Analytic Design Group

One of the main attributes of the design work we at ADGi do (and when I say design I mean interaction design and information architecture, not so much visual design) is that all of it is evidence-based. That is, all of it, and I really mean all of it, every interaction, every node in the site map, is driven out of user research and expert analysis. I also insist that the designers who work here can articulate what the evidence or expert analysis is that led them to making the design decision they did.

It’s been a year full of wonderful (travel!, new job!) and some not so wonderful experiences – lots of false starts and surprises. Thankfully, things have turned out very well in the end, but the trend continues through December. As a last test for my endurance and patience, my husband got very sick with the H1N1 flu and was unable to help with any holiday preparations. None. My young son and I kept waiting for him to get better so that we could cut down a tree (repurposing a tree from our crowded yard), but the days kept on sliding by.

I am a search engine junky. Whenever I have a technical issue that I need to resolve, my first line of attack is to Google it. With an abundance of people sharing their knowledge and experiences on the Internet, I am confident that the answer to my question is out there somewhere.

Thanks to the brains behind today's search algorithms, searching for things we know is incredibly easy. It's what we don't know that is difficult to find.

A usability study, is that like a focus group?

Clients sometimes ask this question when we start talking about doing usability testing on their website or product. The answer is “well sort of, but not really.”

You know those funny, interesting, inspirational, and distracting  links emailed from friends?  StumbleUpon takes this concept to the next level in terms of scale.

Should you ditch your favourite search engine and move over to Bing? Probably not - and here is why, from a user experience point of view.

The problem is that there is nothing in the Bing experience that makes me say "Yes! This is what was missing in Google Search." or "Wow, this is an awesome new way of presenting search results". Bing does not enhance my search experience. I do not see any value in using Bing over my current default, Google.

http://wave.google.com/

I have had the above link open in a tab in my browser for weeks. It was a reminder to watch the Google Wave demo. The demo is an hour and twenty minutes long, so finding that much time to watch is not easy. Also, the video starts with some pretty hefty promises about how “Google will surprise you” and “show you an unbelievable presentation of what’s possible in the browser.” I’ll admit I was quite skeptical and the thought of sitting through more than an hour of hype was not very tempting.

"I want to follow your witty thoughts ... just join Twitter!"

So nags my friend. They say brevity is the soul of wit. Wit does not often work well without context though. How well does Twitter incorporate context into its brevity-oriented space?