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.

If we pretend, on November 14th, nothing in the world is more important that “Usability” and we say and do things to alienate the people we actually need to improve products, we’re going to do more harm than good to our mission. A day to bash designers about “poor design” doesn’t help us in the long run.

Recorded October 2, 2006, we discuss card sorting techniques, social collaborative tools, the state of UX organizations across the country, and whether World Usability Day is a good idea or not.

Present for this recording were Jared M. Spool, DeWayne Purdy, Lyle Kantrovich, Rashmi Sinha, Nate Bolt, and Joshua Porter.

(Duration: 23m 12s)

Recorded October 2, 2006, we discuss card sorting techniques, social collaborative tools, the state of UX organizations across the country, and whether World Usability Day is a good idea or not.

Present for this recording were Jared M. Spool, DeWayne Purdy, Lyle Kantrovich, Rashmi Sinha, Nate Bolt, and Joshua Porter.

(Duration: 30m 33s)

Recorded October 2, 2006, we discuss card sorting techniques, social collaborative tools, the state of UX organizations across the country, and whether World Usability Day is a good idea or not.

Present for this recording were Jared M. Spool, DeWayne Purdy, Lyle Kantrovich, Rashmi Sinha, Nate Bolt, and Joshua Porter.

(Duration: 29m 58s)

(Duration: 27m 37s)

Recorded October 2, 2006, we discuss card sorting techniques, social collaborative tools, the state of UX organizations across the country, and whether World Usability Day is a good idea or not.

Present for this recording were Jared M. Spool, DeWayne Purdy, Lyle Kantrovich, Rashmi Sinha, Nate Bolt, and Joshua Porter.

The Greater Boston Chapter of the ACM is offering a very cool two-day event on the topic of AJAX. It’s a great price ($495 for two days if you register before 9/30) and has some kick-ass speakers.

Hans Rosling is a professor of International Health at the Karolinka Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. At TED, he presented probably one of the coolest information visualization talks you’ll ever see. He really shows what you can do when you pay attention to how you describe the story with charts.

If you find yourself near Hangzhou in early November, you should definitely check this out.

If you’re going to be in the Sydney area at the end of September, you definitely should check this conference out.