IA Konferenz 2009 /links

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

PaperPoint

Beat Signer on PowerPoint Multimedia Presentations in Computer Science Education: What Do Users Need? /30' video at TU Graz

Structured interviews with 9 faculty members of ETH Zurich lead to the following desired features

• Highlighting and annotating slide content
• Use blank "sheets"
• Use video controls
• Use system mobile
• Orientate efficiently within slide collection
• See content of current and nearby slides

Idea for PaperPoint: Use Anoto pen on hand-out of presentation to control the slide show. Very nice!

PaperPoint Presentation Tool

Publication: PaperPoint: a paper-based presentation and interactive paper prototyping tool. In: Tangible and embedded interaction. Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction

Nailing a Pudding

Have you ever wondered how to nail a pudding to the wall? I guess I figured it out: --- freeze the pudding first! Have fun!

10 Questions to Hartmut Esslinger

Guy Kawasaki interviewed Harmut Esslinger.

1. How does Steve Jobs’s mind work?
2. Why is it that companies with billions of dollars who can hire any designer or design firm in the world put out such crappy products?
3. Can customers truly tell a company how to innovate?
4. What can customers do then?
5. If a company is hiring a design firm, how can it know that it’s picking the right one?
6. If a company is hiring a designer (as an employee), how can it know that it’s picking the right one?
7. What are your top ten products of all time?
8. What are your ten worst products of all time?
9. Why has the One Laptop Per Child project met with limited success?
10. If a young person wants to be a great designer, what should he or she do?

Read the answers at OpenForum: The Inside Scoop on Design: Ten Questions with Hartmut Esslinger

The Top Five Innovation Killers

1. An intolerance of failure.
2. An excessive customer focus.
3. A desire for a magic pill, not a daily exercise regime.
4. An unwillingness to cannibalise sales.
5. A reliance on a small cadre of innovators.

According to Stuart Gross at bnet [read why]

Google Design by Numbers

Quite recently Douglas Bowman left google. While this is not big news in itself it reveals some insights into google design process. There seems to be a clash between google's data driven design by committee approach and Doug's design attidude as an x-designer.

• Goodbye Google, stopdesign
• Bowman leaves Google, IxDA
• Google User Experience, google corporate information

SpatialKey

ritsch ratsch click

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

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

ease of search vs. ease of scrolling

Some websites (read: their web developers) want to be smarter than the user. They try to anticipate my behavior on the page -- and fail. I talk esp. about flickr's search results.