Thursday
Feb262009
Who are You?
Thursday, February 26, 2009 at 3:39PM 
I'd love to know who you are. Recently reading (via audible) the excellent What Would Google Do, I have been encouraged to serve you better. More resources, more helpful information, tips and news that you want to hear.
I've looked through my Google analytics to get a better sense of why people are here. I've looked through search terms that deliver people to my site. And the one piece missing to complete the set is the information that only you can provide.
- Who are you?
- What do you spend your time doing?
- Why do you read UI & Us?
- What's missing?
- What excites you?
So, please take just 15 seconds now — join the many other commenters that visit this site with your voice. I look forward hearing what you have to say!
Reader Comments (18)
I read it for the articles. :-)
I try to make and sell things that strive to push the world a tiny bit from chaos / ugliness towards beauty / humanity. Currently Bee Docs Timeline is the focus but there are a dozen other ideas in waiting.
I read UI & Us to keep tabs on Keith as a Mac developer / designer / influencer / commentator. Same reason I read most of the blogs I read. (37signals, et al)
More interviews would be cool.
I thought the Quartz Composer tips you had on MacBreak were particularly inspiring.
UI Suggestion -- Didn't know I needed to type the http part of the website on the comment form... Shouldn't I be able to start with www?
heard you on Jared's podcast where you called in. This lead me to your blog. Discovered you were the guy who did Skitch (love it). Interested in your thoughts on UI design.
Am now following you on Twitter @SFsoma
My niche is in UX and enterprise software. Trying to raise the bar in the enterprise space :-)
I am A software developer from South Africa,
I read UI & US for insights into UX, as I never really had to worry about this, developing for banks.
More interviews would be rather nice.
I'm a Mac developer, designer and tech. I am passionate about UI design, so UI and Us hits the right note for me. I appreciate the regular updates...
Thank you all, I appreciate your feedback.
I'm a de-skilled software engineer who migrated into software test full time.
My un-sellable skills are structured programming with Ada83, Jovial J72, Occam and Pascal.
My personal interest in UI stems from being a Mac fan since I first saw one in 1985, first used one in 1988 and first bought one in 2000.
My professional interest in UI is in testing. I raise defects againsts the UIs of the apps I test, so it's impossible not to be interested. It's not somethig I really know much about though, so I come here to get a better insight.
I like the idea of specalising in UI testing, but I'm not quite sure how to get into it. Any tips (Books, website etc) would be welcome.
I have some doubts about my own taste though. I like all the shiny in OS-X, but whenever they take some shiny away (pinstripes, brushed metal), it always looks better, and the old looks old. Current thoughts are tha I'd like to see the look and feel of the professional apps (Motion, DVDSP etc) at the OS level.
I'm Russell from Australia, an enterprise J2EE Java coder by day, Rails & Objective-C hacker by night. I spend most of my time typing on some form of keyboard, occasionally I even get paid for the privilege.
I read your blog because I find UI design to be incredibly gratifying when done right, but incredible hard to get right. I am always on the lookout for tips about anything UI related.
I've only been reading for a matter of days, and so far not much is missing. What excites me? I really like those light-bulb moments when I realise how to do something better or where I see a technology that I haven't been looking for, but can't do without. I also really enjoy seeing the evolution of a design, when people post what their original design was and how it evolved over time.
I'm a software developer and UI designer at Orbicule. We develop consumer and scientific apps for Mac OS X.
I discovered your blog when you dropped me an email after Macnification's release. I'm really into UX, so I'm reading your blog on a daily basis and often refer other people to it. I especially enjoyed the recent book reviews / recommendations.
Thanks for providing such a great resource to the UX / Mac community!
Thanks for all the kind words, especially @Peter!
I'll get some more book reviews up, there's some great books around which I'd like to point out.
@ Russell, FYI, I'm in Canberra, Australia. :-)
@ Hywel "I like the idea of specalising in UI testing, but I’m not quite sure how to get into it. Any tips (Books, website etc) would be welcome."
The field is called 'usability testing' — googling that will bring up some good info. I'll not claim to be an expert on it, having never done it in a lab situation or for projects other than my own. However I've had a reasonable amount of experience in the field, and it's essential for any design to get data early, and often. If you want to take it to it's extreme, there are highly-accurate eye tracking facilities which can provide great heat maps on how applications and web sites are being used.
At the simplest level, it is getting strangers, other unrelated staff, family members etc to try out software/ sites as you watch. Asking them to complete certain tasks, or explore an interface and encourage them to talk out loud about their thoughts and feelings. And always making it very clear that you're not testing them, but the software. That nothing they do is 'wrong' and there is no right answer. There are some good tools around to help record the screen, mouse movements, and video camera (for expressions) information as you test. But I've found often you don't need to get that deep before discovering problems. Sometimes a metaphor, interface element, or workflow is something you've taken for granted, and watching a stranger unsuccessfully try to use your stuff will result in hair-tearing moments!
Keep in mind, that you sometimes don't need anything more than paper and some patience to simulate a workflow — this is called paper prototyping. Ranging from printed out photoshop mockups, to simple pen on paper sketches, you essentially can draw up most flows/elements and 'hand animate' them for someone who pretends to use the interface.
The Nielsen Norman group are well known for their experience, and books, and courses on how to do usability testing. Definitely worth checking out as much free information on the web.
http://www.nngroup.com/
Hope that helps!
Keith
Hi Keith,
I think I stumbled across your site by way of Leo Laporte. I too was on Jared Spool's userability podcast, so listening to the podcast renewed my interest in your site.
I work in Washington DC USA in the the e-learning industry as a user experience architect, so my elevator pitch is that I make products easy and fun to use.
I come from an information architect background, so although I do not possess expert front-end "eye candy" UI skills, I appreciate UI design and want to learn more.
I've subscribed to your blog to read about all things user experience (information architecture, usability, interaction design, etc.). Oh, and I'm on twitter @robfay
@Keith, I didn't realise, I'm in Adelaide which is close by Australian standards, even if it is a 13 hour drive ;)
"I like the idea of specalising in UI testing, but I’m not quite sure how to get into it. Any tips (Books, website etc) would be welcome."
Most of the professional usability people I know (the ones large doing studies and lab tests for other companies) studied psychology or ergonomics. Psychology is probably the best direction to go; chances are that a university near you offers psychology courses related to usability. You'll learn about human perception and behaviour, and you'll learn how to run usability tests and studies. In combination with your knowledge of programming, you'd end up with a pretty neat skill set.
I also second Keith's recommendation to check out the Nielsen Norman Group's site, they offer a ton of useful information.
I'm a undergrad architecture/urban studies student interested in design of all sorts. I've only been following UI & us for a few weeks now, but already saved several posts for reference/inspiration purposes and it's one of the more frequently-linked sources on my blog. I am a geek.
Hi Derek,
I'd love to learn more about Architecture and how that related to the *much* younger field of software design.
Corporate drone from Sweden here. By day I code Rails and .NET, by nightfall i'm hugging my macbook.
I'm passionate for UI design, and trying to bring some of it into corporate world. It's been hard, but believe it or not, enterprise is actually starting to listen these days, although not anywhere near as much as they should!
In short, an UI warrior in a world where UI is just extra cost that can be avoided...
Love the site, can't pinpoint anything in particular i love about it, because everything is really useful and interesting so keep it up!
Cheers,
b0bben, sweden
"What’s missing?"
A new Podcast episode :-)
I was starting to wonder whether there was something wrong with my iPhone when it would never show new episodes of your podcast. Reading this entry reminded me that I should figure out what was wrong, and it turns out that there's only one episode.
I realize that producing podcasts and videos takes a long time, but I really loved the Shipley episode.
@ LKM true! :-)