UX

"I hate Facebook, Facebook is stupid." This quip came from a 17 year old who was responding to the question of whether he thought it was good to be 'Facebook official' or not.

The City of Vancouver finally launched their redesigned website. I say finally as it was at about a two year long project and it was something that was long overdue.

Full disclosure: Analytic Design Group did the in-depth usability and accessibility assessment on both the mockups for the redesign as well as a prototype.

Within UX enterprise, reports are sent to our clients on a regular bases. In many businesses, it is the final deliverable where most time is spent with the composition and typographic details of the document. Documents such as RFPs, summary reports, task list, focus group ‘homework’ are still part of your brand and should be treated as important as those final presentations.

Several years ago (2003 - 2005) when I was an Information Architect at Creo (a once-upon-a-time tech darling in BC that got bought out by Kodak) I learned a very valuable lesson about the weight that data and evidence carried over my in-depth knowledge of the content and IA (information architecture) of the site.

There is talk of innovation everywhere. Governments and business are talking about ways to close the innovation gap, to stimulate the economy and growth through innovation. Within this talk there is a great deal of focus on development: developing new apps, developing new technologies, developing a culture of innovation.

“The power of the grid is to lift the designer outside of the protective capriciousness of the "self" by providing an existing set of possibilities, a set of rules.” Ellen Lupton 

Continue...

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” Vincent Van Gogh

Continue...

I currently own a couple late 80’s three-series BMWs. What I love about these cars is how responsive they are to my inputs. Steering, throttle, brake, the car does what I want it to do. With manual transmissions and ABS and cruise control removed, there is only one entity controlling the car, me. If I want to threshold brake through a corner, I can push the limits beyond what ABS would allow.

Stanley Marcus, of Neiman Marcus fame, once said, “There are only two things of importance. One is the customer, and the other is the product. If you take care of the customer, he comes back. If you take care of the product, it doesn't come back.” These days, that focus on customers and products comes together in the User Experience.

One of the primary draws to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets is the ability to download and install apps on the device. The paradigm of an application storefront began in early versions of Apple’s iOS, and has since been adopted by all smart device operating systems. Now what interests me the most about these storefronts is how people use them.