ia/ - Experience Design

User account security measures offer annoying barriers without a reasonable payoff

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:44:52 -0700

Random internet browsing brought me to a choice user response to "internet security measures":

Like, I know they are there for good reason, but so many web sites require so many different variations of passwords, I just can't keep up with them all. My bank for example...It's one of those "password must contain atleas 8 characters, upper and lowercase and atleast one number". Okay, I did that, I've managed to remember it...but then, I have to have 8 different security questions. It doesn't always promt me with one, but about every 5th time I log into the site they throw me one of the questions. I can't keep up with all the answers. There are multiple answers to most of the questions. I don't have a fave band, I have several. I don't have a fave candy, or movie or any of that other crap.... So, if I answer wrong 3 times, they disable my account and make me re-register it.....*grumble*

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 -0800

n/a

Costs of Badly Done Customer Research?

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:37:55 -0800

In light of growing acceptance of user or customer research, it's worth considering the costs of poorly done research. For retailers, it seems especially important to make sure every contact with customers reinforces the values associated with a brand.

I just had a negative experience with customer research, that impacted my perception of the retailer and the associated brand. I spent some time thinking about it from my own viewpoint as a customer, and it seemed the most important cost to the retailer is in terms of closing a channel for business. In this case, the botched online survey I walked through makes me unwilling to engage with them on the web again.

I posted a quick writeup, with screenshots of the survey, here.

I know there's material on these costs from marketing perspectives, but I'm wondering if anyone's working on this from the point of view of IA and UX, when they're focused on better connecting the business with its customers and user?

The User Experience of Interactive Art: Boston CyberArts Festival 2005

Wed, 04 May 2005 18:02:12 -0700

Last week, an article in the NY Times named poor user experience as a barrier to engaging with several exhibits that are part of the Boston CyberArts Festival. The article focused more on how deeply frustrating the User Experiences were, rather than the quality of the artwork. I made a trip to see the exhibits this weekend; here's a summary of the article, photos of the exhibits, and a recap.

Recent Intelligence Failures Demonstrate Value of Qualitative User Research

Sun, 03 Apr 2005 04:42:00 -0700

An Op-Ed column in the NY Times sheds light on the ways that qualitative research yields strategic insight.

Peter Morville's sweet User Experience Honeycomb

Tue, 22 Jun 2004 09:06:36 -0700

When I broadened my interest from IA to UX, I found the need for a new diagram to illustrate the facets of user experience - especially to help clients understand why they must move beyond usability - and so with a little help from my friends developed the user experience honeycomb.
The ux honey comb is a value centered description of the different aspects of the user experience (unlike the experience cycle, with ux-as-user-process, or JJG’s famous ux-as-practice model). The UX facets Peter describes are useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, and credible - and these all contribute to the central facet - valuable As a value-centered design booster, I think this is the key, and builds a bridge between business and user value - projects need to produce both ROI and Return on Experience.

re:con gel 2004

Thu, 13 May 2004 10:25:47 -0700

Heath Row’s Fast Company blog summarizes the sessions at Good Experience Live 2004.

Captology blog

Mon, 10 May 2004 16:27:57 -0700

The Stanford Captology Group is also publishing a interesting blog.

Philadelphia Inquirer | 11/03/2003 | The Job | His work: Watching people use the Web

Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:09:11 -0700

Here's a zen question from the weird, wired world of the Web: Can there be an architect of something that will never exist in a three-dimensional form?

This is Ben Levin's zone.

His business card says 'User Experience Architect,' and the title isn't something cutesy dreamed up by a human-resource consultant who has been to too many motivational seminars.

In the Web world, this is a common job title in the field of usability - the interaction of humans and computers.

The article gets a few things wrong here and there but it's interesting nonetheless to see how our profession is depicted in lay terms.

UCD / UX / IA Salary survey

Sat, 06 Mar 2004 07:11:53 -0800

There's a new salary survey that's open for participation until March 31, 2004 (The official announcement is available here). It's is focused on UCD & HCI but has a number of questions where Information Architecture can be selected, and it's fairly comprehensive in many other respects.

I think that it is beneficial for both practitioners and hiring managers to have accurate, realistic compensation information, and hopefully participating in this survey will help.

FYI, more salary and compensation info is available at the Salary Surveys page on the IAwiki.

Academics Turn to Video Games

Tue, 17 Feb 2004 15:03:30 -0800

Interesting article on Yahoo:

Some of the new questions in a very young field: How do you judge a game? As you would a novel? Should we think up a whole new vocabulary for evaluating games? What do the social dynamics of online worlds -- those massively multiplayer games -- tell us about human behavior?

In Copenhagen, Denmark, the IT University has established the Center of Computer Games Research, which just graduated its first Ph.D., Jesper Juul.

Juul appears to be the first person anywhere to ever get his doctorate exclusively in video game studies. His dissertation 'Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds' seeks to define what video games are, and how academics ought to go about studying them.

...and here are some simultaneously interesting and heartbreaking quotes from old coworker Eric Zimmerman and Chris Crawford:

"What we try to do is provide not a single way of looking at games but a whole series of ways," Zimmerman said. "We would like to have an audience that thinks about games as more than boy power fantasies."

Some in the industry, however, are not so sure that games will ever mature. They fear games could be a dead end like comic books -- valuable as a social phenomenon, but outside a select few titles like Art Spiegelman's "Maus," not worth a great deal of individual study.

"I seldom play computer games, because it's such a depressing experience," said Chris Crawford, a game designer who is building a program to create interactive stories. "I end up shaking my head in dismay at how stuck the designers are in a rut."

Widgetopia

Fri, 19 Dec 2003 09:00:22 -0800

Widgetopia - Over time, Christina has pulled together a heap o' widgets... interesting... a blog being used as a notebook... ...

link [Other Blog (Tom Smith)]

Experience People recruting firm

Mon, 27 Oct 2003 00:49:16 -0800

Challis Hodge has launched the UX recruiting firm, Experience People, LLC.

Experience People (XP) is a specialty firm with a laser focus on recruiting Experience Design and User Experience professionals for intermediate to senior level executive positions.

XP works across industries matching the best companies with industry leaders in Design Management, Experience Planning, Creative Direction, Interaction Design, Information Architecture, User Research, Interface Design, Graphic Design and Academia.

Personas: Setting the Stage for Building Usable Information Site

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 12:34:51 -0700

Personas: Setting the Stage for Building Usable Information Sites by Alison J. Head [via InfoDesign (Peter J. Bogaards)], a good article on personas, showing more than telling, with good example personas and a brief case study using BBCi.

Includes pointers, necessary details, and a tutorial featuring a well-explained example.

Wake-up call

Sun, 12 Oct 2003 22:21:54 -0700

Wake-up call