Practice with Personas

Just yesterday, I got my first taste of creating personas based on workers we've been observing recently. So far, the creation of these personas has been the most fun and interesting part of the project.

Suddenly, we see all the disparate data from Contextual Inquiry come together to create fictional characters that represent the various types of folks we've observed.

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Cognitive Ergonomics

Ergonomics Today(TM) - What is Cognitive Ergonomics?

As I've been learning and doing contextual inquiry (observing users at work), the whole idea of making products easier to use through observing the user experience has completely absorbed me.

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The Ethnographic Observations Have Begun

As you may know, I’m working with a team to improve distributed learning at a big ‘ole company that shall remain nameless. For this phase of the project, we’re using contextual inquiry as a way to understand the future users, which should help us make usable online products for them.

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Contextual Inquiry and the Fine Art of Fly Tying

As part of a project I’m working on, my team is learning contextual inquiry, which is a way to conceive and build usable products through watching people in their work environment. Prior to actually going out into the field, a team of us are relying on our resident expert (Ryan) to train us.

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Ethnography, 2 Groups and One Website

peterme.com: Points and Lines - User Research Analysis Goodness

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UseIt: Productivity in the Service Economy

Productivity in the Service Economy (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Jakob Neilsen's new Alertbox is about how usable information technology can increase productivity.

I don't agreee with Jakob on everything, but I do agree this final point:

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Debugging the User Code: 2 Part Paper by Steve August

I've been connecting with Steve August of KDA Research and it's been an fruitful journey so far- and one that happened thanks to this weblog.

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Profile in Unusability: Weatherbug

I was watching the evening news and saw a story about Weatherbug, which is the organization that runs the school-based weather updates. Have you noticed your (US) weatherman reporting about weather from local schools? It’s Weatherbug.

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Good Experience: The Page Paradigm

Good Experience - The Page Paradigm

More experience-based guidelines from Mark Hurst. He re-iterates a point he made in 1999 that he called "The Page Paradigm". It goes:

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Article: Stalk Your User

New Architect: Stalk Your User

I've been learning a little more about a user-centered method of design and development called Contextual Inquiry, first developed in the early 90's by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt. This article provides a high level view of the basics.

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