KonzeptioNerd

Book: Positioning

Al Ries’ and Jack Trout’s Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind is dated, controversial, and still a planner’s bible. Ries/Trout start from the observation that we live in an over-communicated world (even more true today than 30+ years ago when the book first appeared). Their remedy for all who want a slice of mind and [...]

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Useful Week, London

I am (well, was) in London for Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Week and there’s no Wireless in the conference room. There’s not even electricity. I failed to charge my MacBook during the first night, but even if I had, my batteries wouldn’t last through eight hours of structured note taking. Then again, with airport off, they [...]

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Jesse James Garrett’s Elements of User Experience

Jesse James Garrett’s The Elements of User Experience: User Centered Design for the Web is certainly the piece de resistance of or the user experience design and Garrett’s something of the godfather of the discipline. You simply cannot do UXD and not have read the Elements. Together with ia/recon and the Visual Vocabulary (already drafted [...]

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It’s the customers, stupid

Once more, Gerry McGovern:
The first thing I think about in the morning is my customers and the last thing I think about in the evening is my customers.
I like being around customers. I love observing them as they use my website. I’m a good listener and observer.
I believe that website management is a process of [...]

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Bashing the blurb

I usually have a hard time finishing Gerry McGovern’s New Thinking because I can’t scroll very well with two thumbs up (maybe the new MacBook Air with its ingenious multitouch technology could be of help here?). But last week’s instalment? (Great websites do, not say, Jan 14, 2008)
McGovern apparently has a bone to grind (or [...]

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Web design defined

Jeffrey Zeldman defines web design:
Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.
(A List Apart: Jeffrey Zeldman, Understanding Web Design)
That’s quite a way from “web developers make the web work, web designers [...]

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The iPhone … ok, ok

The iPhone seems to be getting a slow start in Germany. At least according to most local media. Over in the US, 10.000 units sold on the first day come across as quite a success. And it appears that a lot of iPhone disillusionment is media made.
We all know that Americans are just indiscriminate fanbois [...]

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If the great philosophers had been user interface designers (pt. 2, Plato)

Plato was a vocal advocate of logfile analysis. In his famous Simile of the Cave, he explains that the web designer is like a man, sitting in a cave, and logfiles are like shadows cast against the walls by users carrying lanters before an opening in that cave.
Of course, he conceeded, one might learn so [...]

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If the great philosophers had been user interface designers (pt. 1, Descartes)

Rene Descartes made the feeds briefly when he coined “Cogito, ergo sum” in his review of Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. Alienated clients left and right by insisting on grounding his design-decisions on human reason alone, never once condescending to look at results from user testing.
In later life, turned entirely to the more arcane [...]

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Channel-Convergence

Over at Advertising Age, Al Ries explains Why the iPhone Will Fail. Ries may be right and the iPhone may well “fail”, but not because there’s no demand for hardware convergence.
The iPhone is not about fusing a phone, MP3 player, internet device … and maybe TV, radio, GPS … The iPhone is about not caring [...]

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