InContext at 20

20 years is a long time in the world of technology. When Karen started her initial work in Human-Computer Interaction, the interaction we were talking about was English-language command lines for the EVE editor at Digital Equipment Corporation. Most software at the...

Trust the Process

“This is never going to work. I don’t get it.  Why are we doing this?” “Don’t worry, Cody.” I’m teaching one of my 16-year-old son’s friends how to do an affinity analysis on some data he’d collected for a high school “critical thinking” project. Sometimes I’m not...

Simple Methods for Reliable User Involvement

Hugh will be presenting at the Agile conference again this year, talking about basic techniques for getting users involved in your Agile sprints. From the conference program: One of the difficult problems faced by an Agile team is that of getting reliable user input....

I’m in the user’s shoes, now what?

How finding an empathetically user-centered perspective on design builds innovation Many of us talk about being user-centered, and most of us want to be user-centered designers. But what does that really mean? And how do you take the understanding you gain from user...

Fighting Complacency

In a recent conversation, a long time friend told me how he was spending all his time dealing with internal issues while working on his current project. His team is developing some very interesting technology targeted at users setting up and managing cloud...