I have recently been placed in charge of a project to design and manage a pattern library for my organization. The library will contain high-level interaction patterns, components, and style guidance from a range of internal and external projects. I plan to reference existing patterns wherever possible, particularly the work from Yahoo! The biggest part of the gig right now is setting a vision for the project and deciding on a strategy to get there. The scope is ambitious, so I will need help. To that end, another major part of my immediate task is outreach and training. That’s where this page comes in. It’s a starting point, a placeholder, until I can set up our internal resources.
I started using Delicious again after a one-year hiatus. I am impressed with the new interface. At first, I though they just reskinned the old design – lipstick on a pig, if we are still allowed to use that phrase. After using it for a week, I see that they have made a number of subtle but crucial changes to the user interface.
Today, I am writing about the tagging interface, which is my favorite of these changes. I really like the new interface. I offer some tips on using it effectively, and some recommendations to the design team on further improvements. Continue reading »
Okay, new rule! If I select the same preference customization when an application starts ten consecutive times, that application must remember and execute that customization permanently. If not, I get ten dollars from the manufacturer for every subsequent failure. It should remember it on the first try. But ten! Ten is insulting. I think this is a fair rule. You ignore my wishes ten times, you give me ten bucks. It’s more than fair, and it should be part of the ULA. I’m looking at you, Microsoft. Continue reading »
DCIA hosted a great event tonight revisiting Adaptive Path’s recent User Experience Week here in DC. Dan Brown put the event together and he did a great job. The panels were well balanced and the moderation kept things moving. There were even handouts. We hosted the event at my SRA office in Clarendon. The session was broken into three panels, with each panel taking a day of the conference (at least for days one, two, and three).
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The local chapter of UPA hosted a review of the 2005 user experience conferences last night in Bethesda. From the sound of it, CHI and STC are not particularly useful to practitioners, and your money would be best spent on the IA Summit and UPA. STC sounds overwhelmingly huge and diverse, with less of a chance for marketing and networking. CHI sounds predictably academic – we can read about the good stuff in the academic press. The IA Summit provides a range of practical material, although it is heavily oriented toward high-level consulting that sometimes is closer to business strategy than interaction design. UPA also has a big range of things, and I was pleasantly surprised to find hands-on training in methodologies like card sorting and stakeholder interviews. UPA actually sounded like the most practical for in-the-weeds IAs, interestingly.