I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!
7 Ways to Increase User Participation Running a site doesn't only require Web development skills. Any site where the users can add content and communicate with each other requires a great deal of care and attention if it's going to be a success.
Presentation Zen: Presentation: A few minutes with John Cleese on creativity Below is an excellent 10-min video clip from a presentation by John Cleese expressing a few of his ideas on creativity. One of the main problems for many of use today is that we are always in a hurry and our minds are a bit scattered juggling many balls in the air.
The 5 habits of highly effective field researchers You may not get many chances to visit and observe your customers at their place of work, so you want to make the most of the opportunity. But what’s the best way to run a site visit? Highly effective field researchers show 5 specific behaviours. They create a focus question, audio record the sessions, take photographs of the environment, take notes and write up a short summary of the observation immediately
Three Reasons Why Persuasive Design Isn’t Enough to Influence Change :: UXmatters Persuasive design is designing to change people’s behavior, or actions. This design movement fascinates me, and I’m jump-up-and-down thrilled to see it get more attention lately. Forbes recently ran an article about Jon Kolko, creative frontman at Frog Design, and his perspective on persuasive design. Kolko noted:
Faceted Navigation: SEO and Facets « Experiencing Information Faceted navigation, when done well, can help customers find what they are looking for quicker and in a more satisfying way. This is good for business and for the bottom line. After all, customers can’t buy what they can’t find.
Why mobile is vital for in-destination bookings | Tnooz We have always known that activities tend to be the last thing that people book when they go on holidays.<br />
For the most part this is due to two important factors:<br />
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For online travel agency sites that provide airport transfers and activities, these offerings are treated as an add-on at the end of the booking after flight, hotel and car. This makes it very easy to skip during the booking process.<br />
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The majority of in-destination offerings are not available online. The ones that are provided are generally consolidated through multiple aggregators, such as a local destination marketing company and then the OTA.
Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!
I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!
Video: The amazing John Cleese shares his wisdom… – (37signals) The amazing John Cleese shares his wisdom on writing, creativity, getting in the zone, and interruptions. It’s great to see advice that we hear all the time reaffirmed from outside the tech industry.
Free Wireframing Kits, UI Design Kits, PDFs and Resources – Smashing Magazine To mock-up the user interface of a website, software or any other product, you’ll need some basic UI elements. And this is where wireframing kits and UI design kits come in handy. When you want to create a low-fidelity prototype for your projects, you can use these kits to give your idea a certain shape, keeping it abstract and not losing yourself in details.
The Top 5 Qualities of Productive Creatives (And How to Identify Them!) :: Tips :: The 99 Percent A recent BusinessWeek article reported that, “According to a new survey of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM's Institute for Business Value, CEOs identify ‘creativity’ as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future.” While the study’s results will come as no surprise to hard-working creative professionals, they do raise an important question: How do we identify – and hire for – the qualities that add up to creativity?
I love Seth Godin – if you don’t already, I recommend that you take a look at his (short and inspirational) Seth’s Blog. Here’s a talk he gave at TED on marketing that sums up why Seth is so great!
I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!
Reductionism in Web Design It’s important to define what reductionism is in the context of web design. While ideas towards reductionism vary depending on who you ask, a simple definition is that reductionist methods boil down complex things to simpler things, which might include modularizing the system into more digestible components; all of this while avoiding losses in value (fidelity) and usefulness.
The Web Strategy Pyramid: A Well-balanced Web Strategy To deliver a site that gives users the experience they are looking for, we need to set it upon a solid foundation of content, usable navigation, and strong SEO practices.
Beyond the Web Experience | Blog | Nick Finck | UX/IA Pro, Speaker, and Community Cultivator. I find it interesting that whenever I talk about experience design people assume I am talking about web based experiences only. An experience is the holistic perspective, everything from experiencing interfaces, websites, physical interfaces, the environment, even the smells and tastes. Within a single day I came across three seemingly un-related topics that were all tied into user experience.. or perhaps more accurately, the human experience.
Designing with Paper Prototyping | UX Booth Prototyping is key to any successful design. Paper prototyping is usually the first step, but does it fit into a world where mobile devices are king? Yes, but not using the conventional method. Combine the physicality of the device and the power of paper prototyping and you have a solution that’s fit for the new era of computing.
Defining Design – Surface vs. Substance | Front to back What is design? Most people will answer that question by pointing to a designed object – the iPhone, for example. Now that’s good design! The Mini Cooper. London’s famous map of the Tube. Anything ever built by Norman Foster. That’s design, right?
A List Apart: Articles: Flexible Fuel: Educating the Client on IA Information architecture (IA) means so much to our projects, from setting requirements to establishing the baseline layout for our design and development teams. But what does it mean to your clients? Do they see the value in IA? What happens when they change their minds? Can IA help manage the change control process? More than ever, we must ensure that our clients find value in and embrace IA—and it’s is our job to educate them.
I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!
UXMARKZ – Hand picked UX related resources UXMARKZ is a collection of hand picked UX related resources, updated daily. You will find interesting sites, articles, videos, images and slideshows from the field of interaction design, usability, information achitecture, user interface design and other. In order to prevent spam and keep the quality of listed resources, all submitions are moderated.
Predicate, LLC | Editorial + Content Strategy | Predicate, LLC | Editorial + Content Strategy It’s 2010 and smart folks get it: the case for content strategy has been made. “Kill the ‘content phase,’” Margot Bloomstein tells us, “and help the web grow up!” But the question of approach, of *how* to do content strategy, remains fuzzy. Where does a content strategy begin and end? What’s optional and what’s required? Is there such a thing as everyday content strategy?
Content Strategy – a knol by Jeffrey MacIntyre What is content strategy? Good question! We're working here to provide a basic definition of the field of interactive content strategy, its body of knowledge, and its practitioners.
Complete Beginner’s Guide to Content Strategy | UX Booth A common occurrence: you or someone you know wants to create content and have it published online. A slightly less common occurrence? Having that same someone articulate high aspirations for their content. For those select few, instead of creating content destined for some digital landfill, their content is special; it’s going places and it’s taking them, their brand, and their experience with it.
The Cooper Journal: Combating availability bias If you’re involved in the design of products, you run into this problem all the time. Stakeholders use their own most easily-retrieved examples to compare against, whether it’s the CEO who is influenced by the pundit he read that morning, or the product manager who knows that one guy who is just like your target market, or the designer who is really designing for himself — the self being the extreme “available example.”
Creative Review – What Interns Really Want A recent CR blog post requested advice for new graduates and interns about how to navigate the world of work. But what about advice for employers in return? As part of their final project at LCC, graduates Paul Cooke & Jemma Mackle created Mind The Gap, which includes ten pieces of advice for employers from interns…
Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!
Welcome to BlobFisk.com, the online home of Alex Horstmann. I'm a User Experience Manager (currently General Manager, User Experience and Design at TUI Travel plc) passionate about usability, user experience and accessibility.
I blog mainly about all things UX, Usability and IA; when I'm too busy to blog I will share some of the interesting bookmarks that I save.
