Kategoria: Herkut (Page 3 of 45)

"We need to support, defend, and promote our artisans or artists, and we need to eliminate the assholes from our organizations."

Redesigns confuse users, and confused users don't spend money. Your current customers have invested so much effort in learning to work around your site's shortcomings that a new interface stops them in their tracks. Even the most humane and usable UI refresh takes acclimation – and that may cost your site conversions and revenue in the meantime. However, it seems as if the bigger danger lies in allowing your site's information architecture to become ossified. Eventually, new UI paradigms will offer your younger competitors an avenue for feature differentiation.

Ethnography may differ from what is traditionally regarded as 'normal' ressearch, but it is far from the dark art that it is sometimes perceived as. Indeed, it's high time to dispel some of the myths that have sprung up around ethnography so that organisations can understand its true nature. The first myth to dispel is that ethnography is not a method; it is a research approach that uses a wide selection of methods.

In this report, the process of defining unique experiences together with users is referred to as user-driven innovation. User-driven innovation encompasses both an understanding of true user needs and a systematic involvement of users in the innovation process. The report explains a number of market forces and academic underpinnings, and presents an overview of the context regarding user-driven innovation in each of the five Nordic countries. The report also presents concrete examples of how companies employ user-driven innovation processes.

Everyone misses the point. Simplicity is not the goal. We do not wish to give up the power and flexibility of our technologies. The garage door opener may be simple, but it hardly does anything. If my cellphone only had one button it certainly would be simple, but, umm, all I could do would be to turn it on or off: I wouldn’t be able to make a phone call. Is the piano too complex because it has 88 keys and three pedals? Should we simplify it? Surely no piece of music uses all of those keys. The cry for simplicity misses the point.

"Hi, my name is Chris Campbell and I have a color vision deficiency. While there are a number of simulators and plugins that can help you 'visualize' what a color deficient person might be seeing, I honestly don’t recommend spending a lot of time with them. Instead, I’d like to propose just a few simple guidelines along with plenty of examples to help you effectively ensure that a good percentage of your audience won’t misinterpret your message."

Deconstructing Product Design is a book by William Lidwell and Gerry Manacsa, to be published by Rockport Publishers in the Fall of 2009. Its purpose is to explore the meaning of "good design" as it pertains to consumer products. Deconstruction here is an exploration of the form, function, and usability of these products by way of emotional response, objective analysis, and subjective commentary. To that end, we want to know what you think and feel about these products. If you have actually used any of these products, know interesting or little known facts about them, or have a visceral response or personal perspective that you would like to share, write it up as a comment on this site. If we select your entry for inclusion in the print book, you will have a byline with your comment and you will be included in the contributor section.

It was not long ago that producing multimedia digital content required expensive equipment and technical expertise; we are at the point now where we can do some very compelling content creation with nothing more complex than a web browser. In this workshop you will design a basic story concept that can be created in a web 2.0 tool using images, audio, and/or video, and then create it quickly using one of 50+ different web tools that are free to use.

"In this paper, we present our observations of the microblogging phenomena by studying the topological and geographical properties of Twitter’s social network. We find that people use microblogging to talk about their daily activities and to seek or share information. Finally, we analyze the user intentions associated at a community level and show how users with similar intentions connect with each other."

Nokia's "dirty ethnography" research project with Indian students resulted in sixteen prototype concepts.

Your boss and your job determine not only what you do all day, but what you learn and who you interact with. Where you work is what you market. Work in a high stress place and you're likely to become a highly stressed person, and your interactions will display that. Work for a narcissist and you'll develop into someone who's good at shining a light on someone else, not into someone who can lead. Work for someone who plays the fads and you'll discover that instead of building a steadily improving brand, you're jumping from one thing to another, enduring layoffs in-between gold rushes. Work for a bully and be prepared to be bullied. If you want to become the kind of person that any company would kill to have as an employee, you need to be the kind of employee that's really picky about who you align with.

Results of a study. Does this sound familiar: People in non-design roles making design decisions. Managers making design decisions w/o design training. Designers don’t seek enough data before designing. No time is provided for long term thinking. Not receptive to critical feedback.

"It has been argued that this Infinite Friendspace is an unalloyed good. But while this plays nicely into our sentimental ideal of lifelong friendship, it's having at least three catastrophic effects. First, it encourages hoarding. We squirrel away Friends the way our grandparents used to save nickels – obsessively, desperately, as if we'll run out of them some day. (Of course, they lived through the Depression. And we lived through – what, exactly? Middle school? 90210? The Electric Slide?) Humans are natural pack rats, and given the chance we'll stockpile anything of nominal value. Friends are the currency of the socially networked world; therefore, it follows that more equals better."

There is a risk of complacency for start-ups (and even larger firms) who have achieved a level of security in their first niche. Markets change, consumer needs change, and you need to continue to explore opportunities to sell your offering to new customers – non-customers – even though it’s a much harder sales process than a renewal, upgrade, or follow on sale to an existing customer.

By making more information available online, our habits are changing. We’re teaching one another new tricks and evolving together. We’re sharing more stories by way of social networking. We’re learning new ways for doing the same old things. We’re willing to be talked into most anything, especially if we read it on the web, in an email from a friend or click a search engine result that looks credible.

Banning Facebook and the like goes against the grain of how people want to interact. Often people are friends with colleagues through these networks and it is how some develop their relationships. Using technology to build closer links with ex-employees and potential customers could also boost productivity, innovation and create a more democratic working environment.

When we succeed, we usually know we've succeeded, but we can't pinpoint why. Which step or element was the key to our success? It's very hard to learn from success. Especially the how-do-we-do-that-again lessons that are essential to long-term growth. Failure helps us hone our skills much better than success. When we fail — and take the time to learn from our failures — we discover what we need to improve. As the saying goes, the largest room in the world is the room for improvement.

Obama fans are striking back at all the chatter about his middle name by changing their online identities.