We need a way to document and express mental models that is as simple and robust as personas for user profiles and scenarios for tasks. By laying out users’ current mental models and a target mental model, we can clarify our thinking and communication about the user interface’s objects, metaphors, and interaction.
Process and Methods
Somewhere in the process of evangelizing user-centered design, user experience professionals seem to have forgotten the value of vision-driven design, which can be equally important in making sites and software relevant and desirable. We need to integrate both approaches.
The New R&D: Relevant & Desirable
In a high-tech field like web design, we might expect to find computer-savvy practitioners accomplishing all their work with the click of the mouse and a stroke of the keyboard. However, in our studies of the early stages of web design, we found that good ol’ pens, paper, walls, and tables were the primary creative tools.
The Designers’ Outpost: Capturing and Interacting with Design History
Designing, developing, and deploying an intranet can be expensive, time-consuming and organizationally tricky. But certain strategies, when carefully executed, can simplify designing and managing your intranet.
Practical Strategies for Creating a Successful Intranet
Well-designed interactive products allow people and technology to carry on a complex and elegant dance relying on multiple, simultaneous forms of communication. A new 12-part series will discuss the activity of interaction design as it relates to the Web, and the relative advantages and disadvantages of the Web as an interactive medium.
Introducing Interaction Design
A typical maintenance project goes something like this: someone has a new piece of functionality or content they want to put up on the website. The IA’s job: find the best place for it.
Tackling Maintenance Projects
There are several research tools at our disposal for understanding user behavior. But how many times do we get the chance to spend as much time on research as we think is required? Combining techniques is one way to increase efficiency and still collect meaningful information.
Consolidated Assessment:
Just as a vacation in an unfamiliar culture can build a new sense of resolve and purpose upon the return home, this “visit” to malls and retailing can help reinvigorate you and your work and give you new ideas and sources of inspiration.