Archive > January 2009
Guia para as primeiras horas no Campus Party
Campus Party 2009 chegou com muita cobertura da mídia. A tradicional falou o de sempre e a alternativa… também, falou o de sempre. Um monte de gente (nerd) e alguns jornalistas ávidos por surfar na onda da mídia social.
Apesar de toda parafernália tecnológica (com interessante conexão de 30Gb), evento é evento. Como não poderia deixar de ser, tem diversos problemas e vou deixar escrito aqui (para não me dar mal novamente) como contorná-los.
- Cadê o ônibus que vai para lá? Saindo das catracas do Jabaquara, vire à esquerda e vá em frente, subindo as escadas. Siga em frente pelo lado esquerdo, por fora da grade. Chegando perto do estacionamento, há uma área para parar carros, é lá que irá parar o ônibus que vai e volta de 20~30min do Centro Imigrantes. Se não tiver paciência pegue um táxi no ponto da frente, custa R$8.
- Por onde entro? No portão 3. Se tiver fila, pegue seu RG na mão e entre. Pergunte se o seu crachá está pronto. Boa parte da fila é gente que não teve o crachá impresso e está esperando.
- Vou ficar nas barracas, cadê? Tá no final da área de palestras, do lado direito. Se ainda não tiver barraca vai ter que montar a sua.
- Registrei meu laptop, onde pego a etiqueta? Vá até o meio da área de palestrantes e procure pela assistência técnica, vão anotar seu RG numa etiqueta azul e colar na máquina.
- Caiu a internet! Cadê? Foi tomar um café e já volta. Aproveite e faça o mesmo: vá relaxar na massagem, tomar um refriegerante ou senta e espera mesmo. Algum mané deve ter derrubado o servidor ou quebrado a fibra ótica que serve a sua mesa.
Seja bem vindo à maior festa de internet do Brasil!
WTF is User Experince Design?
Read about user experience can be a very frustrating experience. Lacks of consistence begin by its label and acronyms – User Experience Design, UX, UxD, Experience Design. After by it’s definition, there are so many different – and inconsistent – ones that the core means fades away.
To find the right way to the answer, a good strategy is to point the wrong ones. And that is what Whitney Hess does in her article, “10 most common misconceptions about user experience design”. Quickly:
User experience is NOT:
- user interface design
- a step in the process
- about technology
- just about usability
- just about the user
- expensive
- easy
- the role of one person or department
- a single discipline
- a choice
And the best quote among great ones in the article:
Louis Rosenfeld, publisher at Rosenfeld Media, publishing books on user experience design, and co-author of the seminal 2002 book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web argues that user experience may not yet even be a discipline. “It may not even be a community just yet,” he asserts. “At best, it’s a common awareness, a thread that ties together people from different disciplines who care about good design, and who realize that today’s increasingly complex design challenges require the synthesis of different varieties of design expertise.”
So, the best definition I could reach is that User Experience still is just an awareness. Many people are trying to find out the main path, but the main scenario and elements are too blured to create a solid definition. Everybody knows that their products and services need it, but no one realizes what is exactly this need.
Let’s keep looking for it.
The last days before the Earth stood still
Just came back from the movie “The Day The Earth Stood Still” remake. I have never seen the original one, so everything was new to me.
Despite visual effects, actors and so, the usage of new technologies is an interesting point. Microsoft Surface appears to help scientists display their analysis result about the alien. Three glass cylinders over the table displayed DNA helixes and a square piece of glass displayed some pages containing the alien profile. (Obs: The first scene shows an Windows 7 loading screen 
)
Also the army people used was seems to be an UMPC from Toshiba running Windows Vista to display some maps. (would be the very first first time using it, the Windows and Intel “powered” labels still glued on the sides…)
The last one I remember was a touch translucid display with news.
And that’s it, after all everything became nothing becouse the Earth stood still.
A sucessful Visual Design delivery
I almost always have some kind of problem with clients asking for visual design deliveries too early. The first question after the contract sign is “so, when can you send me a layout?” Doesn’t matter how much the research and planning phases are specified in the paper, what matter is he can look and feel something in the screen. You end up delivering a poor visual design just to satisfy the client’s expectation (this can be solved by managing the expectation, but it doesn’t fit in the article’s scope, maybe another one). These are problems faced when working as freelancer or with a small team, when everybody involved in the project can quickie see the big picture.
These scenario changes when dealing with big or giant projects, you play a role inside the team dealing just with parts from the process. And one of the roles is the Visual Designer. Usually the work begin with a requirements document, some wireframes, a feedback from the client about the wireframes or early prototypes and… good luck, you have one week. The sensation is that you received an outlined drawing to paint with Photoshop effects and Illustrator paths. You can try to put your own expertise changing the wireframes, adding some requirements or simply ignoring one, but it’s upon your own risk. Your shot can hit the exactly middle of the target; your client will be delighted and fall in love by your graphics. Or you can hit your feet and receive an “unapproved” email from your project manager.
Regarding this issue Julia Houck-Whitaker, from Adaptive Path, wrote the article: Stepping into Oz: Managing & Delivering Successful Visual Design. At a glance, these are the best practices proposed to avoid problems like the ones above:
- Involve the visual designers early and often.
- Gather all constraints early.
- Avoid presenting visuals to clients without first walking through the decisions that influenced the design.
- And presenting thr ee distinctly different design directions the visual design process can go more smoothly.
The point number three has an interesting reason. The clients can give a design feedback instead doing art direction. E.g.: “The colors are too similar to our competitor, we would like to see other options” instead of “Change the blues for reds and yellows”.
The reason for Julia’s article title and its close out fits well here:
If you follow the yellow brick road, you’ll bring your clients to the Wizard of Oz. This place is also known as a happy client that raves about your visual design direction.
Good luck, Dorothy 
Design will be the technology of the 21st century
That’s John Maeda’s belief. In his column at Esquire’s September issue, Maeda wrote a manifesto talking about the designers role in order to improve technologist view from gadgets and its features. Two excerpts I liked:
Technology is outpacing our ability to use it. And it’s the job of designers to restore balance to this equation.
Technological advances have always been driven more by a mind-set of “I can” than “I should,” and never more so than today.
Interaction Design for Phisical Spaces
First write in 2009 and from now on I’ll try to write just in English 
Reading old e-mail to clean-up my inbox, one from November 5th, 2008 was Adaptive Path’s newsletter. Leah Burley wrote about her experience into observing how architecture was related to user experience design. I’m trying to find the url of this article, but seems to be published only in the email :/
But the main point is about this expcerpt:
“interaction design for physical spaces — is not about helping people have interesting experiences with the space, but about helping people have interesting experience with other people because of the space”
Updates on this post comming…
