Comments at Boxes and Arrows

rhonda gilligan: In a previous comment, it was stated that posting these podcasts would have t...

rhonda gilligan — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:28:26 GMT

Comment on IA Summit 2008, Day 1

In a previous comment, it was stated that posting these podcasts would have the benefit of drawing new people into the conference and association. I’d assume if that was a goal that you’d want to put the most professional foot forward. And I wouldn’t expect a professional IA to need to be paid in order to design usable interfaces with valuable content. I’d expect that to be a given. I think it’s terrific that you got your conference pod casted for the first time, but if you’re only talking to yourselves and making it overly difficult for the rest of us to get the value from them, what’s the point? Of course, I sympathise with Mr. Parks’ personal tragedy and it may well be that his situation mitigates the usability challenges. If your goals were achieved, good for all of you. But users don’t know your back stories, they only know what works and what doesn’t.

Christina Wodtke: I'm sorry I'm usually more polite than this, but No one got paid to do this,...

Christina Wodtke — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:48:32 GMT

Comment on IA Summit 2008, Day 1

I’m sorry I’m usually more polite than this, but

No one got paid to do this, Jeff Parks has worked in all his spare hours through a personal tragedy to get these up. Rhonda, you are a spoiled git who has no help to offer, just whining.

Sure we could do better, but this is the first time anyone has managed to get the Summit podcasted, and our first time doing it. I’m proud of a team who worked hard when they’d usually have the pleasure of relaxing and learning so more folks could learn from this fine conference. Next time will go more smoothly, I’m sure.

And sonali, if you have the equipment and time to make video podcasts, we’d love to have you join our team to help out. We have made audio available to the speakers so they can create screencasts if they have the time. Some have. I hope you enjoy those.

erinn brush: What a great article. Mental models are a tool that I don't use very often. ...

erinn brush — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:40:38 GMT

Comment on What Is Your Mental Model?

What a great article. Mental models are a tool that I don’t use very often. I do find them very helpful to process and will be integrating them into my work more often now!

Jeremy Yuille: am loving the book Indi.. really great work! (especially like that I can read...

Jeremy Yuille — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:36:39 GMT

Comment on What Is Your Mental Model?

am loving the book Indi.. really great work! (especially like that I can read it *now* in a pdf too)
I’d been looking for something that’d help communicate this type of understanding with stakeholders and (more importantly, I think) internally in the team. We’d used concept models a bit in the past, but were having issues in the way they bled over into different perspectives of an experience. After reading the first couple of sections of your book today I’m pretty excited about trying this out. Thanks for sharing your insights & experiences with us!

Patrick Stapleton: A third party writeup on this tool what be a great bonus for us all I think. ...

Patrick Stapleton — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:22:50 GMT

Comment on Axure Article

A third party writeup on this tool what be a great bonus for us all I think. Currently looks to be the best value software simulation tool on the market. Mores the pity it doesn’t include more specification features as well.

PS
Just when is Adobe going to step into this market?

Patrick Stapleton: I wrote this article a while back (Task based CRM), maybe it would be of inte...

Patrick Stapleton — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:09:15 GMT

Comment on Task Architecture

I wrote this article a while back (Task based CRM), maybe it would be of interested.
http://ui-patterns.blogspot.com/2008/02/task-driven-crm-s…

rhonda gilligan: I would have expected IAs to do a better job including text links in their st...

rhonda gilligan — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:43:47 GMT

Comment on IA Summit 2008, Day 1

I would have expected IAs to do a better job including text links in their stories. Your blurb encouraging me to “check out the presentations from ” should be a link to that podcast. When I find “podcasts” in your left nav and click to the page, you organize the individual podcasts by not date even though the sort criteria is labeled “date”, not “day of conference”. Finally, all the descriptions for each day’s casts are the same, so I have no content clue as to what the topics discussed that day might have been in order to determine which ones might be of interest to me. So, I guess in order to “check out the presentation from April 12” I have to first find the link in the nav for podcasts, then figure out which day of the conference (1,2,3, or 4) the 12th was, then take a shot that it might contain something of value or interest to me. Not exactly what would pass muster on my team for usability or content strategy.

Theresa Putkey: I was talking with a colleague the other day who did about 30 user interviews...

Theresa Putkey — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:32:42 GMT

Comment on Extreme User Research

I was talking with a colleague the other day who did about 30 user interviews and 20 stakeholder interviews and was having trouble collating the results. I think the steps for “Once I interview all these people, what do I do? I feel overwhelmed” are very helpful.

I used to work in tech support before going into usability (actually quite a good career path!). As a suggestion, I think it would be an awesome idea to ask that tech support people keep track of their calls in one week. They don’t need to do anything but have a sheet of paper and for every call write down the main words associated with that call. Then when you ask these surrogates for what are the top problems, they can refer back to this sheet… Just something to jog their memories, otherwise it just becomes one giant problem w/o any specific examples.

margaret schultz: As an aside, I found this comment very interesting: "If there is direct comp...

margaret schultz — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:34:24 GMT

Comment on The Trouble With Web 2.0

As an aside, I found this comment very interesting:
“If there is direct competition people normally tend to change their behaviour. They try to acquire and to protect their special knowledge. The German language even has a special term for this kind of behaviour: “Herrschaftswissen”, which means superiority through withheld or not communicated information or knowledge.”
I’ve witnessed this type of behavior in a different environment: a work place where team members compete against each other for annual review scores. Doesn’t really make for good team work the rest of the year!

Great article!

Krish Mandal: Our company creates and develops custom software (web sites, web-based applic...

Krish Mandal — Wed, 14 May 2008 04:07:45 GMT

Comment on Interaction Design in an Agile Environment

Our company creates and develops custom software (web sites, web-based applications, internal biz apps, etc.)
I’m currently working on an internal project, which I can’t talk much about except to say it’s a type of CRM app. The issue I’m running into right now is that we have an Agile methodology, but the user research and visual design has never been completed. Therefore, we’re doing IA and UX in iterative cycles.

The process is that I’m designing, starting with wireframes, then writing my code to kinda-sorta get close to the wireframes. There’s no color, and the buttons aren’t exact, etc. The half-finished doc then goes to the developers to start working on the functionality. Then i move onto the next section for the site.

The idea is to return to the screens later to make them “right.”

But this FEELS so wrong to me, and is almost more time consuming than if I’d had 2 months to really get the design done, interactions thought out, and delivered final markup/css.

Yet, the general consensus I face is that this is Agile, it works, and we are using it.

Any comments? Insight? Am I not seeing something?

To me, the Agile process should begin after the design is done being iterated over and we have final markup.

Andries du Plessis: Thank for the personal experience mixed with a lesson from History... Food fo...

Andries du Plessis — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:48:30 GMT

Comment on It Seemed Like The Thing To Do At The Time

Thank for the personal experience mixed with a lesson from History… Food for Thought indeed and something I will mill over…

Elaine Chu: I'm a practicing Search & Taxonomy Lead. John and I are colleagues. I admir...

Elaine Chu — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:49:26 GMT

Comment on How to Evaluate Search Relevancy and Precision

I’m a practicing Search & Taxonomy Lead. John and I are colleagues. I admire and respect his expertise. He always shares practical and relevant recommendations. Would love to see John’s article about search! Thanks.

Jason Ford: Hmmm...I'm not sure how this whole Ideas section is supposed to work. It seem...

Jason Ford — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:54:33 GMT

Comment on The Content Matrix deliverable: a tool for prioritizing content and functionality

Hmmm…I’m not sure how this whole Ideas section is supposed to work. It seems like I’m supposed to wait from someone from BoxesandArrows to contact me before submitting the article – is that right? Does anyone have any insight into how this process works?

Russ Unger: Go to www.whitneyhess.com/blog for some of the best notes from the conference...

Russ Unger — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:10:40 GMT

Comment on IA Summit 2008, Day 1

Go to www.whitneyhess.com/blog for some of the best notes from the conference.

Then follow her on twitter.

—Russ

Chris Baum: Hi Axel, I didn't even realize that this was still visible. It was already w...

Chris Baum — Mon, 12 May 2008 05:24:40 GMT

Comment on Business stakeholder interview best practices

Hi Axel,

I didn’t even realize that this was still visible. It was already written.

Start here with Part 1:
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/setting-up-business