Fresh Material Review, April 2010

This material opens a series of monthly reviews of fresh articles on the topic of interfaces, new tools and collections of patterns, interesting cases and historical stories. For about a year I regularly collect, publish and share these links in the thematic Friendfeed-room User Experience, but in addition to the general tape, a digest has also proved useful. This is the first release - April 2010.

Methods and practices

Faceted Finding with Super-Powered Breadcrumb
Greg Nudelman offers an interesting approach to building navigation in online stores and online catalogs. It shows several examples of refined bread crumbs, which allow flexible filtering of the list of products and search results.
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Controlling Privacy on Social Networking Services
Matthew C. Clarke describes the problems of modern social services with private data users - first of all, how difficult it is to manage their settings. And also offers several solutions to the problem.

UXmatters Q & A - Putting a Paper Form Online / Avoiding Dropouts and False Information / Applying Aesthetics
The interface team for UXMatters is answering a series of questions about form building. How to correctly transfer the paper form to online, reduce the number of refusals when filling out and get rid of the fields filled in the box?

Designing with Lenses
The technique of using "lenses" in the design and design of Bill Scott from MeeBo. The method allows you to look at the interface from different angles, comparing it to one of the "lenses" (for example, an accurate or schematic display of faces). The collection of patterns of "lenses" is available on the project website .

Designing for iPad - Reality Check
Information Architects talks about the design and design process for the iPad. The team managed to collect a good experience in this area and assesses the adequacy of the official interface guidelines.

Eye Tracking - The Best Way To Test Rich App Usability
An overview of testing techniques using eye-tracking, its features and limitations from James Breeze. He talks about possible ways of conducting eye-tracking testing and the effect of each of them.

Instruments

Mobile Chart Options
Theresa Neil has compiled an excellent collection of libraries and frameworks that allow you to create diagrams and graphs for mobile browsers. A great way to expand the capabilities of mobile sites and web applications.

Google Drawings Wireframe Stencil
Set wireframe-stensil for online design tool Google Drawings. Although it was not originally designed to work on interfaces and is much inferior to specialized tools, its collaboration capabilities look interesting.

Putting Together Simple Wireframes Using OmniGraffle
A brief and comprehensive guide from CX Partners to designing with OmniGraffle. A 3-page PDF document offers step-by-step guidance on how to create wireframes.

Patterns

Touch Gesture Reference Guide
Luke Wroblewsky from Yahoo! collected a handy reference to gestures used to control modern touch interfaces. Attached to the document is a collection of a dozen foreign stencils and guidelines on the same topic.

iPad UX Interactions
A collection of screenshots of the iPad tablet interface, showing the work of its applications and functions. A huge number of examples, useful both for understanding the principles of operation of the device and for use as illustrations.

Design Patterns for Mobile Faceted Search
Greg Nudelman describes an interesting approach to the design of multi-criteria search in mobile interfaces. In the material opening the series of articles, he describes several techniques that allow him to put extended functionality into the limitations of telephone screens and browsers.

Maps in Modern Web Design - Showcase and Examples
Overview of examples of the implementation of maps on the web and a set of tips on their proper use. The author of the article Zach Dunn talks about how to use the cards and gives examples for each of them.

Process

Sustainable UX (Nick Finck Presentation)
Nick Finck's presentation from the UX Web Summit conference about the design process. Although the topic has already been revealed hundreds of times, it is one of the best materials on the topic with good illustrations and a good structure.
Planning Your UX Strategy
Renato Feijo writes about how to gradually integrate the design process into the overall work of the company. He considers 6 degrees of interaction - from complete indifference and primary interest to the topic to the active involvement of specialists and their full integration.

Managing User Experience Teams
Blog Margaret Gould Stewart and Graham Jenkin from Google, telling about the management of interface projects in the company. Although many materials describe things that are common to project management, they mention a lot of interface specifics.

Using a Collaborative Parallel Design Process
A description of the collaborative design process and its practice from Mike Myles. He talks about how the interface team, their colleagues from other departments and users can work together on the interface.

Cases

The FedEx Journey
Tom Wicinski and Brice Stokes from FedEx talk about how the process of working on the interfaces in the company is structured. As well as how it goes beyond computers to the more general side of customer experience.

The Evolution of a GUI and the Pulsating Life of a UX
A story about the design and design process of the Tabbles desktop file manager. Many intermediate interface concepts are shown, which allows you to see the development of the idea.

Case Study of Agile and UCD Working Together
The history of the redesign of a large information site Computer Weekly. Although agile is mentioned here rather as a buzzword (there are almost no descriptions of the interaction between the teams), the article provides a useful project schedule.

Theory

Navimation - Exploring Time, Space & Motion Screen Design
Jon Olav H. Eikenes and Andrew Morrison offer a new term for navimization for modern interfaces. They actively use animation to show transitions between screens, objects, and system states.

Eight Principles of Information Architecture (Dan Brown Presentation)
A good overview presentation by Dan Brown about the key principles of the information architecture - attention to content, a large selection makes it difficult to choose, gradual disclosure of information, multiple entry points and methods of classification, etc.

Story

Into the Groove - Lessons from the Desktop Music Revolution
Dave Cronin from Cooper Consulting describes the history of the development of specialized software interfaces for musicians, from analog and simple digital devices to complex computer programs and unusual instruments.

Bob and Beyond - A Microsoft Insider Remembers
A detailed first-hand account of the history of one of the most controversial and ridiculed interfaces. He is often criticized a lot, although the concept laid out in MS Bob was more than interesting and should help inexperienced users understand computers. In a series of materials available product launch history and gallery of screenshots of the interface .

History of the Button (Bill De Rouchey Presentation)
The presentation of Bill De Rouchey, which tells about the history of buttons. It contains many examples showing the development from mechanical tools to computer interfaces.

Trends

Natural User Interfaces are Not Natural
Don Norman reflects on the trend of “natural” interfaces and gives several reasons why they are not completely natural.

Game mechanisms and elements in interfaces
Recently, the trend of using game elements in interfaces has been growing more and more, from simple profile filling strips and getting karma to more complex systems with pumping the “character level” for using its functions and other activities related to the history of working with the service. This material contains descriptions of gaming mechanisms, as well as examples of their use in modern web services.

Fresh links can also be tracked as they appear in the Friendfeed User Experience ribbon .