Sometimes, people forget that the various UX deliverables on a given project are strongly interrelated. By this, I mean that a deliverable influences and informs downstream deliverables, while the downstream deliverables should support and expand on those that were created upstream. This also means that when something new is discovered, all of these fabulous deliverables should be updated as needed. The larger the project, the more important this becomes. Makes sense, right? Right!
Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen, sometimes due to time or budgetary constraints, sometime due to poor process or laziness. “Checklist Thinking” for UX Professionals: Retaining your sanity in a complex project further explains the importance of process when it comes to deliverables and offers some strategies for making is happen. It’s worth the quick read, if only as a reminder of how all these documents are (supposed to be) tied together.
Out of necessity, people on small user experience teams need to be generalists, especially when they are a team of one or two. UX Matters has some great pointers for small UX teams, from selling yourself to getting things done with little budget to finding a support network. All good advice that can help make you and your tiny team more productive.
It can be difficult to explain the ways by which things get created. The people at Cooper generally have two roles on their pair design teams: Generators and Synthesizers. But,this nomenclature may not go over so well “with parents or at a cocktail party”, to use their words. So, they’ve gone on to explain their pair design roles, metaphorically. I especially like the the use of Han Solo and Chewie in the pilot/navigator roles.
The social engagement tracking in Google Analytics is great. Google +1 works by default if you use the +1 Button Creator. However, one needs to do a bit of configuration to get tracking working for other things like Twitter tweets and Facebook likes. The popular WordPress plugins for Addthis and Sharethis use Google Analytics Events for tracking social engagement rather than the newer _trackSocial method. So, for the time being, if you want to get track social engagement with Google Analytics social reports, you’ll need to add your own code. Don’t be alarmed though, it isn’t all that difficult. This step by step guide about Tracking Social Engagement with Google Analytics will get you headed in the right direction.
One thing that wasn’t clear (to me at least) was were the javascript code should go for the Twitter event binding. This is important when considering a blog index page where there are multiple tweet buttons on the page that are associated with different posts. Twitter’s code handles this quite well, so long as you put the call to twttr.events.bind and the function extractParamFromUri somewhere where they only get called once. In my case, I created a .js file for these two things, which loads in the header along with widgets.js.
Wireframes are old hat to anyone who has been working on web sites and applications for more than, say, 5 minutes. However, for those that aren’t involved in web design, wireframes can be a bit of a mystery. If you’re growing tired of explaining the role of the wireframe and why nobody should worry about how boxy and devoid of color they are, perhaps you can point people to UX 101: The Wireframe. There, one will fine a succinct explanation of the wireframe, why they are valuable, and what to look for when reviewing them.
The video above shows the movement of over 800 iPhones in Europe during April 2011. There are a few other versions of iPhone Fireflies 3 at crowdflow.net. By the way, Crowdflow is collecting iPhone location log files in order to visualize wifi and cellular data networks around the world. If you are interested, you can in contribute the location data from your iPhone on crowdflow.net.
Stakeholders generally provide plenty of design feedback. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the feedback is so counter to a good user experience that you, as the UX designer, are compelled to take a stand. If you’ve been around for more than one project, you’ve probably done this already. Before your next encounter, you may want to read Winning a User Experience Debate, which is an excerpt from the book Undercover User Experience Design. They present a three-tiered approach for validating a design, which they call the Validation Stack. It walks one through the evidence that one can be used to defend a design decision. They also mention an additional technique to use when your use of the Validation Stack fails.
via UIEtips
Wireframes can be misconstrued by stakeholders if they are not presented in the right way. Everyone has their own way of presenting wireframes, and most are always on the lookout for ways to improve. These three tactics for making more understandable wireframe presentations are worth checking out. I especially like the use of storytelling to frame individual wireframes in the context of user stories and/or personas. I also like the idea of working early sketches into the presentation.
View the full length video on YouTube.
Food packaging is pretty wasteful. Even if one recycles everything they can, a fair amount of packaging is going in the trash. In.gredients, a supermarket slated to open this year in Austin is going reduce packaging needs by letting customers bring their own containers. If you don’t have a container, no problem, In.gredients will provide a compostable one for you. Unpackaged, a store with a similar concept, has already opened in London. So, maybe we’ll see supermarkets like this opening elsewhere soon. In the meantime, you can support In.gredients’ effort by being an investor.
via Good :: Fork in the Road
There was a point in the late ’90s where all the graduating M.B.A.’s wanted to start companies in Silicon Valley, and for the most part they were not actually qualified to do it. They brought the whole sideshow of the hype and parties and all that crap. M.B.A. graduating classes are actually a reliable contrary indicator: if they all want to go into investment banking, there’s going to be a financial crisis. If they want to go into tech, that means a bubble is forming.
– Marc Andreessen (Bubble? What Bubble?)
Read the article and you’ll find out that Andreessen still believes that tech companies are undervalued and there isn’t a tech bubble right now. Everyone should be watching where most of the newly minted MBAs land next though.
via Betabeat