虽然这个卧室里的家具看起来比较简单，但是功能还算俱全，桌子、凳子、睡床、衣柜、书架，一个都不少. 但是挑剔的你肯定还是觉得它们太简陋了…

8过，如果84告诉你这所有的家具都可以轻轻松松收进上面这个小箱子里，你是不是觉得它突然又变得不是那么的“简单”了呢？看下图，详细分解小箱子 Casulo 的惊人变化：

via：LikeCool

• 挖……如果知道哪有买我一定要去买一套……|||  Alec，2008-02-14
• 飘一族的好帮手。  oohmedia.cn，2008-02-14
• cool  Chris，2008-02-14
• 简约 方便，真想拥有一套 ~~ 有个建议，如果以后介绍的创意产品可以购买的话，84能不能加上？ thx ^_^  duke，2008-02-15
• 真的很实用，考虑购买！希望不要太贵  筱七七，2008-02-15
• 喜欢！！！  blackisle，2008-02-15
• 不会很重吧！  王刚，2008-02-15
• 我觉得有点简陋呢。家，要温馨才行。  irene，2008-02-15
• good idea 已经有强烈的购买欲  legend，2008-02-18

本文属于设计｜生活｜发现新鲜，基于CC协议创作和分享 - c098d2226fb3d136846df854eb4f0260

过年回家，又回京。假期眨眼就过去了。

看到爸爸通过电视购物买了一个手机，各种功能应有尽有，价格不到1000人民币。据称，这样的手机在家乡的小城里十分受欢迎，占据了不错的市场份额。

Alan Cooper在《交互设计之路》中提到(大意)：满足100%用户的50%需求，不如去满足50%用户的100%需求。

所谓精准定位。

电视购物手机便是很好的一个案例：

大多数用户认为可以听歌、看电影、有触摸操作的手机都是售价昂贵的高端手机。他们不上网、不看数码杂志，没有方式对某款手机进行过具体的了解，所以在他们的设想中，这些高端手机都应该是使用复杂、价格高昂。电视购物的出现给了他们一个信息渠道，推翻了他们从前的认识（这些原始认识本来就带有一定不自信），告诉他们高端手机其实也有平民化的款式，谁都可以拥有一台。

同时，电视购物让用户觉得自己很聪明，很时尚。事实上，他们的目标用户确实具有这类品质。而电视购物正是抓住了用户的上述性格特征，又从信息不对称做文章，才取得成功：从物质需求和情感需求两个方面抓住消费者的心。

当然，价格的低廉更是起到了推波助澜的作用。

最后提一点电视购物的罪恶：主角只夸张的介绍手机拥有什么功能，却刻意淡化这些功能应该如何使用，让用户默认为这些功能都容易操作。殊不知功能是有了，但可用性极低(成本正是因此而低廉)，比如音乐视频要转换为特定格式、连接电脑要安装复杂驱动等，用户拿到手机后往往不知如何使用。然而，恰恰这些用户也不会有精力有兴趣去研究，所以他们不会责怪手机有毛病，只会把责任归咎于自己不会使用。可是手机难用并不会影响到手机的口碑，他们在给朋友推荐时还是会说：“功能很多，价格很好！”；他们不会说：“功能很多，价格很好！但是我根本不会用。”

Usability，易用性，是种以用户名为中心的设计概念，是让产品的设计能够在实现功能要求之外，更简易，高效地适应用户的使用需求和习惯。其包括有效性，高效性，实用性，安全性，易学性和易记性等等要素。

Solidworks是款三维机械设计软件，虽然相比其它同类软件(CATIA, UG, Pro/E, Inventor等等)起步晚了一些，但因为其优秀的界面和易用性，以及高效的设计分析功能等等，开始逐渐被更多的企业和用户所采纳和应用。目前Solidworks每年都会推出一个新的版本，总会加入更多的功能和更简易的操作支持。前两天使用了Solidworks 2008最新版本，其中两个最明显的变化实在让我对其越发喜爱。

上图是在建立模型或者装配体时，点击选取模型元素后所展示的渐显式弹出菜单。其将会根据元素的不同显示出不同的快捷功能按钮。而且此菜单为渐显式设计，只有用户把鼠标移动向菜单时，才会逐渐降低其透明度来激活，以便不干扰普通的设计操作。

这种设计类似MS Office 2007里在选择一串文本后所显示的弹出功能按钮，不过Office里只有当鼠标移动到选取内容框的右上方才会显示，显得非常不人性化。

另外一个更方便的处理是其采用了自定义快捷键弹出式菜单。用户只需要点击“S”键，便会在鼠标的旁边弹出一个小巧的功能菜单。里面的功能按钮可以由用户自己设置，同时其大小和排列方式均可以调整。这个功能实在是太赞了，平时在使用此软件时，我经常使用的操作便是测量，即测量任何模型元素的自身数据或者是两个元素之间的距离等等。在以前的版本里我总是要通过菜单的“工具”－“测量”来进行调用，而现在我可以自己设计好弹出的功能按钮，只需要按下“S”便可以快速选取了。

当然新版本的Solidworks 2008还加入了更多的易用性设计，比如顶部菜单的隐藏处理，操作空间顶部的视图选取和设置按钮，右部资源面板的显示优化等等。

• 易见 Easy to discover 藏得很深的功能就不容易被发现，无法使用。
• 易学 Easy to learn 学起来容易。
• 易用 Easy to use 熟练使用的时候可以更快的操作。

以上三点引用自王建硕的《易用性的三条原则》。

作为一个产品设计或者是开发人员，我希望在其设计开发的过程中，在实现和完善产品功能的同时，也应该充分考虑其易用性甚至是美观性，而不是仅仅一味地降低成本。

相关日志

• Utilium:学习资料的管理和分享
• RegScanner:强大的注册表搜索器
• Xobni:强大的Oublook插件
• 问题和答案
• 卡巴斯基还是让我很失望

Visualisation collection

在这里给大家一些visualisation的例子,这两个网站都有关于各方面的实例.
Visual Complexity

Visualisation Gallery

(more…)

A follow up thought to the user personas discussion among Steve, Jared, Joshua, me, countless other people, and in particular to Peter Merholz’s thoughts about the value of personas created through design team conversations.

Let’s begin with a simple premise that I think most practicing UX designers would agree with in a heartbeat: The worst possible way to employ user personas in a design process is for the designers themselves to have no role in the creation of the persona documents themselves.

Or to put it another way: It sucks when the creator of the research artifacts is not also the designer of the product. If personas are created by a specialized “research team” and then handed off to a specialized “design team”, that design team doesn’t actually experience the substantive benefits good personas can provide.

This is true because, in my view, the primary benefit from creating personas is bestowed upon those who actually make the artifacts, via the thinking, collaboration, and conversations that occur during their creation. The best insights emerge during the investigations and discussions about the data.

Typically we think of a research-based design process being boiled down to a simple equation: “research + design”. I think this model is too simplistic. To me, there are three steps, not two, in any good research-driven design process. Between researching users and designing a product there is an additional critical step, something we all do but don’t recognize as a distinct stage in the design process: research interpretation.

The creation of compelling and useful research artifacts, whether personas or modemaps, mood boards or mental models, is a process of interpreting plain data into meaningful structures and systems that are sensible and useful to designers. It is a synthetic and analytic process at the same time. It’s a creative process. It is a design process.

The Second Step

Let’s look at these three components or stages in a research-driven design process, in particular the second step:

1. Gather research data
2. Interpret the research
3. Produce the design

Ideally all three steps would be conducted by the same team, with the same individuals doing the data collection, documentation, and design work. This is easy when the whole team is made up of skilled designers with good research skills.

But on some projects good user research doesn’t yet exist. Someone will need to conduct surveys, observe users, run tests and analysis, interview domain specialists, and do all kinds of of direct, primary research.

Meanwhile on other projects the research may already exist, in great quality and quantity. The only real research necessary is for the design team to ingest these pre-existing reports and data into their design process.

In either case, however, the second step needs to be taken. Somebody needs to transform the data into something that lays the groundwork for the design.

Getting Creative with Research isn’t a Bad Thing

For example, when we create personas we make editorial decisions about how many different types of users we will define. We may choose to represent several types of users in our group of personas. As an example, let’s say for a news web site we define the following four primary personas based on how dedicated they are to visiting the web site:

• The Temporary Visitor
• The Occasional Repeat Visitor
• The New Subscriber
• The Long-Term Subscriber

Does this breakdown of users not immediately suggest a navigation scheme or a UI design model? Doesn’t it seem likely that all four of these user types will want their needs addressed in some explicit way on the web site, something that manifests itself in a big way in the final design?

But what if we chose to define them this way instead, focusing on their content desires rather than on their devotion to the site?:

• The Sports Fan
• The Political Junkie
• The Concerned Parent
• The Well-Rounded Person

Would this alternate way of thinking of users and of interpreting the data not have a fundamentally different effect on the subsequent UX design process? Wouldn’t the resulting designs be different from the design that came from the first set of personas? The data behind these personas may be the same, but the effect of the interpretation of that data on the rest of the design process may be profound.

There are many other ways, of course, to structure a set of research-informed user personas from the same underlying data. My contention is that this process of transforming data is right on the edge, and maybe over it, of being a design process. Sometimes a dataset may reveal clear design solutions (if 30% of your users speak only Spanish, you may want a link to en español somewhere pretty obvious), but more often than not these kinds of structures are far from obvious in the data. Usually it demands creativity and abductive thinking.

Todd Zaki Warfel likes the phrase “Data Driven Design“. I prefer Data Inspired Design. Data-driven implies that the best design solutions are inferred from or deduced from the data, like Michaelangelo removing David from a block of marble. I don’t think design happens that way, even when data is deeply integrated in the design process. In my mind, the data exists to inspire the designers to new ideas, to point them generally in the right direction towards a solution. Not to provide the solution outright.

This is where interpretation comes in. Interpretation and inspiration. This is the magical part of great design, the part where being a good researcher isn’t enough and where being a good designer isn’t enough. It’s where the designer understands research, and where the researcher understands design.

To be a good designer or a good design researcher, you must master the second step of interpretation.

Alan Cooper说：“交互设计师需要具备凭空想象复杂行为的能力。”一语道破了交互设计的真谛：去猜测有可能发生的场景。这是不是也同时表示交互设计完全要靠说不清道不明的第六感觉呢？

幸运的是，我们拥有一种被称为“推理”的能力，这种能力使我们能根据现有的资料，找出规律，去推测有可能发生的事。

做这种事，福尔摩斯最擅长。

不过在我看来，交互设计跟福尔摩斯要做的事也差不多：理解产品目标，研究用户和产品，发现用户使用产品时的规律，推测用户的心智模型，做出设计决策。 (more…)

Sprout 是一家在近日DEMO大会上刚刚崭露头角的Startup，这是一款基于Web的所见即所得的Flash Widget制作利器。

起源于1990年美国的DEMO活动堪称是创新者的竞技场和投资家的选秀台，而在近日刚刚举办的新一届DEMO大会上，Sprout 这家新兴的的互联网企业发布了他们旗下的第一款具有核心竞争力的在线应用程序——SproutBuilder。SproutBuilder 是一款基于Web的所见即所得的Flash Widget制作工具，它本身基于Adobe Flex技术架构，界面酷似于Photoshop等桌面应用软件，允许你通过鼠标的直接拖拽在面板和舞台中放置各种小部件（时钟、表格、插画）、第三方应用程序（Meebo, Yahoo Maps, PollDaddy , Ribbit）以及用来方便跟踪外部网站（RSS, Delicious, Twitter）的小玩意儿等等。另外，当你完成一个作品以后，Sprout 还会产生相应于各大社交网站以及博客的可嵌入式代码，你可以将自己制作的Flash Widget 放置在你喜欢的地方。

尽管目前SproutBuilder 尚未正式发布上线，但是你却可以从国外一些知名科技博客那里获得注册码，点击这里、这里、还有这里进入申请注册页面，按照步骤完成注册即可，邀请有限，喜欢当小白鼠的同学们需要抓紧

[如果您是RSS Reader，您可能无法收看到上面一段视频，请点击这里收看]