Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Gagan Diesh

Gagan Diesh — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:09 GMT

I think an article about wayfinding with comparison to what is happening in major transit systems would be very helpful. Hong Kong and Tokyo both have highly usable transit systems. Hong Kong’s airport designed by Norman Foster is a great example of ‘ambient signifiers’ where the entire airport’s architecture lends itself to wayfinding beyond signage.

I would be happy to add my two bits to the article or collaborate on it. (I teach user experience and interface design at VFS http://www.vfs.com/faculty.php?id=13&staff_id=289)

Gagan Diesh — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:37:53 GMT

Hi Ross:

As I mentioned before, great article. Not sure about the value of the XP Bliss wallpaper but heck, I will choose to ignore that reference! ;)

I suggest a visit to an oldie but still interesting site reference: http://isseymiyake.com (click on autumn-winter 2002-2003). While the site is totally not usable for corporate structures, it is interesting for how they have used the glowing circle to mean navigation quite consistently…the audio cues are also consistent and set up expectations from the first screen where you choose men/women.

also interesting is the “map” and how it orients the user to a breadcrumb of where they have already been.

combine “ambient signifiers” with pavlovian conditioning and you could set up a very positive investment-reward scenario for users.

Gagan Diesh — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 13:59:02 GMT

Does it bother anyone else when the sites that sell design related tools look uglier than the backside of a really filthy old bus? Case in point: http://www.elegancetech.com/ls.aspx

To me, nothing beats paper and pencil. Yes there are tons of collaborative, cool techie tools but I still reach for a pencil when I need to think.

Omnigraffle is good too, and so is MindManager (http://www.mindjet.com). And I agree with Jesper (http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/visio_replaceme#commen…) that hiring a good ruby on rails developer can be a life-saver when things need to be outputted quickly for interaction approval.