Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Uday Gajendar

Uday Gajendar — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 16:32:54 GMT

This is one that is always of relevance I think, but may be good to first check out Bob Baxley’s b&a article on this topic, as well as his book “Making the Web Work: Designing Effective Web Applications”. Perhaps see how/where you can bring additional unique insights per your own personal experiences in this area.

Uday Gajendar — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 06:51:10 GMT

Glad to see someone exploring/pushing the IA issues in terms of enterprise software (the apps that enable a business to function), beyond enterprise websites and CMS systems. However, the article scope seems a bit broad, particularly re: reusable patterns which can be an entire book (see Jenifer Tidwell’s excellent book). Perhaps pick just one or two issues to expand upon for b&a? Or were you meaning to do a summary overview of issues? I think picking one issue and deep diving into specific methods and examples would be most helpful, personally. Good luck!

Uday Gajendar — Wed, 02 May 2007 21:22:58 GMT

Love it, and the possibility of suggesting methods/tips for identifying the problem in “collaborative” situations like that where pulling the brakes on a rushed, foregone solution might be risky politically. Diplomacy, methods of argument, ways to cultivate favor instead of animosity at the “outsider designer type”, problem scoping, etc. would benefit this community very well I think!

Also, I would suspect that any discussion of design problems would hint at the inherently “wicked” nature of problems involving multi-disciplinary perspectives…very fascinating topic in itself!

Uday Gajendar — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:52:11 GMT

Same here, I would like to see your take on PDF prototyping, having done some of it at Adobe in the past, (with remote testing too) and personally advocated for it as a lightweight method to solicit user feedback…and certainly the potential to be a more robust tool, given that you can do full-blown javascript within PDF!

Perhaps comparing/contrasting PDF vs Powerpoint vs web/html vs Flash? (perhaps just a couple of them) Either way, PDF has great value yet to be tapped/described. Can’t wait to hear your examples! Live links would be great!

Uday Gajendar — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 05:46:28 GMT

Thanks for the comments thus far… Just a few quick replies:

- Indeed, there’s more to rich experience than simply websites and I hope this article provokes substantive discussion beyond the mundane. Immersive massively multiplayer games, cross-media promo campaigns, “reality games”, and the like are great examples to highlight. Perhaps someone could volunteer to map out a continuum of richness, where such examples would reside at the far end…

- Please don’t get hung up on design as a “speech”, rather consider that every designed product/service/experience is an act of human communication of some kind to varying degrees of persuasiveness and engagement…and thus prompting a human response.

- Thanks for the pointer about “sophos”—very intriguing!

- In the course of rapid editing, some shortcuts had to be taken…so in my extremely terse “definitions” of the rhetorical elements I may have been a bit misleading. Note that much of my understanding of rhetoric as a mode of design thinking comes from the writings of Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin (Design Discourse, Discovering Design, and The Idea of Design). So I should have stated that Pathos (as a rhetorical element of design) is the emotional, cognitive, behavioral affect upon users, while Ethos is the tone of voice of the designer typically expressed as presentational style, thus conveying the character and credibility of the designer (ie, speaker). Ultimately, this rhetorical balance is about the central task of the designer: to envision and create products appropriate for human situations of use, drawing upon whatever knowledge is needed to get the job done.

Please keep the comments coming! Thanks again for your feedback!

Uday Gajendar — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 06:47:05 GMT

Yes, the collaborative, participatory, communicative, user-generated qualities that have come to typify the “web 2.0” gestalt as articulated by O’Reilly undeniably shape the “richness” of today’s online experiences:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/…

Uday Gajendar — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 17:50:45 GMT

Just finished reading a short piece in the latest ish of Wired (Jun 2007, “Rocket Boom” on the cover) about the parties thrown by Richard Garriot, founder/creator of Ultima Online. Talk about the ultimate in staging a rich experience: the party invitation is a cryptic message that has to be heated in an oven to get the RSVP URL. Then once you arrive, the parties are themed with wild recreations of movies like Mad Max or Titanic. As the writer said, “Rich people throw lavish parties; rich role-playing game designers host living theater experiments”! Continuing on, Garriot says, “I imbue my games and parties with the process of discovery, with a physical manifestation of unreality.” Love it.