Discussion Archive: August 2006

14 Aug 2006 - 10:05am
0
6 years ago
24 replies
Jenifer Tidwell
2003

Common design mistakes?

IxDers,

I am thinking of putting together a half-day course for CHI 2007. As
I prepare for it, I'm curious about something. What, in your
experience, are the most common design mistakes made by novice or
untrained designers?

13 Aug 2006 - 10:32pm
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Jared M. Spool
2003

[CORRECTION] Informal Cocktail Hour: Wash. DC 8/16/06

[Sorry for duplicate: Got the date wrong in the first one. - Jared]

Greetings,

If you find yourself in the Washington, DC area Wednesday evening,
August 16, I want to invite you to an informal cocktail hour. A bunch
of us will be gathering just to talk about usability, information
architecture,interaction design, user experience, and whatever else is
on our minds.

13 Aug 2006 - 8:43pm
0
Jared M. Spool
2003

Informal Cocktail Hour: Wash. DC 8/15/06

[Apologies if you get more than one of these. - J]

Greetings,

If you find yourself in the Washington, DC area Wednesday evening,
August 15,I want to invite you to an informal cocktail hour. A bunch
of us will be gathering just to talk about usability, information
architecture,interaction design, user experience, and whatever else is
on our minds.

13 Aug 2006 - 10:38am
0
6 years ago
1 reply
Terms:
Mark Schraad
2006

A quick guide to readings

Note: I posted this to my blog (which is rarely read ;-), but thought
it might make a good starting point of discussion for the group. Many
of the posters here seem to be searching for references, short cuts
to expertise and experience, and general good insight. - Mark Schraad

A quick guide to readings

I have spent a great deal of time reading in the last few years. Much
of it wasted. It occurs to me that there are some patterns observed
that may be worth sharing.

12 Aug 2006 - 5:56pm
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Robert Hoekman, Jr.
2005

"Designing the Obvious" on Safari

Sorry for the shameless self-promotion, but my new book, "Designing
the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design", is
now available on the Safari Bookshelf as a Rough Cut (partial book).
It includes the first four chapters and chapters 6 and 7.

Aside from being about the character traits of great web applications
and how to design them, it also includes some quotes from interviews I
held with the likes of Jason Fried, Seth Godin, and Ryan Carson (among
others).

Check it out ...

12 Aug 2006 - 10:19am
0
Matt Davies
2004

Mobile UI Design Tutorial

For those interested in interaction and visual design for mobile UI,
I will be joint presenting a tutorial at the Mobile HCI 06 Conference
in Espoo, Finland on September 12th.

Details below:

Tutorial 3: Designing user Interfaces for future mobile applications
and services- a complete interaction and visual design process
walkthrough

Full day.

The tutorial will include presentations, instructor-led material and
collaborative group design exercises. The instructors will walk-
through their design process as a foundation to the day and show
examples of their mobile UI designs.

11 Aug 2006 - 11:37pm
0
Dan Saffer
2003

D4I Book Launch Party: Washington, DC

If you are in the Washington, DC area, I hope you'll join me for the
East Coast book launch party on Tuesday, August 15 from 7-9 at Nanny
O'Brien's, 3319 Connecticut Ave NW.

http://www.irishusa.com/nannys/

I'll be signing books and Adaptive Path will be graciously paying for
the Guinness! Hope to see you there!

Dan

ps. Bay Area folks: Mark September 7th on your calendars for the West
Coast book launch party.

11 Aug 2006 - 6:12pm
0
6 years ago
1 reply
jbellis
2005

Why not ask for *opinions*? (was "The oldPlay/Pause toggle")

I'd like to cast 100 votes in support of Christopher's argument. For every
100 requests that begin..."Does anyone know of a study..." how many times
does the list offer a high-fidelity response? I'd estimate less than 5%, for
reasons Christopher explains. This is a highly inventive and expanding field
and will be so for a long time.

11 Aug 2006 - 4:51pm
0
6 years ago
1 reply
Christopher Fahey
2005

Why not ask for *opinions*? (was "The old Play/Pause toggle")

> Can anyone point me to sources in which people have done
> usability studies of such a behavior in various interfaces,
> and how effective or not effective it is?

Why do so many list questions always begin with "Are there any studies
about...?" instead of "What is your expert opinion about...?"

It seems to me that quite often the question being asked is unlikely to show
up in any relevant research studies anyway.

11 Aug 2006 - 2:26pm
0
6 years ago
16 replies
liyazheng
2005

The old Play/Pause toggle

Hi IDs,

I have a design question for you guys. So music players like iTunes have a
play/pause toggle whereby the button displays the available action rather
than its state: when it's playing, you see that you can pause it and vice
versa.

Can anyone point me to sources in which people have done usability studies
of such a behavior in various interfaces, and how effective or not effective
it is?

We are pursuing a similar design and find ourselves putting a label on the
bottom of the big Play button to show that it's "not playing".