IROAI » design

Why is Great Design so Hard?

IROAI — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:35:43 +0000

“This blog entry is a followup to a previous one a few weeks back looking at the challenges of integrating great interaction and user experience design into organizations.” (Jason Hong)

Part 1 | Part 2

How to Design for Branding

IROAI — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:38:44 +0000

Complete Beginner’s Guide to Design Research

IROAI — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 01:10:06 +0000

“Research actually begins the moment we learn about a project, whether we acknowledge it or not. As user experience designers we aren’t content simply designing to specification. Instead, we ask questions; we take notes; we learn everything we can about our client and their audience—and that’s before we even begin! In this article, we explore the (purported) method to this (seeming) madness, appropriately known as design research.” (Andrew Maier via UX Booth) full article …

Designing Value Beyond the Inflection Point

IROAI — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:20:21 +0000

“Change is happening faster than ever before. With each and every day more people have the power to change the world. You don’t need have to have a MBA degree to see that a lot of industries are currently approaching or at their inflection point. In fact it’s fair to say that so many industries are hitting their inflection point, that whole economies are approaching their inflection point. We’ve actually become so good at management that this has caused our whole economy to come close to an inflection point! (Which is not strange when you consider that our whole educational system is aimed at doing actually that.)

In an economy dominated by industries that are hitting their inflection point, you need people that challenge the old and explore the new. It’s about creating new value instead of maximizing the existing. Innovation in this era is driven by insights, not efficiency. You need people who can provide these insights and translate them into viable offerings.” Marc Fonteijn (via BogieZero) full article

Design and Government

IROAI — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:43:32 +0000

Design Den Haag 2010-2018 researches the relation between Design and Government in Europe within an international context, from cultural, economic and social viewpoints. Starting summer 2010, Design Den Haag will organize a total of five public events biennially in the field of design, architecture and visual communication, with exhibitions, publications, lectures and debates, workshops and documentary films. Each edition will entail a collaboration between Den Haag and another European government Capital: Berlin (2010), Stockholm (2012), Paris (2014), London (2016) and Rome (2018). The project will conclude with recommendations concerning the betterment of relations between design and governance, and on governmental funds for the quality of design, architecture and visual communication. (via Core 77) article

Rich Internet Application Screen Design

IROAI — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:47:26 +0000

“Designing a rich Internet application (RIA) can test even an experienced design team. The hardest challenge is to blend Web and desktop paradigms to create a responsive and intuitive experience. Some paradigms that exist in the desktop environment are ill-suited for the Web, while many of the Web paradigms people are familiar with (paging, explicit refresh) are no longer necessary with RIA technologies like Flex and Ajax. As this space matures, we are learning more and more about which boundaries can be pushed, and which patterns transcend time and technology. While working on the book Designing Web Interfaces, Bill Scott and I explored hundreds of Web applications searching for these patterns.” (Theresa Neil) full article

Service Design: an Interaction Design Perspective

IROAI — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 04:34:14 +0000

Service Design: an Interaction Design Perspective

View more presentations from Jamin Hegeman.

full article

Using a Pre-Launch Checklist for your Website

IROAI — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:36:30 +0000

Accounting for every aspect of a new website isn’t easy, especially at the last minute.

The problems aren’t the details themselves, but rather the process of making sure that seemingly minor details don’t add up to sloppy work.

The best solution is to write it all down.

The worst solution is to not take a pre-launch checklist as seriously as the planning stage itself.

With the hundreds of details that go into building or redesigning a website, overlooking minor points is easy, especially as deadlines loom—or pass. But missing details detract from the quality of a website. full article

Search Patterns

IROAI — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:27:04 +0000

Search Patterns: Design for Discovery

View more presentations from Peter Morville.

Bringing User Centered Design to the Agile Environment

IROAI — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:02:18 +0000

“Envisioned by a group of developers, Agile is an iterative development approach that takes small steps toward defining a product or service. At the end of each step, we have something built that we could release to the market if we choose to and therefore it can assure some speed to market where waterfall methods usually fail. Agile prefers to work out how to build something as we go, rather than do a waterfall style deep dive into specification and then finding out we can’t build parts of the spec for some reason e.g. a misjudgment of feasibility, misjudgment of time to build, or changing requirements.” full article