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BlobFisk.comArchive for the ‘Design’ Category
Fantastic traffic light design
I love this concept – a really usable and innovative approach. The Eko light informs drivers just how long they will be waiting.
The Eko traffic light
Eko light is a simple yet, highly practical concept for traffic lights that not only helps preserve the environment by reducing pollution but promotes safer driving as well. Eko can be easily installed onto existing traffic light systems without much effort while significantly improving overall traffic dynamics.
Designer Damjan Stanković has a really excellent idea here
Furniture for a creative environment
As I browsed through my design RSS articles, one from Minimalissimo really caught my eye. I was struck by the loveliness of the products designed by a new outfit of young designers called Hundreds Tens Units.
When I get the opportunity to kit out an office for myself, I think I’ll be looking at things like these:
In a work environment of such fantastic design creativity is sure to bloom!
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Posted via email from Alex’s posterous
Personas and how to increase the quality of solutions
I recently gave a presentation about personas, and specifically how they can be used throughout a project lifecycle to ensure the highest quality. I thought I’d share that presentation with you. I’m a big fan of the approach to presentations advocated by Garr Reynolds in his book Presentation Zen. When I present my slides have no more than 1 – 3 words on them. That way people listen to what I’m saying. I also tell people that I am happy to share my slides and notes with anyone that would like them. My notes tend to be bullet points only, that way when I speak I’m not reading, I am working from my brain and it’s more of a conversation with the audience. This conversational tone is more engaging (I hope). Anyhow, on to the presentation!
Life before Personas
This is my vision for how life must have been for users before Personas came into widespread use. A barren desert with users wandering forlornly around the worlds of the internet and software. Stumbling around looking for an oasis of usability and accessibility!
It stuns me when I think that Personas really came into popular use after Cooper’s The Inmates are Running the Asylum. Things must have been (and were) pretty bad before that. Thankfully though, Personas are coming more and more into widespread use. There is still, however, some fear and reluctance towards their use.
Primarily this is down to the cost and time it can take to create them, and in some cases a failure to see the great benefits that they have. I think that we, as user experience professionals, need to be better at communicating their value and selling their uasefulness. Primarily we need to be able to demonstrate that the cost and time spent has far more value that just the Persona itself. (more…)
Design as a collaborative process
I am really enjoying IA TV, a blog I subscribe to and visit regularly. This blog posts regular videos of speeches, presentations and interviews from leading people in the fields of Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Seach/SEO, User Centered Design/Human Factors, Usability and User Experience. Some are very short 3 or 4 minute videos, some are longer – all of the ones I’ve watched so far have been enjoyable.
I’ve embedded (with appropriate link backs!) a couple already – but I really enjoyed this one by Bill Moggridge on design as a collaborative process:
Don Norman Interview Video
A really interesting video of an interview with Don Norman, which I spotted on UX Design.
User experience is really the whole totality. Opening the package… good example. It’s the total experience that matters. And that starts from when you first hear about a product… experience is more based upon memory than reality. If your memory of the product is wonderful, you will excuse all sorts of incidental things.