UX vs UX Design

Don Norma[n/l] – who introduced the term user experience into our digital design world – says what UX actually used to mean – and what the term UX still should be used for_

From my point of view, in order to keep things straight, UX is psychology. It is the perception, the cognition, the emotions, the reactions and actions of a human being before, while and after she is using a product, service or system.

On the other hand, Usability is a property of a product in a specific context for specific users. It consists of the independent dimensions effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. These factors can be measured and improved.

UX Design is a holistic design approach to improve the people’s UX while interacting with products, services and systems – before the purchase or sign up, during the use, and after the usage to consider if they want to sign up for an extended subscription or buy another product of the brand. People’s UX can be improved by means of improving the usability of the product, and by improving the way people interact with the service or system. This should be the job of UX designers or interaction designers or service designers. Congratulations if you have someone like that in your team.

I doubt that we will ever have robust computer-2-brain systems. Until then, UX stays subjective. Therefore, I am glad that I’ve found this picture to illustrate exactly this_

gopro_happyhorror_800 UX is subjective. (frame from a GoPro commercial)

Do you realize the difference? UX designers do not design the user experience. They design products, systems and services in order to create a better UX on the user’s end.

à propos

The last 36 yrs on Earth

This is a timelapse of Hamburg 1984 – 2012 provided by Google Earth Engine.

You might have to nudge the view a bit to the West to see the airport Hamburg Finkenwerder beeing extended in this timeframe. The container terminal Altenwerder also did not exist 30 years ago (bottom center). Several piers have been filled up since, e.g. Tollerort in the center and the new HafenCity top right.

Here is Las Vegas spreading into the desert over the last 36 years:

The next example is a very sad one. It shows the Aral Sea east of the Caspean Sea, at the border between Kasakhstan and Uzbekistan. Well, in fact the animation shows how the sea drys out and is about to disappear.

[Update]  The Incredible Shrinking Aral Sea 1960-2014 by Brilliant Maps, Apr 2016

>> more info via techcrunch

>> cf. PetaPixel 7-Nov-2016

W.J.T. Mitchell: What do Pictures Want?

W.J.T. Mitchell was invited speaker at the Warburg Conference in London. Until the webcast  becomes available, you (and I) can watch other videos_

2012:

Methodology: Pictured as sites of theoretical discourse – When pictures reflect on the nature of pictures. Haus der Kunst Symposium 2012

  • From Dolly to 9/11. From cloning DNA to the multiplied digital images of the terror attack on the World Trade Center in New York City
  • image and counter-image
  • image vs. picture
  • iconic images – lying with images

2006:

Anne Helmreich interviews W.J.T. Mitchell exploring the logic that connects cloning and terrorism as the twin phobias of our historical epoch.

2013:

“What do Pictures Want?” – lecture by William J. Thomas Mitchell

cf. “Crazy Talk: What is Mental Illness?” by Gabriel Mitchell, W.J.T. Mitchell’s son, referenced at  Minute 6.

2011:

W.J.T Mitchell on Christo’s Gates in NY Central Park /2011

  • …visualizing the ghosts of Central Park

copy – transform – combine

Everything is a Remix Remastered (2015 HD) from Kirby Ferguson /recommended by Sven Klomp

…which reminds me on Ted Nelson’s quote “Everything is deeply intertwingled” – and Lawrence Lessig’s keynote address: The Internet’s Coming Silent Spring at USENIX 2002 [45min podcast] – “The Mouse is not allowed”, at 8’53”.

Update: Lawrence Lessig is about to speak in Hamburg on 24-Aug-2016: ‘How democracy gets defeated’ – 18 photos

Musings and Ponderings

La Rivière, Aristide Maillol

La Rivière, Aristide Maillol

This new blog Musings & Ponderings is the combination and successor of my google blogs Human-Computer Interaction Design and Interface Culture. I’ve also pulled my medium posts and my good posts from virtual UX.

Of course, the design and information architecture is work-in-progress. The tags are a mess and need to be cleaned up. On the other hand, many broken links and media files have been fixed already.

In case you’re wondering about the cover image for this blog – it is  La Rivière by Aristide Maillol. The sculpture is lying in front of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. /update: As of May-1, 2016 she was moved inside the museum. I am looking forward to visit her new location at the Rotunde of the museum.

Enjoy and please leave a message in the comment section.

-Matthias MProve

Free Your Data

Free Your Data!

Free Your Data! is an initiative by protonet. The aim is to change the European legislation in a way that everybody can access her personal data that is typically stored behind the corporate firewalls – live and in a machine readable format.
You can support this quest at bit.ly/video-bomb
––
Disclaimer – I am a crowd investor in protonet

Follow my Heart

Ungrateful Heart by Francesco-Fusco

My heart belongs to me.

My heart does not belong to all the social media platforms where I can like and fav all the micro media snippets. Why the heck is it so unbelievable complicated to review and retrieve the stuff that I liked? Privacy is a valid point. But it is me. I want to be in control what happens with my clicks. They belong to me, and therefore all the moments when something appealed to me for whatever reason.
Each platform offers a different mechanism to return my favs. Some offer RSS feeds! Some do, but you have to hunt for the feed in view-source. Some offer APInterfaces with or without authentication to access the data. For some pages it is possible to scrape the data with an XPath claw. For others I haven’t figured out yet how to get to the cœur.
Once retrieved and reassembled together, the resulting pages with favs from various platform reveal surprises and beauty that was otherwise hidden between the silos of lost hearts.  (I am sorry. I am carried away – listening the third time Keith Jarrett Trio’s Blue Note concert – “I fall in love too easily / The fire within” from 1994)
This is what I get by pulling together the various sources and displaying them in a comprehensive way. The juxtapositions are not intended at all. But at the same time they are not totally random.
please enjoy