On 7.14-15.08 The Silicon Valley Microfinance Network will host Microfinance West at the Fishermans Wharf Hilton in San Francisco. I’d love to attend but, quite unfortunately for all, it requires a macro-financial investment to register …read on »
Jeffrey Veen and Co. have whipped up The Start Conference to help those who’d like to start their own companies. When it comes to conferences, I too think less is more. This one should be great. A few VC types actually advertising their attendance is also a good sign that there may even be some preexisting confidence in those who’d attend, as the network itself represents good company. So… ‘ya wanna start som’thin?’ …read on »
Jeffrey Veen and Co. have whipped up The Start Conference to help those who’d like to start their own companies. When it comes to conferences, I too think less is more. This one should be great. A few VC types actually advertising their attendance is also a good sign that there may even be some preexisting confidence in those who’d attend, as the network itself represents good company. So… ‘ya wanna start som’thin?’ …read on »
Some of us have held secret hopes for the web, that it will help extend the reach of democratic principals beyond the political sphere, as it is no longer the prime mover of social transformation. As discourse, popular and academic, on life science and information science have begun to connect at their respective frontiers, and turn more and more to systems theory for models of understanding, here I attempt to weave gossamer threads from related readings together, on a theme of patterns. And by this hope to catch the imagination of interaction designers, for how patterns in the natural universe may influence our work, so we may, going forward, utilize them for greater personal, economic, and social freedom and happiness, as the 4th of July 2008 approaches. …read on »
No one person or source can define a term. Vocabulary, like all symbolic systems, is only useful to the degree we share meaning and experience relating to it, and agree (ideally, with no social coercion) on what a term refers to. Dictionaries, at best, merely document our collective sense of meanings and associations. As there is much misuse of “user experience,” with and without “design” affixed, and there is no dictionary entry for it (yet), here are the top seven definitions of ux design. I sought ten and came up wanting, so this entry comes with an invitation to you to contribute those definitions of user experience design (full three terms) that you find most precise or useful. Or add your own… inclusion is conditional, however, on a credibility standard that can only be defined as “secret sauce.” …read on »
Summary of Adaptive Path’s UX Week upcoming event in San Francisco California, from August 12 through 15, 2008. Speakers and workshops are highlighted, and a few thoughts are offered about event structure. If you’ve attended a previous UX Week event, your comments are welcome, if useful to others. …read on »
User experience design and strategy are inseparable. Some say strategy is at the center of UX design. Which I wholly agree with. In this article we simply recognize the difference between business strategy and interaction design strategy, what they may, and may not, have in common, and what the purpose of interaction design strategy is. I don’t pretend to have hold the strongest hand in this game, so your comments are strongly encouraged. …read on »
Are the means and interests of design strategy and business management inherently at odds with each other? If so, then why do they need each other so much? As in most of life this far …read on »
How “Googley” is Google? Could Yahoo! be even Googleyer? In this article I take Google’s UX design principles and measure its, and Yahoo!’s, top services—search and advertising—against them. Of course I can only provide one user’s view, and that is no sufficient sample. So your participation is required. See my UX score card, and add yours to it. Three months from publication, provided a fair sample of qualitative views, scores will be totaled. Could Yahoo! be more Googley than Google?
Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices, Dan Saffer’s first and so far only foray in to print publishing, is a tight little knit of a book. Some passages, which could have tackled the beefier topics, play tag instead. Yet the page count makes it a good weekend read. What it may lack in depth, Dan more than compensates for with a great variety of ideas, images, interviews, and examples of ways we can, and should, design for interaction in smart and clever ways.
More User Experience.UX Design Books …read on »
