Knowing one’s roots is important, and it feels good to point out where I stand as a practitioner of user experience design. After ploughing through years of bookmarks and downloaded PDFs – with subsequent strict self-censoring – I came up with this list of 12 extra important sources of inspiration. The selection is wide and eclectic – something pre-Internet, something from yesterday, something obvious, and perhaps even a surprise. I learn something by integrating this knowledge into my own design process, and I hope you find something you like as well. Enjoy!

Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation [PDF] by John Lasseter (1987)

Good animation = good interaction design! John Lasseter, the grand old man of Pixar and Disney, explains the principles of communication through movement.

The Myth of Metaphor [PDF] by Alan Cooper (1995)

Use conventions, not metaphors! Good conventions are easily learnt and remembered forever – metaphors just limit our thinking to old habits and frames of mind.

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less [PDF] by Barry Schwartz (2004)

Few, but good alternatives are best! Read the whole book, which explains why low expectations are the key to happiness.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness [PDF] by Thaler & Sunstein (2008)

As designers we have an obligation to help people choose wisely. Not because people are stupid, but because we all would rather not think for ourselves.

How To Kill Creativity [PDF] by Teresa M. Amabile (1998)

Purpose, mastery and control (and pleasure) are fragile qualities that flourish with care, and wither if neglected.

The Analysis-Synthesis Bridge Model by Dubberly, Evenson og Robinson (2008)

An analytical and straightforward presentation of the creative process, which also puts the need for design documentation into context.

Design Thinking by Tim Brown (2008)

User-centered design – said with other words. Design is not just about practical knowledge, but also important personality traits – such as curiosity, empathy and “formidlingsglede”.

Bringing Holistic Awareness to Your Design by Joseph Selbie (2009)

Cross-disciplinary collaboration permeates everything we do with user experience design. Nobody can find all the answers on their own!

5 Decision Styles. What is Yours? by Jared Spool (2009)

There’s not just one true good design process. We all take shortcuts – and it’s important that we know about the consequences of doing so.

What Goes Into a Well-Done Critique by Jared Spool (2008)

Giving and receiving critique is perhaps the most difficult – and also the most important – thing we can do to help each other become better user experience designers.

Guiding Principles for UX Designers by Whitney Hess (2010)

Design is a creative decision-making process, where principles are more important than your particular choice of user research methods.

The Fall and Rise of User Experience by Cennydd Bowles (2011)

What does it really mean to design great user experiences, and are really anything more than self-centered beta junkies with turtle-neck sweaters and Apple logos on our breakfast cereal?

Other sources of inspiration:

• So you wanna be a user experience designer — Step 1: Resources
• Essential Interaction Design Essays and Articles

flickr.com/theredproject

Technology has no inherent business value. Technology doesn’t provide improved findabiliy, decision-making or knowledge management by itself. Technology just provides features that help users perform tasks, thereby reaching their goals. Only when user goals and business goals align, can you hope to create business value. Without people, there is no purpose – and without purpose, there is no value.

Enterprise search technology is no different from the rest in this respect. In fact, I know only 3 good reasons for investing in search technology.

Spending time and money on an enterprise search platform like FAST Search For SharePoint (FS4SP) may be a good idea if you believe the success of your business depends on:

1. Consolidation of information from different data sources and formats.
2. Content refinement and entity extraction.
3. Linguistic processing and advanced querying capabilities.

There is of course more to search than this, but these features are in my opinion the hallmarks of FS4SP and the old FAST ESP – what enterprise search does better, faster and with higher tractability than any other available technology. Search is by no means the only way to access information, and similar technologies (like data warehouse, ETL and topic maps) will let you do similar things, each having their own particular strengths and weaknesses.

The true value of enterprise search technology is not bound to fair promises of improved efficiency and profitability, but to the marvels it can do in the hands of brilliant engineers – without requiring any prior knowledge of the context of use. Business value is only attainable when technological capabilities form a higher unity with user needs and business goals through cross-diciplinary user-centered design.

The success of your business may depend on improved findability, decision-making and knowledge management, and that is the true value of designing the user experience of search.

Note: this post is cross-posted at Things On Top.

It really is not surprising that a lot of new portal initiatives therefor start with what the companies have and are familiar with: the content and internal systems. In the early stages of a project we are often faced with the different department’s clear opinions about how their products and services should be presented to the customers, what information they want to publish and how they want to manage the customers and partners. If IT is involved we are also given a lot of guidelines about how the system should work.

These are obviously valuable premises for a successful new solution. One important aspect is, however, missing; the users!
The users tend to be a whole less interested in internal organization, product packaging, and the company’s need to inform the world.

So how do we incorporate the users’ interests into the solution? Well, we invite them in and listen hard to what they have to tell us. We engage them into the analysis and design process, and verify our solution concepts to see if we got it right.

When designing information access solutions for the future it pays off to keep an eye on the basics. Some things never go out of fashion.

Remember the old saying: “The customer is always right”? A good start is to ask what’s right.

Have a good day!

Jørn