#21296
Brand should be a component of every decision a company makes, from its customer service to its logistics to its letterhead to its interactive properties. Tips and advice for the IA needing to support the brand experience within a quality user experience.
Saffer, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Marketing
#28693
The Elements of Interaction Design
Other design disciplines use raw materials. Communication designers use basic visual elements such as the line. Industrial designers work with simple 3D shapes such as the cube, the sphere, and the cylinder. For interaction designers, who create products and services that can be digital (software) or analog (a karaoke machine) or both (a mobile phone), the design elements are more conceptual. And yet they offer a powerful set of components for interaction designers to bring to bear on their projects.
Saffer, Dan. UXmatters (2006). Design>Usability>Interaction Design
#26763
Personas are a documented set of archetypal users who are involved with a product, typically the product's users. Each persona has a name and a picture. They're supposed to give designers a sense that they are designing for specific people, not just generic, ill-defined users. Done well, this is exactly what personas do. The problem is, most teams build personas from the wrong kind of user information, or worse, base them on assumptions.
Saffer, Dan. Adaptive Path (2005). Articles>Usability>Methods>Personas
#28518
So You Want to Be an Interaction Designer 2006
Five years ago, Robert Reimann wrote a seminal article for the Cooper Newsletter called 'So You Want To Be an Interaction Designer.' Like many people, I read the article and said, yep, that's what I want to be. I took Reimann's (good) advice and found both work and training as an interaction designer.
Saffer, Dan. uiGarden (2007). Careers>Usability>Interaction Design>User Centered Design
#21329
A typical maintenance project goes something like this: someone has a new piece of functionality or content they want to put up on the website. The IA’s job: find the best place for it.
Saffer, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Information Design
#21463
Now that you've figured out the navigation, placed the content, and figured out page flows, it's time to explain just what exactly that collection of 'Lorum ipsum' greeking, HTML widgets, and X-ed out boxes are, how they work, and how they meet the site goals.
Saffer, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Web Design>Information Design
#33387
The Web 2.0 Experience Continuum
There’s been a lot of talk about the technology of Web 2.0, but only a little about the impact these technologies will have on user experience. Everyone wants to tell you what Web 2.0 means, but how will it feel? What will it be like for users?
Saffer, Dan. Adaptive Path (2005). Articles>Web Design>User Experience
#33582
Everyone is mad for personas. They’ve permeated the highest and deepest levels of organizations, and have become a standard interaction design tool. Whole projects are now built around creating them, and there’s a feeling that once you get a half dozen or so, your design problems will be solved. Presumably, your personas solve them for you. The problem is, most teams build personas from the wrong kind of user information, or worse, base them on assumptions. It’s no surprise that a Web search for personas brings up an amazing variety of persona sets, and most of them are terrible.
Saffer, Dan. Adaptive Path (2005). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Personas
#35236
Design for Interaction: Ideation and Design Principles
Once you’ve come up with tons of ideas, how do you choose which ones are worth pursuing? You use a set of design principles that will not only help select the best ideas, but guide the design through refinement, prototyping, development, and beyond. But first, let’s diverge and come up with concepts.
Saffer, Dan. Johnny Holland (2009). Design>User Experience>Interaction Design
