See this at: adaptivepath.com| Added on 11/21/07

Special early bird pricing Register on or before December 2: Single Day: US$395 All 4-days: US$1,595 Regular Registration: Single Day: US$745 All 4-days: US$2,495 This intermediate-to-advanced workshop series examines the four key elements that... See more

Special early bird pricing Register on or before December 2: Single Day: US$395 All 4-days: US$1,595 Regular Registration: Single Day: US$745 All 4-days: US$2,495 This intermediate-to-advanced workshop series examines the four key elements that contribute to a successful interactive experience: Design Strategy, Design Research, Interaction Design and Information Architecture. Workshops are led by Adaptive Path's team of experts, including: Dan Saffer, Chiara Fox, Brandon Schauer and Todd Wilkens. “I love the educational atmosphere. It’s great to learn from folks who are eager to learn themselves. Their ability to relate their experiences to the course material was really effective.” — Jason Goldman, Google Tuesday, February 19 - Design Strategy. The most stellar design will fail to succeed unless it supports an underlying business strategy. Yet a business strategy is nothing but a plan until it connects with compelling solutions that actually appeal to the target customer. Whether... See less

See this at: codinghorror.com| Added on 03/20/07

I remember switching my homepage from AltaVista to Google back in 2000 for one simple reason: it was blazingly fast. It's the same reason I don't use personalized Google, or Google suggest as my homepage: they're simply too slow. Dare Obasanjo*... See more

I remember switching my homepage from AltaVista to Google back in 2000 for one simple reason: it was blazingly fast. It's the same reason I don't use personalized Google, or Google suggest as my homepage: they're simply too slow. Dare Obasanjo* wonders if AJAX apps are rolling page load speeds back six years: One big problem with the AJAX craze that has hit the Web is how much slower websites have become now that using Flash and DHTML to add "richness" to Web applications is becoming more commonplace. My mind now boggles at the fact that I now see loading pages that last several seconds when visiting Web sites more and more these days. Dare uses Yahoo! Mail as an example, but I've experienced similarly long load times for the new Hotmail beta, too. The load times can be so long that a combination disclaimer/escape hatch appears below the loading animation: Maybe I'm just impatient. However, there's a lot of concrete data to support the theory that unless you make it load fast, nobody... See less

See this at: businessweek.com| Added on 02/18/07

Forward-thinking business schools on the list, such as Rotman and the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, have coursework championed by leading design thinkers such as Roger Martin and Jeneanne Rae. In fact, Martin, IIT's Patrick... See more

Forward-thinking business schools on the list, such as Rotman and the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, have coursework championed by leading design thinkers such as Roger Martin and Jeneanne Rae. In fact, Martin, IIT's Patrick Whitney, and David Kelley, co-founder of IDEO and Stanford's D-school, have joined together on a project with Claudia Kotchka, the innovation champion for Procter & Gamble Co. (PG ) The four created a three-day program teaching design thinking's three components to the hairstyling products group: deep consumer understanding, the ability to test product variations rapidly, and business strategy formulation. This research laid the groundwork for executive workshops, a summer academy, and a new design elective at Rotman this fall. Partnerships between D-schools and B-schools are becoming increasingly common. In 2006, for example, France's INSEAD and Art Center in Pasadena, Calif., embarked on a partnership that brings design students to... See less

See this at: bokardo.com| Added on 02/14/07

How an over-focus on technology and visual design can hide the real value of social software. In a fascinating piece on the a... See more

How an over-focus on technology and visual design can hide the real value of social software. In a fascinating piece on the amazing growth of the photo-sharing site Fotolog, Jason Kottke clearly articulates a growing problem in design: “Fotolog…relative to Flickr…has changed little in the past couple of years. Fotolog has groups and message boards, but they’re not done as well as Flickr’s and there’s no tags, no APIs, no JavaScript widgets, no “embed this photo on your blog/MySpace”, and no helpful Ajax design elements, all supposedly required elements for a successful site in the Web 2.0 era. Even now, Fotolog’s feature set and design remains planted firmly in Web 1.0 territory.” How do sites with sub-optimal visual design and technology grow so big and become so successful? How are MySpace, Fotolog, and Craigslist so popular in an age that values stunning visual design and amazing technology above all else? Conversely, how is it that Flickr, full of beauty and Ajax, is being... See less

See this at: trendwatching.com| Added on 02/05/07

OK, so we’ve finally succumbed to list mania. Last month, we discussed GENERATION C(ASH) as one of the many emerging consumer trends to watch this year, but to honor your requests for a more elaborative overview of what’s going to be ‘hot’, here’s a... See more

OK, so we’ve finally succumbed to list mania. Last month, we discussed GENERATION C(ASH) as one of the many emerging consumer trends to watch this year, but to honor your requests for a more elaborative overview of what’s going to be ‘hot’, here’s a quick list of five big trends/themes that are on our radar for 2007*. They deal with status, transparency and consumer power, the online revolution, more adventurous consumption, and a shift from consumption to participation. Enough to keep you busy! * For a truly elaborate guide to where consumers are headed this year, with or without you, we recommend checking out our 2007 Trend Report, too. Here’s something trend watchers, CMOs and other business professionals should be able to agree on: in the end, when dealing with (and selling to) people, everything always comes back to status. In a traditional consumer society, he or she who consumes the most, the best, the coolest, the most expensive, the scarcest, or the most popular goods, will... See less

See this at: adaptivepath.com| Added on 02/05/07

The topic of online community has come up a lot on a recent project. I’ve heard some powerful stories about Yelp, Gay.com, Craigslist, Tripadvisor, Citysearch, Amazon… and more. It occurred to me that there is more than one way to engage with users... See more

The topic of online community has come up a lot on a recent project. I’ve heard some powerful stories about Yelp, Gay.com, Craigslist, Tripadvisor, Citysearch, Amazon… and more. It occurred to me that there is more than one way to engage with users and foster a sense of community online. Here are some ideas on the shades of community. 1.The Inner Circle Two common characteristics this type of online community seems to share are 1) the presence of a strong point of view and 2) clear values that people can align with and use to identify themselves in the world. Unlike strong corporate brands, the values of this type of community are created by and evolve with the ebb and flow of the community. Credibility is created through users contributing relevant content that aligns with the values. It seems to be less about numbers and more about relevance. Users here have editorial control of the content. This is where the zealot-like participation happens – as it should since users here own and... See less

See this at: uxmag.com| Added on 01/19/07

About three years ago, we received a much-needed wake-up call from our brilliant, 20-something friends and interns. Meet Lauren: We were sitting at the conference table late in the afternoon. Lauren’s friend Kara called and they talked about meeting... See more

About three years ago, we received a much-needed wake-up call from our brilliant, 20-something friends and interns. Meet Lauren: We were sitting at the conference table late in the afternoon. Lauren’s friend Kara called and they talked about meeting for dinner, but didn’t decide on a place or a time. Instead, they agreed to call each other back. Five conversations later and no plans on the books, we were both getting stressed and silently annoyed. Meet Cassie: While dropping off a big project, Cassie received a text message from Dominika that said, “Do you want to go running?” Cassie texted back, “sure.” Dominika was less than 30 feet away in the next room. Meet Carmen: Her computer screen was exploding like fireworks. Instant messages were popping up at an alarming rate. “How many people are you talking to right now?” we asked. “Six,” she said nonchalantly. Six separate conversations, all on IM. She was also browsing through the campus networking site, Facebook, there was music... See less

See this at: uxmatters.com| Added on 01/16/07

Three articles or posts have been particularly influential in sparking interest in and debate on this topic. The first was Christopher Fahey’s excellent five-part series “User Research Smoke & Mirrors,” which laid out some of the problems that Chris... See more

Three articles or posts have been particularly influential in sparking interest in and debate on this topic. The first was Christopher Fahey’s excellent five-part series “User Research Smoke & Mirrors,” which laid out some of the problems that Chris sees with user research and discussed where UX professionals go awry during research and analysis. Of special interest to me was the following statement in Part 1 of the series: “Many Web designers and consultancies, however, feel it’s not enough to use research to inform their design process. They go further: They try to make “scientific” user research the very foundation of their design process.”—Christopher Fahey The second was a post to IxD Discussion by Maria Romera titled “On research,” in which Maria proclaimed: “I do think that if more people had an understanding of quantitative and qualitative statistics and what inferences you can and cannot draw from them, there would be far-reaching consequences not just for research and design,... See less

See this at: uie.com| Added on 12/29/06

The premier leaders in web application design share their best practices and principles. * Design Patterns and Principles—Bill Scott, Yahoo! * Project Web App: Building a Web Application from Scratch—Hagan Rivers, Two Rivers Consulting *... See more

The premier leaders in web application design share their best practices and principles. * Design Patterns and Principles—Bill Scott, Yahoo! * Project Web App: Building a Web Application from Scratch—Hagan Rivers, Two Rivers Consulting * Communicating Concepts with Comics—Kevin Cheng, Yahoo! * Creating Innovative Applications—Larry Constantine, Constantine & Lockwood * UIE Summit Lunch: Network with speakers and conference attendees for lunch. * Web Application Structure—Hagan Rivers, Two Rivers Consulting * Best Practices for Form Design—Luke Wroblewski, Yahoo! * Web Accessibility Primer—Matt May * Page Hierarchy—Luke Wroblewski, Yahoo! See less

Highlights: Register by January 16th for only $1,999—a savings of more than $400 off the final walk-in registration price.

See this at: uie.com| Added on 12/29/06

"We make a lot of this stuff up as we go along," the lead designer said. Everyone in the group laughed until he continued, "I'm serious. We don't assume anything works and we don't like to make predictions without real-world tests. Predictions color... See more

"We make a lot of this stuff up as we go along," the lead designer said. Everyone in the group laughed until he continued, "I'm serious. We don't assume anything works and we don't like to make predictions without real-world tests. Predictions color our thinking. So, we continually make this up as we go along, keeping what works and throwing away what doesn't. We've found that about 90% of it doesn't work." We were talking with the design team at Netflix. Netflix.com is one of the most successful web sites in the world: the sole customer interaction point of their home DVD-rental business. Over the past 9 years, the site has grown from nothing to serving almost 6 million customers who use the site to prune their rental queues, rate movies, and handle any billing and transaction issues. The designers of Netflix.com have a smashing success on their hands, but we didn't find them resting on their laurels. They want to get even better, and for them that means iterate, iterate, iterate.... See less

See this at: forbes.com| Added on 12/14/06

Like thrill-seeking teens driving up and down a main drag, kids on the Web have cruised endlessly over sites like MySpace, and they want more. More action, that is. MySpace's share of traffic among the top 20 social-networking sites shrank 1% from... See more

Like thrill-seeking teens driving up and down a main drag, kids on the Web have cruised endlessly over sites like MySpace, and they want more. More action, that is. MySpace's share of traffic among the top 20 social-networking sites shrank 1% from October to November, according to online monitoring service Hitwise--and while it still owns more than 81% of that category--its users are going exploring. "I still go on MySpace and Facebook," says 21-year-old San Francisco resident Matthew Gorman. "But it's like a revolving door. You check your messages and you leave. There's just nothing to do." But Gorman found a new site--Xuqa.com--that entertains him enough to keep him coming back for 40 hours a week. Xuqa relaunched in August as a social-networking-site-cum-contest, where users compete for popularity points by accumulating virtual kisses and hugs, winning poker games, spending "peanuts," and even filling out surveys and looking at ads, all to attain status levels. Only a few... See less

See this at: rashmisinha.com| Added on 12/12/06

Here are my slides for the Webvisions talk. The talk pulled together a lot of threads that I have been thinking about recently. How social sharing is happening on the web (tagging is but one way of social sharing. There are several other ways, e.g.,... See more

Here are my slides for the Webvisions talk. The talk pulled together a lot of threads that I have been thinking about recently. How social sharing is happening on the web (tagging is but one way of social sharing. There are several other ways, e.g., viral sharing at YouTube). How massively multiplayer games can design of such social apps. And finally, how rich interfaces (yes, I am talking about AJAX) fit in and bolster these trends. Some people who attended the talk had some kind words. Below are my slides for the talk. Enjoy! See less

See this at: businessweek.com| Added on 10/15/06

When Mena Trott turned 23, she says she was forced to face an unfortunate truth: she wasn't destined for the kind of stardom that lands young women on the cover of entertainment and fashion magazines. The truly famous actresses and pop starlets were... See more

When Mena Trott turned 23, she says she was forced to face an unfortunate truth: she wasn't destined for the kind of stardom that lands young women on the cover of entertainment and fashion magazines. The truly famous actresses and pop starlets were tabloid cover girls by their mid-20s, she reasoned. But Mena was anonymously toiling away at a small Web design studio. Who gets famous for Web design? See less

See this at: mikeindustries.com| Added on 09/26/06

So I just read the big article about MySpace in today’s New York Times and it got me thinking a lot about growth, monetization, and user experience. People always talk so much about how many pages MySpace serves up and how that represents such... See more

So I just read the big article about MySpace in today’s New York Times and it got me thinking a lot about growth, monetization, and user experience. People always talk so much about how many pages MySpace serves up and how that represents such dramatic growth. After playing with the thing for a few weeks and writing a hugely ridiculous article on customizing it, one thing has really stuck out to me: there are a tremendous amount of extraneous page views being generated at that place. It’s a factory of unnecessary clicks. And so when one would view MySpace’s current page view trends on Alexa, one would see this: Here’s a sobering thought: If the operators of MySpace cleaned up the site and followed modern interface and web application principles tomorrow, here’s what the graph would look like: See less

See this at: emilychang.com| Added on 09/25/06

One of the reasons I love designing for the web is the constantly shifting landscape, both in terms of audience and tools. With each technological shift in the brief history of the Internet, designers have evolved and created new systems for people... See more

One of the reasons I love designing for the web is the constantly shifting landscape, both in terms of audience and tools. With each technological shift in the brief history of the Internet, designers have evolved and created new systems for people to navigate online spaces. In the last few weeks, there’s been a good synergy between what I’m working on and what I’m seeing online. I’ve noticed several sites that are using visualization methods to entice visitors to explore and navigate content. These visualizations methods aren’t entirely new, but in the context of the ever-expanding, often vast amounts of content generated by social sites, they’re critical to our experience and our ability to discover new information and patterns. Social sites can include everything from bookmarking applications, news, blogs, wikis, music sharing, knowledge applications, mobile, photo and video media sites, forums, social networks - anywhere the public or a member can contribute to either the content... See less

See this at: thinkvitamin.com| Added on 09/24/06

First up, Blinksale and Freshbooks, which both offer services that will help the small online business get bills out quicker or easier. Blinksale’s strapline is ‘The easiest way to send invoices online’, whilst Freshbooks is ‘The fastest way to... See more

First up, Blinksale and Freshbooks, which both offer services that will help the small online business get bills out quicker or easier. Blinksale’s strapline is ‘The easiest way to send invoices online’, whilst Freshbooks is ‘The fastest way to invoice your clients’ - essentially they are competing for the same users. We asked two designers, Andy Rutledge from Design View and John Zeratsky from Feedburner to give us their thoughts on these two different approaches. Both saw benefits and disadvantages to the way these sites had worked their layout, content and design. For John, “Blinksale’s home page clearly and attractively outlines the benefits of the application and makes me really want to get started. But unfortunately, it’s not 100 per cent obvious how I get started. The big “Sign-up for your free Blinksale account” was below the fold (for me at least) and did not look like a link. “FreshBooks is the exact opposite of Blinksale. Their home page is not as good at getting me to want... See less

See this at: rashmisinha.com| Added on 08/11/06

For a while I have been thinking of different ways of supporting finding information with tags that go beyond tag-clouds. There are three trends that are worth pointing out. 1)

For a while I have been thinking of different ways of supporting finding information with tags that go beyond tag-clouds. There are three trends that are worth pointing out. 1) See less

See this at: websiteoptimization....| Added on 08/10/06

Summary: A new browser study revealed a shift in how we interact with the Web. University of Hamburg researchers found the Web moving from static hypertext information to dynamic interactive services. Clickstream heatmaps and web page statistics show... See more

Summary: A new browser study revealed a shift in how we interact with the Web. University of Hamburg researchers found the Web moving from static hypertext information to dynamic interactive services. Clickstream heatmaps and web page statistics show rapid interaction over smaller areas of the screen. The authors recommend that web developers create concise, flexible, and fast loading web pages to keep pace with the speed of web navigation. See less

See this at: guuui.com| Added on 08/07/06

According to Jakob Nielsen, web pages should use a liquid layout that stretches to the user's current window size. He recommends that we optimize page layouts for 1024x768 pixels, which is currently the most widely used screen size, but that we make... See more

According to Jakob Nielsen, web pages should use a liquid layout that stretches to the user's current window size. He recommends that we optimize page layouts for 1024x768 pixels, which is currently the most widely used screen size, but that we make sure it works for any resolution from 800x600 to 1280 x1024. Pages should also work at smaller and bigger sizes. But a less-than-great design is an acceptable compromise. Fewer than half a percent have screen resolutions of 640x480 and users with large screens rarely maximize their browser window. A liquid design should scale all the way down to the tiny screens found on mobile devices. But mobile services should be designed specifically for use on small screens. Links: See less

See this at: businessweek.com| Added on 08/07/06

If you've been delighted by your iPod, intrigued with your TiVo, or frustrated by your mobile phone, then you have encountered the work of an interaction designer. And an interaction designer, most likely, has crafted the experience we have with many... See more

If you've been delighted by your iPod, intrigued with your TiVo, or frustrated by your mobile phone, then you have encountered the work of an interaction designer. And an interaction designer, most likely, has crafted the experience we have with many of the products and services we encounter every day. Dan Saffer, a senior interaction designer at Adaptive Path, leads us through an exploration of this emerging discipline. Published this month, Saffer's new book, Designing for Interaction, is a much-needed primer on the topic, helping us understand the design of interactive systems. Voice talked with Saffer just prior to his book being published in July. See less

See this at: uie.com| Added on 08/04/06

Rashmi Sinha and Kirsten Medhurst do an excellent job talking about some of the issues you need to consider when designing recommender systems and tagging systems. Part of the AOL Mountain View - Behind The Scenes series. (Found in the iTunes Music... See more

Rashmi Sinha and Kirsten Medhurst do an excellent job talking about some of the issues you need to consider when designing recommender systems and tagging systems. Part of the AOL Mountain View - Behind The Scenes series. (Found in the iTunes Music Store.) See less

See this at: uie.com| Added on 08/04/06

Join us in Cambridge this October for our ever-popular User Interface Conference. Each year we invite the world's best experts in design to share their unique knowledge of how to create web sites and applications. Learn how to tackle the toughest... See more

Join us in Cambridge this October for our ever-popular User Interface Conference. Each year we invite the world's best experts in design to share their unique knowledge of how to create web sites and applications. Learn how to tackle the toughest design challenges. See this year's program. See less