Category: User Experience Design
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A Tale of Two Libraries 1: Mapping and Thinking at the NYPL
Yesterday I took my FIT students on a field trip to see the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibition at the Science, Industry and Business Library of The New York Public Library. It’s a modest little show consisting of several dozen examples of maps, globes, and information graphics — as exemplified by Edward Tufte’s much-beloved…
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Retail Change Management
The coins-on-top method. Coins slip-sliding around on top of the paper bills. It seems like over the past several years, every cashier in the world has decided — or has been told by their bosses — to hand customers their change by first placing the paper bills in the customer’s hand, then placing the coins…
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High and Low in Public Sector Design
New York’s recycling mascots. They used to have an alley cat nemesis, too. In recognition of Earth Day 2006, here’s an environmental design challenge: Inform nine million people how, when, and what to take out for recycling. Your audience, the citizens of New York City, is the most diverse group of people in the world.…
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The Scope Creep
“Scope Creep”, also known as “Feature Creep” and “Creeping Featuritis“, is the tendency of development teams to constantly find opportunities to add new features to a product. It is widely considered to be deadly: It’s obviously destructive to project schedules, but adding new features also has an enormous impact on much more than just the…
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IA Summit 2006: The Science (and Pseudo-Science) of Personas
I attended a fascinating IA Summit presentation by Molecular’s Steve Mulder called “Bringing More Science to Persona Creation“. Lately I’ve been pretty interested in how different companies approach user personas, so this was a must-see for me. I was impressed with Steve’s insights into user persona creation, but this was tempered by a fear that,…
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IA Summit 2006: You’re *both* right!
Information architects reaching a sound compromise. One of the most potent themes emerging from the 2006 IA Summit is that on many issues of IA debate it’s possible for both sides to be correct. That is, that you can combine or connect two or more seemingly different design strategies or technolgoies to form a final,…
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IA Summit 2006: Wireframes I & II
Even as we develop more robust wireframing systems, flat printable wireframes are still easy to draft quickly, and easy for clients to consume. Two wireframe sessions in a row were scheduled on Saturday. It’s hard for me to say much about these panels because I have some pretty strong ideas about how to improve the…
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Travelocity Midnight Madness
This will be my very next phone call. After an exquisite redeye flight on Cathay Pacific, I arrived in Vancouver late on Friday a little after midnight. When I got to my hotel, to my dismay I was told that the hotel was fully booked, and that my Travelocity reservation was for Saturday night, not…
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SXSW Confidential, Part 3: Miscellany
Gotta clear out some final SXSW loose ends so I can go on with my life! At least they wont ever change this one, I guess. Virginia Murdoch suggested the creation of a Society for the Preservation of Paul Rand Logos. I could not agree more. I have a message for companies currently sporting a…