From the IxDA website:

In this free eBook, ‘UX Storytellers – Connecting the Dots’, 42 UX masterminds tell personal stories of their exciting lives as User Experience professionals.

The book brings together authors from around the world who paint a very entertaining picture of our multifaceted community.

Whether you’re a usability pro or a student of interaction design, whether you’re a senior information architect or a junior UX designer, you will find 42 entertaining stories in this book told by leading experts from all over the globe.

<< Download the eBook now! >>

Theo Mandel, Ph.D. gives an invited presentation – “Golden Rules of Web Design” – to a Digital Marketing graduate course at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver
September 27, 2010
Denver, Colorado

Things may have gotten worse than we thought:

“There’s been a lot written about how the beeping and flashing gadgets with which we now surround ourselves keep us from sleeping, keep us from concentrating, keep us, ironically, from working. The thing that I have noticed of late is how often they seem to keep us from living.”

Definitely worth the read, especially if you know you can’t put down your iPhone or Blackberry for more that 15 minutes!

<< View the article >>

Here’s what it’s all about:

Health 2.0’s original tag line of ‘user-generated healthcare’ contains the germ of a compelling idea—patients are using new tools to guide their own care. And now those tools are starting to integrate with the health care system. Doctors, patients, and health care organizations are all starting to use a new generation of online and mobile technologies which are fundamentally changing the way health care works.

The Health 2.0 Conference is the leading showcase of cutting-edge technologies in health care, including Online Communities, Search and lightweight Tools for consumers to manage their health and connect to providers online.

Check out the Health 2.0 2010 Developer Challenge Website!

P.S. I’ve just joined the Challenge as an expert. View my Member Page.

“With the aging population and increased reliance on internet resources, improving the online experience of senior and retired users can facilitate greater success and knowledge about the web. While the common practices of increased text size, button size, and simplified layout contribute to online retiree success, the real key is developing confidence in senior users by improving their mental models of websites. By requiring self-identification, providing a shallow page structure, and limiting the use of PDFs, senior and retired users can grow more adept at completing online tasks quickly and successfully.”

<< View the Article >>

Usually companies don’t point out their usability issues and problems, but Microsoft’s manager of Office programs, Jennifer Michelstein decided to try using a game to help train users (See Jennifer’s post).

Here’s CNET’s post on the interesting strategy.

Here’s Microsoft’s Ribbon Hero game.

What do you think of this strategy???

http://www.nickfinck.com/blog/entry/gifts_for_user_experience_geeks_2009/

Mandel’s keynote, “The (New) Golden Rules of Web Design,” is an new presentation based on a chapter from the well-known book, The Elements of User Interface Design (John Wiley & Sons, 1997). The presentation describes the history of UI/Web interface design and usability guidelines, and then shows how these “Golden Rules” of interface design still apply to today’s web design world.

Mandel’s book was translated into Russian in 2005. It was the first book translated into Russian with the word “Interface” in its title. Many of the attendees at the conference learned their craft by reading this book.

The User eXperience Russia 2009 conference was a huge success. There were over 300 attendees at the conference (http://userexperience.ru/en/).

View the SlideShare presentation.

<< View the Video >>

On September 14, 2009, the company introduced an experimental news hub called Fast Flip that allows users to view news articles from dozens of major publishers and flip through them as quickly as they would the pages of a magazine. Google will place ads around the news articles and share resulting revenue with publishers.

• Read New York Times article
• Google fast flip Website