ARTICLES
Reflections on design practice + its impact on people, systems, and everyday life.
Synesthesia (Terri Timely)
Conducting a Usability Evaluation (Patrick Jordan)
After having listed various evaluation methods, Jordan provides a guideline for choosing the most appropriate method(s) depending on the level at which a prototype is developed and shows an example of how such testing might be conducted.
Evaluating Usability Throughout Design and Dev (Dumas & Redish)
Joseph Dumas & Janice Redish analyze the potential benefits of combining various evaluation methods as complementary tools for usability testing in the context of usability engineering.
Paper Prototyping: Fast + Easy UI Design (Carolyn Snyder)
Carolyn Snyder proposes a definition of paper prototyping as 'a variation of usability testing where representative users [...] [interact] with a paper version of the interface that is manipulated by a person "playing computer" ' (italicized in original, p.4).The aim of her book is to extend the practice of paper prototyping to a variety of HCI platforms for non-expert users to adopt as a practical tool for creating and testing their products during the development process.
An Introduction to Usability (cont...)
Designing for usability is a user-centered approach to design. Jordan lays out the different considerations to keep in mind during the design process and proposes a set of methods (some empirical, others non-empirical) that can be used as testing tools and discusses the advantages and disadvantages that come with each method. His writing allows designers to understand better that there are different ways of testing users and that some styles are more appropriate depending on the content of tasks involved in using a given product or interface and its relation to a demographic/technographic target audience.
Le Sens Propre (Cisma)
The Brain and the Printing Press (David Hubel)
Intercorporeality (Hubert Dreyfus)
Visual Hallucinations (Oliver Sacks)
Don't Make Me Think! (Steve Krug)
Steve Krug explains how we can create better Websites if we just stop wasting time on useless debates within teams and engage in 'usability testing' early on in the development process. His book provides the antidote.He distinguishes between designers and developers in what they consider to be a 'good' website design. Designers prefer pleasant layouts, whereas developers enjoy a good amount of features. This is also compared to the duality between commercial culture and craft culture. Which is a question of aesthetics versus usability. Ideally, we would want to have both.
An Interview with Don Norman (Howard Rheingold)
Norman stressed the importance of understanding the logic behind the act of designing, which includes considerations for the human factor. In this interview he sets ground rules for 'good design' and focuses on the idea that design should be inherently 'humane'; which is to say that technological tools need to be thought of with a user-centered approach. "Cultivate Sensitivity to Design" explains how experimenting (observing, testing, etc.) helps designers reach a place of "empathy" for the user and simplifies complex products or systems in accordance to audience feedback.
Golan Levin
As a quest for expanding the vocabulary of social practices and of the object-subject relationship, emotional technology (smart, intelligent) simulates human behaviour and creative energy. It revisits the environment anew for new types of interactions and explorations.Golan Levin is a software artist who creates screens and robotic objects that study sound, speech, movement, and gaze.