Highlights of Week 24/2010
- The end of the killer feature (by Scott Berkun) - Scott points out the downsides of upgrades and compatibility; version management across third-party development, huge field.
- The Experience belongs to the User (by Joshua Porter) - about the effects of over-architecting on the actual user.
- How Well Are You Pricing Your Designs? (by Joel Reyes) - usually I consider previous experiences and their workload in hours, plus/minus additional requirments and the client itself (more communication involved, more/less hand-holding required, etc.) and multiply it with a fixed price. That's my total.
- Apologizing like a human, not a corporation (by 37signals) - we all make mistakes, let's start recognizing them and learn to appologize right - great example!
- Defining the Designer of 2015 (by aiga.org) - aiga teamed up with Adobe to take a look into the future. Capture the attention span of a user, huh?
- Destroying Designer’s Creative Block and Unleashing Your Creativity (by Aidan Huang) - Watch my caffeine intake?? Are you kidding me????
- There's no right answer (by Donna Spencer) - Donna mentions some factors for designing the 'better' solution, the successful design will take all these factors into consideration.
- UCD info graphic poster (by Pascal Raabe) - information graphic poster illustrating the underlying lifecycle, methods, principles and techniques in a user centred design process.
- Using Charts and Graphs for Content (by Chris McConnell) - comprehensive overview and discussion of charting and graphing content.
- Considering Prototypes (by Andrew Maier) - prototypes generate context and questions and move teams in the direction of meeting business demands.
- The Frankfurt Kitchen (by Harry Brignull) - about design perfection that becomes counter-productive.
- Design Better And Faster With Rapid Prototyping (by Lyndon Cerejo) - another great blog post about prototyping - don't overdo it and be aware of scope creep - it's a bloody prototype
- Two Beautiful New Mini Pixel Icon Sets (reported by Paul Andrew) - what more to say, go get them.
- UX Lx Wrap Up (by Theresa Neil) - good wrap-up (with links to material) of the 3 day UX Lx conference in Lisbon last month.
- Master user experience design (by Craig Grannell) - inside UX, well-researched and laid out article, good read.
5 Usability Newsletters to Follow
Yes, you heard right, "Newsletter", this old-fashioned, 'traditional' thing that pollutes our mailboxes. Well, at least according to Jakob Nielsen email newsletters are more powerful than stream-based media (RSS or other social media feeds) in terms of maintaining a customer relationship, i.e. because newsletters need to be deleted manually versus 'dropping off' the users' main page.
5 Newsletters well worth following
Alertbox
Jakob's column on Web usability is probably the most prominent and longest running newsletter out there. Jakob has been publishing his research results and findings in his bi-weekly 'Alertbox' since 1995.
Subscribe to Alertbox
UIEtips
Jared M. Spool and his team publish their high-quality research, interviews with grands like Luke Wroblewski, Donna Spencer, Dana Chisnell et al and special offers on User Interface Engineering. Like Nielsen he's been around for ages and their conference is on sequel 14 this year.
Subscribe to UIEtips
SURL
The Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) was initiated in the Fall 1998 under the direction of Barbara S. Chaparro who has over 19 years of experience designing and evaluating user interfaces and conducting research in human-computer interaction (HCI). The goal of the lab is to provide usability services and research to the software development community and to train students on HCI with real-world projects.
Subscribe to SURL
Measuring Usability
Jeff Sauro maintains a very interesting site & newsletter at Measuring Usability. He has been pushing the limits of usability engineering for a few years now in the hopes of moving toward more objective implementations of user data. His articles are published irregularly but when they are, they deliver.
Subscribe to Measuring Usability
UI Design Newsletter
Every month Human Factors International (HFI) reviews the most useful developments in user interface research from major conferences and publications. Their UI Design Newsletter covers the full range of human-computer interaction, including development, HCI issues, I/O devices, multimedia, documentation, and training.
Subscribe to UI Design Newsletter
You know another Newsletter?
Have I missed something? Post it in the comments section.
About Me
Michael Gaigg is Lead UI Engineer in Esri's Professional Services Division.
He has been designing map application for over 10 years and can't stop thinking about improving them.
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