13 steps to effective user/stakeholder interviews February 11, 2008

I had the good fortune to conduct user and stakeholder interviews with regard to an application that the client had developed 6 months ago. The application was up and running and this project was launched in order to look at streamlining the application and making it more intelligent and easy to use.

This is where I came in… My job was to personally fix interviews with the interviewees. The only problem was that the interviewees belonged to several different countries across the world. I must accept however that I have never a more satisfying experience where work was concerned. It was actually enlightening to speak to so many of these people around the globe.

So here’s how an interview is conducted.

10 User Centered Design blogs you ought to read December 6, 2007

Just thought I’d share my favorite UCD blogs with you. These are sites I read to keep in touch with the research on usability. They also make for very interesting reading.

Experience Dynamics: Frank spiller’s blog is something that every User experience professional should read. Frank has the happy knack to hitting the nail on the head with every post. Very practical info out there.

Boxes and Arrows:  In the words of David Moore, Boxes and Arrows is an “Intelligent peer-written journal on information architecture and user-centered design. Lots of practical information as well as conceptual back-up”.

Seven87: With a unique outlook on usability, marketing and customer experience, Charlie Nichols presents usability in a business environment.

Webword: John S. Rhodes operates the WebWord Blog, providing

Information Architecture simplified November 17, 2007

Our user experience team in office decided to form a small group that promotes the awareness and usage of usability. With this focus, we got to work brainstorming on the best way to put usability, interaction design and information architecture, in laymen’s terms.

We decided the best way to do this would be to start a newsletter. For the articles, we came up with the theme of “Weave a story”,

The design curve October 28, 2007

When there is a site to design, there are a lot of people who become information architects at the drop of a hat. Everyone considers himself/herself an expert on the topic. All of a sudden the designer becomes a mere puppet and is reduced to someone who simply executes everyone’s ideas in the form of a web page.

Matthew Inman in an article on http://www.seomoz.org/ calls this the design curve. According to him the more the wrong kinds of people get involved with the process, the worse the design gets.

User Interfaces in the movies August 10, 2007

It’s incredible how Hollywood can completely overhaul reality when it comes to computer screens in movies. Why is it so much easier to use computers in films? It never ceases to amaze me. It’s funny to think that these bloopers are being watched by all those high end developers out there, creating complex applications for a living. It’s even funnier that user experience professionals like so many of us get to run heuristic evaluations right there in our heads. Here are some of the funniest bloopers…

• The user interfaces in movies are either in 3D or are animated.
• Code is always being cracked in movies and it always appears as green text on a black background.
• A computer blowing up signifies a crash of the operating system or the successful upload of a virus onto the system.

A CUA™ at long last! March 24, 2007

After several months of preperation and a whole lot of anxiety, I managed to get through the Certified Usability Analyst examination. I was elated and absolutely thrilled to bits.  Its humbling actually… since you now get to see that much more is going to be expected of you. Its actually the beginning of a long, long journey. But this one am going to thoroughly enjoy.

For anyone who is interested in the course structure and the fee details, I suggest you visit the human factors site and take a look at all the details.

As far as personal experience goes, I cant say it better than rahul mainkar and prashant poladia.