November 2006 Issue
Improving User Workflows with Single-Page User Interfaces
Published: November 20, 2006
Over the last two years, Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) have been a hot topic of discussion. While the sheen has already begun to wear off the buzzword Ajax a bit among Web application designers, RIAs are bigger than ever with our clients and their customers. Everyone seems to love slider-based filtering, drag and drop, fisheye menus, and auto-completion for input fields. Web application designs that include none of these typical Ajax features are not well received. Sometimes, one gets the feeling that Web developers implement richness just for the sake of making a Web site and the company that commissions it look cool. Obviously, user experience design should be about a lot more than creating cool controls.
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Category: Features
Interaction Frontiers 06: Conference Report
Published: November 20, 2006
On June 16, 2006, Interaction Frontiers
was held at the Bicocca University, in Milano, Italy.
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Category: Reviews
A Day at Interaction Frontiers 06
Published: November 20, 2006
There are not many interaction design conferences in Italy, so you can imagine the interest a conference about the frontiers of interaction design engendered. Interaction Frontiers 2006—the second edition of this conference—had as its mission the exploration of the future of interaction design. Though I’m Swiss, my native language is Italian, and this topic attracted my attention.
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Category: Reviews
The Atmosphere at Interaction Frontiers 2006
Published: November 20, 2006
Matteo Penzo was the brain, the hands, and the energy behind Interaction Frontiers 2006. The recipe for this event was deceptively simple: Gather some fine thinkers in a room and let them speak about technology and people. The 2005 edition of Interaction Frontiers had been just an appetizer—a taste of things to come.
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Category: Reviews
Participation in the UXmatters Reader Survey
Published: November 20, 2006
To those of our readers who have already participated in our first annual UXmatters Reader Survey, thank you! So far, 55 people have participated in the survey. To help our editorial staff better understand and serve your needs, we hope that more of you will share your thoughts and a little of your time with us and complete the survey before it closes on November 30, 2006.
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Category: Editorials
By the People, for the People
Published: November 6, 2006
This month, UXmatters is celebrating its First Year Anniversary. We began publication of this magazine for the UX community last year on November 3rd, in conjunction with the first ever World Usability Day.
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Category: Editorials
User Research: Subjectivity and Objectivity in Practice
Published: November 6, 2006
In recent months, there has been an interesting dialogue on the IxD Discussion mailing list, in which some participants have questioned the need for and benefits of doing user research rather than relying on the experience and intuition of designers. These comments led others to voice concerns about the actual quality of the user research companies are undertaking and the validity of any conclusions they have drawn from the resulting data.
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Category: Columns
Creating a Universal Usability Agenda
Published: November 6, 2006
How do you keep usability, accessibility, and user experience requirements on track while developing standards? It is part of the very nature of standards to focus on details—and in the process, to sometimes lose sight of the real goals. This is especially true when a standards-making process goes on for a long time, a situation is highly political, or most people are focused on technology issues. For over two years, I’ve worked in just such a situation as part of the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) creating federal standards for voting systems in the United States.
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Category: Columns
Book Review: Designing Interfaces
Published: November 6, 2006
I must admit that I am not a fan of pattern books in general—especially in the field of design. I’ve always felt they are excellent sources of inspiration if you’re crafting a quilt or stenciling a wainscot for your living room, but for more involved design activities, I’ve concluded they are too simplistic—perhaps even limiting. I suspect this opinion was informed by my architecture professor’s intensely negative reaction to Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language and A Timeless Way of Building when they were first published. Years later, when I learned that software engineers were enamored of Alexander’s books, and the emergence of software patterns had its basis in Alexander’s notion of design patterns, I was bemused and skeptical.
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Category: Reviews
Please Participate in the 2006 UXmatters Reader Survey
Published: November 6, 2006
To help our editorial staff better serve the needs of UXmatters readers, we are currently conducting our first annual UXmatters Reader Survey. We hope that you will take this opportunity to tell us what you want and need from your Web magazine for UX professionals.
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Category: Editorials