Challis Hodge’s UXblog

Catriona Cornett has recently launched an awesome new UX blog titled InspireUX. According to Catriona:

This site posts inspiring user experience quotes on \”quote cards\” that you can save or print, to remind user experience designers of the impact that their work has on the world.

When I took my first look at the blog one of the quote cards jumped out at me immediately. It was a quote by Kathy Sierra under the post “The Best User Experiences are Enchanting.” Katy’s quote is as follows:

The best user experiences are enchanting. They help the user enter an alternate reality, whether it’s the world of making music, writing, sharing photos, coding, or managing a project.

and my response:

I totally agree…when enchantment is what the user wants or needs. In many other cases the best user experiences are invisible. The people we design for are often delighted by simply accomplishing their intended goals. We as designers and UX practitioners are commonly guilty of creating disruptions along the way. In my experience, the most successful user experiences are defined at the overlap of business goals/objectives and user wants/needs. Leaning in one direction or the other is suboptimal. Enchantment sometimes fits perfectly in that overlap but its not as often as we might like to believe. Just ask your users :)

So go give InspireUX a look. Its a great concept with potential to add a lot to our community.

I reallly like the content in this new blog. The goal of the site is to promote out-of-the-box thinking about truly next-generation user interfaces that are designed for new types of users and computing devices, and go beyond the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing Device) method that most current interfaces are based on.

Some of the topics discussed include visual user interfaces; web sensing and visualization; information appliance interfaces; user interface innovation; next-generation I/O peripherals; search interfaces; alternative web architectures; gesture input; 3D browsers; virtual worlds; game interfaces; wearable computing; data visualization; command-line interfaces; and UI development resources.

For all of you wireless junkies WirelessDevNet now has a wireless weblog. Bookmark this one!

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