UXEM workshop in CHI'08 (April 6th, 2008 in Florence, Italy) - "The aim of the workshop is to transfer knowledge from practitioners to academics about challenges with putting UX evaluation into practice, and from academics to practitioners to inform and inspire practical UX work with research findings of UX evaluation methods. Participants will gain an overview of the current state of practical approaches, tools, and methods for UX evaluation, as well as insights into the importance of UX evaluation in product development. The main outcomes of the workshop are a model of different UX evaluation methods across product development process and a list of UX evaluation challenges in product development. " (Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattila, Virpi Roto, and Marc Hassenzahl)

Proceedings of the International Workshop (Reykjavik, Iceland June 18th 2008) - "The workshop VUUM brings together a group of experienced HCI researchers and practitioners to explore a long-standing research problem – the meaningfulness of measurable constructs and the measurability of nonmeasurable ones. One may argue that basically everything can be measured, but some things may be more 'measurable' than the others; how to estimate the threshold of measurability remains unclear. The sixteen interesting submissions in this volume touch upon the basic issue of the formal-empirical dichotomy. Many arguments can be boiled down to the fundamental problem that our understanding of how people think and feel is still rather limited, which is essentially inferred from people's behaviours. Psycho-physiological and neuro-psychological data seem promising, but the issue of calibration and integration is a big hurdle to overcome. Nonetheless, we are convinced about the value, meaningfulness and usefulness of this research endeavour." (Effie Law et al. - MAUSE COST Action 294)

"The focus of my questions in this video interview with Howard Rheingold, was kindly suggested by the event organizer Leandro Agrò, and they focused on (a) the future of technology, (b) the speed at which things change, (c) who will eventually control the Internet, (d) what we can do about it, and (e) how pervasive technology will become in the next few years." (Robin Good's Latest News)

"In this article we present the methodology and initial results from qualitative research into the usage and communication of digital information. It considers the motivation for the research and the methodologies adopted, including Contextual Design and Cultural Probes. The article describes the preliminary studies conducted to test the approach, highlighting the strengths and limitations of the techniques applied. Finally, it outlines proposals for refinement in subsequent iterations and the future research activities planned." (Kelly Snow et al. - D-Lib Magazine May/June 2008)

"We explore the roles and the importance of having a management community inside the Human-Computer Interaction field and inside the large CHI community. We believe that the management community keeps the broad HCI field in touch with the strategic and managerial values of HCI research and practice. It can be an effective advocate and bridge for bringing the importance of HCI research and practice to the strategic and managerial levels of organizations, thus HCI work can have bigger and broader impact on people, organizations, and societies. We call for additional energy, effort, and participation to the management community." (Ping Zhang and Roberto Polillo - CHI 2008 DVD Proceedings)

"If the user experience practice in your company was weak before Agile, Agile development isn't going to help things. If your user experience practice was strong before Agile, it'll remain strong after Agile, and evolve to adapt." (Jeff Patton - Agile Product Design) - courtesy of thehotstrudel

"Different traffic sources imply different reasons for why visitors might immediately leave your site. Design to keep deep-link followers engaged through additional pageviews." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

"They are a visual representation of the content of a web page that is the culmination of user research, business objectives and content. Best brought together in a sequence of pages to illustrate paths of navigation and interactions on the page." (User Pathway) - courtesy of thehotstrudel

"(...) to push the thinking further with a discussion about content, UX teams, and how the relationships can be strengthened to create experiences and projects that really sing. The resulting conversation start with content basics and closes with a bold challenge." (Kate Rutter - Adaptive Path blog)

"Service Design is a new holistic, multi-disciplinary, integrative field. It helps to either innovate or improve services to make them more useful, usble, desirable for clients, as well as more efficient and effective for organisations." (Stefan Moritz)

"I'm a person who is deeply passionate about Information Architecture, but also troubled about its future. In 10 years, will we be iRise jockeys or strategic leaders…or something else entirely? If you ask me, my gut says that Information Architecture is definitely worth saving, but right now, I can't tell you why." (Matthew Milan - Experience Matters)

"Here's my new quest: To dramatically increase the focus on customer experience within companies by getting everyone to understand that great customer experience is really good business." (Bruce D. Temkin - Customer Experience Matters)

"It is always a pleasure talking to David Weinberger and just catch up with what he is up to, but I am also looking forward to listen to his after dinner talk at reboot and learn a bit about the history of information!" (Reboot 10 interviews)

"The presentation was framed by a slightly philosophical look at how certain games subliminally activate cognitive processes and could thus be used to allow for new insights. I used Breakout and Portal as examples of this. I am convinced there is an emerging field of playful products that interaction designers should get involved with." (Kars Alfrink - Leapfrog)

"The Extensible Markup Language (XML), which just celebrated its 10th birthday 4, is one of the big success stories of the Web. Apart from basic Web technologies (URIs, HTTP, and HTML) and the advanced scripting driving the Web 2.0 wave, XML is by far the most successful and ubiquitous Web technology. With great power, however, comes great responsibility, so while XML's success is well earned as the first truly universal standard for structured data, it must now deal with numerous problems that have grown up around it. These are not entirely the fault of XML itself, but instead can be attributed to exaggerated claims and ideas of what XML is and what it can do." (Erik Wilde and Robert J. Glushko)

"How do you redesign the website for a venerable news brand with a distinct identity and a loyal readership? What's more, how do you face challenges like the commoditization of online news, the rise of user-generated content, and other emerging technology trends, while still upholding journalistic standards? In this seminar, we will discuss the process we followed during the recent redesign of The New York Times, including research we conducted, forward-looking concepts we developed, and prototypes we created and refined." (Karen McGrane and Kevin Kearney - Businesstobuttons)

"In interaction design, we are not doing visual art. The user's aesthetic experience lies in the interaction, the way in which the system behaves and responds over time in interplay with the user. To put it simply, when we talk about aesthetics we need to talk about look and feel, not merely about look." (Jonas Löwgren)

"CHI 2008 is over – once again, time to look back and write a report for the SAP Design Guild. First, I would like to warn you: This collection of CHI 2008 snippets is neither balanced, nor fair. You may even find that this report turns into a rant, but there are also a number of positive observations. Large conferences are always like a shopping bag – you have to pick what suits you best." (Gerd Waloszek - SAP Design Guild)

"As the business value of design becomes clearer, creative managers building the next generation of products and services are confronted with an increasingly demanding set of challenges. MX brings thought leaders from IDEO, Google, The Mayo Clinic, Cisco, and many others, to show you what it takes to get great experiences out into the world. MX goes beyond typical design management discussions that remain focused on traditional concerns of print and brand, toward a new frontier of innovative products and service-oriented experiences." (Adaptive Path)

"Over the past three decades of computer/human interaction, we’ve seen digital technology evolve from a curiosity to a convenience to an integral part of our everyday lives. For UX professionals, the demand for our skill sets and the opportunities to practice seem only to grow, whether we be designers or developers, usability specialists or information architects, working in fields as diverse as Web, mobile, desktop, and embedded software systems. The UX professions are at a stage that could very well be a tipping point—where the rapid rise of digital devices, services, and connectivity converge to create a massive need for UX professionals. The mobile space alone could generate demand that we can only begin to imagine." (Jonathan Follett - UXmatters)