Articles / Blog
Hot Topic: Social Convergence
I've been grappling with this one for a while. Here are a few observations about the challenge of integrating my website, email outreach, Linked In, my professional presence on FaceBook, my personal presence on FaceBook, YouTube and Google+.
At first , I thought I'd maintain a "blog" as a regular part of my website ... but that involves a lot of management and overhead. Now I prefer to let a social media platform handle that job. Currently, LinkedIn is my platform of choice. Some stuff is here - some is there. I'll provide links from here to there. And - hopefully - back again... seamlessly. It's all part of that "social convergence" thing.
He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person.
Articles on my LinkedIn blog
Here's "convergence in action". LinkedIn is where I maintain my blog now - and these are the links that'll take you there. (Just click on your browser's Back button to return here)
Note:
I like to blab, yet maintaining all of these links can really be a chore. This list is just a showcase of some of the articles that I think might catch your interest. In any case, I hope you'll want to go check out my LinkedIn blog for yourself...
Roots, Origins
Retro Tech
"What's past is prologue." The Wayback Machine is a droll reference to a plot device in an animated cartoon series that appeared the early 60's. It's relevant because ... UX is History. These are our roots: Winky Dink, Videotex, old speeches & papers
Before the Web
The early 80's saw the "first wave" of investment in consumer-oriented interactive online digital services, known at the time as "Videotex". It was the '80's Vision of the Web - and "the vision thing" was right - but the reality still had to wait a few years.
UX is History
Contextual, Big, Disruptive: How did we get here? UX analysis is based on a study of the contextual environment.UX analysis is informed by behavioral events.UX is now so pervasive that it is becoming an implicit expectation.
for Example
"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example." -- Mark Twain
Let's look at my portfolio.
Context
Metaphors
Sometimes we see a discontinuity between the "form" of screen pages and the interactive "function" of the service itself. Perhaps this lack of integration between style and content is partly a result of the metaphors we use in describing the Web environment. the Auto, Architecture
Intertwingularity
"Everything is deeply intertwingled. In an important sense there are no "subjects" at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly. l...people keep pretending they can make things hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can't." -- Ted Nelson
Buzzwords
"The Usual Suspects": tasks, tools, deliverables: These tasks and terms tht come up whenever we talk about UX. The UX Tasks list on my website describes the things I usually do. In fact, you'll find many of these tasks listed as "deliverables" on each engagement in my Portfolio .
Topic Tags
Convenient chunks: topics, keywords: The Topic Tag Cloud in my website is a quick-access overview of what I've been doing, sorted by keywords, like "Sharepoint", "B2B", or "Financial". Click on a term to see my relevant Portfolio engagements, for example...
Process
Interviewers always like to see screenshots. But - especially in the UX arena - they say "Show me your process". Here are some informal sketches and notes that show my approach to ideation and problem-solving for different challenges; Social publishing, consumer-oriented healthcare, social networking & crowdsourcing for the enterprise
Techniques
How - and why - we do what we do : Flat graphics, "Pixel Perfection", Animation, Wireframes, Skype Success, Putting the "you" into usability, the Zen Garden of customizable design
Talkin' about Linked In
Why are We Here?
When looking at the User eXperience of anything, Context is paramount. Here are my assumptions about "why we are here" (tasks & goals). This list is not exhaustive, but I think it's a decent point of reference for our ongoing Discussions of challenges and solutions.
Making it Work
This is a compilation of several of my earliest posts, which focused on problems with the LinkedIn interface. They're a little geeky, but the response by colleagues was gratifying. It's why I'm here now.
Group Behavior
Guidelines, What Not to Do, Consequences: In real-life, our decision-making is aided by the ability to "reduce the noise" of information overload. Choice does not increase the possibilities as much as it limits the noise.