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Design or not ?

Form and function

" Does Form Really Follow Function?

In his book The Evolution of Useful Things, Henry Petroski challenges the widely-held notion that “form follows function”. Using the example of knives and forks vs. chopsticks, Petroski shows how the development of eating tools were as much the result of cultural and social issues as about the t

ask itself. Investigating how Eastern and Western cultures have evolved completely different designs that do essentially the same task (conveying food to mouth), Petroski asserts that the difference is crucial.

“Putting implements such as the common knife and fork and chopsticks into an evolutionary perspective, tentative as it necessarily must be, gives a new slant to the concept of their design, for they do not spring fully-formed from the mind of some maker but, rather, become shaped and reshaped through the (principally negative) experiences of their users within the social, cultural, and technological contexts in which they are embedded. The formal evolution of artifacts in turn has profound influences on how we use them.

Imagining how the form of things as seemingly simple as eating utensils might have evolved demonstrates the inadequacy of a “form follows function” argument to serve as a guiding principle for understanding how artifacts have come to look the way they do. Reflecting on how the form of the knife and fork has developed, let alone how vastly divergent are the ways in which Eastern and Western cultures have solved the identical design problem of conveying food to mouth, really demolishes any overly deterministic argument, for clearly there is no unique solution to the elementary problem of eating.”"

Read it all : http://bokardo.com/archives/form-doesnt-follow-function/

Design is Dead

"Information architecture is not dead, it’s just sleeping
Tomorrow marks the first day of the pre-conferences for the 2007 IA Summit. I arrive Friday afternoon, before the main program begins Saturday morning.

I have been to every IA Summit (the first was in 2000), and I’m going to this one with more trepidation than any I have been to before. While I don’t accord with the sensationalist notion that “information architecture is dead,” I do fear that it is in a deep sleep. And I’m concerned that the leadership within the field of information architecture are doing little to nothing to really advance the field.

For me, an acute sign of this, and the particular cause of my trepidation for this summit, was the cancellation of “Learning Interaction Design from Las Vegas” pre-conference session. This was to be given by three leaders in the field of user experience — Steve Portigal, Bill deRouchey, and my colleague at Adaptive Path, Dan Saffer. It was a brilliant concept — using the location of Las Vegas as material for a day-long workshop on user research and interaction design.

Sadly, it fell victim to market forces. Up against 18 other pre-conferences, it didn’t get a critical mass of attendees. I take some blame for this — I was seriously considering signing up for the class, but didn’t get around to it before it was cancelled.

But I also feel that the leadership of the IA Summit deserves some blame for this. I find it appalling that visionary sessions are being cancelled because of market forces (I know there were enough people signed up to make it an interesting workshop — just not enough to warrant the costs). Shouldn’t the main conference for a professional organization take the occasional loss in order to advance the field? Why on earth is it playing it safe? It’s not like this should be a money-making venture.
"

Provocative readings : http://www.peterme.com/?p=536

Design - 5 steps

Technology Serves Humans. Too often people blame themselves for the shortcomings of technology. When their computer crashes, they say "I must have done something dumb". If a web site is poorly designed, they say "I must be stupid. I can't find it". They might even turn to a book for Dummies to get it right.

This is horrible! People should never feel like a failure when using technology. Like the customer, the user is always right. If software crashes, it is the software designer's fault. If someone can't find something on a web site, it is the web designer's fault. This doesn't mean that the designer has to hang their head in shame…they should see this as a learning opportunity! The big difference between good and bad designers is how they handle people struggling with their design.

Technology serves humans. Humans do not serve technology.

Design is not Art. Art is about personal expression. It is about the life, the emotions, the thoughts and ideas of the artist. It matters very little what observers do, their activity is not required, only their appreciation. The practice of Art doesn't require them. It is a necessary activity for the artist, and the artist alone.

Design, on the other hand, is about use. The designer needs someone to use (not only appreciate) what they create. Design doesn't serve its purpose without people to use it. Design helps solve human problems. The highest accolade we can bestow on a design is not that it is beautiful, as we do in Art, but that it is well-used.

Unlike Art, Design is always contextual. It matters when a design was created because of the context of its use: what problem is it supposed to solve? And for whom? At what point in time? This is why design is so related to technology, because technology changes so quickly, so must our designs. A design that worked ten years ago might not even be worth considering today. History is littered with wonderful designs that are no longer necessary.

Great Art, on the other hand, is always in style. We appreciate Michelangelo's David even though we could recreate a million of them because it was the toil and expression of a single man. That will never fade. Great Design is dependent upon the age in which it is made and the problem which it is meant to solve. But not Art. Art is timeless.

The litmus test. When people enjoy Art, they say "I like that". When people enjoy Design, they say "That works well". This is not by accident. Good Design is something that works well.

The Experience Belongs to the User. Designers do not create experiences, they create artifacts to experience. This subtle distinction makes all the difference, as it places the designer at the service of the user, and not the other way around. This doesn't rule out innovation, it doesn't prevent a designer to leap beyond what is accepted as state-of-the-art. It just means that the experience of a design doesn't happen simply because the designer says it does, it happens when a user actually reports it.

The ultimate experience is something that happens in the user, and it is theirs. They own it.

Great Design is Invisible. An interesting property of great design is that it is taken for granted. It works so well that we forget that creative effort was involved to bring it about. Sometimes, like with the lowly spoon, the object is so simplistic that it seems obvious, and we disregard that at one point in history it wasn't. Other times, like with the automobile, the object is so sophisticated yet easy-to-use that we're blinded to the fact that millions and millions of human-hours went into getting it to this point. That's a shame…every great design has a rich history. And every design has behind it a designer or designers who tried to make the world a better place by solving some problem or another.

Bad design is obvious because it hurts to use. It is awkward, difficult, and complex. In a great irony of the world, bad design is much easier to see than good design. It raps us on the head like a bully. Because of its success, great design is often invisible.

Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication. As Saint Exupery said, "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Simplicity is treading a line: knowing what to keep and what to throw away…it comes across as magic when it works, because none of the complexity is transferred to users…only simplicity. That is the highest achievement for a designer.

Read more : http://bokardo.com/archives/five-principles-to-design-by/

Selection-Dependent Inputs

" In a previous Communication Design column, "Refining Data Tables," I alluded to the importance of Web forms in online commerce, communities, and creation. As arbitrators of checkout, registration, and data entry, forms are often the linchpins of successful Web applications.

But successful Web applications tend to grow—both in terms of capability and complexity. And this increasing complexity is often passed on to and absorbed by a Web application's forms. In addition to needing more input fields, labels, and Help text, forms with a growing number of options may also require selection-dependent inputs.

Selection-dependent inputs are, in essence, a pretty simple concept: Once a user initially makes a selection from one or more options in a form, the user must provide additional input related to the selected option before submitting the form. Figure 1 illustrates this behavior by showing two steps from the eBay Create a Download Request form. After an eBay seller selects the Sold option in the Listings and records drop-down list, the form presents additional input fields for selecting a date range. Were the user to select a different option in the Listings and records list, completing the form would require a different set of additional options. "

The full article : http://uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000172.php

New consummers, new design

"In Summary
Generation C expects experience enriching products.
Designers need to look at places where process is celebrated to get new ideas for experiences.
In particular, look at: thresholds, friendships, and sports
Tangible interactions are more familiar than current computer inputs/interactions.
Tangible interactions and physical computers (that take the network for granted) have been validated in the marketplace by the Nintendo Wii & Apple iPhone
The potential of tangible interactions and physical computers for fun & enriching experiences will drive the “next  "

Read it all : http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?459

Desing is also a learning experience

"At the UIE Web App Summit in Monterey, Joshua Porter walked through what designers can learn from the success of Social Web Applications:
Most people tend to focus on visual design when evaluating the quality of Web sites. However, several highly successful Web sites (My Space, Craig’s List, & Amazon) are not designed well from a visual or interaction design perspective.
These sites, while lacking in visual & interaction design, have great social design.
When conducting a large-scale e-commerce study, UIE found that users often went to amazon.com before buying something on another e-commerce site to research their purchases. They called this the “Amazon Effect”.
The content people used on Amazon was highly social: user reviews, recommendations, user-generated shopping lists, and more. In fact, Amazon had 11 social features on each & every product page.
Sites with good social design model the social lives, goals, and interactions of their users.
Design Elements: the lowest-level building blocks of design that can be used to form higher-level structures.
Visual Design: line, size, color, shape, texture, pattern, light, value
Interaction Design: button, input, link, screen, navigation, cursor, check box
Social Design: messaging, sharing, collaborating, rating, reviewing, gossiping, recommending, voting, arguing, networking
Design Principles: higher-order guides that deal with the relationship between elements.
Visual Design: contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity
Interaction Design: anticipation, autonomy, consistency, readability, learnability, metaphor, explorability, etc.
Social Design: motivation, identity, control, independence, privacy, authority, gaming, community, emergence
Motivation: identify primary motivation & create a golden path to achieve it. (del.icoi.us bookmarking)
Identity: let people manage their identity online like they do offline (MySpace profile)
Control: Users want control though they may never take advantage of it (Facebook news feed)
Independence: a necessary part of enabling the wisdom of crowds. If achieved, then popularity is valuable.
Privacy: different for everyone but a key consideration for application design.
Authority: built up over time based on agreement on who is right or in charge.
Gaming: it is human nature to compete and a site can benefit (digg)
Community: it is not a feature set. It is a feeling people get with shared interests or experiences.
Emergence: effects over time & effects at larger scales.
Personal benefit always precedes social benefit: the Delicious lesson. "

Read more on : http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?455

EYE-tracking on LIVE SEARCH

MSN just published a report on EYE Tracking on Live search

Pour télécharger l'étude : ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2007-01.pdf

Merci a S. Pugibet :)

iphlone look

Hot or not ? Well ....

2007 Trends

Via : http://www.informationarchitects.jp/