Five Sketches™

Microsoft’s Bill Buxton recently wrote an article for Business Week, titled On Engineering and Design: An open letter. In it, Buxton explains that developers can improve the user experience of the product that they’re building by learning three of the four layers that engage designers:

Design awareness.
Design literacy.
Design thinking.

Buxton also mentions a fourth layer, design practice. He explains that […]

Recently, I was brought in to assist a software-development team toward the end of its development cycle. In the preliminary discussions with the client, I talked about the benefits of doing design at the early stage.
“Oh, never again!” declared the customer.
“Oh no,” I thought. “This customer’s experience with design went sour.” So I asked a few clarifying […]

Usability isn’t just about web pages, as you’ll know if you’ve tried to dial a phone number on someone else’s cell phone. Or if you’ve tried to wash your hands on most Boeing airplanes built in the past 30 years:

The water only flows while you press the lever—one lever for cold water and one lever […]

For my blogging: looking for the formal name of the “ugly alternative” P.E.T.-design principle in the @kas #HFI webcast http://bit.ly/6cDt1 #
“An epidemic of overloaded text slides” in #ppt, says Dave Paradi in a podcast (http://bit.ly/jnczw) with sad & amusing examples. @wvmikep #
Semantic Web is slowly coming into focus for the wider world. Download the […]

For my blogging: looking for the formal name of the “ugly alternative” P.E.T.-design principle in the @kas #HFI webcast http://bit.ly/6cDt1 #
“An epidemic of overloaded text slides” in #ppt, says Dave Paradi in a podcast (http://bit.ly/jnczw) with sad & amusing examples. @wvmikep #
Semantic Web is slowly coming into focus for the wider world. Download the survey […]

For a Five Sketches™ design session, I ask design participants to bring at least five substantially different ideas to the table, in the form of sketches. A common initial reaction is: “…But I can’t sketch!”
Many design participants believe they cannot draw. To be honest, I believe that about myself. People who feel they cannot draw tend to extend that belief […]

Whether it’s ethnographic research, usability research, or marketing research, I’ve learned that the best insights aren’t always gleaned from scheduled research.
Here’s a photo of impromptu research, conducted by Betsy Weber, TechSmith’s product evangelist. I was her research subject. Betsy recorded me pushing sugar packets around a table as I explained how I’d like Camtasia to behave.

Betsy […]

The WordPress community recently ran a poll. Users were asked to choose one of 11 visual designs. The leading design got only 18% of the vote, which gives rise to such questions as:

Is this a meaningful win? The leader only barely beat the next three designs, and 82% voted for other designs.

I don’t know about the 18% versus 82%. I […]

If you’ve ever wondered where exactly on your web site or software your readers or users are looking, eye tracking will tell you that. The eye-tracking equipment emits a specific wavelength of light (invisible to humans) that helps the eye tracker to follow your eyes. As the light bounces off your retinas and back to the […]

Looking at Androida Free WordPress business theme. Cool. http://bit.ly/11hnt9 Do I have the courage to switch themes on FiveSketches.com…? #
Usability of swine-flu news: Fail, because current stats are within the norm. “In Canada, 4000 die each year from flu.” http://bit.ly/Uqdcz #
Usability as political philosophy. Imagine policies and laws that take common human responses/behaviours into account. […]