User Centered Design Literature

The Tipping Point - A book every information designer should read /  by Cory

tipping_point.jpgI recently read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and must say it has had a profound impact on how I see information design and the world in general. It is the concept that little things make a big difference or "tip" an idea, concept, or product from mediocre to widespread adoption. The book is filled with many in-depth case studies that reinforce the concept and help you become more familiar with how our minds work, how our culture works, and what links it together.

One interesting thing the book mentions is how the TV show Sesame Street became successful by doing iterative usability type testing on kids. They used the testing results to drive tweaks to the show that eventually led to the success. They used testing to figure out what the show needed in order to "tip".

CEO of IDEO - Innovation Through Design Thinking /  by Cory

ideo.gifLuke from Functioning Form recently posted notes from a discussion with Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO on the topic of innovation through design thinking: So what is Design Thinking?

  • It’s a human-centered approach to innovation.
  • Being human-centered is unique to design, Designers think about people first, then the business second. The opposite is true for most companies.
  • In the traditional Venn diagram of People (desirable), Business (viable) & Technical (feasible), design thinking solves the problem from the People perspective
  • Design thinking is supported by a rich set of tools, processes, roles, and environments. Designers work like craftsmen. They know when to use the right tool at the right time.
  • There are 3 important phases for design thinking: Inspiration, Ideation, Implementation

Inspiration

  • Everything hinges on inspiration. We need new insights to drive innovation.
  • The right way to get inspired is to get out into the real world: use the world as a source of inspiration not just validation.
  • Great designers are great observers of life. They get out there to look, listen, and try.
  • What’s the difference between design research and market research? Predictive market research is used by marketing to gauge the size of an opportunity. It is primarily a validation tool. Design research is an inspiration tool.
  • Designers gain empathy by looking at the world through other people's eyes in order to understand things at social, cultural, cognitive, emotional, and physical levels.
  • Designers often look at analogous situations for inspiration. For example, when doing research for surgery procedures an IDEO spent a day with a Nascar pit crew.
  • Insights come from extreme users and not from center of the bell curve. There’s little inspiration in average usage.
  • Kids are extreme users. They magnify issues that we have as adults.

Ideation

  • Building to think is essence of the prototyping process.
  • Prototypes can be very rough but they should always enable engagement & discussion. Prototypes don't have to be physical but do need to be tangible.
  • Designers might go though hundreds of iterations of prototypes so they need to be quick and easy to build.
  • McDonald's prototypes service models and scenarios in a giant reconfigurable lab in Chicago.
  • Prototyping makes a difference. Mcdonald’s saw kiosk usage rise from 7% to 90% after IDEO ideation process.

The Designer's Guide to Web Applications /  by Cory

web-application-structure-220.jpgUIE has released a new e-book, "The Designer's Guide to Web Applications", and as a promotion for the new book, they have released the first chapter (10 pages), "Structure & Flows" for free as a pdf. The free chapter explains how to use Hubs to help architect an application structure.

Table of contents (the italics section is free): 1 Skeletons ....................................................1 1.1 The Hub ...................................................2 1.2 A Hub With No Data .................................5 1.3 The Interview ...........................................7 2 A Real Application: SupportSuite ..............9 2.1 A simple hub and spoke—or is it? ...........10 2.2 An interview appears! ............................12 2.3 Hubba hubba .........................................13 2.4 A hub for hubs .......................................16 2.5 Finishing touches....................................17 3 Revealing Structure in the Design ..........19 3.1 Tabs ......................................................21 3.2 Menus ...................................................23 3.3 Tab Menus .............................................26 3.4 Breadcrumbs ..........................................29 3.5 Links ......................................................32 3.6 Titles .....................................................36 3.7 Progress Indicators .................................37 3.8 Knowing which element to use ................39 4 Designing the structure ...........................40 4.1 Command Architecture ...........................40 4.2 Seeding the structure ..............................41 4.3 Enter the users .......................................42 4.4 As we learn more, more changes .............44 4.5 There are many possible structures ..........48 5 Creating a Winning Design ......................49

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Free e-book - "Getting Real" /  by Cory

37.gif37 signals has released their book, "Getting Real" for free. The pdf still costs $19, but you can read it online for free. I would highly recommend this read to just about anyone that works on web apps, it may change the way you think about the web application development processes. Heres an excerpt about the book from the 37 Signals website:

Want to build a successful web app? Then it's time to Get Real. Getting Real is a smaller, faster, better way to build software.

  • Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics, wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.
  • Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features, less paperwork, less of everything that's not essential (and most of what you think is essential actually isn't).
  • Getting Real is staying small and being agile.
  • Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that people are going to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.
  • Getting Real is about iterations and lowering the cost of change. Getting Real is all about launching, tweaking, and constantly improving which makes it a perfect approach for web-based software.
  • Getting Real delivers just what customers need and eliminates anything they don't.

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