Recorded December 21, 2006, we discuss the big user experience stories from 2006, including the Wii, the Target accessibility law suit, moderated vs. unmoderated testing techniques, and more.

Present for this recording were Jared M. Spool, DeWayne Purdy, Lyle Kantrovich, Kyle Pero, and Nate Bolt.

(Duration: 27m 8s)

(Duration: 28m 15s)

Recorded December 21, 2006, we discuss the big user experience stories from 2006, including the Wii, the Target accessibility law suit, moderated vs. unmoderated testing techniques, and more.

Present for this recording were Jared M. Spool, DeWayne Purdy, Lyle Kantrovich, Kyle Pero, and Nate Bolt.

 

 SpoolCast #4.1: Where Did The Year Go?: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Recently, UIE team members, Brian, Ashley, and Josh returned to the office all a-glow after attending Edward Tufte’s one-day workshop in Boston. They really enjoyed it and I’m not surprised: Ed does a great job.

Josh Porter and I are visiting the San Francisco Bay area on Monday, meeting with several clients. If you’re in this area too, we’d love to meet with you. We’re hosting an informal cocktail hour in Palo Alto today, February 26, from 5:30-7:00.

Undoubtedly, the most important finding of the CUE studies has been the diversity of the results. In explanation, Rolf points to the simple number of usability problems in the average system: “If you have 500 problems to choose from on a non-trivial website, and the usability test basically finds 40 problems more or less at random, then it’s no longer a surprise when you get these different problems.”

In response to last week’s post on how long pages rule, Heidi Adkisson wrote a great post about how she’s seen users have trouble with long forms.

The Josh and Jared Show: Episode #1This is the inaugural episode of a new show we’re temporarily calling The Josh and Jared Show. Every few weeks, my colleague Joshua Porter and I will get together and discuss the interesting happenings in the world of experience design. This episode focused on the role of information architecture and some of the changes the discipline is undergoing.

The Boston CHI Chapter has put together a one-day event on January 26th that looks top-notch.

Maybe I’m an optimist, but I believe it’s possible we can arrive at productivity measures that work (meaning, when gamed, they produce the results we were hoping for) for design teams. These measures would quantify the results the team produced and compare them to the effort it took to produce it. From there, we could determine what practices and skills are most efficient at gaining the best results. We can also use these measures to help us make budgets and predict timelines.

Buxton suggested ideation is a different process than evaluation. In ideation, the goal is to come up with many different ideas, using each idea to suggest others. In evaluation, the goal is to narrow down the choices of ideas, honing in on the best idea. He suggested today’s usability process is evaluation, while ui design is ideation, an idea I agree with.