One of my favourite talks from Barcamp Auckland 4 was What is User Experience? by Haunani Pao (@haunanipao). She described UX from the point of view of a practitioner and gave a lot of insights into how she approaches UX work. I made a (very) few notes, and you can also see her presentation slides. I liked the use of graphics in the presentation: they clarified the talk rather than distracting from it.
So here are some of my notes and thoughts on the talk. Continue reading “What is User Experience? at BCA4” →
21 Aug 10 —
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The title of this book describes the web application design strategy presented within. Hoekman calls it the
Framework for Obvious Design:
- Know what to build — the conceptual element
- Know what makes it great — the application element
- Know the best ways to implement it — the interaction element
Continue reading “Designing the Obvious — Robert Hoekman, Jr” →
16 Aug 10 —
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Web guy Phil Howie talked at Barcamp Auckland 4 recently about designing forms on the web. He singled out Luke Wroblewski as a good source of wisdom on this topic, especially Luke’s book Web Form Design. I can second that recommendation — I’ve posted about Luke’s form design ideas before. Continue reading “Designing and Building Great Forms at BCA4” →
1 Aug 10 —
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This is a passionate polemic on the dark side of rampant software technology. But it also shows a way out, and that is (cue celestial choirs) Interaction Design. Continue reading “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum — Alan Cooper” →
30 Jul 10 —
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This is an overview of the entire world of user experience (UX) design from the point of view of a dedicated UX practitioner. It covers the UX side of project management, client interaction, design, development, and testing. Despite the broad coverage, its focus on the practitioner means it goes into a bit more depth than many such books.
The book includes good discussions of personas, user-centered design, user testing, wireframes, prototyping and more. Continue reading “A Project Guide to UX Design — Russ Unger & Carolyn Chandler” →
14 Jun 10 —
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This simple book is worth reading for its mindset rather than for any concrete ideas. Maeda gives ten “laws” of simplicity, but they’re really pretty arbitrary. The tenth law is just a slogan (although a good one), and there are three extra laws at the end. Clearly he was intent on having ten laws in his list.
Here’s my interpretation of the laws:
Thoughtful reduction yields simplicity.
Organisation makes complex systems appear simple.
Savings in time feel like simplicity.
Knowledge makes everything simpler.
Simplicity and complexity need each other.
Simplicity needs a sympathetic context.
More emotions are better than less.
In simplicity we trust.
But some things cannot be made simple.
Continue reading “The Laws of Simplicity — John Maeda” →
11 Jun 10 —
5 comments
When designing Microsoft Money 2000, Microsoft followed a “new user interface model”, which they called inductive user interface (IUI). The Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines are available on MSDN. I came across them a few months ago and thought they give a nice description of how to make simple, focussed applications screens, whether for a desktop or web application. I’ve summarised the main points here. Continue reading “Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines” →
23 Feb 10 —
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To mark World Usability Day 2009, here’s a review of a classic book on usability for web sites and applications. A lot of the information and advice seems obvious once you’ve read it, but judging by the websites that litter the web, it’s not always obvious when you’re building sites. If all web designers and developers read this book, the web would be a better place. And hey, it’s fun to read. Here are some of the book’s highlights. Continue reading “Don’t Make Me Think! — Steve Krug” →
12 Nov 09 —
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Consider a Delete button in an application. Click the button and something gets deleted. But what if you click it by accident? Two approaches are commonly recommended:
- Confirm: Require the user to confirm the action before doing it
- Undo: Do the action immediately, but allow the user to undo it
The Confirm strategy offers the worst of both worlds. It slows down people who actually want to delete, and it fails to protect those who don’t. In contrast, the Undo strategy offers minimum impediment to purposeful users while making it easy to avoid losing work. Continue reading “Undo is better than Confirm” →
11 Nov 09 —
4 comments
Forms That Work is a practical book dedicated to making web forms usable and useful. It gathers a heap of information together, with helpful summaries and guidelines to make it easy to create web forms that people will actually use.
Here is a summary of some points that I found particularly helpful. This gives the flavour of the book and serves as a reminder for me at least. For all the background information, you’ll need to read the book itself.
Continue reading “Forms that Work — Jarrett & Gaffney” →
4 Nov 09 —
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