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  11. Anderson, Gretchen 7
  12. anxiety 9
  13. Appleton, Maggie 5
  14. Aptekar-Cassels, Wesley 5
  15. Arango, Jorge 4
  16. architecture 110
  17. art 86
  18. Asimov, Isaac 5
  19. attention 17
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  24. beauty 59
  25. Behrensmeyer, Anna K. 7
  26. Bjarnason, Baldur 8
  27. Blake, William 5
  28. blogging 23
  29. body 11
  30. Boeing, Geoff 7
  31. books 6
  32. boredom 9
  33. Botton, Alain de 38
  34. Brand, Stewart 4
  35. Bringhurst, Robert 16
  36. Brooks, Frederick P. 22
  37. Broskoski, Charles 6
  38. brutalism 7
  39. building 16
  40. bureaucracy 12
  41. Burnham, Bo 9
  42. business 15
  43. Byron, Lord 14
  44. Cagan, Marty 8
  45. Calvino, Italo 21
  46. Camus, Albert 13
  47. Carruth, Shane 15
  48. Cegłowski, Maciej 6
  49. Cervantes, Miguel de 7
  50. chance 11
  51. change 17
  52. Chiang, Ted 4
  53. childhood 6
  54. Chimero, Frank 17
  55. choice 8
  56. cities 51
  57. Cleary, Thomas 8
  58. Cleary, J.C. 8
  59. code 20
  60. Coelho, Paulo 31
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  63. color 23
  64. commonplace 11
  65. communication 31
  66. community 7
  67. complexity 11
  68. connection 24
  69. constraints 25
  70. construction 9
  71. content 9
  72. Corbusier, Le 13
  73. Coyier, Chris 4
  74. craft 67
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  76. crime 9
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  78. critique 10
  79. Cross, Nigel 12
  80. Cross, Anita Clayburn 10
  81. css 11
  82. culture 13
  83. curiosity 11
  84. cycles 7
  85. Danielewski, Mark Z. 4
  86. darkness 28
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  88. data 8
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  90. Debord, Guy 6
  91. decisions 10
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  93. desire 6
  94. destiny 6
  95. details 31
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  97. Dieste, Eladio 4
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  100. Dorn, Brandon 11
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  102. dreams 8
  103. Drucker, Peter F. 15
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  105. Eatock, Daniel 4
  106. economics 13
  107. efficiency 7
  108. Eisenman, Peter 8
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  110. emotion 8
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  115. euphony 38
  116. Evans, Benedict 4
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  122. fear 7
  123. features 25
  124. flaws 10
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  128. Fowler, Martin 4
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  139. Gombrich, E. H. 4
  140. goodness 13
  141. Graham, Paul 37
  142. graphics 13
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  165. i 18
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  170. information 42
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  172. innovation 15
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  174. interest 10
  175. interfaces 37
  176. intuition 9
  177. invention 10
  178. Irwin, Robert 65
  179. Isaacson, Walter 28
  180. Ishikawa, Sara 33
  181. iteration 13
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  183. Jackson, Steven J. 14
  184. Jacobs, Jane 54
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  192. Keller, Jenny 10
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  234. Miller, J. Abbott 10
  235. Mills, C. Wright 9
  236. minimalism 10
  237. Miyazaki, Hayao 30
  238. Mod, Craig 15
  239. modularity 6
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  320. Simms, Matthew 19
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  323. Singer, Ryan 12
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  326. Smith, Cyril Stanley 29
  327. Smith, Justin E. H. 6
  328. Smith, Rach 4
  329. socializing 7
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  342. Ström, Matthew 13
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  345. symbols 12
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  348. Sōseki, Natsume 8
  349. Tanaka, Tomoyuki 9
  350. Tanizaki, Jun'ichirō 15
  351. taste 10
  352. Taylor, Dorian 16
  353. teaching 21
  354. teamwork 17
  355. technology 41
  356. texture 7
  357. thinking 31
  358. Thoreau, Henry David 8
  359. time 55
  360. Tolkien, J.R.R. 6
  361. tools 32
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  364. Trombley, Nick 45
  365. truth 15
  366. Tufte, Edward 31
  367. Turrell, James 6
  368. typography 25
  369. understanding 33
  370. urbanism 68
  371. ux 100
  372. Victor, Bret 9
  373. Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène 4
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  403. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
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Ryan Singer

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  • Framing vs. Shaping

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    world.hey.com
    Image from world.hey.com on 2022-05-21 at 2.00.58 PM.png

    Framing is all about the problem and the business value. It's the work we do to challenge a problem, to narrow it down, and to find out if the business has interest and urgency to solve it.

    The framing session is where a feature request or complaint gets evaluated to judge what it really means, who's really affected, and whether now is the time to try and shape a solution.

    • products
    • problems
  • Two kinds of usability

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    world.hey.com

    I divide usability problems into two kinds:

    1. Perceptual: "They couldn't figure out what to do next", "they couldn't find the feature", "they didn't know they could click that button..." etc.
    2. Domain-specific: "We need a way to jump back here because in their workflow this happens..."

    In general, usability testing only catches type 1 perceptual problems. Because in those tests you take people out of the real world and assign them tasks. Usability testing doesn't catch domain-specific problems because they only come up in real life use.

    • ux
    • ethnography
  • How I Wrote Shape Up

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    m.signalvnoise.com

    Here’s a little behind-the-scenes look at the development of our newest book, Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters.

    1. ​​To Make a Book, Walk on a Book​​

    A very different process from Craig Mod, but I always enjoy reading case studies about how information artifacts are made.

  • Keep digging

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    m.signalvnoise.com

    The hardest thing about customer interviews is knowing where to dig. An effective interview is more like a friendly interrogation. We don’t want to learn what customers think about the product, or what they like or dislike — we want to know what happened and how they chose... To get those answers we can’t just ask surface questions, we have to keep digging back behind the answers to find out what really happened.

    • questions
    • research
    • understanding

    I asked one of my favorite questions: What was happening that showed you the way you were doing things wasn’t working anymore?

    This question is extremely targeted and causal. It’s a very simple question that invites her to describe the problem in a way that is hard, factual, time-bound, contextual, and specific — without any analysis, interpretation, speculation or rationalization. Just: What happened. What did you see. What was wrong.

  • Domain-specific vs. Domain-independent UX

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    m.signalvnoise.com

    Domain specific UX means understanding how the supply should fit the demand considering a specific situation and use case.

    On the other hand, many aspects of UX don’t require knowledge about a particular situation. They‘re based on the common constraints of human sense faculties, memory and cognition or the net of ergonomic factors around the device and the setting where it’s used. These domain independent elements of the UX are important too.

    Domain independent UX should absolutely pervade the organization. It belongs to the general skill and knowledge of each supplier at their link in the chain. It’s part of learning to be a good designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson etc.

    • ux
    • design
    • context
  • The Fidelity Curve

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    m.signalvnoise.com

    How do we choose which level of fidelity is appropriate for a project?

    I think about it like this: The purpose of making sketches and mockups before coding is to gain confidence in what we plan to do. I’m trying to remove risk from the decision to build something by somehow “previewing” it in a cheaper form. There’s a trade-off here. The higher the fidelity of the mockup, the more confidence it gives me. But the longer it takes to create that mockup, the more time I’ve wasted on an intermediate step before building the real thing.

    I like to look at that trade-off economically. Each method reduces risk by letting me preview the outcome at lower fidelity, at the cost of time spent on it. The cost/benefit of each type of mockup is going to vary depending on the fidelity of the simulation and the work involved in building the real thing.

    1. ​​Four levels of fidelity​​
    2. ​​Time to build versus confidence gained​​
    • prototypes
    • interfaces
  • Time-based analytics

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    feltpresence.com
    Image from feltpresence.com on 2021-09-05 at 2.07.11 PM.jpeg

    Analytics apps don't tell you much about usage behavior. You might be able to see how many users performed an event, or how many times they did it. But none of the analytics packages out there are good at showing you how often people do things. Are they using to-dos once a week? Every day? Only signing into the app once a month but happily paying for years?

    Time matters. You can't understand usage without time.

    • analytics
    • metrics
    • features
    • visualization
  • UI and Capability

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    rjs.medium.com
    Screenshot of rjs.medium.com on 2021-09-05 at 1.39.21 PM.png

    I’m very conscious of whether I am affording a feature or styling it. It’s important to distinguish because they look the same from a distance.

    ...Affording a capability and styling it are both important. But it’s essential to know which one you are doing at a given time. Style is a matter of taste. Capability and clarity are not. They are more objective. That person standing at the edge of the chasm cares more about accomplishing their task than the details of the decor.

    • function
    • style
    • design
  • What happens to user experience in a minimum viable product?

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    signalvnoise.com
    Screenshot of signalvnoise.com on 2021-09-05 at 1.22.31 PM.png

    "Feature complexity is like surface area and quality of execution is like height. I want a base level of quality execution across all features. Whenever I commit to building or expanding a feature, I'm committing to a baseline of effort on the user experience."

    There’s a distinction to make: The set of features you choose to build is one thing. The level you choose to execute at is another. You can decide whether or not to include a feature like ‘reset password’. But if you decide to do it, you should live up to a basic standard of execution on the experience side.

    Features can be different sizes with more or less complexity, but quality of experience should be constant across all features. That constant quality of experience is what gives your customers trust. It demonstrates to them that whatever you build, you build well.

    1. ​​Minimum Awesome Product​​
    • quality
    • products
    • features
    • ux
  • What UI really is (and how UX confuses matters)

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    rjs.medium.com

    People mix the terms UI and UX together. UX is tricky because it doesn’t refer to any one thing. Interface design, visual styling, code performance, uptime, and feature set all contribute to the user’s “experience.” Books on UX further complicate matters by including research methods and development methodologies. All of this makes the field confusing for people who want to understand the fundamentals.

    That’s why I avoid teaching the term ’UX.’ It means too many things to too many different people. Instead I focus on individual skills. Once you understand the individual skills, you can assemble them into a composite system without blurring them together. For software design, the core skill among all user-facing concerns is user interface design.

    • ux
    • interfaces

See also:
  1. ux
  2. interfaces
  3. products
  4. features
  5. design
  6. quality
  7. function
  8. style
  9. prototypes
  10. analytics
  11. metrics
  12. visualization
  13. context
  14. questions
  15. research
  16. understanding
  17. ethnography
  18. problems