Balsamiq Mockups Giveaway

Sometimes there is a need for really good software tools to help visualize a concept. Balsamiq Mockups is easily one of the best wire framing and conceptual drawing tools available. Equipped with a vast UI Library that includes controls for websites, iPhone screens, and software user interfaces, it’s a must have for those who want to plan and design with maximum benefit and minimum cost.

Now, for the good news....
Balsamiq has allowed me to give away a copy of Mockups to one lucky individual. All you have to do get in on the action is:

1) Follow me on Twitter (@compoundj)
2) Leave a comment below with your Twitter username
3) Tell me how your life can be easier with Mockups

The winner will be announced @ 11:59 p.m. EST on May 22nd, 2009. Feel free to retweet and download the trial version of Mockups so you can get some practice in. You may be surprised what you are able to do with it. Good Luck!

Update: Congratulations to @sheatsb! Thanks to everyone that participated in this giveaway. Stay tuned for prizes and discussions coming up soon...

A Project Guide to UX Design Book Review

A Project Guide to UX Design is a book that defines the micro and macroscopic views of user experience design and its role in the project life cycle. Russ and Carolyn do a great job of reiterating what the core of user experience design is as well as identifying the different roles that utilize it. The book covers a lot of ground and takes a transcendental approach of showing the underlying purpose for each role in order to promote a synthetic comprehension of user experience design as opposed to shallow memorization.

The main target audience of the book are Information Architects, Interaction Designers, User Researchers, and other project stakeholders (Business Analysts, Content Strategists, Copywriters, Visual Designers, and Front-end Developers).

To make the contents more inviting, I've created an enclosing outline to provide abstract classifications for several groups of chapters. Each number represents the number of pages in each chapter:

+ Introduction
- Chapter 1: The Tao of UXD (8)
- Chapter 2: The Project Ecosystem (29)

+ Business Perspective
- Chapter 3: Proposals for Consultants and Freelancers (15)
- Chapter 4: Project Objectives and Approach (10)
- Chapter 5: Business Requirements (15)

+ Research
- Chapter 6: User Research (26)
- Chapter 7: Personas (13)
- Chapter 8: User Experience Design and SEO (17)

+ Information Architecture / Interaction Design
- Chapter 9: Transition from Defining to Designing (18)
- Chapter 10: Site Maps and Task Flows (17)
- Chapter 11: Wireframes and Annotations (17)
- Chapter 12: Prototyping (15)
- Chapter 13: Design testing with Users (25)
- Chapter 14: Transition: From Design to Development and Beyond (10)

The book also contains frequent references to books, online resources, and user experience groups and authors throughout as opposed to an Appendix or a 'For further reading' section nested in the back. This helps to drive home the thoughts as you read them, rather than 'when you are finished'.

As an aspiring user experience professional, I do believe that this book is worth owning, reading, and referencing as a compass to create effective user experience in any project setting.

Information Architecture Book Review

A lot of people think they know exactly Information Architecture is, but the truth is that a lot of people don’t know and they are not even aware that they don’t know (aka second level incompetence).

To make sure I wasn’t a member of the later group, I recently read Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web (2nd Edition) by Christina Wodtke and Austin Govella.

Wodkte and Govella do a good job in outlining their definition of the basic principles of IA:
- Design for Wayfinding
- Set expectations and provide feedback
- Design ergonomically
- Be consistent / consider standards
- Provide error support (Prevent, Protect, and Inform)
- Rely on Recognition rather than on recall
- Provide for people of varying skill levels
- Provide contextual help and documentation

While the illustrations that drive home the subject matter can be a little clipart-ish at times, the concepts are presented in a non-technical and non-jargon based way. Each topic is explained clearly using an outline / numbered bullet format to ensure that each section can be clearly understood independently and collectively. Items such as ‘Who are the users?’ may seem trivial at first, but imagine how many interpretations of ‘The users are...’ exists within an organization and the problems that arise when the user begins to morph throughout the product lifecycle to satisfy everyone's argument. Wodtke and Govella decompose several non-obvious items such as persona creation and navigational types (structural, associative, and utility) into chunks that are comprehensible (Hrair Limit). I was genuinely surprised to find a section for Social Architecture which exposed me to topics such as Kurt Lewin’s formula for understanding human behavior and the elements of social architecture: identity + elements, relationships + elements, and activity + elements.

The book can be read from cover to cover, if time permits. However, most of the world will probably use this book as a reference guide for completing IA related tasks as they arise. I would strongly recommend that all aspiring and current IAs give the book a once over to spawn new thoughts about the discipline or to renew the interest in keeping things usable and findable.

Stop Lying...

Now more than ever, more people go online and look for jobs.Many companies are so desperate to get more work and skills out of the people they do hire, the job of requirements are turning into flat out lies, which in turn make job listings 'unusable'. We all know that hiring managers sometimes get overzealous when they post an opening or contract role. Sometimes hiring companies honestly don't know what an interaction designer does outside of what other job listings have stated, at which point someone 'cuts and pastes' other companies skills into their own opening descriptions. In extreme cases, the job title is so misleading from the responsibilities of the job, it seems like an federal enforcement agency should step in. Example:

Title:Information Architect
Responsibilities: Wireframes, prototypes, Linux server administration and installation, Java and WebSphere
Really? I guess you could say that many companies want to fill a server admin role and an IA role....but with the same person!?

Point 1: We (working class) need an honest assessment of the skills needed today AND tomorrow so we can compare expectations. And by expectations, I mean salary / equipment needs / managerial support. Lying is not good design...

Bad Example: Not too long ago, a person I know was hired to do visual and web design work for a small company. The job requirements were very simple: Adobe CS3, HTML, CSS, and Ajax, which are all typical of a front-end presentation level role. Within two days, the job somehow morphed into a full-fledged certified .NET C# Developer position (SQL included). The company's attempt at sponsored training: Borders. Bad Design? Yes, if you consider the job said 'GUI Designer'.

Good Example: Alan Cooper is a prominent author and founder of his own consulting company. On his Careers section, not only does he 'define' each job category, job exercises are present to help prospects determine where they fall in the companies hierarchy, if at all. Here is a link to an example for the interaction design exercise. Good Design? Yes. Why? I now know that I would not be a good communication designer for Cooper, but I would be a great interaction designer.

Point 2: Hiring Managers and Recruiters must stop pushing expectations apart from one another, just in favor of pacifying all parties until after the contract is signed. For the sake of all disciplines, its not good design to be a Talent Pimp...

Real: Truth and honesty can make many things usable, including software and designs

Imagined: Lying, deception, talent pimping

UX vs XA

(Credits: casch52 In and Out for a while)

I recently read an article that proposes several valid points comparing the composition of user experience design to experience design. (Read: From UX to XA: what is this Experience Design dem speak of today?)

As a practitioner of UI / UX design and a student of human computer interaction, I am often shocked about the lack of understanding of the UX role within the design process. Often, the practice is to build a technical framework and then ‘throw’ UX into the flow after some concrete development has occurred, if at all (Read: 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design). But I think that is where the problem begins.....(User) experience design is an abstract concept that is being mistaken as a concrete discipline. Yes, UX designers end up creating visualizations of concepts in the form of mockups, wireframes, mental models, or storyboards. But that does not mean that UX, which uses Photoshop or OmniGraffle or Powerpoint (yuck) consists of the aforementioned tools alone. These are the tools available to us today. When the universe advances and Adobe Photoshop CS 900 (Extended) and Microsoft Office 2090 becomes available as an internet download to our brain, then we may use completely different tools as user experience designers (yes...I said ‘we’, as in I expect to still be here in 2090). User experience design, information architecture, usability, etc. are persistent and will outlive any and all technologies that are used to promote them.

Real: User Experience is not a transitive discipline and consists of several overlapping disciplines

Imagined: Adobe CS 900 (Extended), Microsoft Office 2090

Birth of R or I

After going through what seems like purgatory to get this blog up and running, I finally have published the site. Welcome to Real or Imagined, a place where you and I can vent some thoughts and you can choose whether something can or cannot exist.

I look forward to posting many things here (i.e. concepts, ideas, thoughts, etc.), conduct book and content reviews for the sake of objective opinions, and several topics that are important in my life (i.e. Information architecture, HCI, information design, interaction design, user experience, philanthropy, etc.).

Let's get started...