A fascinating article in last Sunday’s New York Times documents a recent study in which it is shown that predicting the success of cultural products (such as movies or music) is impossible, and that a phenomenon called “cumultive advantage” — where people prefer something largely because other people already prefer it — will usually overcome … Continue reading Predicting User Experience Success
The word “experience” comes from the Latin word “experÄ«rÄ«”, or to try. It’s strange, then, that in modern English the two words, “experience” and “try”, have such different meanings: when we try something we tend to take a sip or a nibble, get our toes wet, or go for a test drive around the block. … Continue reading Experience or Don’t Experience. There is no Try.
I am speaking next Monday at the 2007 ASIS&T Information Architecture Summit in Las Vegas. My topic will be “Interaction Design Style“. It will be a highly visual romp through a variety of topic having to do with the concept of style and how it fits into the design of interactive systems: The definition of … Continue reading Come to my Stylish Talk at the 2007 IA Summit
Essentially, Twitter permits large and disparate groups of people to synchronize their activities with one another without there being any obligation to actually engage in real planning. When you announce where you are and what you’re doing, there is no “deal†in place that any action will be taken on the information you’ve shared, unlike the kind of expectation that you might have in a face-to-face conversation, a phone call, or even an instant message.
Six Apart, maker of MoveableType and TypePad, has apparently been recalibrating their product development away from targeting professional web developers like me and towards the massive “teen/tween” market. TypePad was the first step in this direction, but now they’ve been working on a new social networking app called Vox which is obviously designed to enter … Continue reading Social Networks are Brands