Author: Christopher Fahey
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Measuring The Morville Honeycomb
Peter Morville’s well-known “honeycomb” diagram (and accompanying article) illustrates seven qualities or “facets” of user experience design, going beyond just usability into six other areas where the user experience designer’s work is cut out for them. It’s a great diagram — I use it with clients to describe all the things we need to address,…
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“Snakes on a Plane” is Hurting America
I toyed with the idea of going to see Snakes on a Plane last night in order to be able to write a negative review about it with more credibility. I even considered the idea of making it seem like I went to the theatre with the expectation that the movie would be fun, thus…
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Where Writers Can Learn from Programmers
I generally consider myself a capable writer, at least in the technical sense. In particular, I think I have a pretty good understanding of how to punctuate properly in written English. But there are some areas where the language’s “standards” are in continual dispute, some areas where I think the standards are just plain logically…
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The Team is Integral to the Strategy
You can’t compensate for incompetance with prayer, luck, stubbornness, or waiting until your presidency is over, either. Demotivational poster from despair.com. I read an article recently that pointed out that when members of Congress voted in 2003 to authorize Bush to invade Iraq, they were voting not just for war with Iraq, but specifically for…
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A Movie Studio in Your Pocket
Stills from Nuovi Comizi d’Amore (New Love Meetings) by Marcello Mencarini and Barbara Seghezzi. Two Italian filmmakers, Marcello Mencarini and Barbara Seghezzi, have completed a feature-length movie shot entirely with a mobile phone. It’s an interview-centered documentary, which seems the ideal form for a mobile phone movie. Here’s what they have to say about the…
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Video Lingo vs. Web Lingo: What is “Broadband”?
TV snow, soon to join the record-needle scratch and the dial tone in technology oblivion. It’s well-known that the entertainment industry has its own distinct and secret language. Variety magazine’s slanguage is infamous, in which “mitting” is applause, a “skein” is a TV series, an “oater” is a western, and, most confusing of all for…
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Elegant Experiments
The classic Skinner box experiment. A comment by Steve Baty on my recent series about design research got me thinking about the fine art of experimental research design: Where research (in all forms) becomes a waste of time and effort is when the research design and methodology applied invalidate the conclusions _before_ they can be…
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User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 5: Non-Scientific User Research isn’t a Bad Thing
(This is Part 5 — the final part. Please read Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , and Part 4 first.) I would certainly agree that more rigorous methodologies can’t hurt in our field. But at the same time, I think that we need to be a little more honest about the value…
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User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 4: Research as Bullshit
(This is Part 4. Please read Part 1 , Part 2, and Part 3 first.) Okay, in this post I’m going to get a little down and dirty. I’ll show some examples of research which do not seem to really enable a design team to learn more about their users, nor convince stakeholders about correct…