Fit and Finish: Insight from the Ironworks User Experience Group

Searching for the Fundamental Flaw

I daydream occasionally about a hypothetical candy box of doctorates, from which I might some day pluck a thesis to pursue.  The creamy center of each potential research project is a variation on the urgent question HEY,WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON HERE! 

Among many burning questions, I really want to know: Why is software for users SO difficult to design well?

The Magic of User Experience

I often find lots of thought-provoking material in Mark Hurst's "Good Experience" e-newsletter.  Of particular interest recently was a video from the 2009 Gel Conference featuring slight-of-hand magician, Jamy Ian Swiss (photo at left).  Jamy talks about the importance of user empathy in good design and demonstrates this on stage by revealing a magic trick that all can see except for the willing audience volunteer.  This 25-minute video is well worth watching for anyone who truly cares about the user experience.

Metadata, Taxonomies, Vocabularies – Do What?

Imagine standing in front of a wall of cubbies filled with parchment scrolls, and not being able to find the Tractatus you know exists in there.  Or no – make that try to find the right health insurance claim form on your corporate intranet.  Your predicament is as old as civilization itself.  And content classification structures, including tools like metadata and taxonomy, were invented thousands of years ago to deal with it. 

But let’s say you want to build one of these taxonomy or metadata things yourself.  You might first want to figure out what those terms mean – though ironically enough, there are creative differences over how they’re defined and used. Nonetheless, the following offers a high-level description of these key terms.

Citizen-Centric Portals in a Nutshell

I'm working on a citizen-facing, U.S. government portal in the early stages of becoming an archetype for e-Government services. I recently did a peer review to identify other sites that also:

• * Steward and present content from across organizations
• * Require close inter-organizational coordination for user authentication to deliver secure access to applications and data
• * Have to pull everyone involved up by the bootstraps to get the job done

UX Library: 4 Books On My Must-Read List

Even with all the outstanding UX resources online I still find myself gravitating to my books. There's just something reassuring about having a well-stocked UX reference shelf that I can physically touch with my fingertips.  

I started collecting in 2000 - mostly UX reference, but I do have some fun oddballs. In 2007 I had the pleasure of curating a vast UX reference collection for the e-commerce division of a former Fortune 500 retailer. Overall, my personal collection is fairly eclectic and utilitarian (I might write about it in more detail in another post).

At the moment I have 43 UX-related books in my Amazon shopping cart. Trouble is I only have time (and budget) for 4.

Here's my list of must-reads for early 2010:

 
 
  
Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People - Ken Watanabe
I was really inspired by the deductive reasoning G. Polya preached in How to Solve It (and I'm not a math guy). Here Watanabe presents an intriguing collection of practical problem-solving strategies. I like that the book was written for school kids in Japan but has been embraced by the business world. 

Authorization to Read: Granted

Work life is intensive! My time clearance for reading trade publications is on a need-to-know- basis only. In other words, no conference session, local event, article, or book chapter gets on my calendar unless I need to learn something NOW.

So, in preparing this year's Information Architecture Special Issue for the ASIS&T Bulletin, I sought articles with thought-provoking yet practical ideas for busy user experience practitioners. The approach paid off immediately on my current project, a government portal we're building at Ironworks.