Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Analogies

So, I am always looking for new analogies to describe use experience architecture.

It helps me in conversations with my kids, who probably prefer I had a more common occupation, say a teacher or policeman...

Watching the hillarious TopGear got me to hunt for analogies in car design. Like the ui team,, the car design team must work with the engeneers, accomodate the hardware (engine, anyone?), drop 4 wheels,a steering wheels, dashboard,, seats...
And as we know, the possible variations of make and model are amazing. Much like variations resulting from organizing ui widgets on a screen.

Similarly, we design not only for the ultimate user - the driver, but also for the manufacturor.

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About Me

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When my kids were younger I often wished I had a traditional job: a firefighter, doctor or a bus driver, because it is difficult to explain to a toddler what a user experience architect is. But as it turns out, all I really do is making software easy and sometimes even fun for people to use. My boys are cool with that. I’ve been involved with users and user interfaces well before usability became a profession and the UI recognized as a critical component of software and devices. With over 15 years of experience in making complex UI frameworks easy to deploy, extend and use, my clients are medium to very large multi-national companies, and my good fortune is the opportunities that my work lends me to meet people all over the world. I have a special interest in solving complexities in workflow and localization of global applications, data visualization challenges around manipulation of vast actionable data, personalization and customization. I am also learning all the time – about people, methodologies, technologies and tools that enable the development of rich user experience in an increasingly more semantically aware WWW.