User Experience & HCI Design

iPad Wiener Art im UX Roundtable Hamburg

2011-11-12T09:46:00.001+01:00

iPad Wiener Art

Vielen Dank für die konzentrierte und freundliche Diskussion rund um die iPad-Apps beim UX Roundtable im November.

Even Better Xing with Design Hacks

2010-09-20T11:30:00.001+02:00

Xing’s recent relaunch introduced a couple of new features and design updates. I definitely appreciate that Xing continues to develop and improve my main networking platform. I would like to share my design hacks to get an even better usability with less clutter and more space for the content – In my example 1/3 more space for the content area.

Xing Design Hacks

Kars on Transmutation

2010-06-24T13:37:00.001+02:00

Kars Alfrink presented at Raum Schiff Erde in February 2010.

His talk on Transmutation is now online.

The talk’s title refers to alchemists’ quest to turn lead into gold, which sometimes feels similar to what we’re trying to do with pervasive games in public urban places.1 To summarize: I start by talking about the fact that games are essentially useless, and that this means applied game design should look for useful results in second order effects. I argue that the contribution of urban games lies primarily in the increased diversity of use of our streets, which is a good thing in itself. I talk about the care designers need to take with the games they deploy, since not everyone is looking to play and we should respect that. Playing games is a voluntary thing by definition. Towards the end I go into different strategies for using games to increase systemic awareness using several games as examples. I wrap up with a look at reward systems we commonly find in games like Foursquare, which now serves as templates for a lot of work in this area. I feel that this leads people away from what game design is about in the first place: creating interesting activities.

Remote TV A11Y

2009-09-08T14:45:00.001+02:00

This article is about reducing complexity with a knife, scissors, and some tape. These tools already indicate that I am talking about RL! Well, in fact you can cut all the wires of your power adaptors to simplify your life, but I do recommending this right now. The problem at hand is a TV remote -- I can hear your aahs! Too many remote controls with too many functions, too tiny buttons, too easy to get lost, confusing labels and to sum it up: not suited to the task. My user population is an 80-yrs old lady with a telly hooked up to the cable; no special equipment like VCR, DVD, AUX 1-3 or SAT. Not to mention HD recorders, or TiVO with timeshift functionality. In my opinion it is even difficult for an educated engineer to use any remote control properly, but at 80 years you come from a totally different background to say the least, and your mental abilities are no longer at 100%. Usage errors are frequent -- and the concept of Undo or Home is not available.

As said, my approach reduces the likelihood of user errors by making dangerous actions impossible to trigger:

http://www.23hq.com/mprove/photo/4903842

I find my design also superior to the competition because in terms of robustness you cannot remove the paper shield by accident.

(also http://om.ly/Ipvj)

Other special remote controls aim to address a limited eyesight of the user by making everything larger:

http://www.23hq.com/mprove/photo/4903784
They shouldn't have stopped here. Clear wording is preferred. But this is no news if you are familiar with accessibility guidelines. On the other hand, this is the first remote that offers a function to call a taxi -- I call that a unique selling point!
I think different shapes of the buttons is also a good idea, because touch becomes more important if you cannot see so well anymore; or if it's quite dark in your living room with the home entertainment system. Though in the example above, channel and volume controls are too similar to get used to them without taking a look all the time.

[originally published as a User Experience Forum Newsletter #28 | Join Xing]

IA Konferenz 2009 /links

2009-05-18T16:06:00.005+02:00

The Information Architecture Konferenz 2009 took place in Hamburg last weekend. Here are some links...

ritsch ratsch click

2009-03-06T18:40:00.003+01:00

At least someone starts to think about camera UIs. But none of them is really convincing, or has the wow factor.

BTW_ I like to see a camera that can be controlled just by touch – i mean just with your fingers without the necessity to look at the screen all the time.

Information Architecture TV

2009-02-28T17:31:00.002+01:00

Jan Jursa colected more than 300 presentations and clips over the last 2 years. Bring some time to watch the show...

Shake it, baby

2009-01-27T12:13:00.000+01:00

A couple of new window management features of Windows 7 are quite remarkable. First of all the shake of windows, that hides all other screen clutter. Shake the window again and the other windows come back. This is an excellent, fun, and easy to remember gesture to remove distractions and focus on the current task. For me on Mac the shortcut Cmd-Opt-H has a similar effect. It hides all windows from other applications. But I suppose it is not as much fun, and not consistently implemented across all applications. Back to Windows' gesture, I would expect just one caveat: The trigger MouseDown-RapidSmallMouseMovements works best with a mouse -- a trackpad is not the best graphical input device to perform this gesture.

Two other gestures grabbed my attentions. Move a window against the upper border of the screen and it maximizes. Move it to the right or left border to use the right or left half of the screen. These gestures simplify the task to compare two documents side by side. A small, yet powerful aspect to work with windows.

There is another shake gesture that becomes fashion. Shake Apple iPods and you get a new random song. I would like to see this feature for iTunes as well. Shake the iTunes window to randomize to the next tune. Alt-Click on the forward button is my most used function in iTunes anyway.

Xing's brokn buttons

2008-11-17T16:29:00.006+01:00

Firefox 2 on Windows, default font size - ok:

Firefox 2 on Windows, increased font size -- the Find buttons show some strange artifacts:

Firefox 2 on Mac, default font size - ok:

Firefox 2 on Mac, increased font size -- the Find buttons show the same strange artifacts as on Windows:

Firefox 2 on Mac, incredible increased font size -- aha! This is how the UI is implemented. And I suppose Xing can also do better regarding accessibility:

MetaSquares is back

2008-10-02T11:38:00.002+02:00

MetaSquares, the smart and addictive game by Scott Kim is back -- for iPhone, for MacOS X (soon), and a tryout verison for the web.

From Business to Buttons 2008 - Videos

2008-06-27T18:00:00.001+02:00

videos and slides of the conference From Business To Buttons 2008 in Malmö/Sweden are now available. Don't miss Don Norman's presentation. But I am sure that there are more talks of interest.

more conference webcasts here...

Frieder Nake über Software-Ergonomie

2008-06-09T23:16:00.001+02:00

Software-Ergonomie geht entweder im Design auf oder sie geht unter.

– Frieder Nake in sw-ergo-news #358, 1998

On Being Human in a Digital Age

2008-06-03T10:58:00.001+02:00

Reconstruction of Bill Buxton's closing keynote at CHI 2008:

and some notes and related links

Handbook of Usability Testing, 2nd ed.

2008-04-27T17:07:00.007+02:00

From Dana:

Hi!

I’m tingling, I’m so excited. I like to think that this is a special event in the user experience world. But every book author probably thinks that.

Handbook of Usability Testing, Second Edition by Jeff Rubin and Dana Chisnell ships on Monday, April 28.

This is not your mother’s HUT. Well, of course not. The first edition was published in 1994. Technology isn’t special anymore, it’s everywhere. (There were DOS examples, for heaven’s sake!) For HUT 2.0, Jeff and I

Simplified the organization of the main sections

Reordered many chapters to more closely reflect the flow of planning and conducting a test

Updated dozens and dozens of examples, samples, and stories

Expanded and updated discussions about recruiting participants, whether you need a lab, working with observers, analyzing testing data, and (we think) the best way to make recommendations

Added a chapter on variations on the basic method

Populated www.wiley.com/go/usabilitytesting with

electronic versions of many of the deliverables used as examples used in the book

updated references

a (we hope) comprehensive list of other resources such as conferences and seminars, other books, blogs, and podcasts.

The drawings and diagrams are have been freshened and improved. The layout and format promise to be less nerdy and more accessible, too.

Oh, and we benefited from sage reviews from Janice James, founder of the Usability Professionals’ Association as our technical editor (brava!), and a foreword by Jared Spool. [...]

Hope your experience with HUT 2.0 is good.

Dana

P.S. Here’s the official cite:

Rubin and Chisnell, Handbook of Usability Testing, Second Edition: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests (Wiley, 0470185481, 450 pages, April 28, 2008).

Dana’s blog: usabilitytestinghowto.blogspot.com

Wil Shipley on Mac Software & Hype

2008-02-17T11:46:00.005+01:00

Right from Wil's blog: Call me Fishmeal.

Find other conference videos at mprove: webcasts.

List of IA blogs

2008-02-07T10:24:00.000+01:00

A list of blogs concerning information architecture is available at Stefan Freimark's blog.

Elements of Style

2008-02-04T12:35:00.000+01:00

For a presentation I gave last week on the origin of patterns I found a quite condensed version of Christopher Alexander's latest book "The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe". The abridged version "Elements of Style" was featured by Wired in December 2003. You can find my version in English and German at Slideshare.net:

| View

(Let me know if anyone has high resolution images. Mine are a bit jagged.)

Jef Raskin found by Anarchaia

2008-01-29T08:49:00.000+01:00

Anarchaia found and linked to my page with Jef Raskin's design rules. I'll have to check the other cool stuff collected by Christian Neukirchen.

IxDA Patterns

2008-01-15T11:16:00.000+01:00

The Interaction Design Accosiation has collected its discussions on patterns.

Find more resources on patterns (in general) at mprove: HCI Patterns.

James Kalbach's Designing Web Navigation

2008-01-02T09:53:00.001+01:00

James Kalbach's Designing Web Navigation
Originally uploaded by vanderwal

Thomas Vander Wal is looking forward to read James' book on Web Navigation. Me too.

Visualization Methods

2007-09-28T03:40:00.000+02:00

The 17^th User Experience Newsletter features “A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods”. It's a wonderful collection and classification of different chart types for very different occasions... (read more)

Summary of design rules by Jef Raskin

2002-08-09T12:19:00.000+02:00

In 2002 Jef Raskin wrote to Tom Gilb "A nearly one page summary of design rules".

The first principle. When using a product to help you do a task, the product should only help and never distract you from the task.
The second principle: An interface should be reliable.
The third princple: An interface should be efficient and as simple as possible.
The fourth principle: The suitability of an interface can only be determined by testing.
The fifth principle: An interface should be pleasant in tone and visually attractive.

Then Jef Raskin concludes:

An interface should be effective, habituating, reliable, efficient, and tested. To the extend that doing so does not conflict with these essentials, an interface should also be attractive.

[read Jef's nearly one page summary of Raskin's design rules]