You can watch most of the videos from UX 2011 which took place in San Francisco from August 23 to 26, 2011. UX Week 2011 was organised by Adaptive Path.
User Research
User Research
A Quick Look into IDEO’s Design Process- Designing a Shopping Cart in 5 days
July 23, 2011
In 1998, ABC’s Nightline news show asked IDEO to create a new shopping cart concept, considering issues such as maneuverability, shopping behavior, child safety, and maintenance cost. The resulting episode demonstrates IDEO’s design process, showing the multidisciplinary team brainstorming, researching, prototyping, and gathering user feedback on a design in order to move all the way from an idea to a prototype in just four days time.
Interestingly, the cart went on to win an IDSA IDEA Silver award in 1999.
About IDEO
IDEO is an international design and innovation consultancy founded in Palo Alto, USA with other national and international offices. IDEO helps design products, services, environments, and digital experiences. It has become increasingly involved in management consulting and organizational design.
Related Links
The UX Bookmark- the best UX links for the smartest User Experience practitioners
May 18, 2011
I created the UX Bookmark a few years ago to separate the wheat from the chaff, here you will find only the best of articles, from journals, conferences and the web, that will help you evolve to being a more knowledgeable user experience practitioner.
From the feedback I have received, I could not be more glad in knowing how much it has helped many of you- at times when you have needed it most, or how you have used it to slowly build your knowledge in user experience or a particular area within it.
If you are a usability engineer, user researcher, human factors specialist, interaction designer or an information architect, then the UX Bookmark is a resource specially for you.
Insightico- a collaborative research web app
March 28, 2011
Insightico in a nutshell
Insightico is a collaborative research web application that lets you look for insights in your research data in a simple and easy manner.
You really should sign up for the beta.
What is Insightico?
In Insightico, you first create a project and then add research artifacts (audio, video, images, spreadsheets, PDF’s and more) with the option to categorize them according to the different research activities you conduct (could be user interview audio files and transcripts, usability test videos, and such).
You can then add team members to the project and all begin adding insights to any of the artifacts (called sources in Insightico) contained. Insights can be added to a particular section of a document, image, audio or video file for all your team members to see, and tag them with relevant descriptors. Analyze the tags to discover relationships and patterns.
(Disclaimer: I work with PebbleRoad, the company that has built Insightico)
UX Quotes- Quotes on User Experience
March 1, 2011
This website of mine features a wonderful collection of quotes I have gathered over the years related to usability, interaction design, typography, etc.- the whole gamut of user experience. It lets you build upon your user experience wisdom through serendipity one quote at a time.
UXQuotes
Rob Tanen on Tools for User Research
May 23, 2010
Rob Tanen begins to talk about how user researchers have historically lacked appropriate technology for studying how people use technology and the emergence of a variety of tools that can be applied to data gathering, analysis and sharing. He talks about the need for awareness and guidance in the selection and use of such research technologies.
Tanen goes on to talk about the basic characteristics of effective user research tools: documentation, measurement, efficiency and enhancement, data on current usage of various technologies for data gathering, analysis and presentation, demonstrations and tips on the latest technological tools for conducting user research, including high-speed digital video and pen computing and concept designs of future user research tools.
About Rob Tanen
Rob Tanen is Director of Research at Bresslergroup, a product design and development firm. Rob has over 15 years experience applying product/interface usability in the medical, industrial, commercial and consumer fields.
Rob is creator and editor of DesigningforHumans, the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) blog focusing on events, methods and technology related to user research. Rob has a BA in Cognitive Science from Vassar College, and MA and PhD degrees in Human Factors/Experimental Psychology from the University of Cincinnati.
Related Links
David Kelley on Human Centered Design
May 2, 2010
David Kelley, chairman of IDEO, says product design has become more about the user experience than about hardware. He shows a video of this new, broader approach, including footage from the Prada store in New York.
About David Kelly
David Kelly is the founder of IDEO. He helped design the first mouse, the Treo and the Leap chair. Kelley has also been teaching design at Stanford for more than 25 years and now leads the university’s design school there.
My analogy on User Research
February 21, 2010
Designing a product without conducting user research is like running with your eyes closed.
Jen Fitzpatrick on the Science and Art of User Experience at Google
September 13, 2009
In the Google TechTalks video from 2006, Jen Fitzpatrick talks about the art and science behind Google’s design process and share examples of how design, usability and engineering come together at Google to create great products.
About Jen Fitzpatrick
Jen Patricks is an Engineering Director at Google, who at least was then managing Google’s user experience team. A founding member of Google’s UI team, Jen has also led the UI design, testing and implementation of numerous features and changes to the Google.com site.
She joined Google in June 1999 as a software engineer and has also served as Engineering Director for Google Adwords and Google’s Internal Systems engineering group.
Jen is a graduate of Stanford University where she received a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and an M.S. in Computer Science.
Jon Kolko on Design Synthesis
August 10, 2009
(Download associated slides, PDF, 4.9 mb)
Jon Kolko talks on Design Synthesis, offering two sense making methods to translate research into meaningful insights.
The methods he talks about are Insight Combination, a method of building on established design patterns in order to create initial design ideas and Reframing, a method of shifting semantic perspective in order to see things in a new way.
Jon Kolko talks about Design Synthesis because he feels interaction design research activities produce an enormous quantity of raw data, and while this must be systematically and rigorously analyzed in order to extract meaning and insight, these methods of analysis are poorly documented and rarely taught. And because of the pragmatic time constraints associated with shipping products, there is often no time dedicated in a project to a practice of formal synthesis. As a result, raw design research data is inappropriately positioned as insight, and the value of research activities is marginalized– in fact, stakeholders may lose faith in the entire research practice, as they don’t see direct return on the investment of research activities.
About Jon Kolko
Jon Kolko is a Senior Design Analyst at frog design in Austin, Texas. His professional work deals with the manipulation of complicated business and technological constraints in order to best solve the problems of Fortune 500 clients. The work spans the boundaries of Information Architecture, Interaction Design, and Usability Engineering; the common underlying theme of these problems and projects is the creation of a solution that is useful, usable, and desirable.
Kolko is the author of the text Thoughts on Interaction Design; he is also the 2008-2011 Editor-in-Chief of Interactions Magazine, published by the ACM.
Other Links
Jon Kolko’s website
Jon Kolko’s book- Thoughts on Interaction Design
