In the latest London IA Podcast we host a wide-ranging conversation with Cennydd Bowles on moving from user experience design to digital product designer, what it takes to develop visual design skills, freelancing, A List Apart, writing a book, conference speaking and of course that legendary animal of European folklore.
Hosted by Matthew Solle and Andrew Travers. Produced by Will Myddelton and Matthew Solle.
We are the makers of the new everyday things. We design and develop the virtual pens, telephones, newspapers, calendars, and door-handles that people interact with every single day. We are the virtual architects and the products that we design and develop have the power to determine whether people have a good day or a bad day.
In this session, Aral Balkan will outline the important role that user experience design plays in the making of virtual products and inspire you to see that it is your job – regardless of whether you make web sites, mobile apps, intranet systems, or ticket machines – to make this new world that we are crafting together not only usable and accessible but beautiful, fun, inspiring, pleasurable, delightful, and – dare I say – magical.
Tagged with design aral balkan ux inspiration everyday things
Discover the rules of thumb for finger-friendly design. Touch gestures are sweeping away buttons, menus and windows from mobile devices—and even from the next version of Windows. Find out why those familiar desktop widgets are weak replacements for manipulating content directly, and learn to craft touchscreen interfaces that effortlessly teach users new gesture vocabularies.
The challenge: gestures are invisible, without the visual cues offered by buttons and menus. As your touchscreen app sheds buttons, how do people figure out how to use the damn thing? Learn to lead your audience by the hand (and fingers) with practical techniques that make invisible gestures obvious. Designer Josh Clark (author of O’Reilly books "Tapworthy" and "Best iPhone Apps") mines a variety of surprising sources for interface inspiration and design patterns. Along the way, discover the subtle power of animation, why you should be playing lots more video games, and why a toddler is your best beta tester.
Josh Clark, Principal, Global Moxie
I’m a designer specializing in mobile design strategy and user experience. I’m author of the O’Reilly books "Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps" and "Best iPhone Apps." My outfit Global Moxie offers consulting services and training to help media companies, design agencies, and creative organizations build tapworthy mobile apps and effective websites.
Before the interwebs swallowed me up, I worked on a slew of national PBS programs at Boston’s WGBH. I shared my three words of Russian with Mikhail Gorbachev, strolled the ranch with Nancy Reagan, hobnobbed with Rockefellers, and wrote trivia questions for a primetime game show. In 1996, I created the uberpopular "Couch-to-5K" (C25K) running program, which has helped millions of skeptical would-be exercisers take up jogging. (My motto for fitness is the same for user experience: no pain, no pain.)
Episode 4 of the London IA podcast is - finally - out. In it, we chat with Giles Colborne, managing director of CX Partners and author of ‘Simple and Usable’ about his career in design, the evolution of user centred design, writing, the role of conferences, and distraction and delight in design.
In this podcast, we speak with Aarron Walter, user experience design lead at MailChimp, about designing for emotion.
Aarron talks about why and how MailChimp aimed not just for usable, but for a pleasurable user experience. We also discuss what’s fuelled the emergence of emotional design, risks with emotional design and why emotional design should be led by the UX team.
We also talk about what we can expect from Aarron’s exciting new book, ‘Designing for Emotion’. You can download an example of the design persona we discuss over at Aarron’s blog.
Guest:
Aarron Walter, user experience designer (http://aarronwalter.com/)
Resources:
Mailchimp (http://www.mailchimp.com/)
‘Designing for Emotion’ (http://www.abookapart.com/products/designing-for-emotion)
Design Persona (http://aarronwalter.com/design-personas/)
In this podcast, we speak with Josh Clark, designer, UX guy and author of Tapworthy about the role of friction and complexity within the user experience.
We discuss the distinctions and similarities between mobile and desktop experiences, how touch devices are now allowing us to cut through greater levels of complexity and how the role of friction relates to the concept of a minimal viable product.
Really interesting podcast and huge thanks to Josh for his time. Make sure you check out the presentation from Josh that inspired the podcast and the awesome Future Friendly site.
Guest:
Josh Clark, designer (http://globalmoxie.com/)
Resources:
Presentation from Josh (http://vimeo.com/21503078)
Future Friendly (http://futurefriend.ly/)
Design (or if you prefer—user experience) is at a crossroads. In our globalized, hyper-connected world, users no longer need to wait for us to create experiences for them. As we debate the value of design thinking, the usefulness of the next API, or strive to craft the ultimate cross-platform experience—users are sorting this out on their own, using whatever service or technology is “good enough” for them at the time.
Strategies and scenarios that made sense mere months ago, are disintegrating as technologies shift, business models crumble, and we watch with dismay as users exchange tips to disable JavaScript on their Kindles, or access multiplayer Flash games on the iPads.
What happens to your brand, your product, and your bottom line when users choose “good enough”, over your carefully crafted product or service? Is it a sign of failure, a missed opportunity, or a chance to dive head first towards a new reality?
http://2011.dconstruct.org/conference/bryan-stephanie-rieger
Bryan Rieger is a designer, writer and reluctant developer with a background in theatre design and classical animation. Bryan has worked across various media including print, broadcast, web and mobile; and with clients such as Apple, Microsoft and Nokia.
Stephanie Rieger is a writer, designer, and closet anthropologist with a passion for the many ways people interact with technology. With a diverse background, Stephanie’s expertise lies in marrying design, technology, and business goals to craft simple, elegant experiences.
Addiction or devotion? The complexity of our relationships between connected experiences, devices and people is increasing. Stanley Kubrick once said a film “should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what‛s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later”.
Design ethnographer Kelly Goto presents underlying emotional indicators that reveal surprising attachments to brands, products, services and devices. Gain insight on designing user experiences that map to people‛s real needs and desires.
http://2011.dconstruct.org/conference/kelly-goto
As an evangelist for ‘design ethnography’, Kelly Goto is dedicated to understanding how real people integrate products and services into their daily lives. Goto is Principal of gotomedia, LLC, a global leader in research-driven, people-friendly interface design for web, mobile and product solutions for clients including Seiko Epson Japan, Adobe, NetIQ, WebEx and CNET. Her book, Web Redesign 2.0: Workflow That Works, is a standard for user-centered design principles. Goto is also the editor of gotomobile.com, a leading online publication on mobile user experience and serves on the national board of the AIGA Center for Brand Experience.
A lot of R&D still puts the front-end last. But considering the user experience throughout product development pays handsomely, say Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone. One study shows design-led businesses outpacing the FTSE 100 by 100 pct. Crumlish and Malone provide cases for Twitter, Dropbox, Hipmunk, and Etsy, outlining how good UX pays, at the 2011 Web 2.0 Conference.
UX—User Experience is part user interface engineering, graphic design, usability testing, HCI (human-computer interaction), cognitive psychology, and content strategy. It’s best if it’s baked in to the mix, rather than added as frosting on the cake.
So many of the recent offerings that have succeeded in sparking the public’s interest and curiosity are especially uncomplicated and easy to use. Both imaginative rethinking and pragmatic testing are required, but the result can be a product that holds up against price wars for the value of the experience.
Malone presents a case from Twitter, in which they found that new users abandoned their accounts soon after signing on. How could they avoid having new users feel like they had showed up for a party but found, at first, an empty room? The answer was in managing experience flow. Making it easy for users is the clever and quick work of ideation, sketching, rapid iteration, and problem-solving, all design mainstays.
UX design and testing pays. Good design gets free public relations, as users describe the products as "beautiful" or feel the makers especially understand their needs. Simple A/B testing has netted millions of dollars in profits as one graphic or phrase appeals to consumers over another. Malone urges startups to find UX expert help early, where a few well-chosen design considerations can go a long way.
Christian Crumlish is a writer, information architect, and digital designer. He is a consumer experience evangelist at AOL, an advisor to and director emeritus of the Information Architecture Institute, and co-chair of the monthly BayCHI program. He was the curator of the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library for several years. He is the author of the bestselling The Internet for Busy People, and The Power of Many, and co-author of Designing Social Interfaces with Erin Malone. He has spoken about social patterns at BarCamp Block, BayCHI, SXSW, the IA Summit, Ignite, Web 2.0 Expo, PLoP, IDEA, Web Directions, the Web App Masters Tour, and WebVisions.
Erin Malone, Principal with Tangible UX, has led design teams and developing social experiences for web and software for over 20 years. Prior to Tangible UX, she spent 4 years at Yahoo! leading the Platform User Experience Design team on Community products and platforms, helping develop the Yahoo! Open Strategy, building the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library and providing design expertise to YUI (Yahoo! User Interface Library). She led the redesign of the Yahoo! Developer Network, among other Yahoo initiatives.
Before Yahoo!, Malone was a Design Director at AOL responsible for community applications, Creative Director at AltaVista and chief Information Architect for Zip2. She was the founding editor-in-chief of Boxes and Arrows and author of several articles on interaction design history and design. She is co-author of the book Designing Social Interfaces with Christian Crumlish for O’Reilly Media.
The rise of smart devices like the iPhone and iPad has led to an application goldrush, with companies racing to stake their claim. In the early days we saw a few lucky pioneers strike gold, but like most gold rushes, the obvious targets were quickly depleted. Digital prospectors lured by the promise of gold are now arriving to find a very different market—one rife with competition and few obvious deposits to mine.
Recent studies have shown that we tend to limit our usage to a few core applications and the bulk of apps never even get opened. So despite newspapers and magazines hailing the iPad as the saviour of the publishing industry, does it really make business sense to jump on the application bandwagon? If not, what are the alternatives?
In this keynote, Andy Budd will look at the current state of the mobile web, how we got here and where we go next. He will explore the new opportunities that have opened up for the field of user experience design, but will caution that not every mobile experience needs to start with an app.
Page 1 of 2Older