Forget About the Details in UX Design

The title of this post may strike you as weird. After all, we know how important details are for UX, right? There are lots of descriptions of design details and the impact they had, and, not least, Steve Jobs' obsession with details is legendary. (See, e.g., “The Tweaker – The real genius of Steve Jobs”.) So why this post?

Well, because there is a right time for everything, and this also applies to dealing with details. Or, put differently: just because you are obsessing over details does not mean you are contributing to UX in a significant way, quite the contrary may be true.

A Cynic's View on the UX Community

Twitter and other (largely) public online forums are used by the UX community to publish thoughts, exchange ideas and discuss current issues. But of course, the audience consuming all that information is not limited to UX professionals. Anyone who wants to gain some insight into the UX community can tap into this constant stream of information, which is especially easy on Twitter - just filter for the #UX tag and there you go.

On the downside, tweets have to be short, leaving little room for context or differentiation. In addition, there's also a tendency to make messages "stick" by phrasing them in a strong and simplistic way. In some cases, this tendency continues in the sources the respective tweets point to.

Suppose "outsiders" (e.g. potential clients) go online and sample some of this information, would they have to be very cynical to arrive at some (or all) of the following conclusions regarding the UX community?

What You Always Wanted to Know About Eye Tracking - Part 3: Terminology

In part 1 and part 2 of this series, some fundamental aspects of the eye tracking technology that affect data gathering have been covered. The next parts will cover more advanced conceptual-methodological topics, related to data analysis and data interpretation. Being aware of these issues is important because we are still far from having a unified framework for analysis and interpretation of eye tracking data.

Problems can already arise when it comes to terminology.

What You Always Wanted to Know About Eye Tracking - Part 2: Data Accuracy

After discussing the issue of fixation detection in the first part of the series, this post will provide some additional basic knowledge about the eye tracking technology before diving into some more advanced conceptual aspects of eye tracking in part three.

An essential part of the eye tracking setup is the camera that captures light reflected by the eye in order to analyze the information and, on that basis, determine the gaze direction. If the eye tracker is not head-mounted, the camera is often positioned statically, e.g., above or below a computer monitor on which the "test material" is displayed.

User Interfaces and Self-Esteem

The Bloomberg Terminal and Self-Psychology

An article at UX Magazine that appeared a few days ago deals with the – unmastered – challenge of redesigning the Bloomberg Terminal. One central argument that is brought forward regarding the reason why the interface will not be redesigned any time soon, is that “users take pride and find highly rewarding to handle a painful interface“, with the reward consisting in „feeling and looking like a hard-core professional”.

Norman’s thoughts regarding the “reflective level” of design come to mind [PDF]. But of course, he is not the first to describe how objects and activities that are relevant to us affect our (psychological) selves. Take, e.g., this description of “selfobjects”, a concept brought forward by Heinz Kohut:

„Selfobjects are external objects that function as part of the "self machinery." In other words, they are persons, objects or activities that "complete" the self, and which are necessary for normal functioning. Observing the patient's selfobject connections is a fundamental part of self-psychology. For instance, a person's particular habits, choice of education and work, taste in life partners, may fill a selfobject-function for that particular individual.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_psychology#Selfobject

Macroblogging, Microblogging and Mesoblogging

Here’s a "public service announcement" for my readers.

As some of you may know (e.g. from my profile) I am engaging in "microblogging" on Twitter (@MarkusWeber). I’m using the service to post links, (very) brief thoughts and engage in conversations and the exchange of ideas.

As for "macroblogging", I’ll continue maintaining this blog and post rather longish articles here in order to deal with ideas and arguments that need some more space than 140 characters and that – in my opinion – merit revisiting from time to time.

And then there’s "mesoblogging". This is what happens on my Posterous page. I’m using that to post the "stuff in between": things that are too long to be dealt with on Twitter but that do not justify a really long blog article, e.g. screenshots that may be interesting or rough sketches of ideas.

Update frequency will be roughly inversely proportional to message length with the Twitter stream updated most frequently.

So, dear readers, now you know where to find my updates and with which frequency you can expect them.

Thanks for reading.

What You Always Wanted to Know About Eye Tracking - Part 1: Fixation Detection

Since the topic of eye tracking keeps drawing people’s attention – it’s a silver bullet for some whereas others see it as a complete waste of resources – I thought a series of posts that focus on the methodological aspects of eye tracking research would be in order. As such, the posts will not focus on particular (usability) studies that have been conducted with eye tracking but rather shed some light on implicit and explicit assumptions, caveats etc. of the method itself. Ideally, readers will find some information to make up their own minds regarding the appropriateness of the eye tracking method for the examination of diverse questions.

Before exploring more advanced conceptual aspects of the eye tracking method, it is worth noting that there are basic technical aspects that must be kept in mind when conducting or interpreting eye tracking research.