Volkside - Interaction and Information Design, User Experience and Usability

Great ramp-up experience on the new Flickr photo page

Jussi — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 06:34:55 +0000

Flickr have redesigned their photo page and their interactive tour of the new layout and features is exemplary. Read the full post for observations on how Flickr provide a great ramp-up user experience.

How to name your product, service, or startup

Jussi — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:32:56 +0000

When creating something new it is essential to name it. Whether it's a product, service, or startup that you're working on it has to have a name so you can identify it, identify with it and start telling others about it. Read the full post for practical tips on how to get started with naming.

Create easier navigations using Naview – Sign up for Early Access now

Jussi — Wed, 12 May 2010 06:32:11 +0000

Naview helps you to design and build navigation prototypes quickly and test the usability of your navigation with users. It is made specifically for user experience and information architects, business analysts and web designers who design large website structures. We have been working hard on a new version of Naview and the beta is finally out! Read the full post for more.

17 guidelines for better information architecture…from 1991

Jussi — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:36:50 +0000

Kent L. Norman published an interesting book titled "The Psychology of Menu Selection: Designing Cognitive Control at the Human/Computer Interface" almost two decades ago. This post lists some the menu design guidelines provided in the book, adapted for information architects to use with today's websites.

Tip: Reuse your designs with OmniGraffle shared layers

Jussi — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:38:52 +0000

When designing wireframes you typically have common elements like header and footer that you want to include on several separate screens. Read the full post on how to use OmniGraffle Pro shared layers to maintain and reuse these common elements.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Jussi — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 02:06:41 +0000

Thank you readers, clients, partners and friends for a great 2009 - we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2010!

Tip: Print out your usability testing tasks

Jussi — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:48:15 +0000

Moderated, task-based testing is the mainstay of usability testing and most practitioners are familiar with it. At Volkside we normally give participants their tasks verbally, however more recently we have experimented with also giving them a printed copy of each task. Read the full post for more.

Keep your memos to one page or less

Jussi — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 22:06:16 +0000

Ricardo Semler urges us to keep our memos short: "If you really want someone to evaluate a project's chances, only give them a single page to do it — and make them write a headline that gets to the point, as in a newspaper." Semler is the CEO of the industrial conglomerate Semco and the author of Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace (1993). Read the full post for more.

Poster: Card sorting guidelines for participants

Jussi — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:50:51 +0000

In recent card sorting sessions, we have made a poster with "card sorting guidelines" available to the participants. These guidelines serve as a quick reference when the participants are immersed in sorting the cards and remind them of the "do's" and "don'ts" in grouping and labelling. Read the full post for more.

Design detail: An easier music video directory

Jussi — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:37:39 +0000

We helped redesign an online service called Dancentral, "the ultimate dance music video directory." See the full post for 'before' and 'after' screenshots and further details.