Thursday, January 22, 2009

Words to inspire user experience designers

Inspire UX - Great quotes!
Good design, when it’s done well, becomes invisible. It’s only when it’s done poorly that we notice it.” - Jared Spool

“I’ve been amazed at how often those outside the discipline of design assume that what designers do is decoration—likely because so much bad design simply is decoration. Good design isn’t. Good design is problem solving.” - The Art & Science of Web Design by Jeffrey Veen

“For businesses to bottle the kind of experiences that rivet minds and run away with hearts, not just one time but over and over, they’ll need to do more than hire designers. They’ll need to be designers. They’ll need to think like designers, feel like designers, work like designers. The narrow-gauge mindset of the past is insufficient for today’s wicked problems. We can no longer play the music as written. Instead, we have to invent a whole new scale.” - Marty Neumeier

“When we blame the user, we teach them that technology is perfect and that the errors are their own. Because technology is hard to use, we are teaching a generation to be afraid of technology. We are teaching a generation to believe in their own stupidity… It’s not the user’s fault.” - Jono DiCarlo

“Most [clients] expect experience design to be a discrete activity, solving all their problems with a single functional specification or a single research study. It must be an ongoing effort, a process of continually learning about users, responding to their behaviors, and evolving the product or service.” - Dan Brown

“Don’t design for everyone. It’s impossible. All you end up doing is designing something that makes everyone unhappy.” - Leisa Reichelt

“If you want to reach the greatest number of users possible, it’s best to write clearly and simply and design your interfaces to be consistent from page to page. For some people, simple usability advice like this is an absolute accessibility need… And anyway, people of all abilities fail tasks that are confusing. Why should we all suffer an interface that proves itself to be unusable?” - Matt May

“Technological advances have always been driven more by a mind-set of ‘I can’ than ‘I should’… Technologists love to cram maximum functionality into their products. That’s ‘I can’ thinking, which is driven by peer competition and market forces… But this approach ignores the far more important question of how the consumer will actually use the device… focus on what we should be doing, not just what we can.” - John Maeda

“It’s always helpful to look outside of the web for your inspiration, to places where you might not at first expect to find a solution. The world is a collage of inspiration, from newspapers, magazine publishing, and advertising to product design, architecture and the fine arts.” - Andy

“Designing a website can be a bit like being a kid and inheriting a sweetshop. It’s easy to get carried away. There are so many choices. A website can be like an attic that never fills up. Space is not the problem. Attention is.” - Gerry McGovern

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Design Anthropology

Dori Tunstall (professor of design anthropology at University of Illinois, Chicago) has just written a great piece for the Adobe Design Center's Think Tank on the intersection of anthropology and design.

In her brief article she clearly describes how an understanding of culture and people informs good design. She presents case studies and a simple academic framework for an anthropological understanding of people that makes design successful and powerful. This is a great read.
It may seem like an obvious argument on the surface: designing for a "known" is much better than designing for an "unknown". But one of the things that Tunstall does so well is characterize what it means to be "known". She correctly reminds us that anthropology has moved beyond a primarily colonial focus on the exotic "other" and has brought huge value to design and innovation by focusing on notions of change, identity, and power - and that all these things help us know people and design well for them.

Design Anthropology is not about understanding behavior, but rather about understanding, in Dr. Tunstall's words, "what it means to be human."

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Design Career guidance session at ICAT-Image College of Art, Animation and Technology

Ranjeet & Raj @ Career guidance session at ICAT-Hyderabad
I was been invited for a guest lecture and career guidance session at ICAT-Image College of Art, Animation and Technology, Hyderabad. (ICAT) is a unique college, set up to identify, introduce and prepare students exclusively for a career in the Digital Media industry. Image College of Arts, Animation & Technology (ICAT) offers a range of courses extending from Under Graduate to Post Graduate programs and offer programs in 3D Animation, Visual Effects, Game Design and Game Development. This is India’s Largest Digital Media CollegePioneering Full Time Education in design / animation and multimedia in India.
There were 150+ students in the conference room. Initially I thought of teaching new techniques in multimedia / graphics and VFX industry and when I had interaction with the audience, I felt there is some need to give a design / graphics industry overview.
I have covered these topics in detail:
  • Visual Design
  • Emotional design
  • Usability & User experience
  • Inspirations for gaming experiences
  • Multimedia (Industry Domains)
  • Design & Animation careers & challenges
  • Finally…..Question & Answers

This went for ~4-5 hours continues session and was more interactive. My friend Rajasekhar Reddy also has presented his topic on Careers in Web & Graphics. Finally this was really great experience to do some career awareness programs and helping / guiding upcoming professionals just with skill set and experience.

I would like to give back to the society with my skill set and domain experience without charging anything... I am ready to help / support any education institutions / engineering colleges to share my knowledge in these areas:

  • User experience design
  • Usability engineering
  • Multimedia
  • Animation & Graphics
  • Logography & Branding

Please get in touch me if you represent a Non-Profitable organization, NGO, Charity / Voluntary organization, Educational institutions, computer training centers working for a good cause.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Missing IxDA - Interaction 09 conference

The Interaction Design Association (IxDA) 2nd annual conference will be held February 5-9th in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. IxDA 09 is being held in conjunction with Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology. Several hundred Interaction Designers from around the world will come together to address the design of various types of interactive systems: web and desktop applications, mobile, consumer electronics, digitally enhanced environments, and more.Interaction 09 will feature three days of inspirational and tactical sessions geared at anyone who practices Interaction Design, as well as a day of pre-conference workshops.Pre-Conference workshops are starting to fill up, but there is still space left.

Some of the invigorating sessions available include:
Well, we did all this research . . . now what?
So you want to be a hardware / software Interaction Designer . . .
Web Form Design
Designing and Building with Patterns and Pattern LibrariesOut of the many sessions this year, the ones I am looking forward to the most include:
Rapid Design Labs
Sketching haptic and multimodal interaction

Designing Natural Interfaces: Notes from the Multi-Touch, Multi-User Frontlines
Mission Critical Interaction DesignThe six keynote speakers this year are:
John Thackara
Genevieve Bell
Dan Saffer
Fiona Raby
Marc Reddig

Kim GoodwinInteraction 09 will be a great experience for any Interaction Designer to network, fine tune their skills, and have a great time. Prior to and during the conference, there is a social networking site attendees use to discuss events, outside activities, and lots more!

I am truly missing this.. best of luck you focks who are attending!

Monday, December 22, 2008

web directory called 2.0websites.com

I found this neat web directory called 2.0websites.com - for web 2.0 related sites and products.
Quote:“2.0 Websites is a web directory for those interested in what’s available and happening in the Web 2.0 arena.”
The directory would include list of sites which are in the areas of Web 2.0, including the evolving areas of Security 2.0, Identity 2.0, Media 2.0, Data 2.0, Programming 2.0.
Certainly worth checking out & bookmarking.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering, Pune.

I have attended "CAUE - 2008" a national Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering, November 27-28, 2008 at Pune. This conference was organized by Department of Information Technology at Vishwakarma Institute of Information Technology (V.I.I.T) considering the need of a platform to get together the professionals, academia and students to discuss and share their experiences in the emerging field of usability. There were ~125+ registrations and the interesting part is 90% of the audience is the Industry professionals. Initially I was not much interested to attend this and was in a fickle situation whether to attend this or not, as my schedule were very tight. Thought for a while and decided to attend as I know the organizing committee and have good contacts with Pune usability friends.

When conference started, felt as a college annual day celebration and not much smelled as professional conference. Some topics were really boring as same old stuff "WHAT IS USABILITY" THE UCD PROCESS... blaw..blaw..blaw..! Later this became more interactive and interesting. The best part is all the invited speakers were also actively participated and made more interactive, shared their experiences, questions, views, etc.

Most of the paper presenters topics and invited speaks were really good. I really liked the second day of this event better than first day. VIIT team has worked very hard to make this event successful and for the first time they have organized this type of event and done a great job!

One thing which really felt bad is that I did not submit my paper on usability (as it was ongoing ..... iterative state – may be, I am following UCD process for my paper too ;). By seeing the conference published hardcopy proceedings, realized that it is very important to submit my paper and which will help some of the new upcoming professionals and indirectly our society.

Pune industry people should join as volunteers and help the VIIT team to make CAUE -2009 more successful. Dr.Dinesh Katre, Y.D Deshpande and VIIT team were the main back bone for this event and made this successful. Closing ceremony was dragged too long. End of this event i can say this is overall good, great networking, met most of my old usability friends and some learning’s :)

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Tips on Google’s new open source browser Chrome



Google Chrome released out for downloading. It is very fast, simple and good looking.It has an important feature which is given in Firefox;If your system turned off suddenly when you browse, after restarting the browser you can restore the pages.Number of features are given in Google chrome.New add-on’s will come as it is open source browser.This browser will be a competent to other existing browsers like Firefox, IE7, Safari etc,.If you didn’t download Google chrome, Try downloading it at Google Chrome web page. I will give you assurance that it will be great experience for you to use this browser.Lot of Tricks have been found and i take this tips and tricks in front of you with this post.
CTRL+SHIFT+N:-If you try this you will be open a new window in “incognito” mode. In this mode no trace out’s are left behind your pc like cookies,passwords,usernames. So, now we don’t have an extra task every time to delete history,cookies etc,. You can also open “Incognito” in new window by going to CURRENT CONTROL PAGE on right side of address bar and select NEW INCOGNITO WINDOW.
ALT+HOME:-Loads home page you have set as default and displays thumbnails of recently visited websites or pages.
CONTROL+T:-Opens a new Blank Tab.CONTROL+SHIFT+T:-Opens the most recent tab you have closed and if you give another stroke with CONTROL+SHIFT+T then it opens another recent tab you closed one just before opened tab.CONTROL+NUMBER
(CONTROL+1,CONTROL+2 Like that):-This will shift between tabs currently available.CONTROL+TAB:-This let you open tabs in an order.New Firefox 3 comes with a new feature. Drag and drop a link to a tab. This feature is available in Google Chrome.CONTROL+B:-By using this you can hide or show Bookmarks bar.CONTROL+H:-Open History page.
CONTROL+J:-Open download page.Google Chrome allows you to see how much memory your tabs and Plugins are using by implementing Task Manager.Point your mouse pointer to the top of browser window and right click the select Task manager. You can close particular tab or Plugin by ending process.
SHIFT+ESCAPE:-Opens Browser Task manager.about:plugins - This lets you see what plugins are installed in your browser.about:crash - This lets you see how a crashed tab looks like.about:stats, about:network, about:histograms, about:memory, about:cache, about:dns, about:internets - These lets you know more about Google Chrome.

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