Archive for April 2008

17 Apr 2008 0626H

Apple Design Methods

Was passed this by a colleague, an article from Business Week, which reveals some techniques they use for ideation. Particularly useful I think are paired design and the pony meeting. We hold pony meetings all the time, reminds me of the lines from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, “they talked wildly about the death [...]

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14 Apr 2008 0611H

Things that impact user experience outside our domain

Just heard a story on NPR about TurboTax (which I just used for the 10th year in a row last night). Last year they didn’t anticipate the hit their servers would take. The cost? 10 million in refunds issued to angry users that needed to be assuaged. They’re not the only site: think about all [...]

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08 Apr 2008 0745H

On “Chinese Design Everyday”

Is there such a thing as Chinese design?
Of course there is design produced by Chinese, either Americans of Chinese descent or Chinese in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, or Singapore. That is Chinese design after a fashion. But is there a vernacular we can call Chinese design? What makes it so?
I would aver, as the exhibit [...]

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07 Apr 2008 1750H

All we have been doing in user experience

when it comes to online retail, has been done before, not in so many words, but, in parallel, by Paco Underhill and his firm Envirosell. Usability? Let’s call it customer observation, customer ethnography. Of course it is not really so, unless we were able to observe user sessions completely hidden from view. But we do [...]

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07 Apr 2008 0638H

Ellen Lupton’s Thinking with Type

While I’m busy processing my thoughts about the Chinese Design Everyday exhibit, now on its last days (closes April 13) at the Design Exchange in Toronto, I’ll throw this out there.
On a trek through that stretch of Queen St West in Toronto that’s been dubbed the Art & Design District I wandered into the tiny [...]

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