A Lemon Battery

UX & IxD Books

• Universal Principles of Design
• Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites
• About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
• Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability
• Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data
• Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
• Envisioning Information
• Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative

more at jnd.org

The “Designing the User Experience" poster

Analysis Phase

• Meet with key stakeholders to set vision
• Include usability tasks in the project plan
• Assemble a multidisciplinary team to ensure complete expertise
• Develop usability goals and objectives
• Conduct field studies
• Look at competitive products
• Create user profiles
• Develop a task analysis
• Document user scenarios
• Document user performance requirements

Design Phase

• Begin to brainstorm design concepts and metaphors
• Develop screen flow and navigation model
• Do walkthroughs of design concepts
• Begin design with paper and pencil
• Create low-fidelity prototypes
• Conduct usability testing on low-fidelity prototypes
• Create high-fidelity detailed design
• Do usability testing again
• Document standards and guidelines
• Create a design specification

Implementation Phase

• Do ongoing heuristic evaluations
• Work closely with delivery team as design is implemented
• Conduct usability testing as soon as possible

Deployment Phase

• Use surveys to get user feedback
• Conduct field studies to get info about actual use
• Check objectives using usability testing

--UPA

Top Countries for Outsourcing

Earlier this year, consultancy A.T. Kearney identified the most desirable outsourcing destinations. Countries were ranked by

1. financial attractiveness, based on such measures as compensation and infrastructure costs;
2. a so-called people score, measuring a nation's people skills, availability of language and educational skills, and the size and quality of the IT industry; and
3. their economic/political environment, infrastructure quality, cultural exposure, and IP security.

Country	Overall Score	Financial Score	People Score	Environment Score
India	6.9	3.2	2.3	1.4
China	6.6	2.9	2.3	1.4
Malaysia	6.1	2.8	1.3	2.0
Thailand	6.0	3.2	1.2	1.6
Brazil	5.9	2.6	1.8	1.5
Indonesia	5.9	3.3	1.5	1.1
Chile	5.8	2.7	1.2	1.9
Philippines	5.8	3.3	1.2	1.3
Bulgaria	5.8	3.2	1.0	1.6
Mexico	5.7	2.6	1.5	1.6
Singapore	5.7	1.7	1.5	2.5
Slovakia	5.6	2.8	1.0	1.8
Egypt	5.6	3.2	1.1	1.3
Jordan	5.6	3.1	1.0	1.5
Estonia	5.6	2.4	1.0	2.2
Czech	5.6	2.4	1.1	2.1
Latvia	5.5	2.6	0.9	2.0
Poland	5.6	2.6	1.2	1.8
Vietnam	5.5	3.3	1.0	1.2
UAE	5.5	2.7	0.9	1.9
USA (Tier II)	5.5	0.5	2.7	2.3
Uruguay	5.5	3.0	1.0	1.5
Argentina	5.5	2.9	1.3	1.3
Hungary	5.5	2.5	1.0	2.0
Mauritius	5.4	2.8	1.0	1.6
Tunisia	5.4	3.0	0.9	1.5
Ghana	5.5	3.3	0.9	1.3
Lithuania	5.4	2.6	0.8	2.0
Sri Lanka	5.4	3.2	1.0	1.2
Pakistan	5.3	3.2	1.0	1.1
South Africa	5.3	2.5	1.2	1.6
Jamaica	5.3	2.8	1.0	1.5
Romania	5.3	2.9	0.9	1.5
Costa Rica	5.3	3.0	0.9	1.4
Canada	5.2	0.8	2.1	2.3
Morocco	5.1	2.9	0.9	1.3
Russia	5.2	2.6	1.4	1.2
Israel	5.2	2.0	1.3	1.9
Senegal	5.1	3.2	0.8	1.1
Germany (Tier II)	5.1	0.5	2.2	2.4
Panama	5.1	2.9	0.8	1.4
UK (Tier II)	5.1	0.5	2.2	2.4
Spain	5.0	1.2	1.7	2.1
New Zealand	4.9	1.5	1.1	2.3
Australia	4.9	0.9	1.7	2.3
Portugal	4.8	1.6	1.1	2.1
Ukraine	4.9	2.8	1.0	1.1
France (Tier II)	4.9	0.5	2.1	2.3
Turkey	4.8	2.1	1.3	1.4
Ireland	4.2	0.4	1.5	2.3

Financial Score measures a country's financial attractiveness based on the costs of compensation, infrastructure, and taxes and regulations.

People Score measures a country's people skills and availability based on the IT/BPO (Business process outsourcing) industry size and quality, laborforce availability, educational skills, language skills, and attrition risk.

Environment Score measures a country's business environment based on the economic/political environment, infrastructure quality, cultural exposure, and IP security.

Source: A.T. Kearney Global Services Location Index 2007

--BusinessWeek

Thinking

Design thinking is a creative process based around the 'building up' of ideas. There are no judgments in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation. Wild ideas are welcome, since these often lead to the most creative solutions.

Critical thinking involves logical thinking and reasoning including skills such as comparison, classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deductive and inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hypothesizing, and critiquing.

Lateral thinking is a term coined by Edward de Bono, a Maltese psychologist, physician and writer. It first appeared in the title of his book The Use of Lateral Thinking, published in 1967. De Bono defines lateral thinking as methods of thinking concerned with changing concepts and perception. Lateral thinking is about reasoning that is not immediately obvious and about ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. Techniques that apply lateral thinking to problems are characterized by the shifting of thinking patterns away from entrenched or predictable thinking to new or unexpected ideas.

Creative thinking involves creating something new or original. It involves the skills of flexibility, originality, fluency, elaboration, brainstorming, modification, imagery, associative thinking, attribute listing, metaphorical thinking, forced relationships. The aim of creative thinking is to stimulate curiosity and promote divergence.

--wiki, eduscapes