Experience IS the Product…and the only thing users care about
Peter Merholz reviews Kodak, iPod, Tivo, Target Pharmacy, and Flickr to support his stance that the experience is the product and that we should stop developing just products.
Permalink | Thursday, June 07, 2007
Organising Knowledge (book review)
I used to feel dizzy when taxonomies and knowledge management (KM) were mentioned in the same sentence. And I tried to understand why my feelings were so biased. Was it because, despite having attended numerous talks on KM and read numerous journal articles on taxonomies, I still could not grasp that damn concept? Or was I trying, in vain, to connect the world of KM and taxonomies to design, a world I’m more familiar with. Something was telling me there was a connection – that taxonomies will help me better understand my world of user experience and design. But I just could not find the clues.
That all changed when Patrick Lambe asked me to review a draft copy of his new book. I’ve known Patrick for quite a long time and the placeholders I’ve developed around KM and taxonomies were largely a result of watching him deliver workshops and speak practically about wide ranging topics, from social network analysis to brand to customer service, and yes, on KM and taxonomies as well. His book weaves through all of this and more to explain, in a practical manner, what taxonomies have to offer and how they can be used for different purposes and in different disciplines, be it for information management or for project management.
Patrick treats the subject in a practical and pragmatic way. Right upfront he tells us that organising knowledge is not all about logic. That there is both a logic-part and a magic-part to it. The logic tells us what needs to be done, and the magic comes from how it is done.
“Taxonomies are products, things that can be used. But in many ways, the processes that produce our taxonomies are more important than the things themselves.”
For me, Chapter 2: Taxonomies can take many forms, was important for setting the baseline for the entire book. In this chapter, Patrick tells us that taxonomies do not always have to take the form of a hierarchy. There are other representations such as lists, trees, matrices and facets that work better in different situations. This cuts through several disciplines such as information visualisation and information architecture.
Chapter 6: What do we want our taxonomies to do, was one that gave me the confidence to discuss knowledge and taxonomy work openly, with friends and colleagues, and more importantly to spot and identify the many charlatans in seminars and conferences.
Chapters 3-5 deal with how taxonomies actually benefit the organisation, from setting up the right infrastructural connections to managing knowledge assets. The chapters come with plenty of cases and examples. The case on Victoria Climbie tragedy is something that will stick with me. This case is about how, despite having clues, hints and information on persistent abuse and battery of an 8-year old, the healthcare and child protection agencies could not stop her eventual murder. And all because they could not share the information they had.
The last section of the book is on preparing, designing and implementing your taxonomy project. I found this section useful even though I’m not in the hardcore taxonomy business simply because the process taught me several things about incorporating and using knowledge in my own work. This goes back to what Patrick mentioned earlier on the process being more important than the “thing” itself.
There are other reviewers who have mentioned that they finished the book in a day or on a long haul flight, this was not the case with me. I took my time. There were sections that were hard going, where I had to refer to previous chapters, or go through a few times. I read the book twice already. But that’s just me.
So, all in all, I would recommend this book to those who want to know how to make use of the knowledge they find around them.
Permalink | Saturday, June 02, 2007
Make your website mobile friendly
Many are asking for mobile friendly websites these days. And this article tells you how to do it.
The number of mobile devices loose in the world greatly exceeds the number of desktop (or laptop) computers filling up desk and table space in offices and homes. The number of people who might view your site while clutching a screen measuring anywhere from 100 pixels to 640 pixels in width increases daily. Creating mobile-friendly content is quickly becoming less of an occasional add-on and more of a standard practice.
Permalink | Saturday, June 02, 2007
The Power of Power Laws
John Hagel has written an article on how having a perspective -- either Gaussian or Paretian can affect your business. Gaussian perspective deals with averages, while the Paretian perspective looks at relationships and how to excel at them.
Business executives also are drawn to a Gaussian world. At one level it is much simpler – there is a meaningful “average consumer” that can be used to scale products and operations around – and it is a much more predictable world. In many respects, the history of Western business in the twentieth century represents an effort to build scalable operations through standardization designed to serve “average consumers”.
Permalink | Saturday, June 02, 2007
Wikis in plain English
First it was RSS in plain English, and now Common Craft folks have given us Wikis in plain English. Cool stuff.
Permalink | Friday, June 01, 2007
IA onesheeters
Nice idea. Something clients might like.
Permalink | Monday, May 21, 2007
The Periodic Table of the Elements
InfoVis article on one of the most outstanding achievements in information visualization - Dmitri Mendeleev's Periodic Table.
Permalink | Thursday, May 17, 2007
The Secret of Apple Design
This story from Technology Review takes a long hard look at what makes products from Apple so successful.
To whatever degree Apple can be said to make products with a distinctive genetic code, they can also be said to have inherited most of their traits from a single parent: founder Steve Jobs. Jobs left the company in 1985 and didn't return until 1997. Nonetheless, according to many who have worked at Apple, sometimes in close proximity to Jobs, it was largely he who established the company's emphasis on industrial design. Indeed, some would say that he made design a higher priority than technology.
Permalink | Saturday, May 12, 2007
Wiki pedagogy
Renee Fountain has written an in-depth article on using wikis in education. Interesting stuff if you can wade through the dense text.
Permalink | Monday, April 30, 2007
A methodology for Web2.0 collaboration experiments
Dave Pollard has written another insightful article on sparking collaboration in organizations. His method revolves around self-motivated champions who shoulder the responsibility of making collaboration work.
Permalink | Monday, April 30, 2007
Designing for Web 2.0
Luke Wroblewski has a presentation on using the visual communications ecosystem when designing web applications.
In the presentation I point out how the ability of visual communication to express core customer and brand messages across multiple forms of media has not changed much. However, shifts from locomotion to services, from pages to rich interactions, from sites to content experiences, and from content creation by webmasters to everyone online have introduced unique opportunities and constraints that the presentation layer of Web applications needs to account for.
Permalink | Friday, April 27, 2007
Measuring the Success Of a Classification System
Iain Barker has written an insightful article on using card sorts to evaluate and measure the effectiveness of the top level navigation in websites.
Permalink | Friday, April 27, 2007
When Observing Users Is Not Enough: 10 Guidelines for Getting More Out of Users’ Verbal Comments
Nice article to get one's bearings when preparing for user research engagements.
To help you get more out of users’ verbal comments, this article will provide ten guidelines and various interviewing techniques I’ve learned from experience. These techniques work best if they are used with genuine empathy for users. If users feel that you are not genuine—even if you are not aware of it or try to hide it—these techniques won’t work. I’ve described most of these techniques within the context of usability testing, but some techniques are also applicable to other user research activities—such as field studies and task analyses—and to stakeholder interviews.
Permalink | Saturday, April 21, 2007
Google Lays Out Its Mobile User Experience Strategy
Google breaks down mobile user behavior into 3 groups: "repetitive now", "bored now" and "urgent now".
The "repetitive now" user is someone checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.
The "bored now" are users who have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behavior group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don't offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.
The "urgent now" is a request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries.
Permalink | Friday, April 20, 2007
Enterprise IA methodologies: starting two steps earlier
James Robertson has published an article on the need to use a different approach when looking into enterprise IA design issues. He advocates the use of Needs Analysis and Strategy & Scoping research at the start of the design process.
Permalink | Thursday, April 19, 2007
It’s all about location, even in a goat farm
When it's feeding time, the goats in the front of the barn get all the hay. So how does one design the feeding experience? This goat farm I visited put the "kids" in front and the exotic species at the back. This makes many to purchase more hay packs to feed that one with the "really long ears". Nice strategy, seems to work like a charm.
Permalink | Sunday, April 15, 2007
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
Good article by Jason Beaird on what makes beautiful websites tick. He uses the same principles of good design (symmetry, balance, grid, etc.) and applies it to the web.
Permalink | Sunday, April 15, 2007
Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful
Jakob Nielsen's latest alert box is on using breadcrump navigation and not messing with its well-established format.
Breadcrumbs won't help a site answer users' questions or fix a hopelessly confused information architecture. All that breadcrumbs do is make it easier for users to move around the site, assuming its content and overall structure make sense. That's sufficient contribution for something that takes up only one line in the design.
Permalink | Sunday, April 15, 2007
What’s the organising principle here?
Found this at a local toy shop. I wonder what organising principle he was thinking about?
Permalink | Wednesday, April 11, 2007
UX Methods
Jess McMullin of nForm has created a UX method deck of 16 deliverables and ideas that UX professionals can use.
Permalink | Monday, April 09, 2007
The Luxury Touch
A Strategy+Business article that looks at how luxury brands manage their service frontiers.
Companies like Ritz-Carlton, Nordstrom, and Lexus can guarantee service that goes the extra mile because, in effect, they’ve programmed their organizations to foster customer-centered behavior in employees at all levels. Although there’s no single process for achieving high levels of customer satisfaction, four principles are common to nearly all top-performing luxury brand companies:
They create a customer-centered culture that identifies, nurtures, and reinforces service as a primary value.
They use a rigorous selection process to populate the organization with superior sales and support staff. The impulse to care about accommodating customers cannot be taught to people who are not predisposed to it.
They constantly retrain employees to perpetuate organizational values and to help them attain greater mastery of products and procedures.
They systematically measure and reward customer-centric behavior and excellence in sales and service to enforce high standards and reinforce expectations.
Permalink | Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Setting Up Business Stakeholder Interviews - Part I
Michael Beavers has written an article on holding stakeholder interviews. Part I explains how to "pay special attention to the influence of company politics on stakeholder interviews and how you can avoid some of the biggest pitfalls by properly recruiting subjects and setting up your interviews in a way that minimizes the effects of client bias."
Permalink | Friday, March 30, 2007
IA Summit 07 presentations
Slideshare presentations from the IA Summit 07 are now online.
Permalink | Thursday, March 29, 2007
When effectiveness and efficiency go bad
This is a nice story of living in a networked world -- where a nodal efficiency can lead to the downfall of the entire network.
Singapore is well-known for its strict anti-piracy laws and its allegiance to upholding intellectual property rights.
A study by research consultancy firm Spire of some 40 global companies operating out of Asia concluded that when it came to producing pirated goods, Singapore was a distant last.
The International Chamber of Commerce had earlier given it high marks for protecting IP -- ranking it ninth out of 82 countries.
If you were a customs officer and saw a shipment from Singapore and if you were aware of its envious standing, what would you do?
You would let it pass, right?
Pirates are using the same strategy to sneak goods to other countries via Singapore and that too in an efficient and effective manner.
In 2004, more than 300,000 pirated DVDs seized by British customs had come on ships from Singapore.
These numbers ranked Singapore in the top three countries -- with Malaysia and Pakistan -- in terms of the number of pirated DVDs seized at points of entry (in the UK).
And the irony of it all is that Singapore's efficiency is proving to be one of the bottlenecks in stopping these shipments.
And, in the buzz of activity at the Singapore port, which prides itself on its quick turnaround times, some point to the obvious dilemma: It would be virtually impossible — and extremely disruptive — for the authorities to go around examining every consignment that is being transhipped.
This story goes to show how having a systems viewpoint is so important in our age -- we need to be looking at the forests more often.
Permalink | Monday, March 26, 2007
Choosing an Accessible CMS
Joshue O Connor has written a report on research done by The Centre of Inclusive Technology to see how several popular content management systems stack up when it comes to support for accessibility. Here are the CMSs they looked at: Jadu, Mambo, Joomla, Quick and Easy, Expression Engine, Plone, Drupal, Textpattern, Xoops and Typo3. [via Max Design]
Permalink | Thursday, March 22, 2007