Arrows in Our Quiver

On mailing lists, at conferences, in conversations at cocktail hours, I'm starting to see a growing awareness of how our various disciplines form a community of practice.

Olsen, George. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

The Backlash Against Jakob Nielsen and What It Teaches Us

While you may not agree with everything Nielsen has to say, he's definitely provided a number of good tips on how to go about usability, and raised the awareness of user experience issues to a much broader audience - including those who sign the checques. The downside is that Nielsen's promoted 'usability' as being synonymous with 'user experience' to many people and we'll be clarifying the difference for years to come I fear.

Olsen, George. Usability News (2002). Articles>Usability

Building the Beast: Talking with Peter Morville

Polar Bear book co-author Peter Morville shares the inside stories about the making of the new edition--from its original scribblings on an airsick bag to the ideas that didn’t make it in--and his thoughts about how the field has changed since their book was first published.

Olsen, George. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Information Design

Designing Breakthrough Products: Going Where No User Has Gone Before

For UX designers, some of the most exciting projects to work on are new-to-the-world or breakthrough products that solve real problems people didn't even realize they had. Get them right and they may be hugely successful in the marketplace, but they're also the riskiest projects. While user-centered design (UCD) techniques can sometimes be valuable on new-product projects, more often, they don't seem to work particularly well when designing breakthrough products. Here are some lessons I've learned from my own work on new-product projects.

Olsen, George. UXmatters (2006). Design>User Interface

Expanding the Approaches to User Experience

Jesse James Garrett’s 'The Elements of User Experience' diagram has become rightly famous as a clear and simple model for the sorts of things that user experience professionals do. But as a model of user experience it presents an incomplete picture with some serious omissions—omissions I’ll try address with a more holistic model.

Olsen, George. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>User Experience>User Centered Design

A Failure to Communicate

It's ironic that, as professionals dedicated to clear communication, information architects and user interface designers are having such trouble communicating with each other. Information designer George Olsen digs up the roots of communication breakdown and explores the three aspects of web design.

Olsen, George. List Apart, A (2001). Articles>Communication>Professionalism

Lessons to be Learned

Ivy-covered halls are filling up again with eager students of the user experience fields ready to change the world (or at least to study out the recession). But are these programs really teaching them what they need to know?

Olsen, George. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Education>Information Design

Making Personas More Powerful: Details to Drive Strategic and Tactical Design

Personas ought to be one of the defining techniques in user-focused design, but they've unfortunately become more of a check-off item than a useful tool. So how did we get here?

Olsen, George. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Design>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas

The New R and D: Relevant and Desirable

Somewhere in the process of evangelizing user-centered design, user experience professionals seem to have forgotten the value of vision-driven design, which can be equally important in making sites and software relevant and desirable. We need to integrate both approaches.

Olsen, George. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design

(Over)simple Answers for Simple Minds

Part of me feels for Jakob Nielsen for the grief he’s taken over deciding to work with Macromedia after declaring 'Flash 99 percent bad.' After all, the pressures and temptations to provide simple answers to complex issues are ones we all face in our professional practices.

Olsen, George. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Multimedia>Interactive>Flash

Persona Creation and Usage Toolkit  

This toolkit enables you to build up detailed profiles of the personas themselves, their relationship to the product, and the context in which they use the product. The intended user of the toolkit is the product's designer, so it's it advisable to streamline the personas to critical aspects when presenting them outside the product development team. Even within the development team, not everyone may need every single detail about the persona.

Olsen, George. IAsummit (2004). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas