What’s under your software’s hood? Whether your developing for the desktop or the web, could you be borrowing more? Simson Garfinkel’s piece “The ‘New’ Apple” in the MIT Technology Review talks about how an organization traditionally known for being proprietary has become a shining example of building upon the work of others with Open Source Software.

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: 28m 37s)

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.

Continuing with the trend of second generation web-based applications, I just watched a brilliant video created by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. It’s an under-5-minute look at how blogs, wikis, web feeds, social networking sites, and folksonomies are revolutionizing our culture. Without further ado, The Machine is Us/ing Us.

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.

UIEtips 12/06/06: Tips for Designing Powerful RIAs: An Interview with David Malouf and Bill Scott In this issue of UIEtips, we’ve put together some of the best parts of the discussion Jared Spool and Josh Porter recently had with Bill Scott and David Malouf. You’ll read what David and Bill think about choosing AJAX versus Flash, what’s a good starting point for learning these technologies, and how design patterns can help with the development process.

An astute virtual seminar attendee asks:

“We are reorganizing the content on our site (Customers continually tell us they can’t find things, the context is overwhelming, etc.). I was hoping to use tagging to get an idea of how our customers look for things and then base the structure accordingly. Is this appropriate?”

Yes, this is definitely appropriate. Any insight into how customers look for things is valuable. If you can gain knowledge about how people value your content from the way they create and use tags, then you have a virtual obligation to do so!

In the virtual seminar I gave on tagging last week we had some great questions from attendees. We had so many, in fact, that we couldn’t address them all in the time we had.

Several of the questions dealt with a common concern: tags are messy…

UIEtips 7/27/06: Designing Powerful Web Applications: An Interview with David Malouf

UIE’s Joshua recently interviewed David (Heller) Malouf, a premier Interaction Designer, to discuss the issues involved when development teams are thinking about designing web applications using AJAX and RIA.