31 May 2006
UXD - User eXperience Design: Breaking the First Commandment
If any commandment is central to the spirit and philosophy of UXD, arguably it's Arnie Lund's enduring admonition--heck, it's even framed Biblically: Know thy users, and thy users are not thyself It's a good guideline, of course: as user exper
30 May 2006
Agile Ajax: AJAX and the Zeigarnik Effect
In the web application world, we avoided this aspect of the Zeigarnick Effect by making it difficult if not impossible for the user to diverge from the page flow. Now, with the capability to use fancy modal dialogs that interact with the server, we can ad
26 May 2006
UXD - User eXperience Design: The Zeigarnik Effect in GUI Design
The Zeigarnik effect suggests people remember incomplete or interrupted things better than completed things. It’s human nature to want to complete a task or hear the end of a story, and when we don’t a psychological tension results until the item is c
To Customize or to Reuse
Design patterns, Templates, Stock designs--whatever they're called, they present an opportunity and a challenge for designers. All interface designers will run across this same question sooner or later. When to customize and when to reuse a preexisting de
23 May 2006
UXD - User eXperience Design
When the first GUIs were created they leveraged perhaps the most ubiquitous items people experienced in an office environment: a desktop with folders and documents.
16 May 2006
UXD - User eXperience Design: An example of Ajax providing a good user experience
Duo consulting has done some really nice work for the Chicago Parks District. The web site takes advantage of 'web 2.0' features to maximize the user experience, and as a result, a highly successful site that among other things, greatly increased online r
12 May 2006
UXD - User eXperience Design: Rapid PowerPoint Prototypes for Ajax and Rich Interactions
As applications take the web from static pages to dynamic screens, how can the designer effectively mock up and vet early-stage dynamic screen designs? PowerPoint provides one possible vehicle.
