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
Google Analytics has a few handy reports for tracking social plugin activity on your site. If you’re using the standard Google +1 implementation, +1 activity should get tracked automatically without further coding. However, for other plugins like Twitter and Facebook, you’ll probably need to add some code to your site. The Google Analytics Blog to has a quick rundown on Social Plugin Tracking in Google Analytics.
Orienteering vs. Teleportation: Designing for Both Novices and Experts
by jpreardon on July 6, 2011
One of the challenges faced by user interface designers is how to make the interface work for novices, experts and everyone in between. These groups come to a site or application bringing different types of knowledge, therefore they require different interactions. Tyler Tate has an interesting take on this in Novices Orienteer, Experts Teleport. In this article he gives some solid examples of various interface elements for both novices and experts.
How can one go about effectively communicating user experience design to their team? Marc Sasinski puts forth one method in his article, Experience Design Models. He walks through the example of an online service that pays household bills to demonstrate how to create an experience model.
This is an excellent example of how to turn user research into something actionable and easily understood by everyone on the team. I also like the clean and simple graphics used to get the point across in this example. These graphics take information that could very well be presented in a somewhat dry spreadsheet format, and make it visually engaging. This increases the chances of people actually reading the documents–as we all know, the first step to comprehension is reading the document.
Graphic by Marc Sasinski from Experience Design Models: Minding the Gap Between Ideas and Interfaces