August 2011
1 post
4 tags
Always On: Why The Product Is Now The Ad
(Reprinted from Modernista’s Blog.)
Some agencies steeped in decades of mainstream media may be locked in to a mode of thought in which they see their primary “product” as making ads. Of course, we all know what ads are, but I can’t resist a penchant for defining things, so here goes: It’s a compelling, memorable mini-experience in audio, print, or interactive form that interrupts the...
January 2010
3 posts
3 tags
Workflow 2.0 Design: Five Principles
How Well Does Your Product’s Workflow Work?
We’re all familiar with workflow systems that don’t work. Bad workflow systems cost employees, business partners, and customers efficiency and productivity. But with Web 2.0 principles in mind, there are many ways to create or redesign workflow tools to make them work right. Here are some guiding principles based on many years of...
5 tags
Top 5 Reasons Why IA Still Matters
Information Architecture has not been in fashion of late; the argument has been that it should no longer be seen as a discrete discipline. Instead, it should be seen as simply interaction design, or user experience design, or ui design. But there are many great reasons why IA is now more important than ever. Here are a few of them: 1. A Path To Domain Knowledge. Understanding complex domains...
2 tags
Moderated Usability Testing: Mastering The Secret...
If you have invested in conducting a usability test of your product, no doubt you are ready, willing, and eager to interact with your current and prospective users. As your users interact with your product, they are bound to have a number of questions for you. For example:
”How would I save my information here?”
“Could I customize this?”
“What would happen...
November 2007
1 post
9 tags
Four Views into the Transformation Room →
From a conversation published by NextD Leadership Institute with Peter Jones of Redesign Research, Eric Reiss of FatDUX, and GK Van Patter of Humantific.
My own consulting work is often downstream from these kinds of business transformation challenges, though increasingly, I find I need to help clients upstream in terms of thinking about how they lead and manage a user experience design...
September 2007
1 post
4 tags
The Hidden History of Information Management →
A Review of Glut: Maserting Information Management Through the Ages, which I wrote for Boxes and Arrows.
February 2007
1 post
4 tags
WebApptitude: The Rise of Web Apps and Web 2.0
The day of the Web Apps has arrived. Everywhere one looks these days, real live desktop-style applications can be found online. Word processing. Calendars. Spreadsheets. Image Editing. And it’s all storable, tagible, editable, shareable, and thanks to new technology approaches like AJAX, good to use. Google is of course leading the pack, but there are many other innovators, including...
March 2006
1 post
1 tag
The Mediumlessness Is The Message
We live in times of accelerating change and major technology disruption. Thinking through the implications of the changes underway can help us feel positive about the future. One of the biggest changes is the absorption of many media into digital technology. The rising capabilities and capacities of the microchip make it the ultimate mimic.
Today, content formerly housed in containers called...
February 2006
1 post
6 tags
Exploring the Roots of the PC's Family Tree →
A review I wrote for the UPA’s User Experience magazine of “What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry,” by John Maroff; explores the legacy of West Coast UI design from ARC, PARC, and Apple.
November 2005
1 post
4 tags
The Enterprise User Experience: Bridging the... →
This an article I wrote for UX Matters about how moving from a UI approach to a UX approach delivers value for the enterprise.
May 2005
0 posts
5 tags
Making UX an engaging process for prospective UX... →
From the ACM’s Interactions Magazine: “WHOSE PROFESSION IS USER EXPERIENCE (UX)?” This provocative question seems to invite a turf battle in which various UX stakeholders such as information architects, usability consultants, and designers seek to claim their rightful ownership and ultimate glory. Of course, the simple answer is that these folks and many others all have much to bring to the...
March 2005
1 post
Blockbuster's Boomerang: Thinking Outside The...
Blockbuster and its franchisees are struggling to overcome the confusion created by the company’s recent PR and advertising blitz promising “the end of late fees.”
In practice, it seems that customers who keep a movie or game out longer than eight days suddenly own the rental, and Blockbuster bills their credit card for the purchase price. Customers can then reverse this...
February 2005
4 posts
5 tags
Microchipping Animals, Products, and People
The development and use of wearable, stickerable, and injectable microchip identification technology holds far reaching consequences for our future. The technology, also known as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tagging and scanning, provides the ability to identify and track anything and anyone, and furnish digitally encoded information about that object or being to a RFID-enabled...
3 tags
The Child-To-Parent Technology Transfer
A colleague recently recounted some comments the principal at her son’s high school made before assembled parents, touting the school’s computer-education courses. His comments went something like this:
Students are learning that program… what do you call it? The one with the slides. The slides that move. Scientists use it.
Yes, of course, he was talking about the Microsoft...
6 tags
Harvard U In Your Pocket
In a fascinating column in MIT Technology Review, Rodney Brooks, director of the AI lab at MIT, makes some startling predictions on the implications of exponentially expanding digital storage. “Any stable system can become unstable when even one component experiences exponential growth,” he writes.
Like Moore’s Law, storage capacities are currently doubling every year. At...
5 tags
The FBI and VCF: A Case Of Clockspeed Mismatch?
Recent news reports indicate the FBI may abandon a project central to “Trilogy”—the brand name for the agency’s mission to upgrade its technology in order to more quickly access and share information about terrorism and other domestic threats. The FBI started the $170 million project, called Virtual Case File (VCF) in 2001 after Sept. 11, and intended to deploy it in...
January 2005
1 post
2 tags
The Networked Record Collection
A friend recently decided to melt his CD-collection (about 500 discs) down into MP3s through iMusic and his iPod. He then liquidated the CDs themselves (selling all he could to a used CD shop and donating the rest.) To enhance his user experience, he captured all of the CD cover images and loaded them into the iPod as well. As a personal data backup and recovery plan, he then burned all the...