Mar 15
We present Themail, a visualization that portrays relationships using the interaction histories preserved in email archives. Using the content of exchanged messages, it shows the words that characterize one’s correspondence with an individual and how they change over the period of the relationship.
This paper describes the interface and content-parsing algorithms in Themail. It also presents the results from a user study where two main interaction modes with the visualization emerged: exploration of “big picture” trends and themes in email (haystack mode) and more detail-oriented exploration (needle mode). Finally, the paper discusses the limitations of the content parsing approach in Themail and the implications for further research on email content visualization.
External Links:
Visualizing Email Content: Portraying Relationships from Conversational Histories (PDF)
Mar 06
The Excel blog published an excellent article containing examples of the new Ribbon user interface component in Excel 12.
The article contains the following examples:
- Find can be more than just find
- Paste can be Special too
- Wrap text to the forefront
- Text orientation too
- Number format
- Paste Names Renamed … A “Formula” tab example
External Links
Making features easier to find and quicker to use, Microsoft Excel Blog
Mar 06
Bryce Glass has created a great diagram on user experience.
“The idea was to emphasize the readability and approachability of the subject matter (keep it fun!) and not overload the map with too many concepts. Hence, this piece: “The Importance of User Experience.” (Used here with permission.)”
Feb 27
The SAP Design Guild website has a great collection of book reviews about user interface design and graphics design…
External Links
SAP Design Guild
SAP Design Guild - Book Reviews
Feb 16
Matt Queen has written an article about Interaction Modeling.
Interaction modeling is a good way to identify and locate usability issues with the use of a tool. Several methods exist (see Olson & Olson 1990 for a review of techniques). Modeling techniques are prescriptive in that they aim to capture what users will likely do, and not descriptive of what users actually did.
…
This article presents a three-part method of interaction modeling where:
- A prescriptive, preferred interaction model (PIM) is created
- A descriptive user-interaction model (UIM) derived from an actual user study session is created
- A model of problem solving and decision making (PDM) is used to interpret disparities between the first two models
It is a great article about interaction modelling.
Feb 14
Yesterday Yahoo! released its internal Yahoo! Design Pattern Library under a Creative Commons License.
Welcome to the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library. We are very happy to be sharing our library with the design and development community. This is our first drop of what we hope to be a monthly release cycle for the publication of patterns. In many cases we have bundled the patterns with pointers to related code from the Yahoo! User Interface Code Library.
Source: Yahoo! Design Pattern Library
The following web patterns are currently available:
Reference Links
Feb 13
Today I read the Windows Vista Top Guidelines Violations article that I found in the MSDN. I think this is a great comprehensive list which contains import issues when looking at the Windows Vista style.
This article summarizes the most common violations of the Microsoft® Windows Vista™ User Experience Guidelines, and offers guidelines for avoiding these violations. Most of these violations relate to changes in Windows Vista, resulting either from new features or new ways of considering existing features. Several of these violations aren ’t new to Windows Vista, but the guidelines were either missing, misunderstood, or not observed properly by Windows-based programs.
Source: Top Guidelines Violations, MSDN
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