Currently Reading: Usability of iPad Apps and Websites
by Raluca Budiu and Jakob Nielsen
This is interesting in that it’s some early insight into iPad apps and website usabilty. It’s interesting where the best practices for the iPad differs to those for the iPhone – though it seems that they share a lot of the same issues.
It’s kindly offered up as a free download: Usability of iPad Apps and Websites
Currently Reading: Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior.
by Indi Young
This is a book from a series from Rosenfeld Media. The series includes Design is the Problem:The Future of Design must be Sustainable, Prototyping: A Practitioner’s Guide and Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks.
What I’m enjoying most about this book is the practical advice for integrating UCD into less formal design processes. I’m only part way through, and there’s a lot of “real” information.
4D Software Process, taken from “How Do You Design? A Compendium of Models” by Hugh Dubberly.
A few things struck me when I looked through the Information Architecture Institute Salary Survey, 2009 recently: there are a lot of different names (User Experience Planner/Designer/Architect, Information Architect, or Interaction Designer/Architect being the most popular) to describe roughly the same set of tasks/skills (Wireframing/Sitemaps/Process flows, Interaction design, and Audience definitions/Persona development being the most common).
I wish they’d gone a step further and mapped specific tasks/skills to each job title since there’s to be a lot of confusion as to what the difference is between an IA or an ID, or and UXD. The activities outlined in the Wikipedia definition of user experience design – for example – could easily apply to any of the above.
I think it also would have been worth while to have respondents indicate the environment they work in (interactive agency, consulting company or inhouse design team) and their primary focus (micro-sites, web sites, web apps, software or hardware development). The later particularly would have done more to distinguish the respondents than some highfalutin job titles.
The two pieces of data I’m referring to (below) and the survey results:
4. Which of the following job titles best represents your current position?
12. How much your time do you spend on these tasks:
Flow Chart Fun from loveallthis.com.
Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services
Kim Goodwin
This 740 page book is phenomenal! An excellent reference with lots of sensible advice and insight.
Later: The Research section of this book alone is phenomenal! And no where is the process of conducting interviews, modeling data and developing personas outlined in such detail. Proof – if proof were needed – that personas are based on research, not pulled from thin air.
About Face 3 Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin
I’ll be honest – I have never liked Taleo’s so called Talent Management platform. Over the years I have encountered Taleo a number of times when considering career opportunities with medium size companies. After the first couple of (negative) experiences I have more or less avoided using their interface whenever possible.
As a one of the talented being managed, I can see that the system is designed primarily for HR users, with little regard to the talent’s user experience. Today I was about to ignore my own better judgement (the position looked pretty good) when I was reminded anew why I avoided Taleo:
Huh?
I guess it’s better to be stopped in your tracks at the beginning, rather than to find out much later that the system crashes your browser (as it did mine) or otherwise fails to make your life the least little bit easier.
