Review of fresh materials, July 2011

This material continues a series of monthly reviews of fresh articles on the topic of interfaces, new tools and collections of patterns, interesting cases and historical stories. Of the tapes of several hundred thematic subscriptions, approximately 5% of the worthwhile publications are selected that are interesting to share. Previous materials: April 2010-June 2011 .

Methods and practices

How to Read a Wireframe
Excellent memo for customers and participants of the design process from Fuzzy Math, describing how to work with wireframes. What to look at in this document and how to use it in the process? Direct link to PDF .
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The UX of User Stories
Anders Ramsay talks about using user stories in interface design. The article concerns both the format of these requirements and the process of their collection. The second part is http://www.andersramsay.com/2011/07/24/the-ux-of-user-stories-part-2 .

Design Solutions for New Log In Problems
With the advent of authorization through social networks, the process of setting up accounts and working with them has become easier, but new difficulties have arisen. Luke Wroblewski describes solutions that will help solve the user's question, “And with which third-party account did I register here?”. Interesting and other articles from the mini blog BagCheck .

Designing for Android
General overview of the design and design features for the Android mobile platform from Smashing Magazine. This article describes the key points that are important to consider when creating mobile applications for this OS - screen resolutions, patterns and interactive elements, useful resources.

Seven Guidelines For Designing High-Performance Mobile User Experiences
Ivo Weevers gives some tips on building modern mobile sites and applications. A little is said, but thoughts are packed quite well.

Best Practices for Designing Websites for Kids
David Morrison leads a series of tips on creating websites for children. These are 8 simple and clear rules that designers and designers should consider.

Five Factors for Successful Persona Projects
Jared Spool gives examples of projects in which the character technique was unsuccessful. And gives advice to designers how to avoid such problems in your project.

A Taxonomy of Enterprise Search
Tony Russell-Rose describes the features of building search interfaces for corporate systems. The author talks about the basic concepts for the process of searching for information, gradually moving to specific patterns.

Lies in the interview
Chris Noessel from Cooper Consulting shares the experience of conducting user interviews in which respondents intentionally or accidentally tell a lie. He offers seven ways to solve this problem.

The CSS of Design Storytelling: Context, Spine, and Structure
Traci Lepore writes about what a good story consists of and how to use it in interfaces. It identifies three key components - the context, the essence and structure.

Instruments

Usaura - Free, instant click tests
Another simple tool for conducting 5-second usability tests. Its results are available in the form of a heat map and distribution of click points.

refine.io
The service allows you to quickly create functional prototypes of mobile applications, and this requires only a little more time than drawing wireframes. While it works only with iPhone applications and is in beta testing.

Food Engineering Drug Administration - Healthcare Medical Device Design
Draft official guideline on the ergonomics of medical devices from the US government agency FDA (US Food & Drug Administration). The document describes the principles of creating such interfaces and the methods of work of specialists.

The Claw - Mobile Device Usability Testing Jig
Patrick Kennedy talks about his own installation for testing mobile applications. This article describes the software and hardware of the test equipment.

Patterns

Building Trust on Ecommerce Home Pages
Shazeeye Kirmani talks about a user study of four popular online stores. His goal - to identify the interface elements and information that increases the credibility of the seller.

Process

ROI poster
Susan Weinschenk published a great poster, describing in the infographic form everything related to the design ROI - principles, metrics, calculations. Attached is a cool video made with comments by the author .


Beans and Noses
Excellent article Jared Spool, in which he colorfully describes the often encountered design situation - the client can not be convinced that the proposed solution to him is absurd. One of the most optimal solutions in this situation is to wait until the problem that appears appears to the customer.

Winning a User Experience Debate
An excerpt from the new book Cennydd Bowles and the James Box "Undercover User Experience Design." It describes the three layers of arguments that can be used when communicating with a client - user observations, research results and the general theory of design.

Manager's guidebook on intranet redesign projects
Maish Nichani has published a memo for managers involved in projects for the redesign of intranet services. This 65-page document describes the process of creating and maintaining such systems. Direct link to PDF .

Overcoming Halfhearted User Adoption
Don Bruns describes the features of introducing internal products into the company's workflow. Its main message is that the interface is not necessarily “absolutely accepted or rejected” by users, but may be partially sabotaged or not fully utilized.

Stakeholder Feedback
The article by Michael Hawley helps to organize the process of communication with the customer and, in particular, to collect comments from him. Often, such feedback is a reply or comes at the wrong time, which spoils the final result and breaks the workflow.

7 Tips to Get Your Team
Another series of articles from Susan Weinschenk, this time devoted to the features of the "sale" to the client of interface solutions.

Cases

Making online payments simple and convenient. A1Pay system redesign
Pavel Konoplitsky from company A1 described in detail the case of redesigning the payment system of the same name. A well-illustrated article describes the entire process of reworking a product.

ROI of Faceted Navigation?
James Kalbach collects case studies in which reworking navigation has helped increase ROI from investment in design. While there are not many examples, but the list will be updated.

Usability Testing with Children - A Lesson from Piaget
Sabina Idler talks about the features of user research with children of different ages. The article tells about the features of each of the ages - what problems may arise in obtaining relevant answers.

Theory

How Cognitive Fluency Affects Decision Making
Colleen Roller continues a series of articles on decision-making psychology. This time, she describes the impact of cognitive ease on how understandable the interface will appear to the user.

Know Without Thinking: Instinct in UX
Taylor Bastien writes about the principle of "unexpressed memory," which affects user expectations. How are such expectations formed and how to use them in interfaces?

Convergence 2.0 = Service + Social + Physical
Hugh Dubberly talks about the Nicholas Negroponte digital convergence model. It appeared back in 1980 and has since approached the third stage - the complete combination of publishing + broadcasting + computing.

Experience Design Models - Minding the Gap Between Ideas and Interfaces
Marc Sasinski describes the patterns of user interaction with the product. The article briefly goes through the process of how to lead a user from a task lying on a surface to a goal set in reality.

Shadow Emotions and Primary Emotions
Article game designer Danc, in which he describes two types of manifestations of emotions in humans - the primary and illusory. Although the author describes situations regarding games, this also applies to other interfaces.

Story

Are you an Innovation Giant?
A very interesting interview with Jim Lewis, a member of the Simon product team from IBM, the first touchscreen smartphone to enter the market in 1993.

Conference Announcements

D-Camp (D-Camp) @ Zaporizhia
September 24-25 (Saturday and Sunday) in Zaporizhia a two-day workshop-workshop on design and usability will be held. The organizers are the company UXDepot. Facebook event .

404Fest 2011 @ Samara
October 1-2 (Saturday-Sunday) in Samara will be held the fourth annual festival of web developers, Internet leaders and their sympathizers 404.

User Experience Russia 2011 @ Moscow
October 6-8 (from Thursday to Saturday) in Moscow Digital October will host the fifth anniversary User Experience Russia conference.

World Usability Day 2011 @ Moscow
November 12 (Saturday) will be the Moscow part of the professional conference World Usability Day. The venue is still being specified. Similar events should take place in Minsk and Kiev .

Fresh links can also be tracked in the Facebook group of the same name .