http://tc.eserver.org/authors/Saffer,_Dan A bibliography of works by Saffer, Dan in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Saffer,_Dan http://tc.eserver.org/35236.html http://tc.eserver.org/35236.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/33582.html http://tc.eserver.org/33582.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/33387.html http://tc.eserver.org/33387.html 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? http://tc.eserver.org/28693.html http://tc.eserver.org/28693.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28518.html http://tc.eserver.org/28518.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/26763.html http://tc.eserver.org/26763.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/21463.html http://tc.eserver.org/21463.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/21329.html http://tc.eserver.org/21329.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/21296.html http://tc.eserver.org/21296.html 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.