December 29th, 2009
Immobile. Static. Fluff. Over simplified. Minimalistic. Artificial. Plastic. At least that’s how I feel about them. There I said it.
Anthropological ideas of situated action suggest that the complexity of human activity varies from situation to situation. Personas in this respect by showcasing a unified image fail to capture a more complex range of possible activities which can be very inspirational. The form of representation is often a few textual paragraphs and a picture which is questionable at its effectiveness in developing empathy. If the aim of such a design activities is to inspire team members then I would say that more powerful methods of context mapping exist which look beyond the boundaries of a person into the environment. These empathy encouraging methods can also be strengthened with the use of video which Jacob Buur has been exploring thoroughly in Denmark. Furthermore even richer empathy can be achieved by means of team participation when designers join ranks with users in eliciting their latent needs through design research. Given the choice between uniform personas and more granular, video based, participatory scenarios my preferential vote is cast on the latter.
There has also been quite some interesting debate on this topic elsewhere with voices from both sides:
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November 29th, 2009
Sustainability, or the idea of zero waste and reuse of things created (concepts & code), also applies to the world of user interface prototyping. On one hand, there might be a push to build prototypes of such quality that the code that they rest on could be reused further in the development process. This so called “sustainability across a process” is just one approach of how UI waste can be reduced. Another way of building sustainable prototypes is by reusing elements from project to project. So if on one project a widget was used in a prototype, and then the same code is used on another project, it would be a sustainable act as well. This I’ll call “sustainability across projects”.
The truth is that at times there is more value of building “throw away” prototypes that are not of production ready quality. Building something quickly without regard for code quality, learning a lot from it, and then correcting the design direction could be more fruitful than building “high quality” prototypes whose code makes it into the future. However, in order to support sustainable or reusable prototype elements across projects, of course we need the right tools and setup. The idea of relying on emergent patterns is a sustainable across projects concept which EightShapes has been supporting with their unify framework, but also something I potentially want to implement for fluidia.
Posted in Sketches | 2 Comments »
November 20th, 2009
Here are some interesting interactions based on a projector and scanner approach which bend what is real. Pranav uses an augmented reality approach to interaction to display time to departure on a real world plane ticket, or taking photos by means of hand gestures. Pretty interesting. “To be human is not to be machines sitting in front of machines”. Thanks Vincent. 
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November 9th, 2009
Last week I posted the Interactive Sketching Notation. This emerging visual language contains my own approach to drawn user interactions with pen and paper. The general idea behind this notation is the desire to visualize user interface states as well as user actions in a clear and rapid manner. Thanks again to all those who made this possible and please let me know if you find it helpful or have any recommendations. If this inspires your own approach to sketching, I would also love to see some samples of how people use this.
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October 9th, 2009
Ryan Singer talk. Modeling. Screens. Flows. Templates. Before we start to lay down the pen to the paper, we already have a model. Lack of sentences = UI Smell. Where is the “weak tag”? :)
http://www.vimeo.com/6702766
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August 26th, 2009
Thinking a bit about the generation of alternatives during conceptualization, it becomes apparent that a design process also has form. More specifically, here are at least two contrasting sketches on a structured and organic design process which contains an exploratory aspect. Explorations or alternations can happen in a very structured manner (3 concepts every 2 weeks, etc.), or they can happen in a more natural way (the designer generates alternative concepts as they emerge). I’m not sure which one is better. I do get a feeling though that my work is reflective more of the latter one.
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July 22nd, 2009
Tom Wujec gives a TED talk on how meaning is created by the brain. The success behind sketching techniques are also touched upon. Tom’s ideas to some degree also overlap with Dan Roam’s book, Back of the Napkin, where the whats, hows, whys, and whens all collide together to form stronger meanings. Seeing is definitely an active process, which both authors share.
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July 9th, 2009
Here is an interesting talk by Paul Pangaro on Designing for Conversation. It’s filled with little insights suggesting to actively design conversations and choosing the participants wisely. Conversations after all are said to give rise to variety through its participants which in turn lead to design possibilities. Feels like the design loop closes in on itself through conversation.
http://www.vimeo.com/4602017
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July 1st, 2009
A very good (PDF) read on prototyping – The Anatomy of Prototypes. The article explores manifestation dimensions of prototypes and extends the more popular dimension of fidelity to less talked about dimensions such as scope and material. Then the idea of prototypes as filters is proposed where through their incompleteness, only the qualities of interest are made visible.
Y.-K. Lim et al, write about two prototyping principles:
Fundamental prototyping principle:
Prototyping is an activity with the purpose of creating a manifestation that, in its simplest form, filters the qualities in which designers are interested, without distorting the understanding of the whole.
Economic principle of prototyping:
The best prototype is one that, in the simplest and the most efficient way, makes the possibilities and limitations of a design idea visible and measurable.
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June 8th, 2009
Over at MIX09, Dan Harrelson talked about design prototyping and touched upon many interesting points. The ideas he raises include prototypes as being: dynamic, disposable, responsive, focused, explorative and fast. Perhaps these are not completely novel thoughts, but they area a very nice summery and definitely refresh how prototyping differs from designing wireframes. Dan also states that the nature of prototypes is in line with agile development which values less documentation over richer conversations. Further, Dan also goes over two quite popular prototyping techniques: paper prototyping and digital prototyping (with Axure).
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