UI

So somebody else built a successful business on that idea you had three years ago. What does that mean? That if you would just have pursued that idea, you would now automatically be enjoying their spoils? Sorry to burst your bubble, but I really don’t think so. Ideas on their own are just not that important. It’s incredibly rare that someone comes up with an idea so unique, so protectable that the success story writes itself. Most ideas are nothing without execution. Just because you thought of a site to share photos with friends wouldn’t have made you Flickr. But I can see…

The classic argument for enduring 80 to 100 hour work weeks for years on end — sacrificing relationships, hobbies, and anything else that doesn’t progress the mission — is that at the end of the rainbow lies early retirement. The reward for risking it all on a crazy startup idea. This wonderful place is filled with anything you want it to be. Never a dull moment again, all the flexibility and freedom in the world. I’m Jack’s sense of utter disbelief. Why does the idea of work have to be so bad that you want to sacrifice year’s worth of prime living to get…

“The conventional wisdom in our business is that you have to grow and keep moving to survive. We never grew, always stayed tiny, and it served us very well over the years, allowing us to pick and choose projects, and keeping our financial independence from our clients.” -Stefan Sagmeister (link) “Watching nonprogrammers trying to run software companies is like watching someone who doesn’t know how to surf trying to surf. Even if he has great advisers standing on the shore telling him what to do, he still falls off the board again and again.” -Joel Spolsky (link)…

The internet is full of vapid words and catch-less phrases, but one that I’ve long been particularly peeved about is the word “play”. As in this company is an “infrastructure play” or a “CPM play”. Blogger, please. Using “play” feels like it’s just pointing to how unsubstantial something is. Like that this is their third play. And oh hell, if that doesn’t work, we’ll just get more of other people’s money and try to play again. Or that it’s a play as in pulling the lever on a slot machine and if you’re…

Here’s another reason to double, triple, quadruple-check yourself when you want to add a new feature. A while back Netflix added a “Profiles” feature to their service. A couple weeks ago, they decided to pull the feature because it was too confusing and it wasn’t adding value. But it was too late. People were pissed. The blog post received 1286 comments. In the face of this reaction, Netflix had to turn 180 and keep the feature. Whether Netflix Profiles are good or bad, clear or confusing, they’re here to stay. The lesson: Once your user base has grown beyond a…

Where would we be without rating and reputation systems these days? Take them away, and we wouldn’t know who to trust on eBay, what movies to pick on Netflix, or what books to buy on Amazon. Reputation systems (essentially a rating system for people) also help guide us through the labyrinth of individuals who make up our social web. Is he or she worthwhile to spend my time on? For pity’s sake, please don’t check out our reputation points before deciding whether to read this article.Rating and reputation systems have become standard tools in our design toolbox. But sometimes…

MindCanvas describes itself as a remote research tool that uses Game-like Elicitation Methods (GEMs) to gather insights about customer’s thoughts and feelings. It was developed by Uzanto Consulting, a web product strategy firm. When I first learned about MindCanvas, I understood it to be an online card sorting tool. Happily, it’s much more than that.As a veteran IA consultant, I have used MindCanvas a handful of times during the course of different projects. I have also conducted card sorting exercises without the tool. I am thrilled to have a useful—and user-friendly—tool at…

To tackle the classic “how to prototype rich interactions” problem, I developed a process for translating static screen designs (from wireframes to visual comps) into interactive experiences using Flash. Requiring some fairly basic ActionScript knowledge, these prototypes proved to be a quick yet powerful way to bring interaction designs to life.When asked if I could find a quick and easy way to prototype a web application my project team had wireframed in Visio, I first turned to PDF prototyping. Using a PDF of the wireframes as the base, I overlaid clickable elements and some…

The rising popularity of the comic as an internal communication device for designers has increased our ability to engage our stakeholders as we build interfaces. Yet, social service agencies looking to provide services to hard-to-reach groups like immigrants, cultural minorities, and the poor have taken pride in innovative outreach methods. In situations where traditional printed matter is a barrier, graphical methods can be used very effectively to communicate with audiences. From guerilla theatre to testimonials, posters to graphic instructions, users have benefited from alternative…

A lot of confusion and misunderstanding surrounds the term "user experience." The multitude of acitivities that can be labeled with these two words span a vast spectrum of people, skills and situations. If you ask for UX design (UXD), what exactly are you asking for? Similary, if someone tells you they are going to provide you with UXD for an application, website or intranet or extranet, what exactly are you going to get?Is it just one person who is responsible or is it a team of people who are in charge of UXD? In this story I´ll sketch my ideas of UXD based on my experiences…

<a href="http://www.accessibility.net.nz/" title="Accessibility New Zealand Site"><img class="right border" src="http://accessites.org/site/site-img/accessibility-nz.jpg" width="200" height="120" alt="Visit the Accessibility New Zealand site" /></a> The <a href="http://accessibility.net.nz/">Accessibility NZ site</a>, (NZ for New Zealand,) is a well-constructed, simple approach to accessible design. The site clearly demonstrates a firm grasp of the fundamentals of accessibility.

<img class="right" src="http://accessites.org/site/post-img/ucd.jpg" width="250" height="200" alt="" /> The role of the User-Centered Design (UCD) process is vital to the success of site and/or application development yet it remains something of a foreign concept. It is also frequently bundled in with "Usability" and tacked on to the end of a project instead of taking its proper place as the underlying foundation. So, what is User-Centered Design and how should it be applied?

<a href="http://www.woking.gov.uk/" title="Woking Borough Council Site"><img class="right border" src="http://accessites.org/site/site-img/wokingboroughcouncil.jpg" width="200" height="120" alt="Visit the Woking Borough Council site" /></a> The <a href="http://www.woking.gov.uk/">Woking Borough Council site</a> is one of the best UK council sites that we've seen in a long time. Good looking, highly usable and mostly accessible. Given that councils, faced with huge amounts of…

<img class="right" src="http://accessites.org/site/post-img/can-o-tools.jpg" width="250" height="200" alt="" /> As seen on our <a href="http://accessites.org/site/resources/">Resources</a> page, there are a number of web accessibility evaluation tools available to developers. Most accessible web developers fall into three groups as it pertains to the value of these tools. Either they love them, hate them, or don't really understand how to use them. The purpose of this article is to encourage those who love them to…

<a href="http://www.coffee.net/" title="Visit the CoffeeNet site"><img class="right border" src="http://accessites.org/site/site-img/coffeenet.jpg" width="200" height="120" alt="Visit the CoffeeNet site" /></a> The <a href="http://www.coffee.net/">CoffeeNet site</a> is a vast site offering a wealth of content that may be of interest to anyone going to or living in the Seattle, Washington area. It covers restaurants, coffee shops, entertainment, and a lot more. Everything and anything…

This past week I’ve implemented “Reader Shorts” onto DustinDiaz.com(a website that once talked about JavaScript on a regular basis) as a way to include updates on my website on a more frequent basis. These “shorts” are also available as an xml feed and can be commented on (en route to a discussion) using Friend Feed. One funny thing that dawned on me this week is that after including my Twitter updates, and now my Reader Shorts, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no need to ever come up with your own database backend and that you can fully run a…

This is obviously a no-brainer in that knowing something like this works in JavaScript, but it never really occurred to me to even do such a thing until today. Take the following example which ‘calls’ the anonymous function within a unique scope: Scoping anonymous funcitons var o = 'hello world'; (function() { alert(this); }).call(o); It seems ridiculous (in a good way), but it works! So what’s this mean? It’s actually a big deal. Think about how many times you’ve lost your desired scope due to being inside the scope of another function. Confused? How many times…

There are very few things I don’t like on a Mac. One of them is the ability to maximize your application windows like the way you can on Microsoft Windows (Yes, the irony (no, actually that’s not irony, it makes complete sense)). What a Mac will do when you hit the green “+” maximize button is size your application window to the contents that your window contains. Not helpful. What MS Windows will do is actually size your window to the size of your screen blocking out all other applications. To me this is helpful since I don’t like these distractions in the…

The third annual CSS Naked Day is back in full swing. Sign ups have began for the event that will bring the web back to the nude on April 9th, 2008. Please take special note that the date is different (reason explained on the official site). If you want to sign up, please use the sign up form on the official website. As a reminder, CSS Naked Day is a world-wide event that lasts for one international day (48 hours) where webmasters around the globe strip CSS from their websites to promote Web Standards with layered semantic markup, and a clear separation between content, and presentation to…

This is your annual post to remind you SouthBy-goers in Texas that “Breakfast with Dustin” will continue on the final night at IHOP which is just a half mile away from the conference center beginning sometime around Tuesday at midnight ~ Wednesday 1am and surely to go on until about 4am for people looking for something to take up their time before their flight back home or just want to go to an “after the after the after-party.” This was once upon a time an event that I paid for, but now people find that paying six dollars for a few hot cakes, eggs, and orange is just…

Just got introduced to TheDieline.com a great package design blog. How cool is this sleeve?

TechCrunch takes a peek inside the Gmail usability lab — interesting to see a couple of features that never made it.

Yum! Great online tool for creating custom-designed M&M’s. Anyone up for some red UX Magazine ones?

Manga-inspired art by Deseo. Stunning

70 gorgeous business cards. Worth a look.

Christoph Niemann's funny and moving tribute to the New York subway system, as seen through his sons' eyes. A must-read. (Thanks, Alice)

From the This Is Broken group on Flickr, tonrix makes a good point that this street sign is a bit drastic:

Huge data sets are yielding patterns that may be more accurate than pre-built models. Data-driven advances are changing quantum physics, law, cosmology, medicine, travel, politics, and helping to predict hard-to-model phenomena like riots and crop yields. Kevin Kelly calls it the Google way of science.

Newly designed gallon milk jugs at Wal-Mart and Costco. Tradeoff: they're harder to pour (worse customer experience), but have more efficient and green packaging (better "global experience"?).

A bag of Pirate's Booty shows the words "ALL NATURAL" and then, below that, "Good for you"! You might assume it means that Pirate's Booty is claiming to be good for you. You'd be wrong, according to this New York Times article: [Pirate's Booty founder Robert] Ehrlich said that the phrase “Good for You” on a bag of Tings (eight grams fat) wasn’t so much a claim as a congratulation: “You bought this bag — well, good for you!” Then, responding to whether this might be a tad bit misleading: Besides, he adds, is Snapple really made from “the best stuff on earth”?

a series of 4 different physical "sound sculptures": 3D artworks based on audio analysis & custom software that extract meaningful data from sound signals, to create unique mappings between the audio & other media. the sculptures are based on audioworks by Freiband (Nl, Frans de Waard), & Alexander Rishaug (No), & were created using digital fabrication technology such as rapid prototyping, CNC & laser cutting, which allow for the direct translation of a digital model into physical form. [link: flickr.com & 5daysoff.nl] see also sound chair audio sculpture.

several visualizations of real-time coffee consumption tracked by hacking a real (& online) coffee machine. the arcs graph shows the average time caffeine remains in the body. the circles applet represents individual days as unique circles. circles are positioned based on the time coffee was taken, while color saturation & size convey the quantity of coffee. an open, online API, allows anyone to create alternative visualizations of the coffee usage dataset. [link: colmeia.tv|via flowingdata.com & thnkx colmeia]

a visual bookshelf browser of over 21,000 books from Amazon's catalog. books are visualized as stacks in shelves, with covers ordered alphabetically by author & organized by genre. following the typical Google Map interaction metaphor,users can click & drag across Zoomii's landscape of shelves, zoom in & out, or select a book's cover to receive basic statistical information. [link: zoomii.com|via arstechnica.com] see also: . Amazon book map . another Amazon book map . amaznode . oskope Amazon graphs . viewzi book view

a network visualization that shows the flow of knowledge between scientific fields based on the weighting of citations by subject field. a static map represents between fields. the dataset is based on Thomson Scientific's 2004 Journal Citation Reports (JCR), consisting of 6,434,916 citations from 6128 journals. orange circles represent fields, with larger, darker circles indicating larger field size as measured by eigenfactor. blue arrows represent citation flow between fields. an arrow from field A to field B indicates citation traffic from A to B, with larger, darker arrows indicating…

a "social experiment" that harnesses the collective intelligence of the web to visualize & uncover hidden relationships among future & historical events. users are invited to leave predictions of future events, while an encompassing network-like visualizations allows the identification of patterns "by connecting the past, present & future". [link: weboffate.com|thnkx Paul] see also: . community opinion graphs . collaborative news prediction . geographical buzz map

By Jonathan Follett Published: June 23, 2008 “An organization’s reason for being, like that of any organism, is to help the parts that are in relationship to each other, to be able to deal with change in the environment.”—Kevin Kelly Over the past three decades of computer/human interaction, we’ve seen digital technology evolve from a curiosity to a convenience to an integral part of our everyday lives. For UX professionals, the demand for our skill sets and the opportunities to practice seem only to grow, whether we be designers or developers, usability…

By Joe Lamantia Published: June 23, 2008 From “The Big Chill”: [1] Michael: “I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.” Sam Weber: “Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important than sex.” Michael: “Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?” Designers rationalize their choices just as much as everyone else. But we also play a unique role in shaping the human world by creating the expressive and functional tools many people use in their…

By Ben Werner Published: June 23, 2008 A common frustration among UX professionals who are employed in the software development industry is the perception that executive-level management gives lip service to user experience rather than supporting specific UX activities by allocating sufficient resources for them. This perception is seldom a reality. Competent management does realize that the user experience is critical to the long-term health of their company. Unfortunately, when developing software, the temptation to steal from the feature-list cookie jar and try to squeeze just one more…

By Luke Wroblewski Published: June 9, 2008 As enablers of online conversations between businesses and customers, Web forms are often responsible for gathering critical information—email addresses for continued communications, mailing addresses for product shipments, and billing information for payment processing to name just a few. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that one of the most common questions I get asked about Web form design is: “How do I deal with international addresses?” But before we get into the nuances of address variations, it’s worth…

By Colleen Jones Published: June 9, 2008 The bill is a cornerstone communication in the customer experience, especially when it comes to billing for services. Customers want to easily understand and pay their bills, and businesses want to get paid on time. One would think a business would value the bill enough to invest in a thoughtful design. Yet many bills are poorly designed, causing needless confusion and frustration for customers and businesses alike—not to mention expensive customer service and customer churn. To encourage forward progress in the design of bills, this column…

Every wonder who you really are? Congratulations! You have a lot in common with JavaScript. Learn once and for all how to train your JavaScript to remember who it is and what it's doing.  Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us!

Managing subcontractors and distributed projects is easy and fun. No wait, that's a lie. Luckily, a good version control may be just what you need to keep your projects on track.  Hide Your Shame: The A List Apart Store and T-Shirt Emporium is back. Hot new designs! Old favorites remixed! S, M, L, XL. Come shop with us!

On August 18th I’ll be speaking at An Event Apart in Boston, MA about Web Application Hierarchy. I'll walk through how people parse Web pages and the implications of this behavior for designers. Specifically, using the principles of visual hierarchy to communicate key information about the purpose and use of Web applications. If you are interested in going, feel free to use the discount code: AEALUKE for savings on the event cost.Official Description When a potential customer makes it to one of your pages, what will they do? Do you want them to sign up, share knowledge, buy something, or…

In the July/August 2008 issue of Interactions magazine, Philip Haine (founder of Obvious Design) wrote a detailed review of my new book Web Form Design. Here's a preview: "A well-designed form is barely noticeable. But that doesn’t mean the design process is. Like most design problems, achieving a concise design that seems, in retrospect, obvious, requires much work. There are myriad factors to consider, each with multiple alternatives, each with its pros and cons. Should we have one long form or a sequence of short forms? Should help be provided in-line with the form controls, on the side,…

In the July/August 2008 issue of Interactions magazine, I wrote an article on Web-Conscious Content Experiences about how content pages can be better optimized for the Web ecosystem. Here's a preview: "In today’s search-driven, social, and distributed Web, people are finding their way to content through an increasing number of distinct experiences. Content-aggregator sites like digg and del.icio.us, display surfaces like Facebook and MySpace, content creation sites like blogs and wikis, search engines like Google and Yahoo!, and communication tools like email and instant messaging are all…

As part of our Influencing Strategy by Design course, Tom Chi and I walk through some global trends that provide designers with an opportunity for leadership roles. Specifically Tom illustrates the transition from the 1800s craft economy to the 2000s creative economy. In the craft economy of the 1800s, regional markets were filled with individual or family-based craftspeople like blacksmiths or potters. These professions required creativity, were small size (no scale), and did not need a lot of collaboration to get products made. In the industrial economy of the 1900s, small craftsmen gave…

Smart defaults —as described by Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice- are selections put in place that serve the interests of most people. Because smart defaults are designed to help people make good choices, we can utilize them in Web forms to expedite form completion. The trick is to ensure that the defaults in our forms align with our customers’ goals. As an example, let’s look at the rather standard “Book a Flight” form on JetBlue’s site. Among the expected questions of where are you going and when is a set of questions about number of adults and/or kids traveling on this…

Just a quick note that tickets for dConstruct 2008 went on sale at 11am BST this morning. It’s now 2:30pm and we’ve got around 135 tickets left. We’ve got some great people like Steven Johnson, Daniel Burka and Joshua Porter speaking this year, so it should be a lot of fun. So if you want to come along I recommend popping along now to secure your ticket.

To win a free ticket to dConstruct simply grab the code for one of our customisable buttons, add your own image and upload it to your website. Next, take a screen grab of your button and post it to our flicker group. The best button posted added by the evening of the 30th June, as voted by ourselves, will win a complimentary pass to the event. It’s as simple as that.

As well as a great line-up of speakers we’ve got some amazing workshops at this year’s dConstruct. We only launched them a couple of days ago, but several of them are already half full, so we expect them to sell out a lot faster than they did last year. I think people have realised that the workshops are one of the best was to guarantee a place at dConstruct, which typically sells out in under 24 hours. However I think it’s mostly down to the fantastic people we’ve got running these workshops. It’s just a shame that I can’t see them all! First up we have…

If you haven’t already heard, we quietly launched the dConstruct 2008 website at the start of the week. So if you’ve not seen the latest incarnation yet, I suggest you pop along to take a look. 2008.dconstruct.org The conference itself will be take place on Friday the 5th of September, back at the Dome in sunny Brighton. And like last year, we’ll be hosting a series of practical workshops in the run-up to the event. Rather than putting on the same show with the same people year after year, we try to mix things up by focussing on a specific theme. One that we feel sums up the current…

Since my last post people have been clamouring for more details on Silverback, so I thought I’d explain where the idea came from, then show you a few screenshots. Clearleft are a very user-focused agency and we try to do at least one round of usability testing on every project. We keep things as simple as possible by using our own premises, recruiting our own subjects and feeding the results straight back into the design process. Instead of expensive suites we’ll set up a computer in an empty meeting room and train a video camera on the screen to capture what the subject is saying and…

The HTML vs. XHTML discussion has been lingering for an extensive amount of time. There have been many solid arguments put behind each, and more often than not, the consensus from many authors isn’t to choose one over the other, but to justify your choice. The idea was to make an educated decision and stick with it. I’d like to skip the formalities in explaining the fundamental differences between HTML and XHTML in favor of a discussion surrounding the characteristics which helped shape my decision to use HTML after years of writing XHTML. My history with XHTML For a long time I…

As I had recently mentioned, I took a short break from publishing articles to focus on a number of things. One item mentioned was personal projects, the first of which being the design of this website. If you’re currently reading in your favorite feed reader and you’d like to see how things have changed, feel free to check things out. For those that are interested, I’ll take some space to lay out what was done and why I did it. Quite minimalist I’ve always been a huge fan of minimalist design, especially on the Web. I wanted to have a hand at something even more…

I wanted to write a quick note to let everyone know I’ll be back up and running next week (June 23, 2008). I’ve got some articles lined up, and everything permitting I’m hoping to put up a small-ish project I’ve been working on. As an update to the list of things I was looking to complete during my time off, it was just the thing I needed. I was able to spend some much enjoyed quality time with Carrie (she got us a Wii!) and I was able to get a number of things done with/for my family. Some technical details It was good to try and unplug for a short amount of time and…

This website was named not only to provide a blatant posting schedule (something I feel is important to readers) but also to give myself a very public facing deadline ensuring fresh content on a consistent basis. I think I’ve lived up to the promise I made to myself in posting (what I consider) decent articles each and every week for about 120 weeks now. I’ve been struggling to find the time lately to give my articles the time, effort, and attention they deserve, and I think the remedy will be a short time off while I reorganize a bit. It may seem a bit strange, but I’m a…

We’ve all got the benefit of working in an extremely creative environment. Whether you’re a programmer or a designer, working on the Web puts you in quite a unique situation. While our surroundings have a tendency of being ever-changing, exciting, and stimulating, it’s entirely possible to fall victim to burnout; one of the worst things to effect your productivity. For me personally, it’s disastrous when I’ve found myself burnt out on anything related to work. I suddenly find myself consciously avoiding the activity I enjoy most. While being burned out on a job…

For quite awhile, I’ve not really cared about the iPhone. I have a Blackberry and it’s held its own. My wife has an iPhone I got her last year and I like it. I miss my camera. I miss some of the features and IM-like text messages call out to me. I decided that I want an iPhone, and recent events (next post, I promise!) have afforded me the luxury of purchasing one on July 11th, when the 3G iPhone is launched. But today, I spoke to AT&T to see how the landscape would play out for me, given the scenario with our family plan with them. The Scenario Me: Blackberry 8830 My wife:…

Oh, these wonderful social thingies allow for so much flexibility with our language.  Here’s a new one for you, and hopefully you heard it here first. Friend-igrated: When creating social identities, the ability to show friends intertwined in your own thread/feed/etc. Example: I just signed-up for Swurl and I like how it displays all of my feeds in a familiar blog-like format. I’m still looking to see if they let you see a friend-igrated display so that I can keep track of the people I follow, too. (Catch that “friend-igrated” refers to people you…

Sub-title: Beta is BS and Users Deserve Better “Always in Beta” is one of those latest phrases that does a really good job of getting under my skin. Beta implies to me that something is purposefully not yet complete and that there are going to be some mistakes. Some companies, like Adobe, do a really good job of utilizing a beta release program to snuff out issues that real users find and that are not in a “control” group of their selection. That is a good thing. However, launching a website and slapping a “beta” label on it often seems like an excuse to put garbage on the web…

The Roku Netflix box arrived at my doorstep today, and FedEx’s handy email updates of the tracking status made it very difficult to make it through the rest of my meetings before commuting home. When I did finally arrive home, the tiny little box was sitting next to the substantially larger box of a Wii Fit, that somehow managed not to help me begin a new workout regime tonight. The Roku Netflix box is simple. It’s easy to set-up if you know how to, well, set things up. I’ve got a receiver that supports 2 additional zones in my house, and I run everything through…

While the world is off bandwagoning on blog posts about Twitter and how much of an influence/frustration it is, I wanted to get back to the root of some things. I’ve been troubled a lot lately by just how bad it seems that web (online) experiences for brands are failing the consumers. The amount of money wasted on ignorance, well, I just don’t know. As every good marketer should know–from Marketing 101–it is very important that you maintain a brand, or an extension of it. This means that you want people to not only use your product or service, but that you want them to…

People who do a lot of online research are significant sources of advice about products and services compared to adults who don't do much research, according to a new study of 15,727 people by BIGresearch."Do you give advice to others about products/services you have purchased?"                   Active online researcher All adults Regularly gives advice 47.0% 29.4% Occasionally gives advice 49.8% 63.4% Never gives advice 3.2% 7.2% Source: BIGresearch, SIMM 11 (December 2007) After searching, how do you communicate with…

During a webinar that launches tomorrow, Rob Howard and I will chat about the building blocks of communities. It's geared primarily to those thinking about establishing online communities for their companies or brands. Rob is the founder and CEO of Telligent, a company that makes community software. He's a smart guy. You'll like him. Plus, he's giving away 100 copies of "Citizen Marketers" to webinar registrants (the books have since been snapped up). Even better, the webinar is free. Update: Here's the archived webinar.

Unless you are Heidi Klum, two of the most dreaded shopping experiences for women can be buying bathing suits or jeans.  So with a masochist's zeal, I ventured out recently to two specialty stores to buy both items; one sells only jeans, the other only bathing suits. Each featured an impressive selection of high-end inventory.   One expertly alleviated my dread. The other enhanced it. One is building a strong word-of-mouth foundation. The other is probably not growing by referrals. For jeans, a friend referred me to Hem, a "jean bar" in downtown Austin. My friend said…

The book industry isn't well, and BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter thinks he has a solution. On the Harvard Business Publishing blog, Dave lays out an alternative to the current antiquated system: Authors package books on their own. Authors distribute digital copies of books for free to attract readers and identify markets. They use self-distribution tools to sell as many books as they can. Publishers find authors based on strong word of mouth of digital distribution, then pay a licensing fee for distribution rights for serving an initial marketplace of buyers (note: potential business model for a…

American is no longer alone with its $15 fee to check your first bag on a flight. United and US Air just announced they, too, will charge a similar fee. Furthermore, US Air will soon charge $2 for soft drinks and $7 for alcoholic drinks, about what you'd pay at a swanky nightclub. The demise of the standard, all-inclusive airfare and the gathering momentum of a fee-driven model (pioneered by European carrier Ryanair) continues toward something approaching commoditization. Commodities are a terrible business for customer loyalty. Airlines, of course, are in a horrible spot. The rising price of…

This is the first post in a series documenting my trip to Paris to compete in the Microsoft Imagine Cup Interface Design Competition. Unfortunately, our journey got off to a slow start yesterday. Storms over the midwest kept our flight out of Indy delayed over 5 hours. When we finally arrived in Detroit around 1am, we had missed our flight to Paris and were left to camp out under the sweet shade of a plastic tree: With our new flight departing this afternoon, we’re set to arrive in Paris at 9:30am tomorrow. At 1pm the Interface Design finals will commence, and we will be given a brand…

One of the biggest pleasures of working on the IU Energy Challenge has been getting tapped into the broader initiative to promote environmental sustainability on the IUB campus. This summer, I am honored to continue this effort by participating in the second summer internship program sponsored by the Sustainability Task force. I will be joining 19 energetic students from diverse backgrounds, who will each be working on projects to bring sustainable initiatives into various aspects of campus operations and academics. My particular project will be a continuation of my capstone work; I will be…

On Friday, I presented my master’s capstone project, which in a symbolic sense concluded and summed up my design school experience. Putting together the presentation gave me a chance to reflect on the type of work I did this year: my approach, my process and the tacit knowledge gained. I came up with a few concepts that I think especially characterize this capstone project, and also synthesize much of my learning experience from the last two years. Chief among them is the notion of design as service. In their book, the Design Way, Nelson and Stolterman write that design is about…

I just found out that I have advanced to the final round of the 2008 Microsoft Imagine Cup Interface Design competition. The theme of this year’s competition is “Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment”. My design (submitted along with teammate Will Odom) is part of my capstone work creating an energy conservation contest for IU campus. We will be one of 6 teams to compete in the world finals in Paris, France later this summer. Here is the abstract that we submitted with our prototype: (more…)

For the past two months, I’ve been working to overhaul the look and contents of this site. I was getting bored with the generic Wordpress theme, so I decided to create my own style from scratch. This turned out to be a lot more work than I expected, but I am pleased with the results. The style came together with some typographic advice from Web Designer Wall, and some worn edges by way of designer Henry Jones. Along with the new look, I’ve also added a lot more content to my portfolio, notably bringing it up to date and featuring my ongoing capstone project. So please take a look…

UXEM workshop in CHI'08 (April 6th, 2008 in Florence, Italy) - "The aim of the workshop is to transfer knowledge from practitioners to academics about challenges with putting UX evaluation into practice, and from academics to practitioners to inform and inspire practical UX work with research findings of UX evaluation methods. Participants will gain an overview of the current state of practical approaches, tools, and methods for UX evaluation, as well as insights into the importance of UX evaluation in product development. The main outcomes of the workshop are a model of different UX…

Proceedings of the International Workshop (Reykjavik, Iceland June 18th 2008) - "The workshop VUUM brings together a group of experienced HCI researchers and practitioners to explore a long-standing research problem – the meaningfulness of measurable constructs and the measurability of nonmeasurable ones. One may argue that basically everything can be measured, but some things may be more 'measurable' than the others; how to estimate the threshold of measurability remains unclear. The sixteen interesting submissions in this volume touch upon the basic issue of the formal-empirical…

"The focus of my questions in this video interview with Howard Rheingold, was kindly suggested by the event organizer Leandro Agrò, and they focused on (a) the future of technology, (b) the speed at which things change, (c) who will eventually control the Internet, (d) what we can do about it, and (e) how pervasive technology will become in the next few years." (Robin Good's Latest News)

"In this article we present the methodology and initial results from qualitative research into the usage and communication of digital information. It considers the motivation for the research and the methodologies adopted, including Contextual Design and Cultural Probes. The article describes the preliminary studies conducted to test the approach, highlighting the strengths and limitations of the techniques applied. Finally, it outlines proposals for refinement in subsequent iterations and the future research activities planned." (Kelly Snow et al. - D-Lib Magazine May/June 2008)

"We explore the roles and the importance of having a management community inside the Human-Computer Interaction field and inside the large CHI community. We believe that the management community keeps the broad HCI field in touch with the strategic and managerial values of HCI research and practice. It can be an effective advocate and bridge for bringing the importance of HCI research and practice to the strategic and managerial levels of organizations, thus HCI work can have bigger and broader impact on people, organizations, and societies. We call for additional energy, effort, and…

A 14-year old video blogger called Fred somehow managed to get a fan base of almost 45 Million users. Now instead of asking how that’s possible, Seth Godin and Robert Scoble trivialize his success. Did they forget what Elvis said? Just to be clear: Fred is no Elvis. Fred is the most annoying little nag I have ever seen. I had to force myself through one of his painful videos this morning, and I can still feel the agony. Yet I am fascinated by the mathematical possibility of his success. 45 Million users! In our business basically this means you’ve made it into Nirvana. 45 Million…

Perhaps Switzerland’s most ambitious news project to date, “Newsnetz” joins the forces of major Swiss newspapers and a series of local Swiss papers to become the country’s leading news domain in terms of reach, traffic, editorial size, and production. It works by having a single, central online CMS process massive amounts of high-quality news that is fed to a conglomerate of large newspaper sites. These major sites in turn distribute specific local news throughout the entire network of which they are a part. It can be thought of as a star-shaped news machine where…

We had to be unusually secretive about the following developments. But now, we can finally lift the curtain. First, the big news project is finished. Second, we have opened a second office in Zürich, Switzerland. 1. iA Redesigns a Series of Swiss Newspapers What it is:“Newsnetz” is probably Switzerland’s most ambitious online news project to date. It can be thought of as a star-shaped news machine where major Swiss newspapers and a series of local papers join forces. The combined strengths of Tages-Anzeiger, Basler Zeitung, and the Berner Zeitung promise to catapult the…

The IT-Revolution promised to free and enrich us. To free us from propaganda, to free us from mindless TV, to free us from advertisement torture, and to enrich us by letting machines do all the boring work so we’d have more free time. So, how did it go? Good Internet Revolution We read and write more today than we used to. The public opening of digital publication technology (AKA “blogs”) has provided a free speech transport with rocket engines. News has become more accessible and more transparent. The Internet is the taser against the shit bags that try to manipulate,…

The supposed recession is the best thing that could happen to us—to us readers, to us consumers, to us new media makers. Avalanche, take us with you! Even though print continues to cash in significantly more ad revenue than digital media, printed news will—from a purely economical point of view—undoubtedly fail. In the long run, the distribution model of print simply cannot compete. One of my all time favorite articles explains why: “[...] it helps to go back to your basic economics class and recognize that, in a competitive market, the price of a good is always going…

My first book didn't sell very well but it had an effect on people's hearts. Web designers around the world circulated a single copy of Taking Your Talent to the Web, adding their autographs, drawings, photos, and other verbal and visual messages to every page—even the covers and spine.

In Issue No. 262 of A List Apart, for people who make websites, Ryan Irelan invites us to collaborate and connect with Subversion, and Christophe Porteneuve explains how to get out of binding situations in JavaScript.

Friedrolling: vt. Gratuitously posting Basecamp referral links disguised as tweets or blog posts.

Speakeasy will only honor my request to discontinue DSL service in my old office if I call the company from my old phone number, which I no longer have access to because I moved out.

The new office is so new to me that I entered the address incorrectly while ordering CS3 suites for the studio. Amazon is consequently rush-delivering Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat Pro, and Fireworks to the wrong address, and it's too late to change the address on the order. Someone in Harlem is going to be very happy.

Mary Jean, who's always been the best writer in the family, writes: Nathaniel Oscar Rosenfeld was born Wednesday, June 18, at the extremely hospitable hour of 2:54 p.m. He was a strapping 8 pounds 6 ounces, and within minutes of emerging had figured out where the snack bar was, so we expect that number to stay impressive. After the world's longest pregnancy (27 years), everything went about perfectly with the labor and birth. That kid was so overripe he fell right off the tree. Iris is crazy about having a little bother brother. When Lou called her after the birth, I could hear her scream…

McCain's web team must have since been shamed into fixing their site's information architecture, because "Golf Gear" is no longer one of its four main tabs. But there's a screen grab over at Talking Points Memo...

Occasionally I help my clients find consulting firms for information architecture and information management projects. Here's how I help: Establish an overall hiring process Develop RFPs Assemble an initial list of potential vendors Review proposals Develop short list selection criteria Come up with (and ask) questions for the interviews of short list candidates Develop systems for evaluating proposals and presentations Because I'm such a swell guy, I've decided to share a general set of interview questions below. Hopefully some Bloug readers might find these helpful to consider when hiring a…

Steve Krug and I are in Chicago this week to teach our day-long workshops (me on Thursday, and Steve on Friday). Roundarch has kindly agreed to sponsor and organize a happy hour in concert with our visit. It takes place Thursday, May 15, from 6:00pm-8:00pm at the Elephant & Castle Pub (185 N. Wabash Avenue). Come by for drinks, complementary pub grub, and socializing. RSVP to rwankovsky [at] roundarch.com; hope to see you there!

Joshua Kaufman of UXmatters interviewed Liz Danzico and me about Rosenfeld Media, specifically addressing how we determined book features and tested our designs. We describe a bit of the "show and tell" approach we used for identifying features, and a bit about the task analysis we did for the print and digital edition designs. It's a nice short read; Joshua and Pabini Gabriel-Petit, UXmatters' editor-in-chief, did a great job. Speaking of books, I think we'll have sold 1,000 copies of Luke Wroblewski's Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by tomorrow. That's not bad, considering it…

New book by Jim Byrne launched: 60 hot to touch Accessible Web Design tips - the tips no web developer can live without!. Now available in paperback. It takes a different approach to the standard big and heavy web technique tomes currently available - this one offers light bytes for easy digestion. It contains 60 easy to understand, practical tips you can put to good use when developing your next website.

Former Making Connections Unit Director and Web accessibility specialist Jim Byrne has launched his new business website with the aim of helping organisations: Comply with Disability Discrimination legislation. Reach the largest potential audience - via an accessible, usable website. Access tailored training and support to maintain websites in the most efficient and accessible way.

A two hour seminar: Date: 25th May 9.45am - 12am. Book early to avoid disappointment. Venue: The Volunteer Centre, 84 Miller Street, Glasgow G1 1DT Cost: 39UK pounds per person. Facilitator: Jim Byrne email: ddaseminar@jimbyrne.co.uk Does your website comply with the DDA? Book your place on this seminar to explore the issues and find out what you need to know about the DDA and UK websites. This seminar is aimed at those individuals responsible for the creation, or management, of an organisation’s website. By the end of the seminar you will have answers to the following questions: Is your…

Jim Byrne leaves Glasgow Caledonian University - to provide accessibility web design, development and training services. I have been working within Glasgow Caledonian University since 1996, running the Making Connections Unit as a non-profit organisation providing advice, support and services to organisations interested in publishing accessible information on the web. In the last year I have worked as the University Web Accessibility Project Manager, providing training and consultancy to the web team (and external organisations) and working towards ensuring university websites are accessible…

There are still a few places left on the next Making Connections Unit, Accessible Web Design in Practice training course on the 9th and 10th of December. This a 2 day course being run in Glasgow Caledonian University Library in the Centre of Glasgow; the venue is close to both main Glasgow bus and train stations. Register your interest in the course by filling in the booking form. About the course This course is not about creating unattractive 'text only' pages; accessible design is about designing for disabled people and non-disabled people. The training combines off-line discussion and…

by: Matt RhodesAn article in the current edition of the McKinsey Quarterly looks at Open Innovation, the way that some companies conduct their innovation externally, rather than it being a proprietary and internal process.

by: David ArmanoFrom my latest contribution to Advertising Age:

by: Michael HoexterCurrently, vehicle-makers, researchers, investors and green technology analysts are involved in a high-stakes game of developing and investing in various battery chemistries and designs which may yield the result of more energy dense, longer-lasting, and less toxic batteries or ultracapacitors.

by: Dick StroudIn the UK, Honda has the reputation for being an oldies car – guess what car I drive!

by: Alexander OsterwalderUpdate: Based on the overwhelming interest this post got, I updated and republished the version from 2005.A business model is nothing else than a representation of how an organization makes (or intends to make) money. This can be nicely described through the 9 building blocks illustrated in the graphic below, which we call "business model canvas".

Should Links Open In New Windows? Collaborate and Connect with Subversion Getting Out of Binding Situations in JavaScript Portable Social Networks, The Building Blocks Of A Social Web Integrating Social Media into a Web Content Strategy Enterprise CMSes vs. Blog CMSes Make government data freely available Reduce Bounce Rates: Fight for the Second Click CSS Positioning Properties At-A-Glance Guide FancyZoom 1.1 Spam vs. Accessibility html vs css pt3/heading headaches Is Email In Danger? CSS Nesting Specifics - When CSS Misbehaves SWF searchability FAQ Improved Flash indexing

hAccessibility redux? Removing Microformats from bbc.co.uk/programmes The Touch Barrier - Accessibility and usability issues around touch technologies On A Scale of 1 to 5 CSS Editors Reviewed Breaking Out of the Box With CSS Layouts Nifty Navigation Tricks Using CSS The point of “Open” in OpenID html vs css pt2/navigation lists 10 Measures for Continuous Website Maintenance Social Design Patterns for Reputation Systems: An Interview with Yahoo’s Bryce Glass (Part I) A Semantic List-Based CSS Calendar Interaction Design: It’s All About the Subtleties We’re all ops…

Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 Firefox 3: What’s New, What’s Hot, and What’s Not Opera Browser Ver: 9.50 Australian Tech events Patrick Lauke on WCAG2 html vs css pt1/an introduction Sketching in Code: the Magic of Prototyping Faux Absolute Positioning Block Quotes and Pull Quotes: Examples and Good Practices 10 Examples of beautiful css typography and how they did it Why Do Web Startups Die? Lack of Alphalpha When Validation Becomes Unimportant Why You Shouldn’t be Afraid of Customer Reviews 11 Search Trends That May Disrupt Google Hijax: Progressive Enhancement with Ajax…

I was recently sent this question: I tried to use the following code in an XHTML page. When I validated the page, this showed up as invalid. Why? <input name="name" type="checkbox" checked /> Answer: The use of “checked” in this way is referred to as “attribute minimization”. This means the author has used the attribute’s name but has not specifying a value. For a document to be valid XHTML, attributes cannot be minimized. The W3C XHTML 1.0 spec states: XML does not support attribute minimization. Attribute-value pairs must be written in full. Attribute…

Download day 2008 Choosing the right tool The Wheres and Whens of Users’ Expectations Clean and pure CSS FORM design International Address Fields in Web Forms Migrating from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0 More css performance testing (pt 3) IE8 Beta 2 Coming in August Grandfather builds Web browser for autistic grandson Progressive enhancement of links using the CSS attribute selector Developing your Descriptions - Part 1, The Problem How the Web Was Won Easy Vertical Centering with CSS Is It OK to Require JavaScript? CSS file structuring/keeping it together Shifting from Content Management to…

It’s been a while since I heard this legendary recording of the Troggs arguing in the studio control room. The recording is said to have inspired some of the scenes in Spinal Tap. Download the .mp3 at the web archive. (Warning: This recording contains lots of expletives!!) Dubba, dubba, dubba cha!!

The Apple Mighty mouse is an expensive piece of trash. To be fair I do appreciate Apple’s kit, especially when the majority of their hardware is, on the whole, a good blend of form and function. Now I’m pretty sure everyone remembers the ball mice of yesteryear that were great until the ball mechanism got filled with crap and the mouse started being as responsive as Sly Stallone in an ESP test. Still someone realised this and optical mice were invented (according to Wikipedia) as far back as 1980. Failure has been averted ever since optical mice became widely available and the…

Ed and I have been busy updating the CSS Sprite Generator to improve it’s output quality by using the Imagick library instead of GD and as a result this allows a much tighter control over the output. In the process of doing this we’ve fixed the large majority of all outstanding bugs with the previous version. A nice addition to this version is the ability to be able to compress the output (assuming it’s png) with the optipng library. This can reduce the image by a significant amount without affecting the output quality so it’s well worth investigating. The branch on…

On the weekend I was lucky enough to be sent a copy of the awesome mobile Python book by my brother for my birthday. After hitting an issue with updating my PyS60 install I thought it would be a plan to re configure my phone so that I could start working with a freshly upgraded Python install. Before I did this I wanted to backup my contacts to the mac addressbook - always a good idea just incase something goes wrong. When I opened iSync I was greeted with a blank iSync window - despite having previously configuring the phone to work with iSync. Confused I thought “ok maybe it’s…

Great news that MySQL has migrated it’s source code from BitKeeper over to Bazaar. Interestingly the featureset and openness are cited as the main reasons for the switch to bazaar over several alternatives (which weren’t listed). In addition to the move to bazaar, Mysql are also using launchpad as their code repository though bugs will remain hosted at http://bugs.mysql.com/. It’s great to see such a well respected project move over to bazaar, and I can see why - bazaar does make it much more easy for communities to contribute to a project whilst minimising the overhead of…

Tristan Louis has a post looking at Is Techmeme Myopic, which is a good look at the lasting value that Techmeme surfaces. This mirrors my use of Techmeme, which is mostly to have a glance at what is being discussed each day. Techmeme has a very temporal value for me as it is a zeitgeist tool that tracks news and memes as they flow and ebb through the technology news realm of the web. Personally, I like Techmeme as it aggregates the news and conversations, which makes it really easy to skip the bits I do not care about (this is much of what flows through it), but I can focus on the few things…

Under a month from now I have the wonderful pleasure of speaking at the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0, this is just outside of Milan in Varese, Italy on June 25, 2008. I am really looking forward to this event as there are many people whom I chat with on Skype with and chat with in other ways about enterprise and the use of social tools inside these organizations. It is a wonderful opportunity to meet them in person and to listen to them live as they present. Already I know many people attending the event from the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Spain, and (of course)…

I am looking forward to being at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston from June 10 to June 12, 2008. I am going to be presenting on June 10, 2008 at 1pm on After Noah: Making Sense of the Flood (of Information). This presentation looks at what to expect with social bookmarking tools inside an organization as they scale and mature. It also looks at how to manage the growth as well as encourage the growth. Last year at the same Enterprise 2.0 conference I presented on Bottom-up Tagging (the presentation is found at Slideshare, Bottom-up All the Way Down: How Tags Help Businesses Organize,…

One of the things I continually run across talking with organizations deploying social tools inside their organization is the difficultly getting all the components to mesh. Nearly everybody is having or had a tough time with getting employees and partners to engage with the services, but everybody is finding out it is much more than just the tools that are needed to consider. The tools provide the foundation, but once service types and features are sorted out, it get much tougher. I get frustrated (as do many organizations whom I talk with lately) that social tools and services that make up…

This week I was down in Raleigh, North Carolina to speak at National Extension Technology Conference (NETC) 2008, which is for the people running the web and technology components for what used to be the agricultural extension of state universities, but now includes much more. This was a great conference to connect with people trying to bring education, information, and knowledge services to all communities, including those in rural areas where only have dial-up connectivity to get internet access. The subject matter presented is very familiar to many other conferences I attend and present…

John and I have been thinking about website and content management as of late, and we’d like to get a few more opinions on the matter. We’ve put together a short survey, and if you wouldn’t mind, it would help us out if you’d share your thoughts. Update The Survey has been closed, and we are processing the data. Check back here soon for the results. We’ll leave this survey open for a week, and post an analysis of the results here when it’s over. I think it should be interesting to find out some of the more general opinions of the available options in the content management world.

Live search? C’mon guys, this has been done plenty of times before, you say. Yes, it has but I promise you we’ve added a bit of a twist to it. When working on the latest incarnation of orderedlist.com, Steve mentioned that the typical year and month layout of archives was overkill. He thought a better way to present them would be to list them all and let live search sort ‘em out. That simple thought fired a neuron in my brain. I am a fan of QuickSilver and I remembered seeing a port of the QuickSilver string ranking algorithm in JavaScript. A side note: anytime I say “algorithm” in…

Recently 37Signals posted an article on why Web Designers Should Do Their Own HTML/CSS. I’ve been thinking about my reaction for a few days, and have finally come to a conclusion. I feel they’re putting way too much emphasis on the designer. Knowing HTML/CSS Can Help Designers Knowing the particular constraints, as well as strengths, of the medium you’re designing for is never a bad thing. It helps make a more informed designer, and a more thought-through solution. But did we expect Andy Warhol to weave his own canvas? Or Bob Dylan to sing well? Knowledge of implementation details…

It’s my pleasure to introduce John Nunemaker as the second member of Ordered List. As a former coworker at Notre Dame, it’s wonderful to have him join me as a business partner and experienced developer. Site Redesign In an effort to distinguish Ordered List as a former one-man-show, I felt a redesign was in order. Not a big departure from the previous, but different enough to highlight our expanded service offerings, and unique personalities. Additional Content Not only will this addition allow for more work to be done for our clients, but will also allow us to collaborate on ideas for…

It’s been over a year now since Sidebar Creative was announced. During that year the four of us have accomplished plenty, and dreamed far more. So we thought it was high-time to portray that matured concept with a redesign and enhancement of our site. An Updated Design The first thing you’ll notice is a new, updated design. Keeping a very similar feel to the previous version, we made a few graphical refinements sprinkled with better usability and better use of imagery. We also added a lot of new content. We’ve taken the opportunity to showcase some of our publications, and our…

Recently I attended a business networking event where I had the pleasure of meeting a business development director for a staffing agency in Boise.  His job was to create relationships with the area's technology and engineering firms that would place in these companies technical and engineering professionals on short-term and long-term projects as well as on a contract to hire basis. He lamented how it can be difficult to establish such relationships and place professionals in these companies.  Our conversation reminded me of an article in the Idaho Business Review I read last year…

The Web 2.0 world we live in has been beneficial in creating a community of users that share their thoughts and opinions on the quality of just about anything ranging from websites, books and music, to services provided by vendors in their local.The power is in the hands of the end-user and they now have a voice. Even more powerful and more prevalent on the web is the power of groups. A fundamental paradigm has adapted itself online in the world of Web 2.0: People tend to buy, use, do and think the way their peers do. In other words, there is a human need to fit in and be among people much…

On Tuesday night I had the opportunity to attend TechBoise's networking event featuring a guest panel consisting of Chris Blanchard from Pronetos, Ryan Woodings of MetaGeek and former Idaho Statesman reporter Ken Dey, now with St. Luke's. While the gentlemen discussed their respective businesses, work and views on technology in the Boise area, the event turned into an open forum where the guests and panel participants had a healthy debate on the state of technology in the Treasure Valley.I mostly listened to the discussion and took some mental notes that I decided I would use as source…

I was happy to see a post by Peter Abrahams at IT-Director.com on the Future of Usability Testing. The reason I was pleased to see this post was because it backed up my assertion from what I feel to be a credible source that usability and user-centered design during the conceptual and development phases of software, website and web applications, should be a holistic process. By holistic process, I mean to say that the usability of the application should be linked to the business need. The business need can mean two things - one for the developer and the other for the customer. As an advocate…

At first I thought it was seeing things. I thought I hadn't had enough coffee when this morning I watched a story on Fox News about a ban on wi-fi hotspots at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.It seems the president of the university, Fred Gilbert, has determined that wi-fi poses a health risk to the student population based on studies that radio transmissions are linked to brain tumors and leukemia. Mind you, these studies are inconclusive and a report from Health Canada will be published later this year establishing that wi-fi networks pose no health risks to humans.Still,…

On Wednesday 2 July Nicolas Nova (LIFT lab) moderated a session at the World Congress of Architecture in Turin, Italy, entitled “From ubiquitous technology to human context - Technology applied to architecture and design: does it solve problems or create needs?”. Speakers were Adam Greenfield (Head of Design Direction, Nokia), Jeffrey Huang (Director, Media and Design Laboratory, EPFL, Switzerland) and Younghee Jung (senior design manager, Nokia). Videos: About ten minutes into the session, I realised that no provisions had been made by the organisers to videotape the…

Today I attended the Fron