Notes for About For With w David Heller

Who is david?
Vp for ixda, designer, blogger, speaker

Top 4 books for user exp:

* design of everyday things (donald norman)
* elements of UE (jesse james garrett)
* the inmates are running the asylum (alan cooper, the guy who designed visual basic)
* information anxiety2 (richard saul wurman)

What's User Centered Design (UCD)?
paradigm for building soluitions that ppl interact w

major components:
* research in context, research THE context, observe users in the wild
* *mkt research is NOT the same as going into the field & doing ethnographic research
* empathy for humans - we like them, we are them, lets not torture them w our projects / svcs
* *personas: putting pictures of (hyptothetical? fictional?) users in the shop to keep the human face on things
* validate before release

Where does this all fit in?
Don Norman, _Invisible Computing_
3-legged stool supporting the product:
* technology
* marketing
* user experience

david runs throuhg a few other paradigms and metaphors, none of which are as concise as the stool metaphor, although some are more sophisticated and nuanced.

affordances:  the form of something tells me what to do with it; instructions are built into the design, eg, "raised round thingees" are usually buttons that can be pushed.  a doorknob is another good example.

interface = form
time = behavior
information = meaning
context = enviornment


Human powered (eg loom) --> self powered (eg steamboat) --> electronic (analog, eg telephone) --> digital (eg alarm clock) --> multi use dvc (eg treo) --> multi channel exp (eg ipod+itunes)

twds social interaction, twds contextual

david's crazy about the design in teh film Minority Rpt

marcrettig.com
envisions UX as waves:
operate the machine--> use the software--> ...

UX is about merging concepts
body/mind
form/function

software design manifesto - mitch kapor: "delight" is key

UCD != expensive
UCD != time consuming
UCD != anti-technology
UCD != agile methodologies

What can UCD do for you?
* lower downstream change
* increase bottom line results
* increase brand appeal
* reduce overhead costs

Q&A

Q: could you talk about agile dvlpment? [http://agilemanifesto.org/]
A: SOMEthing has to be upfront. if i had to pair two ppl together, it would be the designer and the coder
yr always going to ahve to make a deciscion: are you ready to code or not?  i'd always ask teh Q "do i know who i'm coding for?"  that should be the user, not yr boss.

Q: what kind of tools do you use for observation
A: i don't review recorded matierials, but when i do ethnography, i've discovered that the most important things are the ones i observe directly.  but that's n ot the norm.  a lot of ppl get stuck inthe details, so they need to have the recorded matierials for review.  i write notes after, rather than before, so i can expirience the interaciton.

Emotional Design:
* viceral ("i want that!")
* behavioural ("oh yeah, i'll use this")
* reflective ("how did i ever live without this?" it becomes an appendage)

Q: what about acclimating the user to a re-design?  eg, apple moving from OS9 to OSX
A: kind of similar to the move from win 3.1 to win 95.  check out [http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh]