Strategy

21 Oct 2008 1419H

Isn’t that . . . marketing’s function?!

Was reading a white paper from HFI the other day. Said they wanted to move beyond usability, which as I’ve noted in previous posts, as we typically experience it, is more normative than it is positive. In essence they described what Grokdotcom might call Persuasion Architecture, but which they are calling, Persuasion, Emotion and Trust. [...]

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18 Sep 2008 1005H

Vast oversimplification probably, but

If you invest in solid user experience, interaction design, and usability as central to your corporate values, then you don’t have to spend millions on an expensive media campaign, nor do you have to hire all these “gurus” to help people out: Besides the TV ads, Microsoft is adding content to windows.com, creating a related [...]

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17 Aug 2008 0850H

Effective design problem solving

By way of Noise Between Stations, there’s a line in this work, my emphasis added, by Nigel Cross’s Expertise in Design: Expert designers appear to be ‘ill-behaved’ problem solvers, especially in terms of the time and attention they spend on defining the problem. However, this seems to be appropriate behaviour, since some studies have suggested [...]

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17 Aug 2008 0647H

Biting the hand that feeds you

Seems a recent post at grokdotcom has inflamed the information architecture community: hardly worth mentioning really but for the strident responses drawn to that flame. I don’t think it’s wrong to say that interaction design or information architecture is faulty or point out how they are incomplete, and most mature disciplines at some point in [...]

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10 Aug 2008 0826H

Gap goes back to basics

From BusinessWeek: “For several years, Gap, under former Disney (DIS) executive Paul Pressler, relied heavily on focus groups and spent little time in the stores. Early on, Gap North American President Marka Hansen encouraged Robinson to have breakfast with store managers at Gap’s flagship on 34th Street in New York City. As he scribbled furiously [...]

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07 Aug 2008 1216H

Research driving UX projects

We’re in the production stream of a project now, and I’m looking back on an affinity diagram I put together after we’d had a group of about four or five users tell us their loves and hates (such strong words, I know) about a particular online service we offer. Hadn’t looked at it in a [...]

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31 Jul 2008 0822H

Personas for shopping malls?

Why yes. In what is being scored as a landmark event by the NYT (rather late post) at the beginning of July, real estate developers have consulted their targeted users in planning commercial real estate: Terry Montesi, the company’s chief executive, first hired two female retail consultants: Claudia A. Sagan and J’Amy Owens. But Trademark [...]

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30 Jul 2008 0641H

Brulant + Rosetta: crazy delicious?

Well, not quite. Since the dotcom days, I have always been somewhat suspicious of firms that have grown by merger and acquisition. In those days, rolling up firms for their assets and clients seemed to be the predominant exit strategy, and all the equity built up by the talent within went for naught as they [...]

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16 Jul 2008 0814H

Design Can Change; Interaction Design Supporting Sustainability

Maybe you all have seen this site, Design Can Change, from SmashLab in Vancouver, but I just tripped over it the other day. It’s a good read, and I think we’re all looking at ways to make changes as we can in the work we do. A new society will require all kinds of people, [...]

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04 Jun 2008 2214H

Do you make things? Real things?

So I get this email from this guy today. I usually don’t help out grad students generally. As a former academic I try not to get involved now. But the ghost of Victor Papanek won’t let me ignore this one. He said once, “There are professions that are more harmful than industrial design, but only [...]

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