tech:design

2011-09-21T21:44:00.000-07:00

Mobile Video: 3 Ways to Improve the User Experience

2011-01-12T12:16:00.001-08:00

Los Angeles UX Planning Meeting

The Los Angeles "meeting of the UX families" happened last night at Pete's in DTLA. We had representatives from the LA - Usability Professionals' Association Chapter, IxDA Los Angeles, The UX Book Club and our trusted leadership from the LA UX Meetup Group. It was a great night of planning out our respective group's activities and floating ideas about what we would like to have happen as a community.

Some of the more fundamental issues we dealt with were the overlapping of group agendas, and in some cases, redundancy in programming. We managed to come up with some really great ideas for events, and somehow work out a tentative calendar for the first-half of 2011.

Some of the topics that were floated were as follows:: A UX Debate: An event that would be in the debate format

User Experience and Movies: Exploring the intersection between film-making, digital technology and user experience.

Artificial Intelligence and User Experience: With rapidly evolving technology, where does User Experience fit into the self-actualized system?

P.E.T. Design and Application: What is designing for P.E.T. or Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust?

Prototyping: The 2011 Refresher and evolved methods of...

Eye-tracking

Some of the established events for the first part of the year include:: A tentative meet up at Coloft in Santa Monica on January 25th, where the topic will be eye-tracking. (*See the LA UX Meetup Group page for the latest information on schedules.)

Hopefully we can keep the IxDA meeting on in February

Interaction Conference Recap, first week of March.

Schedule of all combined UX meeting should be the last Tuesday of every month.

This was from my personal notes for the meeting, so if there's anything incorrect here, please feel free to email me any corrections.

2010-12-06T15:48:00.000-08:00

Social Media Revolution

This is an interesting set of facts about Social Media. Done in a very hyper-media way, but the core of the message is interesting. Now, how to we monetize that? :)

2010-09-10T09:33:00.000-07:00

"Digital ADD" Breaking Through
Tuesday, Sept. 14th
7:30 AM - 9:00 AM

Akasha Restaurant
9543 Culver Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232

"Having a hard time breaking through the clutter in today's complex digital media ecosystem? In today's digital environment companies like yours are finding it harder and harder to engage users who have developed a serious condition we call "Digital ADD." How can you create products that stand out without having to make a lot of unnecessary noise?

Join us and a panel of experts from some of LA's Top media & entertainment companies in a dynamic conversation moderated by Chief Visionary Jose Caballer from The Groop."

Panelists will include: Mike Macadaan, VP of User Experience at MySpace, JP Bedoya, Sr. Director of Product/User Experience at Citysearch and Noam Dromi, COO of TempleHome, Producer and Co-host of MIPtalk, Co-Founder of Noco Media Group

More information:
http://www.groopthink.net/2010/09/08/5-reasons-to-attend-groop-skools-executive-breakfast/

Registration:
http://executivebreakfast.eventbrite.com/

Inkling for iPad: eTextbook Reading Done Right

2010-09-09T01:17:00.000-07:00

iPad Ebook Features review from Adaptive Path

Here's a great article from Ljuba Miljkovic on the new Inkling app for the iPad.

Inkling for iPad: eTextbook Reading Done Right

2010-09-08T11:30:00.001-07:00

The Rise of Collaborative Consumption

With the rise of products like Zip Cars and local sharing platforms such as NeighborGoods and Share Some Sugar, there has emerged the concept of Collaborative Consumption. While renting cars and sharing items is not a new concept, there is a school of thought that looks at this trend as a paradigm shift in market behavior. The idea that these concepts are "reinvented through social technologies and peer communities" is something very intertesting.

Click below for the complete article by Rachel Botsman.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Free - an extract from Chris Anderson's book

2010-04-06T01:19:00.001-07:00

Free - an extract from Chris Anderson's book

Posted using ShareThis

Web Semantics: information architecture of social experience design

2009-12-01T21:33:00.001-08:00

Web Semantics: information architecture of social experience design

Posted using ShareThis

Mobile Web Best Practices in User Experience Design

2009-11-25T13:41:00.001-08:00

Mobile Web Best Practices in User Experience Design

Posted using ShareThis

2009-07-20T14:24:00.000-07:00

Mortality & User Experience - Ignite Seattle talk by Ario

A very interesting mix life, death and User Experience.

2009-06-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

How smart is your phone?

Wired’s Guide to Smart Phones

2009-04-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

Sprint's customer service chat feature, better than talking to their people!

I just had to post this. I just completed a chat transaction with Sprint, and it went more smoothly and was more effective than any phone transaction I've EVER had with them! Nice work Sprint! I will never speak to anyone at your organization again! :)

2009-04-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

User Experience and Google

Marissa Mayer, Google Vice President of Search Product and User Experience, on USA Today's Talking Tech.

2009-01-15T09:27:00.000-08:00

Aquent presents the world of User Experience Event

I'll be speaking at this event, and doing double duty as DJ! Come out, it should be a lot of fun!

- Stephen
----
From the desk of Meri Gulyan:

Aquent LA has an event coming up on the 27th of February in Downtown focusing on User Experience. It’s going to be pretty awesome, we have 2 speakers, Stephen Ruiz and Josh Galban, and will have an open discussion after. Cheese, wine and DJ’s included!

Hope you guys and gals can make it! As the date approaches, I’ll send out specs on topics. If there’s something specific you’d like to discuss let me know and I’ll see if we have time to get that on our panel.

Cheers!!!
Meri
Interactive Account Manager

RSVP to mgulyan@aquent.com

2009-01-12T10:16:00.000-08:00

Best Career 2009? How about best career ever!

I've been in the User Experience profession for sometime now, and while there is a dedicated, exceptionally bright group of folks that practice this discipline, I have really not seen to much mainstream press. Until now. It seems that US News has picked up on exactly what it is we do and why it's so important. With the economy on the verge of collapse, it seems like the idea of making your multimedia experience more User-Centric seems to make more sense than ever. Finally. :)

Usability Experience Specialist Article

2008-12-15T11:31:00.000-08:00

Branding and User Experience

*This was first published via my employer's blog, at http://opinion.rapp.com/2008/12/branding-and-user-experience/

When was the last time you made an emotional connection? Was it with your child? A spouse? A parent? Were you empathizing with someone on television, or committing an act of road rage? Now, when was the last time you had this kind of connection with a brand? Is it something that you’re even aware of? What does it mean to have an emotional connection with a brand?

Last week I was asked to speak on a panel of User Experience experts here in Los Angeles. Our topic was Branding and User Experience. In my preparation for this panel, I started asking myself a few very important questions about my own consumer behavior. What emotional connections do I have with brands? How did User Experience play a role in this process?

To me, when I think of going for “coffee,” I automatically think of going to Starbucks. I can’t tell you why, or at what point this happened, but I do. When I think of “grocery shopping” I think of Whole Foods. Again, for no reason in particular, but I do. But what really started to bother me about this was the WHY? How had a generic concept, something like “going for coffee,” get transformed into “going to Starbucks?” Two words Experience Design.

Experience Design is “the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions, with less emphasis placed on increasing and improving functionality of the design.” In laymen’s terms, Starbucks has engineered an environment and experience so pleasing, that in my mind it is the ultimate coffee getting experience. This was kind of a mind-blowing leap for me. This happened without me conscious of the process.

In my digital-centric view of the world, I used to think of User Experience as what the user is experiencing in the digital realm. Is it on the web? On a mobile device? A kiosk? An intelligent billboard? The answer is yes, but also it is the visceral experience with brand itself. It’s the culmination of what the brand promise is, combined with the execution of the strategy we employee everyday for our clients.

The true “experience” comes from our capacity to extend our message beyond the brand’s function, and into the brand’s belief. Nick Platt, ECD in Los Angeles, gave me some insight into something called Brand Elasticity. The idea is we move the brand from “product” to “belief.” It’s the “ah ha” moment, the messaging strategy, the core of what converts a brand into something pervasive and industry changing.

Stephen Ruiz
Senior Experience Architect, Los Angeles

stephen.ruiz@rapp.com

2008-12-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

Hack 2 School

Found this great article called "How to Work the Design Blogosphere: Design Blog Editors Teach You How to Get Your Shit Published Online" on the Core 77 specialized "Hack 2 School" section of their site (which is really not accessible from the home page from I've seen). There's some fun and interesting stuff here.

READ IT HERE

2008-04-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

The Information Architect and the Fighter Pilot

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2008-01-25T14:36:00.001-08:00

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

2008-01-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

The Pirate's Dilemma

I just found out this guy was coming to speak in Dallas tomorrow night. Interesting perspective on innovation and technology.

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2008-01-16T11:22:00.000-08:00

Our cellphones, ourselves

2007-10-09T14:35:00.000-07:00

Q & A with Peter Merholz
I remember first meeting Peter in San Francisco in 2000. We met through a mutual friend when went to see a band at a small local venue. I remember the conversation we had about the web and tech culture and thinking he was on to something, and indeed he was.

7 years later, his rise to the top of this industry has been meteoric. In the Information Architecture, User Experience and Design communities, Peter Merholz is something of a Rockstar. The very term "blog" (shortened version of weblog) "was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999." He is one of the founders of Adaptive Path, is in constant demand as a lecturer and criss-crosses the world giving workshops on user experience methods.

Peter took time out from his busy schedule to do this interview.

TECH-DESIGN:

Tell me a little bit about your background, and how that lead to you starting Adaptive Path.

PETERME:

Well, I've been a geek since birth. I had my first computer at 12, an Apple IIe. I quickly learned that while I liked computers, I had no desire to program for them... I was kind of the ultimate user of the tool. My B.A. is in anthropology from UC Berkeley, which is also where I was exposed to what was then called "multimedia," through a job I had on campus. I taught myself Photoshop, Illustrator, and Director (remember Director?), and parlayed that into a job at the Voyager Company, the pre-eminent multimedia CD-ROM developer and publisher. I was exposed to the best in interaction design, and also found myself managing Voyager's nascent website.

I left Voyager to return to the Bay Area, where I got deeply involved in web design, both at agencies and as a freelancer, and after a couple years started calling myself an interaction designer. A big break came for me when Epinions.com brought me on as Creative Director, and I lead a team that redesigned the site from top to bottom. I grew frustrated with having a boss, though, so I reached out to some friends to see if they'd be interested in starting a user experience consultancy. I had recognized that, even in a failing economy, the demand for user experience work was on the rise... It was a skill set, a competency, just getting widely appreciated.

Starting a company also gave us the opportunity to create the kind of company we wanted to work for, very much in response/reaction to what seemed typical in the industry. From the beginning, we've always been open with our ideas, we've respected a live/work balance, and we're committed to delivering great experiences that improve people's lives.

We launched in March 2001, at the very bottom of the Nasdaq.

TECH-DESIGN:

What about the Adaptive Path's organization structure? Is it broken down by design, technology, market, etc? And how do you determine what the company deliverables are?

PETERME:

Adaptive Path has nearly 30 people. We don't have much of an organizational structure. We do have one fundamental split, between folks engaged in the practice, and folks engaged in operations, but that's about it. Our practice is made up of one large pool of people working together -- designers, project managers, strategists, researchers. The job titles you see on our site, though, are not hard and fast. Designers do research; researchers do strategy; strategists do design.

The company has very few standard deliverables. Deliverables are determined in two ways: 1) First, in the sales process. Through conversations with the client, we put together a project plan, and that project plan typically specifies milestones and deliverables. 2) Once a project is in-flight, the nature of the deliverables is reconsidered to make sure we're doing what is best for the success of the project.

TECH-DESIGN:

When you look at roles like Information Architect, Interaction differences and what overlaps? In your opinion, how does a usability professional mind the gap when facing these over-lapping job roles?

PETERME:

I have tried, fruitlessly, to abolish job titles at Adaptive Path. At
our company, there is simply no way that a job title can accurately
describe someone's role and responsibilities.

I tend to look less at roles than I do at practices, at activities.
An Information Architect conducts a series of activities, such as
content audits, content analysis, metadata development, navigation
design, wireframe design, etc. And Interaction Designer might develop
personas, write scenarios, design wireframes, specify functionality,
design user interfaces. A design researcher might observe users,
analyze behavior, develop personas, write scenarios. As you can see,
activities may be performed be people with different roles, depending
on that person's comfortability with that task, and how suitable they
are to do it.

So, I try not to care too much about the differences and overlaps. I
try to make sure that the members of my team represent a wide range
of complementary skills and experiences, so that we can bring a
variety of approaches to solving problems.

I think it's the responsibility of the individual practitioner to
recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and to collaborate in ways
that contribute to a holistic approach.

TECH-DESIGN:

What do you see as the evolution of the usability profession? What do
you see as future trends in the industry?

PETERME:

Well, it's hard for me to speak of the "usability profession," as I don't consider myself a usability professional.

In terms of the user experience profession, I think the inevitable evolution is to grow beyond the World Wide Web, and to apply our approaches and mindset to experience challenges across a range of domains, platforms, and channels. We're seeing companies adopt "customer experience" roles for people to track how the customer engages with the entirety of an organization, ensuring consistency and quality at every step.

For more information:
http://peterme.com/
http://www.adaptivepath.com/

2007-08-02T07:37:00.000-07:00

Shift Happens

2007-07-02T15:10:00.000-07:00

In the club

Today I joined the

I'm interested to see what I'm going to learn from this experience. Stay tuned.

2007-03-28T09:18:00.000-07:00

Perter Merholtz, President and founder of Adaptive Path (an organization considered one of the inovators of User Experience Design) has a post about Informaiton Architecture that's really facinating. Check it out here at Peterme.com.

2007-03-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

This is a re-post of a re-post. Really interesting perspective on Web 2.0.

2007-02-23T07:23:00.000-08:00

Graffiti Research Lab

This is a combination of uraban living, social messgage, technology and a streetwise group of artists. Will future graffiti writers be using lazers and software?

http://graffitiresearchlab.com/

2007-02-09T23:34:00.000-08:00

Why bad design prevails...

2006-02-01T15:31:00.000-08:00

Zen and the Art of Information Architecture

Doing an online reference search for "Information Architecture" yielded the following definition:

Information Architecture (IA) is the art and science of structuring knowledge(technically data), and defining user interactions (also see use case).

In my world, this entire process revolves around technology, web sites and the process of organizing information and content systems for web site users. In my 10 years of web design and deveopment experience, most everyone I've met in the industry has their own definition of what I.A. is supposed to be. From my vantage point, and as someone who has experienced what the lack of organized processes can yield, I can say that I.A. is is best defined by those who are sharing that common definition.

The web is chaotic, by it's very nature it's an organic system that finds order in it's complexity. If you look at the web as strictly a hierarchy of data, you're missing it's inherent model. The best I.A. should adhere to common standards among a larger professional community, however organizations (companies, designers and developers within an organization) themselves should define what the process is. Each group of stakeholders should be the authors of what I.A. should be to them as a group, and what their end goal is. It's can be frusterating, but the end process, the creation of in-house definitions and standards, insures that the group has a conherent and common frame of reference relvent to the groups goals.

In short, the process of organizing data, web content and page elements should take universal definitions of I.A., then taylor them to their own needs and goals as an orgainzation.

2004-02-19T07:46:00.000-08:00

The Enemies of Good Design
There's a running joke within the design community that goes something like "the biggest obsticle to good design is the client". While it's meant to be funny, there is an element of truth to this statement, and it's especially true when dealing with design for the web. I can't count the number of times a client/boss/over zelous file clerk, has wanted to make changes to a design that would fundamentally flaw the usability of a site. The quandry here is how to approach this "design" problem, while not making your client feel that there ideas are not valid.

The key here is educate-educate-educate! Most clients, even within the technology industry, do not have a good working knowledge of web design or usibility. In order for you to make a case for good design, you must first make your client understand the fundamental importance of what your doing. Sometimes this doesn't happen until QA, which if you're working in a small company, is an unforntunate reality (providing that you yourself are not the entire QA team, which is the case in many situations). Sometimes it doesn't happen until a site has been launched and end users start e-mail complaints in, which of course, is too late. I have found that the most compelling case for good design are the stats.

I have recently redesigned the SearchKing home page and top-level directory structure. If you compare the old site design to the new site design you can see that there was an entire rethinking in the information architecture, and priority made to certain key features of the site. This not withstanding, what made the case for this design wasn't my ability to make it a coherent site or even making is 100 times easier to navigate. What sold the design was the increase in traffic!

With web design there is a line-of-site logic. If there is more thought put into the design, you will have more success with the end result, whether your goal is to sell widgets or inform end users on a product. As a designer your goal is to show some tangable evidence of the benefit of good design, before going live.