or as Peter himself put it:
It’s hard to find the best trees when we can’t see the forest. So, we often fall back on old habits. We churn out wireframes when a story may be worth its weight in gold. Some great deliverables stay hidden in plain sight. That’s why we created this treasure map for our wall (and yours).
– Peter Morville
I’ve
The book is basically about how to design intelligent things. Some call it ambient computing others discrete computing, but it’s all about the pitfalls and principles when we try to add intelligence to our daily objects.
I
Strategic
The methods used were interviews, user testing in a lab environment and heuristic evaluation. The result of the research was eight rules of thumb when developing applications for the iPhone.
I’ve
On
Here’s some pictures taken by from the event along with some comments. The pictures are taken by Ola Karlsson. Thanks a lot Ola!
This Thursday (November 13) is World
Here in Växjö, Sweden we’re going to celebrate this with a get together where I’m going to talk a little about usability in general and a few others are going to talk about specific usability problems and solutions. Other than that we’re just going to have a nice cup of coffee, some cookies and a nice chat. The event takes place at Visma Spcs at 15.00 and will last for about one and a half hour.
If you’re in the area and are interested in participating, sign up by leaving a comment or by contacting me through this blog’s contact page. It’s completely free of charge but you have to let us know in advance that you’re coming.
My
Action
This
Studies have shown that completion rates of forms can be increased by 10-40 percent by designing them using best practices. If the form is the check-out form on an e-commerce site you can easily see that this potentially can be a good investment.
Luke makes the observation that most forms suck. Therefor it should be every designers mission to make them suck less. Exactly how to do this is explained in great detail throughout the book.
I wrote about it in my blogpost Easiest
Gradual Engagement is simply the concept of not throwing a big fat sign-up form in the face of the first-time visitor before he has a chance to try out the site. A better approach is to try to get him engaged in what the site is all about before trying to get tons of information from him.
I’ve
I’ve listed them in the order I think one should read them and I’ve also written a small text about each.
Why is it that web apps very often lack something that we take for granted in most window applications, namely the undo function? Is it because it’s not needed? Is it too hard to implement or is it simply just because it’s something that developers don’t think is needed?
The most common solution to prevent user errors is to simply throw an alertbox warning about potential damage or loss of data that the action might cause. Even otherwise awesome web applications often resorts to this behavior. Take for example Backpack
This is, from the developers point of view, the easiest way to handle it. It’s almost too easy to implement an alert and many developers habitually do it without giving it a second thought.
A far better solution is to use an undo function. Although harder to implement it maps so much better to the users mental model and behavior patterns. As Alan Cooper puts it in About Face 3:
Users generally don’t believe, or at least don’t want to believe, that they make mistakes. This is another way of saying that the persona’s mental model typically doesn’t include error on his part. Following a persona’s mental model means absolving him of blame. The implementation model, however, is based on an error-free CPU. Following the implementation model means proposing that all culpability must rest with the user. Thus, most software assumes that it is blameless, and any problems are purely the fault of the user.
Alan Cooper, Aboute Face 3
An undo function enables the user to easily recover from mistakes and also encourage him to explore the interface without fear of doing irreversible damage. It transfers the responsibility of handling errors from the user to the system, where it righteously belongs.
Robert
I had high expectations on this book since I really liked Designing the Obvious. And I have to say that it met my expectations. It’s fun to read and provides lots of interesting examples on great interaction design.
Locus
When we are designing user interfaces it’s important to be aware of where the users locus of attention are, so that we are able to show crucial information where the user has his or her attention.
I recently wanted to contact Northface regarding a jacket of mine which zipper has broke. I went to www.northface.com and searched their web site for an email address or something. After some searching I found a button labeled “Email us” and clicked on it expecting my email client to launch, but instead I was transferred to a page with a contact
I got a small mp3 player as a gift this Christmas. It’s a Sony Walkman NW-E003 and it’s really good. It has great sound, it’s easy to slip inside your pocket, it has long battery time and is easy to operate. The downside is that the software that comes along with it, SonicStage, is really bad. Although I feel that Itunes is somtimes a little quirky to use, it’s nothing compared to SonicStage.
I’ve just discovered a new site called Geni.
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