LET’S BE FWENDS ISSUE #51:

VALUABLE EXPERIENCE DESIGN TOOLS AND RESOURCES

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

~ Buckminster Fuller

I guess when Facebook starts it’s own cryptocurrency, it’s all over and we’ve reached peak weirdness. So I can finally go back and write about experience design and link to cool resources and tools and stuff.

The Product Experience Playbook

The fine people over at Automattic Design (responsible for wordpress.com, among other things) published theirProduct Experience Playbook, and although I am aware of the fact that you probably don’t need another compendium of best practices and good advice, I must say it is a very interesting read. I’m especially a big fan of their “teamwork” section. It’s the first time (that I’m aware of) that a design handbook includes not only designer-client/designer-user interaction and collaboration, but also addresses the principles of interaction inside the team itself.

On mental and conceptual Modes

Here’s an interesting primeron the difference between mental and conceptual models, and how it influences digital product development (but also, how you should treat your research).

Alana offers advice on how to align your users mental models with your conceptual models, based on wether you want to introduce a completely new product (or product category) or improve on already existing solutions.

Where the Hamburger Menu comes from

OK, I can’t do it without at least one interesting background article — You’re aware of the “hamburger menu”, of course. Maybe you don’t know it by its name, but you have seen the three horizontal lines stacked on top on each other a gazillion times. Hamburger Menus made their big appearance when responsive design really kicked in - it was a convenient way to hide away navigation bars without changing the structure of the website. Screen estate on mobile was extremely limited, and people wanted to move away as much as possible from the screen.

But did you know that the Hamburger Menu is actually much older? Like, really, much older? Like, 1981-like old?

Dale interviewed the people involved in creating the user interface of the Xerox Star, and dives right into the early days of icon design.

Want to try something else? Let’s talk about Sausage Links!

Depending on your use case, a hamburger menu might not be the most user friendly way of navigating around. Here’s an interesting alternative, which seems to be based loosely on the “quick reply” buttons of Facebook Messenger. If you’re trying this kind of navigation, just make sure you style the buttons right. Because text buttons can also be a usability problem.

I’m in Munich next Week

I’m in Munich on 25.6. speaking at the TDWI Conferenceabout Agile, making mistakes, learning from them, and what happens when you take advice from an iconic fashion designer.

Hit me up if you’re there and want to go for a coffee!

A Polar Bear and a severe case of the Munchies

But of course, Let’s be Fwends wouldn’t be itself if there wasn’t at least one totally offtopic and at least slightly bonkers link, so here’s a video of a polar bear trying to eat a scotsman.

Holy cow, look at those incisors!

The closest thing to getting eaten by a polar bear that ever happened to me was when my cat was so hungry, he shoved me aside to get to his food, making me nearly trip and fall over. If you too are the survivor of a brutal animal attack, high fives to you, and welcome to the club. 🐾