Personal Infographics! Do you have your own?
There are today lots of tools to make a better personal presentation about yourself on web. RE.VU is one of them, I used this tool to make mine infographic and it was a good experience. It is liked to Linkedin and imported a lot of data from there. Have custom graphics and different themes.
Source: re.vu
It shows that user experience shouldn’t be based on what is inside the screen, but constructed by all previous situations that happens before and through the use. If you want to show something new, prepare the user to see what you will show, building the awareness.
Source: theteamw.com
GRID by BINARY shows a nice way to produce multimedia content to project, share and remember.
Very nice content from http://hibilly.com/ Tumblr
Source: hibilly.com
Why rounded corners?
Professor Nänni is saying that rounded rectangles are literally easier on the eye.Put another way, compared to square-edged rectangles, rounded rectangles are more computationally efficient for the human brain. To me, this is a revelation. An idea that at the very least demands more investigation.
Source: uiandus.com
Quirky has rapidly accelerated the traditional product development cycle, but perhaps the better example of rapid iteration is how I have launched three businesses in five years. Five years may not sound like very rapid anything, but trust me, it was.
In the spirit of the 99%, I want to share some of the tenets I live by – the ones that have enabled us to accelerate product development and make so many ideas materialize.
1. It is very much about ideas.
It’s been said that it’s not about ideas, it’s about making ideas happen. Who could disagree? Me. It’s very much about ideas. Lots and lots of good ideas. The trick is killing good ideas quickly and swiftly in an effort to focus on great ones. This requires being a ruthless prioritizer and relentless critic. You need to be able to sift quickly through a long list of ideas both good and bad, slicing and dicing until you end up with a great, effective, and elegant solution.
2. Find great critics.
Part of the idea-killing process is surrounding yourself with critics who aren’t afraid to give it to you straight. Quick, educated opinions, even if they’re harsh, are key to picking up and moving forward to your next iteration.
3. Don’t worry about the new, focus on the next.
Fail and fail fast. At Quirky, every product we develop, whether it’s a runaway success or a huge flop, teaches us valuable lessons that we can apply to future iterations of that product or other products. Whether it’s a failure, success, or something in-between, there’s always something to learn from each iteration. We’re never “done,” which allows us to stay on our toes and figure out what’s the next step for that initiative, instead of worrying about what was just delivered.
4. Set unrealistic deadlines.
This is where people start to think I’m nuts. Put ambitious goals on the table and publicize the heck out of them. This may force you out of your comfort zone, but that’s the best place for a creative person to be. Knowing that people are expecting great things will motivate you to actually make those things happen. And hey, if you fail, at least you’ll learn a good lesson for next time.
5. Distract yourself from your unrealistic deadlines.
It’s natural to get too caught up in an ambitious or unrealistic project. Make sure you take regular breaks to pursue other interests – reading, sports, cooking, or anything else that uses your brain in a different way. Doing other things allows your big project to percolate in the back of your mind in a way that can be surprisingly productive. The inspiration you’ll need to meet your unrealistic goal – that “a-ha!” moment – usually comes when you least expect it, especially when you’re trying to do something that’s never been done before.
6. Know what options D, E, and F look like.
Even if you follow all of the tips listed above, you’re probably not going to get it right each and every time. Most people will tell you to have a Plan B and C; I’d take it a step further and say come up with a Plan D, E, and F as well. You want to be flexible and always look as far down the pipeline as possible. If A, B, and C fail, use the best elements of those plans or experiences to create newer, better plans. There’s no shame in making an F if it’s better than A, B, C, D, or E.
7. Take a deep breath.
Living a rapidly iterative life can burn you out pretty quickly. It’s important to give yourself time between iterations to pause and regroup. Use this break to evaluate the previous project(s) and gather your thoughts so you can take on the next one.
—
Ben Kaufman is the 23-year-old founder of Quirky, a social product development company that launches a brand new consumer product each week.
Bret Victor’s principle is the importance of continuous feedback. To do so, he invents tools that enable people to understand and visualize what they are creating.
“Creators need to see what they are doing”
“Two golden rules of information design: Show the data, show comparisons”
“This is not paper, when you have a new media you have to rethink this things, you have to think how can this new media allow us to more media connection to what we made.”
Bret Victor also talks about how a “principle centered life” can help you to live.
“Every aspect of your life is a choice, but all default choices, you can choose to sleep through your life and accept the path that was laid out for you, you can choose to accept the world as it is, but you don’t have to. If there is something in the world that you feels wrong and you have a vision of what the world can be, you can find your guiding principle and you can fight for a cause. So after this talk I ask you to think about what matters to you. What you believe in and what you might fight for.”
“What is your principe?”
“This principle will guide you and make it easier to know if what you are doing is right or wrong.”
As the picture above show, the interface must be a tool to improve the capabilities of the user, help him to complete a task and make it easier to reach his needs. The interface must fits the problem and also fits the person.
A tool addresses human needs by amplifying human capabilities.
How many times did you passed a day long trying to figure out how to realize an idea on a software? We truly expend too much time and efforts to go over interruptions caused by bad interfaces (digital, physical, conceptual or social).
Source: worrydream.com
I was thinking about the fidelity of prototypes and notice that there are several parameters that have low, medium and high fidelity inside each one. Some days ago I did a sketch of the idea and today I decided to do a better diagram to explain the concepts of this parameters. Prototypes are used to validate hypothesis using the least effort possible.
Interface is a component of user experience, but there’s much more.
isn’t a step on the process. You don’t do it and then move on. It needs to be integrated into everything you do.
user experience design is not limited to the confines of the computer. It doesn’t even need a screen
People often think that [UX design] is a way to make products that suck into products that don’t suck by dedicating resources to the product’s design.
We have to try to make sure that we are presenting an overall experience that can meet as many goals and needs as possible for the business and the users
People cling to things like personas, user research, drawing comics, etc.,” notes Saffer. “In reality the best designers have a toolbox of options, picking and choosing methods for each project what makes sense for that particular project
Just because we know how to conduct some cool and useful activities and you know your business really well doesn’t mean that this whole process is a breeze. And cutting corners on some important steps is a recipe for disaster.
User experience isn’t just the responsibility of a department or a person, That compartmentalist view of UX is evidence that it is not part of the organizational culture and hints to teams not having a common goal or vision for the experience they should deliver collectively.
At best, it’s a common awareness, a thread that ties together people from different disciplines who care about good design, and who realize that today’s increasingly complex design challenges require the synthesis of different varieties of design expertise.
Good experience design is an add-on, not a base requirement.
Read more… Complete version of Whitney Hess
Source: Mashable
10 Steps to Personas (Poster)
- Finding the Users
- Building a Hypothesis
- Verifications
- Finding Patterns
- Constructing Personas
- Defining Situations
- Validation and Buy-in
- Dissemination of Knowledge
- Creating Scenarios
- On-going Development
(via contextualinquiry)
Source: hceye.org
LOVEEE this chart. Inspiring & informative!
http://mashable.com/2012/06/17/digital-jobs-salaries/
Source: heatherlovesdesign
