#26394
The Top 10 Myths and Truths about Design in China
Are you worried as a designer in the U.S. that design jobs will migrate to China? Are you concerned about the increasingly competitive pricing on design jobs and its resultant outsourcing? Are you curious about the quality of design work over there?
Ann, Elaine. uiGarden (2005). Design>User Centered Design>Regional>China
#31088
When everyone offers quality, quality no longer stands out. Businesses must look elsewhere for differentiation. The next arena for competition has become innovation. But there is little consensus on what innovation is and how to achieve it.
Dubberly, Hugh. uiGarden (2008). Articles>Management>Methods
#26872
The Truth About Google's So-Called "Simplicity"
Anybody can make a simple-looking interface if the system only does one thing. If you want to do one of the many other things Google is able to do, oops, first you have to figure out how to find it, then you have to figure out which of the many offerings to use, then you have to figure out how to use it.
Norman, Donald A. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Search
#25075
uiGarden is a bilingual on-line magazine that provides an opportunity for researchers and practitioners who work in the user interface design (including user experience, information architecture, GUI, and usability) field in the Chinese and the English speaking worlds to publish their thinking and exchange views with each other.
#31837
Universal Design – The Time is Now
The time for universal design is now because, as the Designing for the 21st Century III Conference website states “This is an extraordinary moment. We are more diverse now in ability and age than ever before. It is time for design to catch up. There is an urgent need to exchange ideas about the design of places, things, information, policies and programs that demonstrate the power of design to shape a 21st century world that works for all of us.”
Tauke, Beth. uiGarden (2008). Articles>Usability>Accessibility>Universal Usability
#26242
Usability Grows Up: The Great Debate
Is usability ready for primetime? Two industry leaders go head-to-head on this issue.
Marcus, Aaron. uiGarden (2005). Articles>Usability
#25392
Usability Half-Way Round the World
Is usability the same in New York as in China? As I thought about it, this is really two questions: Is our professional practice the same? Are we working from the same basic assumptions about how to approach the job of making products and applications work for their users, and do we use the same techniques and methodologies? Do western usability principles apply to a Chinese audience? Can we apply what we have learned from usability tests in the US and Europe, or are cultural differences so great that we must rethink what usability 'means?'
Quesenbery, Whitney. uiGarden (2005). Articles>Usability>Regional>China
#28591
User Experience Group Development and Integration
When a company wants to make a certain segment of the organization better, usually they 'throw more money at it' and hire more employees. The problem with doing this for a UX team is that people with overlapping skills and ideas usually end up hindering user-centered design rather than helping. Conflicting design decisions will soon turn into a design by committee situation that won't help the consumer nor expose individual expertise (Brown 2004). User experience groups need to be flexible, agile, and scalable, and should only expand if the projects they work on are sufficiently large. The following is an overview of skills and disciplines needed for a successful user experience group.
Rundle, Mike. uiGarden (2007). Careers>Project Management>User Experience
#28532
User Experience in a Software Development Team
User Experience (UX) design is traditionally seen as the domain of user interface (UI) design, but within a software development team it should mean so much more! UX should permeate through the whole development team. It should influence the way middle tier developers' craft their components and the way database administrators create their tables, stored procedures and views.
Goddard, Matthew. uiGarden (2007). Articles>User Centered Design>User Experience
#29305
A View of the Future: Trends in Research, Ethnography and Design
Innovation is more often than not the result of many pieces of valuable information such as general observations both conscious and subconscious, media influences, interactions, discussions as well as a mix of intuition and common sense.
Veikkola, Timo. uiGarden (2007). Articles>Technology>Planning
#28204
We Got Sick of Hearing About Design and China, So we Got on a Plane and Went There
There has certainly been a great deal of speculation lately regarding the real or perceived rise of Chinese industrial design. We say 'perceived rise' to emphasize that their impending world domination in this field is not a foregone conclusion, despite the frequent flurries of listserve chatter and design-conference panel discussions supporting such a notion.
Tharp, Bruce M. and Stephanie Munson. uiGarden (2006). Design>Web Design>Interaction Design>China
#28590
The software development process usually drives what users get. In the beginning, there was the Waterfall model based on a world where everything is known in advance and specs don't change (i.e. a figment). Users got something functional, just not what they wanted or needed by the time the software shipped. Then came various spiral flavors: Iterative, Agile, XP. Unlike waterfalls (which run in one direction and don't back up), spirals can produce software much more likely to match what users want. Spirals support usability, and usability drives the need for spiral development. But what comes after usability? And will new development approaches emerge to support it?
Sierra, Kathy. uiGarden (2007). Articles>Usability
#26285
Dr Norman has changed the way a generation of designers in understanding people and technologies. His philosophy of usability and emotion has been widely used in designing products for people's everyday life in the west and is now also starting to have an impact upon Chinese design practices. What is Dr Norman's view on Chinese design and usability industry then? Christina Li, on behalf of the uiGarden editorial team, brings us the experience of questioning Don Norman.
Li, Christina. uiGarden (2005). Articles>Interviews>Design
#29672
Why Do People Become Attached to Their Products?
How can a designer increase the degree to which people bond with a product? This is the question researcher Ruth Mugge tackled, who has recently received her PhD degree on this topic at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Mugge, Ruth. uiGarden (2007). Design>User Experience>User Interface
#28033
Why Doing User Observations First is Wrong
How many times have you had to fight hard for the ability to do field studies and other observations at the very start of the project? How many times have you patiently explained that taking time now would be rewarded by faster time to market overall? And how many times were you successful? The HCI community has long complained about product processes that do not allow time to start with good observations. The more I examine this issue, the more I think that it is we, the HCI community, who are wrong.
Norman, Donald A. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Usability>Methods
#27172
这项研究调查了西方可用性规则是否可以应用于中文网站。Nielsen 等在2000年根据研究领域内的观察提议了一套207条可用性规则。我们采用了其中48条作为子集，研究四家中文在线书店的依从率（译者注：另译为顺应度）（一个网站所符合的规则条数，除以总的规则条数），任务完成时间，任务准确程度，以及用户的可用性感受和喜好程度。结果显示遵从可用性规则和站点可用性有显著关系：随着站点依从率的升高，用户所感受到的站点的可用性和印象也在提高。这一结果揭示了决定中文用户行为的规则和西方用户极为相似。简言之，这一研究质疑了很多人认为亚洲站点和西方站点的可用性（标准）应该不一样这一普遍的直觉。
Yau, Josephine K. Y. and William G. Hayward. uiGarden (2005). (Chinese) Design>Web Design>Usability>China
#26959
我们常常看到这样的新闻报道：飞机坠毁夺走了好几百人的生命，某次工业事故导致几百万英镑的损失，某新发现的系统医疗错误致使数千病患重返医院。几个月后，公布的调查结果如下：操作机器设备时的人为错误导致了这些事故。人们使用‘人为错误’一词来表达‘操作上的错误’，而经常的情况是，这些‘人为错误’ 根本就是机器设备的人机界面设计或安装上本身固有的问题。低劣的人机界面会导致使用效率降低或者容易发生错误，严重的则会造成财产和生命损失。
Dix, Alan. uiGarden (2005). (Chinese) Articles>Human Computer Interaction>Usability>User Centered Design
#26904
Google 的真实情况是怎样的呢？回答是：它并不简洁。 瞧，我喜欢 Google。它是个很棒的搜索引擎，但是我比较反感听到有人表扬它的外观优雅而简洁。见鬼，所有的搜索引擎都有一部分是优雅而又简洁的：在输入框中输入要查询的词语，然后按“回车”键。 “不”，有人会马上反对说：“Google的搜索页面是那样的简洁、优雅，没有和其它的功能挤在一起”。
Norman, Donald A. uiGarden (2006). (Chinese) Articles>Web Design>Usability>Search
#27176
你有没有怀疑过你的同事或者客户是否真的理解“可用性”？在我们和同事的在商务、技术和设计讨论中谈论‘可用性’是什么时，经常充斥着一些标准和指导方针替代品。在本文中，我们通过了解可用性的五个维度，我们便能够围绕可用性目标达成一致的看法，并开始以这个可用性的定义为基础，来计划用户中心设计的工作。
Quesenbery, Whitney. uiGarden (2006). (Chinese) Articles>Usability>User Centered Design
#27170
四个国家，四种未来：Tom Klinkowstein的地平线项目工作坊
过去的一年半，Tom Klinkowstein在四个国家和一些设计学生举行了一些工作坊的活动，叫做地平线项目，这个项目采用了NASA科学家John Anderson的方法。工作坊在纽约进行了半天，在土耳其伊斯坦布尔进行了两天，在中国上海进行了三天，在印度孟买进行了五天。
Klinkowstein, Tom. uiGarden (2005). (Chinese) Articles>Education>Information Design>Case Studies
#31765
和许多其它国家一样，日本在努力使残障人士融入主流社会方面也遇到很多困难。
Kose, Satoshi. uiGarden (2008). (Chinese) Design>Accessibility>Regional>Japan
#26965
这个分为三部分的文章概述了一个直观的、省时省力的方法来提升访问网站的速度，这是基于网站性能有关的两个简单法则。
Powell, Thomas A. and Joe Lima. uiGarden (2004). (Chinese) Articles>Web Design>HTML
#26957
本文的第一部分（二月份）介绍了如何通过优化代码来尽可能少的传输数据，在本文的第二部分中，我们将着重介绍如何利用Web端的缓冲技术（caching）来尽可能降低传输的频繁度。一旦您开始注意进行有效的缓冲设置，您便可以极大地减少网页加载的次数，尤其对于经常访问您网站的常客和忠诚的访问者来说更是如此，而且还可以降低您整体带宽的消耗，并减少您有限的服务器资源的占用。
Powell, Thomas A. and Joe Lima. uiGarden (2005). (Chinese) Articles>Web Design>Usability
#26961
诺曼博士改变了一代设计师对人和科技的理解。在西方，他提出的可用性和情感方面的设计哲学，在人们日常产品的设计中被广泛应用。现在，中国设计界也开始受到他的影响。那么，诺曼博士对于中国的设计界和可用性行业有何看法呢？李鱼女士，代表uiGarden的编辑团队，对诺曼博士就这一问题进行了采访。
Li, Christina. uiGarden (2005). (Chinese) Articles>Interviews>Design
#31574
编者：本书最后部分，作者比较了由机器开发的设计原则和由人总结的设计原则。下文中是机器对于如何与人交流的想法。
Norman, Donald A. uiGarden (2008). (Chinese) Articles>Human Computer Interaction>Research
