Recent updates to user experience design resources

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Recent updates

To be published as issue 86 in late September, 2006.

  • Outside in innovation
    "We believe that technology should be designed to engage the intelligence and commitment of the people who use it. This means that people need to be at the center of the innovation process. To do this, you need to truly understand the work or play you are trying to support; find ways of engaging the participation of users in the innovation process; iterate with prototypes; and test the technology-in-use. This podcast explores the way innovators with a strong user sensibility do this."
    (Jim Euchner, Jonathan Wolfman)

  • IA Podcast
    "A podcast discussing the role of the information architect, the professionals they work with, and the value add they bring to projects."
    (IA Consultants)

  • Web Axe - accessibility tips
    "Practical web accessibility tips. Blog and podcast for programmers, developers, coders, or anyone else interested in techniques for web development with accessibility in mind."
    (Dennis Lembree)

  • CMSAdvisor
    "CMSAdvisor is a podcast hosted by Lisa Welchman. The podcast covers relevant issues related to content management systems implementations. Podcasts include interviews with prominent content management practitioners as well as practical tips and advice."
    (Lisa Welchman)

  • Boagworld: web design podcast
    "This podcast covers all things relating to web design and web development. Whether you are a web site owner, designer or developer hopefully this show has something for everybody. Each episode includes news, review and hints and tips, all presented in the light hearted style of podcasts like diggnation."
    (Paul Boag)

  • User testing is not entertainment
    "Don't run your studies for the benefit of the people in the observation room. Test to discover the truth about the design, even when user tasks are boring to watch."
    (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

  • Use old words when writing for findability
    "Familiar words spring to mind when users create their search queries. If your writing favors made-up terms over legacy words, users won't find your site."
    (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

  • Data visualization of web stats: logarithmic charts and the drooping tail
    "Using a linear diagram to plot data from website traffic logs can lead you to overlook important conclusions. Sometimes advanced visualizations are worth the effort."
    (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

  • Screen resolution and page layout
    "Optimize Web pages for 1024x768, but use a liquid layout that stretches well for any resolution, from 800x600 to 1280x1024."
    (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

  • Traffic log patterns
    "The relative popularity of a site's pages, the number of visitors referred by other sites, and the traffic from search queries continue to follow a Zipf distribution. In comparing the new data with data from 10 years ago, the biggest finding is that the curves look almost the same. Several measures of Web traffic followed a Zipf curve in 1996, and they still do."
    (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

  • Findability with tags: facets, cluster and pivot browsing
    "For a while I have been thinking of different ways of supporting finding information with tags that go beyond tag-clouds. There are three trends that are worth pointing out."
    (Rashmi Sinha)

  • Design Critique: products for people
    "Encouraging usable products for a better customer experience."
    (Tim and Tom)

  • UXpod: user experience podcasts
    "User experience discussions with Gerry Gaffney."
    (Gerry Gaffney)

  • Talking with Talis
    "Listen to conversations with thought-leaders at the interface between Web 2.0, Libraries, and the Semantic Web."
    (Paul Miller)

  • User interface design - taking the good with the bad
    "Designing the UI is fundamentally an exercise in compromise—not compromise between designers and other project stakeholders (usability should never be sacrificed as a result of office politics)—but compromise between the drawbacks and benefits of design decisions. Every UI decision, from a pixel’s precise placement to the entire site’s information architecture, should be made judiciously. Careful consideration of the benefits each design decision affords and costs its users is essential. It’s the sometimes-subtle expense that many people often overlook, and every UI decision does have expense. Educated compromise across all UI decisions is essential to creating the best interface possible, and is, ironically, required if you are to avoid designing a compromised interface."
    (Mike Padilla - Digital Web Magazine)

  • Approaches to classification in publication and knowledge management - panel discussion
    "Classification of knowledge, and of the objects which contain it such as books and journals, has a long history, but is also a hot topic in the modern world of electronic collections and the World Wide Web. The subject goes by many names and has generated buzzwords such as taxonomies, ontologies, folksonomies and metadata, but the essential arguments are pretty much the same: how do we divide up and label the world or knowledge, does it have a hierarchy, what do you do about knowledge objects that seem to belong to several categories at the same time, and who decides? Can a controlled vocabulary be generated, and how does that help search and retrieval? How does one reconcile the classificatory judgements of experts with the way that the public and users see things?"
    (Electronic Publishing Specialist Group - British Computer Society)

  • Graffletopia
    "As a web designer, I've been using OmniGraffle for years. It's fantastic for designing interfaces — miles better than Adobe Illustrator for most tasks. Stencils are a big part of why Graffle is great. So, hopefully, this website will make it easier to find cool stencils."
    (Patrick Crowley)

  • Book review: Designing for Interaction
    "Dan Saffer’s Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices was an ambitious undertaking. In fewer than 300 pages, he has attempted to cover the history, current practice, and notions about the future of the rapidly evolving discipline of interaction design (IxD). Whether you are simply curious about interaction design, are entering the profession yourself, or are collaborating with an interaction designer, Designing for Interaction is a good place to start your journey down the road of interaction design."
    (Leo Frishberg - UXmatters)

  • Designing for Interaction
    Companion site for the book by Dan Saffer

  • Refining data tables
    "After forms, data tables are likely the next most ubiquitous interface element designers create when constructing Web applications. Users often need to add, edit, delete, search for, and browse through lists of people, places, or things within Web applications. As a result, the design of tables plays a crucial role in such an application’s overall usefulness and usability. But just like the design of forms, there’s more than one way to design tabular data."
    (Luke Wroblewski - UXmatters)

  • New life for product documentation
    "Here are some 'truths' we’ve all heard: 'Documentation is just a band-aid for poor design.' 'Real users don’t read manuals.' 'Super users never read anything.' 'Help doesn't.' But are they really true? I've seen some signs of life in the use of documentation for digital products recently."
    (Whitney Quesenbery - UXmatters)

  • Brand experience in user experience design
    "Much has been written in the past decade about the importance of usability and the user experience to customers' perception of an organization’s brand. This article attempts to identify the appropriate role for brand values as one project objective within the broader framework of user-centered design."
    (Steve Baty - UXmatters)

  • Label placement in forms
    "In using eyetracking to evaluate the usability of search forms for my previous article for UXmatters, 'Evaluating the Usability of Search Forms Using Eyetracking: A Practical Approach', we discovered much interesting data. I'll provide an in-depth analysis of that data here."
    (Matteo Penzo -UXmatters)