Technology First, Needs Last

Don Norman stirs things up with…

I’ve come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs.

(forwarded by Angus)

A Rebuttal to Technology First Needs Last

Todd Warfel replies to Don Norman’s post…

Technology didn’t drive these innovations, it was merely the road. The driver was an opportunity for invention and design research was right behind the wheel.

When both sides of a debate are highly respected experts, it makes for an interesting read!
(forwarded by Angus)

Short-Term Memory and Web Usability

Jacob Nielsen reports …

The human brain is not optimized for the abstract thinking and data memorization that websites often demand. Many usability guidelines are dictated by cognitive limitations

(forwarded by Angus)

My big list of 24 Web Site Usability Testing Tools

Craig Tomlin shares his list…

In the past few years, there has been massive growth in new and exciting cheap or free web site usability testing tools, so here’s my list of 24 tools you may need to use from time to time.

(forwarded by Angus)

Make the logo bigger! (the song)

In the finest tradition of Spinal Tap comes this mock-metal song Make the logo bigger, sure to raise smile on the face of anyone who’s had to deal with clients who want their logo…just that little bit bigger. (Warning: make sure you turn down your volume before playing the song)

(forwarded by Angus)

iPhone app for The Independent (UK)

Over on Econsultancy, Graham Charlton reviews the latest newspaper website mobile app…

The Independent iPhone app is a departure from some other newspaper apps, as it is designed to allows readers to download all the articles while they have a decent 3G or wi-fi connection, and saves them for reading while offline.

An interesting approach.
(forwarded by Sophie)

Surrender! Foucault and Twitter

Ian Delaney laments the direction in which social media may be taking us…

Some of my early hopes for social media, that it represented, like Kevin Kelly reckons, some kind of renaissance for socialism in the western world, are starting to run dry.

Do we blindly accept “social media networks as empowering, democratic and all about spreading fresh ideas”? Delaney says “The reverse may be the case: any given information about ourselves donates some portion of control to another party”. It’s the “dark side of social networking” he says. An interesting philosophical read to break up the mountain of practical posts, articles and reports we read day in and day out.(forwarded by Chris)

A summary of user research methods

Lastly, on his personal blog, our own Patrick Kennedy summarises a whole bunch of useful user research methods…

In this article I give a quick overview of the methods I commonly use, broken down in to main categories:

• Direct user contact—where the researcher does very much interact with users, or members of the audience as I prefer to call them
• Indirect user contact—where the researcher does not actually interact with members of the audience

The USiT team has had a running conversation of late about prototyping techniques and tools. We have been debating the value of sketching, both in terms of quickly producing and documenting ideas as well as for prototyping (where low fidelity can be a useful attribute when putting designs in front of a user).

Some of this was exposed through the comments on a recent blog post regarding wireframes, in particular Chris’ comment on a sketchy wireframe stencil. So we’ve collectively been thinking about documenting and prototyping and how important “sketchiness” is.

To further fuel the discussion, I want to refer to Russell Wilson’s review of 16 user interface prototyping tools. I like how he categorises his “picks” into “Low fidelity mockups for idea exploration and communication”, “Interactive prototypes to test and communicate interactions” and “High fidelity drawing tool”. This is much more useful than saying one uses Axure (for instance) to prototype, like any one tool or technique could ever fit all situations. There are some interesting comments on Russell’s post too.

Also on this topic, Todd Warfel is running a survey on prototyping tools for his upcoming book. Be sure to check it out and have your say, this is adding some clarity around the various characteristics and pros and cons of prototyping techniques that will be of use to the entire community.

And it will help answer the question raised in the title of this post :)