An exploration of Experience Design

Posted Wed, 02/11/2009 - 21:43 by jnoyes

I stumbled on a great exploration of experience design. I don't personally know Braz, but I identify with his approach.

When you design an experience on the web or mobile, do you think your job is to organize visual elements in space and across different pages to convey cool features in a way people understand, use and find what they are looking for?

In my opinion, this is not enough. It sure works, and you can deliver a good experience, but to turn what’s good in something extraordinary you will rely on serendipity if you go this way.

You Tubes Analytics: Using animation to arrive at usage patterns

Posted Wed, 02/11/2009 - 21:39 by jnoyes

This is just mind bending. I've yet to use this, but plan to as soon as I can find a moment. For now, I'm posting this to my blog just for my own reference. Hope you enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKsBTqqhVTs

Companes focused on user experience achieve 39% annual financial gains

Posted Wed, 02/11/2009 - 21:38 by jnoyes

I find this article fascinating: http://www.uxmag.com/strategy/327/investing-in-ux

It seems that companies that care about user experience do quite well on the open market. To me this isn't a great surprise. Apple and Google are perfect examples.

No one cares about you!

Posted Wed, 02/11/2009 - 21:36 by jnoyes

A quick video worth checking out about the paradigm shift in media. For generations now, we've all been sitting in front of a tube while big conglomerates push ads at us. While it's obvious to those in the our industry, more and more viewers are getting entertained via online activities like youtube, stumbleupon, and many other social publishing sites. Did you know that youtube had 5 billion videos viewed in july?

http://www.openforum.com/innovation/video_noonecaresaboutyou.html

Revising Drupal's Admin Interface via Modules?

Posted Wed, 02/11/2009 - 21:35 by jnoyes

It seems that the Drupal community is revising the drupal admin interface via a different theme. Rootcandy is one example. The folks at Merge have come up another.

http://blog.merge.nl/2008/10/03/working-on-a-free-admin-drupal-template/

I cant help but wonder - is this the way to go? Can Drupal be made easier merely by an admin interface theme change? What are your thoughts?

3 Ways to Achieve Good Design

Posted Wed, 02/11/2009 - 21:34 by jnoyes

Jared Spool recently wrote about the three patterns that are found in companies creating great experiences.

1. Understand the purpose of vision. Everyone in the company should know the experience five years out.
2. Listen to and/or observe your user base at least two hours every six weeks.
3. Reward Failure. Failure equals opportunity to improve.

I recommend this article to anyone looking to foster an experience group.

Create your own Digg site with Drupal

Posted Wed, 02/11/2009 - 21:32 by jnoyes

In an ongoing effort to explain how to use drupal, here's a tutorial that explains how to build a Digg clone with Drupal.

http://socialcmsbuzz.com/build-a-digg-clone-with-drigg-for-drupal-part-1...

What makes a good blog?

Posted Wed, 02/11/2009 - 21:30 by jnoyes

Ever wonder what makes a good blog? We'll, this may not give you the answer, but it does look at Technorati's top blogs and provides interesting statistics on things like nav placement, number of ads, etc. Check it out - it's worth the read.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/31/a-small-survey-of-big-blogs-f...

webforms tutorial

Posted Wed, 02/11/2009 - 21:30 by jnoyes

http://geoffhankerson.com/c/files/video/webform.mov

Learning JQuery

Posted Wed, 02/11/2009 - 21:29 by jnoyes

I'll be the first to admit. I'm a crude engineer. While I can usually hack through existing code and make things work, writing code from scratch is a huge challenge for me. Regardless, I'm incredibly impressed with Jquery, and thirsty to drink the cool-aid. Apparently there was a jQuery conferince in Boston that I missed, but the artifacts they left behind are great learning aids. Check it your self:

http://docs.jquery.com/Tutorials:Rounded_Corners