The Philosophy of Function

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently was reminded of papers I wrote back in college for some philosophy courses that oddly deal directly with my professional life as a User Experience Designer. This next paper really resonated with my internal Interaction Designer, as it deals mainly with function and behavior.   Please bare in mind that my skills as a writer were not the greatest back then and I’m slightly embarrassed at the state in which I found them, regardless I hope you enjoy.

Advanced Prototyping Using Blend 3

The key to any advanced prototypes using Blend 3 w/ Skecthflow is using the SketchFlow Animation Panel, the more advanced States panel, or by adding common interactive behavior to controls. Now, if you happen to have any Flash background, setting up animations will feel very comfortable for you. Below are my thoughts on how to set up some of the behavior that is exhibited by another Silverlight Prototype I put together. (Please explore the prototype to see how feedback and annotations work.)

Prototyping with Blend 3 and Sketchflow

My first introduction to Blend wasn’t a pleasant one, so bad that when Blend2 came out I promptly ignored it. However, while attending the Day of .Net Conference I sat in on a demo of Blend 3 with Sketchflow. It was impressive to see the improvement that has been made in the Blend, and with the addition of Sketchflow.  To dive deep into the capabilities of Blend, I downloaded the trial version and set out to create a prototype for a future design of this blog (and do some R&D for how to use this on my project team). Below are some thoughts I had while cranking out this concept.

What kind of designer do I aspire to be?

Ghost in the Pixel is one of my favorite Interaction Design blogs. Last May, Uday Gajendar posted some insightful questions to guide young designers on the path they want to take professionally. I found this helpful in allowing me to better define the type of designer I want to be when I grow up. Below are my answers.

Links for 6/1 – 6/5

How to Create A Style Guide With Ease – Great tips on how to great a style guide that is both thorough and understandable.

Oldie but goodie: When I’m asked to design a bridge … – Dave Malouf offers some great starter points for attempting the Mozilla Design Challenge.

Links for 5/25 – 5/29

Wireframe Websites That Wow – I have completely fallen for wireframes. This post highlights some of the best sites out there to help yourself keep on top of them.

Selling What We Do – UX is hard to sell, hands down. This post gives some good pointers that makes it a tad bit easier though.

Links for 5/11 – 5/22

Twitter’s Most Moronic Change: Removing @ Reply Settings – Twitter community outrage on recent change to their @ Reply system.

About Challenges and Authentic Experiences: An Interview with Bill DeRouchey – Great interview looking at the history of Interaction Design, and where the profession is going. At the end of the interview is a nice piece of advice for young UX Designers.

Links for 5/4 – 5/8

Web Do’s and Don’ts - Great resource for patterns and anti-patterns.

You Are Not A Designer If – It would be very interesting to see a follow up to this called ‘You Are A Designer If’.

Boxes and Arrows Interactions 09 Recap -  Whitney Hess summarizes all the craziness that occurred at this years Interactions 09 conference.

Should Interaction Design Control Behavior?

There seems to be two schools of thought in the IxDA community regarding how a design should influence a user behavior. On one side there are designers who simply try to support existing behavior patterns, on the other hand designers attempt to directly influence a users behavior pattern. Some argue that it is unethical to directly try to influence, or change, a users behavior without them knowing it. In my opinion, if you are not causing the user undue harm by modifying their behavior, it is fair game.

IA Summit 2009: Personas and Politics

Personas are one of my favorite tools in the user experience tackle box. They can be used to drive the design of a project from start to finish, and also answer many pesky design problems. Adrienne Massanari (blog) pointed out another use for them at this years IA Summit in Memphis, political leverage. The following are my tweets from the session: