We can never be a normal user of our own services. We can temper that by being self-conscious in reflecting on our experiences as users of other people’s. But even that tacitly assumes that we are like normal users, other than in our expertise as providers of a particular service. But that assumption may be [...]
My dishwasher has a bit of whatever the white goods equivalent is of bling. It has a display panel on the front conveying mostly irrelevant information fairly inefficiently. I assume it is intended to communicate whizzy modernity; it certainly doesn’t communicate much useful information. It cycles through three screens in, only one of which tells [...]
You are walking down the stairs in an office building. At each level, there is a sign on the door to tell you where you are. Quick, which floor are you on? The fact that I asked the question probably made you look more closely than you would otherwise have done, so spotting that the [...]
Sitting in a meeting on user interface design, which might or might not have tipped over into being about user centred design, but seemed at little risk of drifting into user experience design, my mind began to wander. Unaccountably, a passage from the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy drifted to the front of my [...]
Interaction design is largely about the meaning that people assign to things and events, and how people try to express meanings. So to learn from any tool, interactive or not, go watch people using it. You’ll hear them talk to the tool. You’ll see them assign all sorts of surprising interpretations to shapes, colors, positioning, [...]
This is a great day for everybody who has been on tenterhooks for the last four years after watching the Helsinki Complaints Choir in action. I have just discovered that a dvd plus no fewer than three cds of complaints choirs from around the world is about to be released. For those too eager to wait or [...]
The next sentence is the most uninspiring opening line you will ever read – which is why I have put this one in front of it. This morning on my way to work I got some money out of a cash machine. I have no idea how many times I have done that before – [...]
It’s been a while since I linked to one of Jessica Hagy’s Indexed cards, which neatly capture connections contrasts and overlaps. This one sets a question for service designers, and perhaps especially public service designers. Do brilliant ideas have to have polarised responses, or can they be brilliant and inclusive? If we can do brilliant [...]
The Web is not free. It charges customers their time. Successful websites deliver the most value for the least time. Gerry McGovern
Yesterday’s my Public Services conference, organised by the redoubtable Patient Opinion, started with an arresting analogy from James Munro. It is well known that the iron bridge of Ironbridge was the first of its kind in the world. It was less well known (at least to me), that it was assembled as if the pieces [...]