The persona's you're working with probably don't include someone who is visually impaired. Your persona's are probably all white, young and/or dynamic. None of your persona's went through a tragic event recently.
Be careful when creating emotional experiences for the lucky ones. You shouldn't congratulate everyone with another great year, and/or a better year to come.
Don't try to be more personal than you (or your system) can be.
See also this thread on persona's
I've been able to stay away from PHP-based projects for quite some time. Until recently. I needed a small API. The idea was that the API would be transferred to a relatively old server that had been running stable for years and the client didn't want to risk installing additional script interpreters on it. It might even have been my own suggestion, it would be a really small API, requiring no special changes on an already operational 24x7 managed server. On top of it I'd write a modern style front-end, running entirely in the browser.
Of course the API that was intended to be simple got a bit more complex. I wanted the API to output clean JSON messages, which required some data mangling, as data was stored in CSV's, TSV's, and misused XML-files or only accessible through crappy soapy API's. So what does present-day (well, the Red Hat PHP version I was able to use is still in 5.x-series) PHP look like? TL;DR: sometimes it was definitely ugly, but at I can happily live with the cod…
Art is everything men made. Most of what we see is men made. But the art that typically makes it to our museums, stages and concert halls is the art that makes us wonder, rethink, that shocks and discomforts us, that stresses and distresses but also can heal and comfort, or just let us weep. There is no single definition.
The definition doesn't matter. Some functions may be more or less important to you as an observer. To me as someone who needs to be able to think creatively, the wondering, ever critiquing and chaos inflicting aspects of art are most important. Chaos often leads to new insights. And in music I enjoy the fact how it can give place to the emotions that I experience or have experienced and at other times it allows me to better understand emotions of others.
Venues give place to really sit down and rethink and absorb. But you can also immerse yourself in a movie or documentary or a record playing in your house. Although, like with relaxing at home versus going o…
When reading about user experience, you might think about it as the softer side of technology. You read about persuasive technologies, emotional design, that kind of stuff. But user experience is more than that. As it is more than just interaction design too. To me user experience is mostly about the interaction with and of the product within the entire ecosystem the end-user is operating in. Hence, some of my thinking around user experience might get a bit more technical because the ecosystem might feature useful technical advancements. But in the end the only thing that matters is the complete end-user's experience, in which your piece of tech may only (have to) play a small role.
“Indien u vragen heeft, reageer dan niet op deze e-mail, maar …”
Bedrijven die e-mails versturen met noreply@{bedrijfsnaam} zeggen eigenlijk het volgende: we willen eigenlijk niet bereikbaar zijn, praat niet tegen ons: We willen niet luisteren naar klanten.
Hetzelfde geldt ook voor bedrijven die bellen zonder dat ze hun nummer willen laten zien in het scherm. Of geen afzender op de enveloppe zetten als ze nog fysiek hun brieven laten afleveren. Probeer ons niet te bereiken, dat vinden we niet handig. 
Wanneer houdt die verveldende noreply@-gewoonte nou op? Er zit geen technische reden achter, sterker nog: doordat veel ‘vervelende’ e-mails van ‘no-reply’ adressen komen wordt het al snel als spam aangemerkt.
Dus wilt u als bedrijf communiceren met de klant, denk dan nog eens na over wat ‘noreply’-betekend.
Het idee van een interactief verhaal met wisselend verloop spreekt mij aan, maar ik weet dat het een contradictie is. Een verhaal kan eigenlijk maar op één manier juist verteld worden. Een interactief verhaal is vanuit deze optiek niet veel anders dan interactief een boek selecteren in een boekenwinkel onder begeleiding van een verkoper (m/v). Hoe modern is dat?Wel kan een verhaal interactiviteit ondersteunen. Een verhaal waarbij je door kunt vragen; Een film waarbij je op de zonnebril van een acteur kunt drukken en direct kan bestellen; Een krant waarbij je nieuws naar achtergrond, naar opinie schakelt; Een boek waarbij je de recepten van alles dat gegeten wordt kunt nalezen. Verhalen hebben een kracht om mensen te verleiden, maar is om te verleiden een verhaal nodig? En is de beste manier om iets te laten verleiden iets dat interactief is verhalend te maken?
Ik begon weer na te denken over deze kwestie na het bijwonen van een kennissessi...
Yesterday, Seth Godin was making an
argument for micro magazines, which he defines as digital (e.g.
PDF), subscriber based (e.g. RSS or email), focussed, community and ad
supported containers of well written pieces. The concept of magazine
seems to revive electronically. With the launch of the iPad many
publishers are rushing out electronic, slightly more interactive,
equivalents of their paper based media. I don’t really mind they are
doing it, it saves paper and distribution costs.But I am not excited
either.The main reason that I am not excited about the electronic (micro)
magazines is because of the difficulty of ‘sharing’ in the non web
formats they use. Sharing an article from an iPad app, or from a PDF, is
harder than just bookmarking it, or sending the link to a friend. Or
starting a discussion around a linked article. There is no uniform
interface.Yes, there is hardly an end to all the content that is published online.
But I don’t see …
Mensen vragen mij wel eens wat ik doe. Zo’n gesprek loopt vaak uit in
schaamte weglachende opmerkingen over dat zij ook zo veel moeite hebben
met het gebruiken van de nieuwe apparatuur (veelal oudere mensen),
waarop ik gelijk op kan reageren dat dat nou precies is waar ik mijn
bijdrage denk te kunnen leveren. Jongere mensen reageren vaak zo van,
uhuh… (ze zijn immers alleswetend) en beginnen over coole gadgets,
waarna ze in de loop van het gesprek er ook achter komen dat de techniek
toch eigenlijk niet zo werkt zoals ze wilden dat die zou werken.
Techniek frustreert toch nog steeds te vaak. En dan kan dat ene apparaat
wel perfect werken, toch moet er vaak ook informatie van het ene
apparaat (lees ook b.v. software) naar het andere apparaat. En daar gaat
het, ondanks dat we in dit moderne leven zo vaak informatie
uitwisselen, nog vaak mis.Dus. Wat kan ik voor uw organisatie betekenen? Wel, volgens mij kan
een bedrijf op de lange termijn alleen maar succes…
Because computers can multi-tasks doesn't mean they should. People are actually quite bad at multi tasking. Computers, like any other tool, are made to support tasks. Make things easier to accomplish. Requiring users to multi task is far from supportive. Every interruption, which switching interfaces is, takes time to recover from. Hence, instead of promoting the idea of multi-tasking, computer makers should think more about completing tasks users are confronted with.
Instead of designing top notch 'solutions' for an entire 'office in a machine', computermakers should design solutions for a single clerk's job, or maybe even just a part of that job and find a way to nicely integrate in that clerk's job. Computers, or the softmachines powered by them, should be attempts to support an entire task without forcing the user to switch interfaces during task execution. Bad and good designs should be tested against the vision of perfect support for a single (ty…
In Dutch, there is a small joke that people tell to children: "ork ork ork, soep eetje met een…" (which translates to: "ork ork ork, you eat soup using a…" Most children will initially say 'vork' ('fork'), but of course the right answer is 'lepel' ('spoon')… and while most children know this, most answer incorrectly. The example above is a typical example of how order of presentation can influence an answer in a questionnaire.
Not so long ago I was phoned by a representative of the Dutch bureau of statistics, CBS. It was an interview about the volunteer work and my willingness to do more. After about 6 or 8 questions, like "Do you volunteer in work for a sports society?", "Do you volunteer in work for elderly? " … etc., a question was asked whether I'd like to do more volunteer work. Well, hell yes! I was feeling guilty after having answered so many times 'no' to 'little' to each of the questions she was asking. Yes, I think everyone has a responsibi…
Ryan, at the 37 signals' signal vs. noise blog, quotes an article at techradar about 'Why Apple is great at interfaces when others are not':I like how Nick draws a connection between good UI and ‘fun’. We don’t talk much about fun in usability circles.In the techradar article, elements like the nodding password entry box when a faulty password is entered, and other supposedly minor adjustments to the interface are making the interface more 'fun' to work with. But I'd say that that isn't really about fun, but has more to do with 'identity'? The computer can be made more personal with only slight tweaks. It can be made to have character.Fun to me is more like little features that may make you smile every now and then… that, however, doesn't make a great interface. Character, identity, on the other hand, could. It allows you to get to know the beast in front of you. Connect. Understand. Understandable interfaces make usable, user friendly, machines. Machines you…
For little over a month, I'm working at a start up named 'the Bean Machine' based in Enschede, The Netherlands. It's a fresh new startup with a clear vision on project management: doing it with scrum. So if you were wondering where murb is hanging out, its over there. My ideas about agile development and how my passion of user experience/interaction design can be integrated in this development method are mainly posted at the beanblog (sorry, in Dutch only). I will try to post the interesting things on this blog as well… especially when I'm at a stage that I can really share best practices (I'm still learning).
It turns out that I finally get to understand what I would like to specialize in, a designer of user experiences in the field of I(C)T. But what should that entail? What is it that a User Experience designer can add to the value of a project?A project starts with a goal, or maybe more like a question, e.g. 'I would like to have something that helps you in getting X done'. If you think about it, solving X may be simple. You gather a set of requirements, translate these requirements in a nice graphical user interface, which may even correspond to all accessibility guidelines available at that time and would work of course flawlessly from a technical perspective, and get it implemented. If done correctly, the client will initially be happy (because it does exactly what it was supposed to do, and you may have gotten him or her to agree on a few sketches and flowcharts you drew in the meantime). Such a process, however, is not considering the needs of the actual users. It is hard to get …
Dit artikel van murblog van Maarten Brouwers (murb) is in licentie gegeven volgens een Creative Commons Naamsvermelding 3.0 Nederland licentie .