blue ticket to ride

The Curators and the Curated

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 09:59:03 -0700

Sketchnotes by Craighton Berman from SXSW.

Introducing The Curator’s Code: A Standard for Honoring Attribution of Discovery Across the Web

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 09:58:13 -0700

Introducing The Curator’s Code: A Standard for Honoring Attribution of Discovery Across the Web:

In an age of information overload, information discovery — the service of bringing to the public’s attention that which is interesting, meaningful, important, and otherwise worthy of our time and thought — is a form of creative and intellectual labor, and one of increasing importance and urgency. A form of authorship, if you will.

One of the most magical things about the Internet is that it’s a whimsical rabbit hole of discovery — we start somewhere familiar and click our way to a wonderland of curiosity and fascination we never knew existed. What makes this contagion of semi-serendipity possible is an intricate ecosystem of “link love” — a via-chain of attribution that allows us to discover new wonderlands through those we already know and trust.

~Brain Pickings

What is curation? Or, more properly phrased (according to Dan...

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 20:04:59 -0700

What is curation? Or, more properly phrased (according to Dan Brown, curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum), what is curating?

Here are some digestible notes toward a definition from Noah Brier, co-founder at Percolate:

A way to create content in a very lightweight way… a hybrid publishing model: combining third party content with original thinking to create something bigger.

via Laughing Squid

Dan Brown on self-awareness for designers

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:10:52 -0700

“Designers should have self-awareness. They should intimately understand not only their strengths and weaknesses, but other aspects of their personalities and preferences that impact their projects.” Ask yourself:

What’s the most effective way for me to get feedback?
How much time do I need to dedicate to brainstorming?
What cadence of design and delivery suits my style?
How much control do I need to have over a project?
How quickly can I adapt to new circumstances?
Are you a big-picture person or a details person?
How dogmatic are you about techniques and methods?
How comfortable are you performing with less than optimal inputs?

via http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/03/soft-skills-for-ux-designers.php

Ideas for remote collaborative design studios

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:15:50 -0800

Ideas for remote collaborative design studios:

What to prepare, and how to connect collocated team members.

via @boltpeters

By adapting a card-sorting exercise, a user research method...

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:34:01 -0800

By adapting a card-sorting exercise, a user research method often used to understand how people categorize and group options on a website, my team was able to prioritize user goals for a registration flow.

First, we generated a list of 15 known user goals based on feedback from customer-facing teams (account managers and business development folks). I stuck each goal on an index card and, during a recent participatory design session, gave each participant his or her own stack with several blank cards included. I then asked them to rank the goals, tossing out any irrelevant ones and adding goals that hadn’t been identified. Each person explained his or her choices and I then gave the observation team the chance to ask follow-up questions.

About half the participants not only ranked the goals, but also grouped them into buckets like “essential,” “nice to have,” and “low priority.” The rankings helped my team to identify patterns in user goals and prioritize them. The buckets made it clear to my team that some users think in terms of “deal-breakers.” Certain goals need to be addressed together in the presentation of the product in order for the value proposition to be communicated successfully.

An entertaining riff on Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics....

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:55:50 -0800

An entertaining riff on Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics.

Love the presentation of #6: “Wow… and WOAH!”

"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else."

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 11:04:04 -0800

““I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.””

-

- pablo picasso

What should future artists and designers know?

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:06:05 -0700

What should future artists and designers know? :

David Kelley encourages designers to apply their skills inside organizations and to think about other disciplines and POVs in an organization as constraints - just part of the design challenge to be tackled.

Interesting thoughts, too, on trends in social impact and how that’s made things easier for design in some ways.

Only 3 minutes!

Lest we think only the experts can design and innovate. The...

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 22:12:16 -0700

Lest we think only the experts can design and innovate.

The students researched what their peers wanted in terms of school furniture, sketched out their ideas, created 3D computer models and physical mock-ups, and learned about appropriate materials and manufacturing techniques.

This video lets you hear about and see the sketches and prototypes - first on paper and then in 3D - that these 8th graders created to present and test their ideas.

Via The Tools at Schools design education program via smartplanet

Why They Stopped Using Foursquare

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 21:25:35 -0700

Why They Stopped Using Foursquare:

“There’s only room in one’s life for a couple of systems and between Twitter, microblogging, TripIt and one experiment (currently Google+), that’s me full :).”

The takeaway here is not to speculate as to whether this sentiment is shared by the masses (though it would be interesting to know that, too). Rather, it’s that products that feel like they take up space in one’s life (and are referred to with terminology like ‘systems’) are perceived to be burdensome. The fact that this person reserves a space for an ‘experiment’ demonstrates how susceptible they are to competition.

Products that are built to solve problems (plenty of those!) and designed well don’t feel like they take up space in one’s life or that they need to be managed. They feel weightless.

Why Distinct Icon Outlines Help Users Scan Faster

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 16:15:44 -0700

Why Distinct Icon Outlines Help Users Scan Faster

Prepping for user profiles workshop

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:00:19 -0700

Prepping for user profiles workshop

One of the most interesting findings called out here: People say...

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 22:29:00 -0700

One of the most interesting findings called out here:

People say they’re more likely to interact with large brands using social location apps.

BUT

People’s behavior shows they are more likely to share interactions with small businesses with their friends online.

And it appears that there is an almost exact inverse relationship here.

A simplified history of user experience

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 09:00:05 -0700

A Steady Trend:

Human-computer interaction is about paying attention to people and their relationship with computing.
Information architecture is about making things findable.
Interaction design is about making things usable.
Content strategy is about making things meaningful.
Experience design is about making things seamless.
Persuasive design is about making things influential.

The trend goes towards deeper meanings and bigger impacts.

As the design discipline gets better at the basics of understanding and enabling behavior, it moves towards creating meaningful impacts by influencing behavior. But this influence must be built on top of successes in the more basic elements of UX such as good research and seamless usability.

Via Lauren Baxter

Women don't like to waste time

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 17:29:46 -0700

Neither do men, but women apparently care about it a lot more: I learned this after watching Amy Jo Kim’s GoogleTechTalk on “Applying Game Mechanics to Functional Software.” The feeling that one is wasting precious time can be a significant barrier to engaging female users in games or products that employ game mechanics.

One way to lower this barrier is to design the product with a points system that rewards the player. If the points are redeemable, the amount of time spent accruing them often rests better with the conscientious time manager.

Words with friends, relations, and former roommates

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 18:36:00 -0700

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.

So said W.H. Auden, and while I’m far from a gaming enthusiast, I see his point.

The folks at Words With Friends (which henceforth I’ll refer to as WWF, despite the bizarre connotation) have built a product that’s successfully penetrated my “things that will undoubtedly waste my time” filter and got me hooked. These are some of the reasons why the product is valuable to me and why it’s engaging:

Intellectually stimulating. Most games feel like a guilty pleasure: you often wish you had those hours of your life back, even if you’ve played in moderation. WWF, however, engages my analytical and vocabulary skills in a way that’s valuable beyond the duration of the game.
A social, not a solitary, pursuit. An abundance of video and online games provide infinite ways to remove yourself from the world of normal social interactions. WWF provides a simple way to move towards people rather than away from them.
Competitive. Of course I want bragging rights over my my sister. And my dad. And my roommate. Duh.
There when you want it, invisible when you don’t. Even when I have alerts on to let me know when it’s my move, I can play whenever I want to. And so can my friends.
Mimics an aspect of real human relationships. This one is a bit more nuanced, but let me start with the truism that one of the very real and delightful aspects of close relationships is the quality of being able to jump in and “pick up where you left off,” no matter how much time has gone by or how much physical space separates you. This is part of the intangible value of WWF and one of the keys to its success. Though it’s competitive and creates a very brief interaction, the game mimics the depth, familiarity, and intimacy of a close relationship.

On that note, one of my favorite experiences with WWF has been playing against a young woman whom I babysat from the time she was a toddler until her pre-teenage years. I spent so much time with her and her family that she would occasionally introduce me to strangers as her sister. We now live on opposite coasts and have little in common day-to-day; needless to say, our paths don’t cross very often, even with Facebook and so many social tools at our fingertips. It’s been wonderful to connect with her on a regular basis via WWF, although presently she’s 30 points ahead of me…

Robert Krulwich (and many others before him) asks, “Why...

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 07:00:06 -0700

Robert Krulwich (and many others before him) asks, “Why can’t we walk straight?”

52 Weeks of UX: How to Identify the Best Design Problems

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 07:00:06 -0700

52 Weeks of UX: How to Identify the Best Design Problems :

52weeksofux:

One of the core principles of UX is to solve existing problems, or problems that people are already struggling with. While this might not be as glamorous as inventing a brand new thing it is more practical: it makes identifying problems easier and people are much more receptive to your…

Do you like it, or do you LIKE like it?

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:56:28 -0700

Facebook’s “Like” button has come up in several conversations recently. It’s a ubiquitous but imperfect indicator of interest and way of sharing information that lends itself all to easily to absurdity. What does it mean, for example, to “Like” leukemia? Or the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? Obviously not that you actually like them, but how else are you going to ask your friends to pay attention?

We click the “Like” button on Facebook, and increasingly, all over the web, because what we’re seeing and reading is valuable and interesting. The reasons it might be valuable and interesting, though, are myriad. In the absence of another option to quickly express interest in and share content, “Like” has become part of web 2.0 vernacular, taking on an even greater range of use than the word already had in the English language.

Here’s a way to draw out some deeper insights about why someone “Likes” a particular post, person, cause, or event:

“Do you find this piece of content more entertaining, thought-provoking, or informative? Place a dot on the triangle to indicate why you ‘Like’ it.”

**Inspired by an article about a GlobalGiving storytelling project that turned anecdotes into useful data. Participants were asked to show how a story related to three potentially intertwining meanings by placing a dot on a triangle.