April 2007 Issue
Interfaces That Flow: Transitions as Design Elements
Published: April 26, 2007
Actively influencing a person’s emotional state throughout an experience—in particular, his or her sense of anticipation, involvement, and desire for a certain outcome—is still an evolving concept in the realm of user interface design. However, this is very familiar territory for makers of music, film, television, and video games. While UX designers may not be storytellers, we can create more engaging product user experiences by learning from their examples.
Many UX designers—myself included—approach projects from a combination of information architecture, information design, interaction design, and visual design perspectives. These disciplines and their methods are fundamentally different from those people use to construct the continuous linear narratives we see and hear in film, video, and music. However, as the technologies for creating interactive user experiences become more robust—especially in the realm of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)—we have an opportunity to draw upon a much wider visual vocabulary. This will also make narrative elements such as timing, pacing, and rhythm increasingly important. Using such design elements may enable us to move users from mere understanding to engagement and, ultimately, to immersion in our digital products and services.
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Category: Columns
Conference Review: IA Summit 2007: Part I
Published: April 26, 2007
In 2006, I attended my first Information Architecture (IA) Summit. It was the best of the many conferences I attended that year, making this year’s conference a must-attend event. The 8th annual ASIS&T IA Summit
was at the Flamingo in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, March 22–26, 2007. The theme of the conference was Enriching Information Architecture—“examining three trends: rich information…, rich interaction…, and rich relationships…”—but the sessions I attended were more about process, methods, and strategy.
Opening Keynote: The Lost Art of Productively Losing Control
Presenter: Joshua Prince-Ramus
The Web That Wasn’t
Presenter: Alex Wright
The Brave New World: Usability Challenges of Web 2.0
Presenter: Jared Spool
WebPatterns: Design Patterns in Web Site Architecture and User Interaction
Presenter: John Allsopp
Communicating Design: An Astonishingly Close Look at IA Documentation
Presenter: Dan Brown
Where Does IA Fit in the Design Process?
Moderator: Peter Boersma
Panelists: Larisa Warnke, Peter Merholz, Livia Labate, Leisa Reichelt, and Josh Seiden
Maximum Value Information Architecture: Big IA Is the Way You Do, Not What You Do
Presenter: Austin Govella
Category: Reviews
Conference Review: IA Summit 2007: Part II
Published: April 26, 2007
More session reviews and the conclusion of my conference review.
Finding Innovation in the Five Hundred Pound Gorilla: Or Overcoming Fear, Building Trust, and Making Believers
Presenters: Kevin Cheng and Tom Wailes
Communal Computing and Shared Spaces of Usage: A Study of Internet Cafes in Developing Contexts
Presenter: Jason Hobbs
Startup Case Studies: How Five of Us Started Our Own Businesses
Presenters: Victor Lombardi, Frank Ramirez, Lou Rosenfeld, Gene Smith, and Christina Wodtke
Closing Plenary: Fast, Cheap, and Somewhat in Control: 10 Lessons from the Design of SlideShare
Presenter: Rashmi Sinha
Category: Reviews
Envisioning the Future of User Experience
Published: April 9, 2007
Welcome to my UXmatters column—“Envision the Future.” In this column, I will share my perspectives on the role UX professionals will play in the future and answer a few forward-looking questions about the field of user experience such as:
What is the future of user experience as a practice, as a philosophy of design, and as a research topic?
What are the challenges and opportunities facing UX practitioners as we strive to better integrate our methods, processes, and philosophies into traditional ideation, design, and development processes?
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Category: Columns
When Observing Users Is Not Enough: 10 Guidelines for Getting More Out of Users’ Verbal Comments
Published: April 9, 2007
One of the principles underlying usability testing is that observing a user perform a task provides more reliable information than simply asking the user how easy it would be to perform the task. By observing users, you can assess whether they are actually able to use a product. By asking them, you simply cannot.
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Category: Features
Book Review: Information Dashboard Design
Published: April 9, 2007
Stephen Few’s Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data defines the state-of-the-art of information dashboard design. Few, who is an expert in data visualization for the communication and analysis of quantitative business information has provided a complete, practical, and illuminating guide to dashboard design. If you are designing front-ends for executive information systems for Business Performance Management (BPM) or for monitoring and analyzing the performance of sales, marketing, or information systems, Information Dashboard Design provides all you need to know to ensure your dashboards communicate efficiently and effectively.
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Category: Reviews