February 2013
2 posts
“Being light and simple, and multiple and complex at the same time is the goal....”
– In their thoughtful book, Pervasive Information Architecture: Designing Cross-Channel User Experiences, the authors present an interesting view on the relationship between simplicity and complexity.
In their view, simplicity and complexity complement each other.
“User-centered design has served the digital community well. So well, in fact,...”
– Cennydd Bowles offered some really interesting perspectives on the value of the user-centred design process, and its shortcomings, in his article Looking Beyond User-Centred Design.
I’ve added a comment to the discussion too.
December 2012
1 post
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Small Cognitive Psychology for Big Interaction...
Slides from my talk at UX Cambridge 2012, are here, for your viewing pleasures:
(Note: I gave a similar talk at Webexpo Prague 2012. But in Czech. And you don’t want to see the slides, since your eyes would hurt from all the special characters and accents.)
In the section about Attention, I also mentioned visual perception theory and how animated transitions could help us to shape the...
November 2012
2 posts
2 tags
Concept design competition - Innovation in...
Me and my colleague Lucy (Visual Designer at Flow) took part in a concept design competition organised by Hethel Innovation this summer. Hethel Innovation is an organisation based in Norfolk, UK, that helps businesses develop their innovation potential.
The competition brief was to change people’s perceptions of electric vehicles.
So we submitted a concept design solution. And won!
Why we...
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UX lessons from...Whatever
I saw yet another one of those ‘What you can learn about UX from XYZ’ articles, and couldn’t resist a cheeky little tweet.
In response, Jack couldn’t resist either and accepted the challenge by following up with a neat and deeply thoughtful piece ‘UX lessons from ice-cream’.
Not being able to comment there, I had to do it here. (You know for how long I...
February 2012
1 post
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“You’re in a problem-solving business, and you don’t solve problems...”
– Jeff Gothelf at London IA February 2012, talking about “Getting out of the deliverables business”
November 2011
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The baguette experience
You are a weary business traveler at an international train station. And you have one pressing problem: you are hungry. Luckily, you spot a baguette chain store and decide to take a closer look. Their baguettes look amazing, especially that one on the right; fresh tomatoes and mozzarella in a crusty French baguette. Yes, that is it. You want to buy it, but no one behind the counter seems to...
October 2011
1 post
5 tags
Communicating and Selling UX Design Deliverables -...
Here are some resources related to my talk about communicating and selling UX design deliverables that you might find useful.
Article by Jared Spool that I mentioned, talking about key qualities for UX designers: Five Indispensable Skills for UX Mastery.
Great articles on designing wireframes
A Practical Wireframe Primer
Three ways to make your wireframes more useful
Books on deliverables...
April 2011
2 posts
1 tag
World with unlimited resources
I was travelling South-east Asia recently and on that occasion I read a comic book retelling the classic ancient Chinese texts upon which Taoism is based.
These texts made me realise that the human society really hasn’t changed that much over the last two thousand years. People’s needs and desires are the same.
Then a question came to my mind: What would a world with unlimited...
Automated airport assistant - a bad colleague?
A few weeks ago, I flew from the London Luton airport and was surprised to see this low-cost airport equipped with a few automated customer service assistants. The airport is trying to reduce costs everywhere and so replacing real humans with automated assistants that work nearly for free comes as no surprise.
Upon reaching the departures hall, a male assistant (picture below) reminded me...
March 2011
1 post
2 tags
February 2011
1 post
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Super-short summary of LightningUX, January 2011
Last week, I blogged a super-short summary of London’s first LightningUX event on Flow Interactive’s blog.
Since then, a couple of blogposts and write-ups from the speakers and attendees have cropped up. Here they are, all in one place on Lanyrd. And you get some talk videos and two sketchnotes on top of that.
January 2011
1 post
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An inspirational conference – The Design of...
Last Friday I and more than a hundred others attended The Design of Understanding - a one day conference on information design and beyond. Despite not being massively promoted, it sold out in a few days. No wonder, the lineup was impressive, and the price of £75 was friendly enough for a poor designer’s wallet. It would be impossible to summarise even just the main ideas from all the great nine...
November 2010
1 post
3 tags
Stretching my design muscle at Design Jam London
London’s UX community witnessed its first Design Jam this Saturday. The all-day jam took place at a great venue provided by City University London, and was supported by Mozilla Labs, City University’s Centre for HCI Design & Johnny Holland magazine.
Around 50 people partcipated, all coming from various backgrounds, inluding user-centred design, frontend/backend development, visual...
October 2010
1 post
2 tags
Potential Reach - Twitter metric
As it often happens, some days ago an idea sprung suddently to my mind - while brushing my teeth. I got an idea for an interesting metric measuring one’s influence on Twitter. The inspiration probably came because of reading The art of SEO, a great book on concurrent Search Engine Optimisation. The analogy taken from SEO revolves around the topic of link authority that affects a...
August 2010
1 post
4 tags
World's Best Countries - visualisation tool
Newsweek published last week a series of articles presenting results of an extensive study comparing and ranking world countries. The country ranking is based on several criteria in five categories - Education, Health, Quality of life, Economic dynamism, Political environment.
Newsweek also launched an interesting information visualisation (InfoVis) tool to accompany the articles. They call it...
July 2010
1 post
3 tags
“Technologies need to be understood and implemented after the overall experience...”
– Nathan Shedroff, Experience Design (2001), New Riders Publishing.
May 2010
1 post
4 tags
Information Visualization - not just eye candy
A talk I gave at the UXCampEurope 2010 conference in Berlin.
Information Visualization - not just eye candy
April 2010
2 posts
“Design for the future, it will be here sooner than you think.”
– Jeffrey Veen (talk at An Event Apart 2010 conference)
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Confirm your typo
Registration is a crucial initial step that most online businesses have to impose on people along their journeys. Registration is necessary to check people’s authenticity and start meaningful conversations with them based on the provided details. Capturing people’s details correctly is paramount since storing, for example, an incorrect email address opens the door for trouble down the line....
March 2010
2 posts
1 tag
Content landmark
Open your Information Architecture dictionaries and pencil in a new term:
Content landmark
Definition: Content landmark is an important, frequently sough-after chunk of content with clearly defined boundaries which is frequently signposted from other pages within a site.
Common examples of content landmarks: Shipping costs pages on e-commerce sites.
…
I’ve just coined it. But...
“If the statistics are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers.”
– Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
February 2010
2 posts
2 tags
Defining the target user population
Next time you hear product managers say: ‘We want our product to be for everyone’, it should ring the alarm bells for you. For everyone? Really? Do they want the product to be targeted at a 85 year-old Inuit grandmother? (nothing against Inuits of course) No. For whom is it then? They tell you that it is actually for people who are roughly between 15 and 70 and like music. Ok, so is it...
3 tags
Mind the PACT
You did extensive user research and collected buckets of data. You understand your target users thoroughly and have gleaned decent insight into their goals and motivations. You did diligent task analysis and know exactly what the most common workflows and user journeys are. And on top of all that, you are very much on the ball with regards to the latest technological possibilities and...
January 2010
4 posts
2 tags
Visio's 5 deadly wireframing sins
If you still think MS Visio is a good website wireframing tool, here is my list of 5 most annoying things which will turn wireframing into a nightmare for you.
Visio cannot duplicate pages (why on earth is such a fundamental feature missing?)
Visio cannot paste in place (especially annoying is you want to duplicate pages, see above)
Visio has no pixel ruler (pixels did not exist when Visio was...
4 tags
Decode: Digital Design Sensations at V&A museum
If you happen to be in London these days, you should not miss an excellent digital design exhibition at the V&A museum. Decode: Digital Design Sensations is a collaborative project of V&A and onedotzero - international digital arts organisation.
The exhibition aims to explore three themes: Code, Interactivity, and Network and features more than 25 interactive design installations.
...
2 tags
“Why do you want real-time data, if you cannot make real-time decisions?”
– Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist at Google. @avinashkaushik
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