Daniel R. Stewart, Graphic Designer

From what I know about the professions that mix with Graphic Design, the User Experience encompasses the following:

1. Information Design

This refers to the structuring of information (bet you saw that one coming), which includes the laying out of rules for nomenclature which is fancy pants speak for how you phrase something/what vocabulary is used.

2. Interaction Design

This interrelates with information & graphic design, but with a focus on how the product is used. How errors are handled, how feedback is given to the user.

3. “Appearance”

I put this in quotes as it refers to more than just the visual appeal of a product (there you are Graphic Designer!) The sound factor is important as well. The sounds (or lack thereof) can make the difference. Finally there is the tactile aspect, which refers to how the object “feels”. It can be an aspect of giving feedback to the user (like a mouse click) or something as simple as using a different texture or thickness that makes it feel better in one’s hand.

…and yet it feels like there’s something missing. These three core values are close, but seem to ignore one extra bit that I propose to add:

4. Prejudice

Positive or negative, we all have prejudices based on past experiences, our culture, our personal bias towards anything. This touches on a lot of things that are covered by graphic design (appealing to someone’s visual aesthetic), information design (ensuring appropriate nomenclature & an appropriate organization of information contained), and interaction design (giving feedback to the user, how to handle an error.)

Examples for the case of adding #4:

• FedEx advertisement in america showing a smiling woman. Then showing the same advertisement in Saudi Arabia
• Political aspects of the country of origin e.g. “Made in Japan” used to carry more weight in the states than it does now
• Identical Product. One branded with Microsoft, the other Apple Computer

What do you think? Is this a welcome addition to the definition of user experience, or is it already covered in the other three? Do you have another possible aspect of the user experience that wasn’t covered here? Make yourself heard by leaving a comment.

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There will always be challenges. Why bother avoiding the inevitable? When I was making my website I wanted wordpress so I could have an easily manageable CRM that would double as a blog. Installing wordpress was the easy part. Installing a few plugins was too. Creating my own theme without knowing PHP whatsoever was a challenge.

It’s not the same as just making a web page as I have in the past with HTML and CSS. I had to learn what the PHP functions in Wordpress meant so that I could design to my specifications. For example right now you’re reading the_content(). Some were self explanatory like that whereas others (I’m looking at you, the_time(’l, F jS, Y’)) were a little less helpful.

I live in California, which has a huge spanish speaking population. Out of personal interest and to further differentiate myself from the competition, my site is completely bilingual. I studied spanish for 4 years and I’ve seen what automated translators can do so I do it myself. My spanish isn’t perfect, but it improves with constant translation of new content (like this article, for example.) I have continued my studies with continued practice with some friends from south america who are happy to oblige.

Getting everything working in a more manageable way in two languages was another challenge. Sure, duplicating the theme and then just renaming all the links would be easy. I could’ve just had the spanish version of my site be danielrstewart.com/espanol and essentially maintained two different versions of the site, having to ensure that all information was up to date. Having to make sure that my portfolio was correctly updated in english as well as spanish, and then writing new articles on the english site then going back to the spanish one to rewrite it. In the short run this is easy as this site is very young. In the long run, it would be a pain, and I refused that.

I chose the challenge instead. I tied everything to XLanguage, the language switcher I use. It took some time to get working, but it was worth it. Instead of having to manage two sites, I can see everything in either language. When I write articles I write them in english and in spanish, marking one for english, the other for spanish. Now all comments are on the same page regardless of what language you’re viewing it in. Go ahead, leave a comment and then change the language. Your comment is still there.

This is my new challenge. I remember bits and pieces from when Flash seemed like Macromedia Director on steroids, but it’s come a long way. I dedicate time everyday to educate myself with it, and I aim to be able to use it for most things I would imagine myself doing with it by the end of this year. I’ve heard from friends who use flash that the new version 3.0 of their scripting language Actionscript is more similar to an object-oriented programming language than for scripting. Since I have some experience with C and Java from high school, I suspect that will be comfortable for me to understand. After flash there is a never-ending list of new things I want to learn, to do.

Is there a challenge that you have overcome that you’d like to share? A challenge you’ve committed to? Let yourself be heard by leaving a comment.

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We see trends for information whether we conciously acknowledge them or not. Street signs are fairly generic. There is always a system that repeats, not just for brand consistency but for knowing exactly what you’re getting into. Red means stop, error, failure, etc.

Computer interfaces follow a system of similar predictability. It’s ironic when the inventor of the graphic user interface was Xerox. Seems fitting for redundancy. All windows follow a pattern of operation buttons here, resize there. Scroll here, display there, etc. These are all following the same pattern on the top 3 operating systems in the world.

Despite many years of improvement on operating systems, there still hasn’t been much change. The reasons are twofold:

They are already very familiar. Why change something that we know how to use already? Sure, it’s not revolutionary, or even more than a minor change, but that’s the point. The biggest real change was the integration of the taskbar in Windows, otherwise known as the dock on the Macintosh operating system 10.x

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“I don’t know” can be a real tough thing to say sometimes, but it’s definitely going to leave you better off than claiming otherwise and delivering an incomplete or ruined product. Knowing your limits is one aspect of honesty, but also knowing that you can do something is another.

I know most of my work has focused on the print side, so I don’t know much beyond using HTML and CSS to create web pages. I know a little bit of Javascript, and a tiny bit of php, but for all intensive purposes I don’t make any claim to really know either of them. I know what I know, no more no less.

Yo entiendo que la mayoria de mi trabajo tuvo un focus con print, entonces no sé mucho con deseño web despues de HTML y CSS a hacer paginas web. Yo sé un poco de Javascript, y un poquito parte de php, pero no tengo un creo a realmente saber los dos. Yo sé qué yo sé, no más no menos.

Of course, there are some things I claim to know, but cannot remember each and every single thing about them. This is where knowledge becomes If I can do whatever I need to do without difficulty. A great example would be the increasingly complex Adobe creative suite and their most popular product: Photoshop. Having passed Adobe’s Photoshop CS3 certification exam, I know full and well that I didn’t pass with 100%. In fact, I don’t think anybody can, considering all the little niche features and corner cases that the exam ran my score down with.

Hay unas cosas qué dizo que sé, pero no puse recordar todo sobre ellos. Este es donde conocimiento quedaron Sí yo puedo hacer qué necesito hacer sin dificilidad. Un buen ejempo es la más y más complicado Adobe Creative Suite y el mejor producto popular: Photoshop. Porque pasé el examen de certificación por Photoshop CS3, yo sé completamente que no pasé con 100%. Creo que la verdad es nadie puede pasar eso con 100%, porque el examen tiene muchas cosas especializada de differente usados.

To Adobe’s credit, it did also ask a significant number of questions about more usual and good-to-know cases: If I want to do X without changing Y, Optimizing for the web, Why can’t I do X with Y? and so on. In the case of things like these, saying that you know something is more like saying I know enough to be competent with my peers. Now wouldn’t that be quite the change to see that on a resumé? Like knowing a foreign language, you may not cover every little subtle difference between some words, but you will know enough to be convincing.

Pero, Adobe preguntaba sobre cosas mas común y bueno-a-saber situaciones: Sí quiero cambiar X sin cambiando Y, Optimización por el web, ¿Por qué no puedo hacer X sin Z? y más. Por algo complicado como a este, diciendo que sabes algo es más como a diciendo Yo sé sufficiente a ser competente con otros. Un gran cambio con un resumen, ¿no? Como a sabiendo una otra idioma, usted tal vez no hablaba todos los sutíl diferencias entre las palabrasa, pero sabería sufficiente a ser convincado.

Saying “I don’t know” may also be loaded in the sense that it means you will never know. The truth is more along the lines of “I don’t want to know”, “I’m not interested in knowing right now”, or “I don’t know yet.” It is this yet that can help allieviate the fear of admitting a lack of knowledge by using the truth in a positive fashion. There are a lot of things I wholeheartedly admit that I don’t know yet. I have not learned enough about them to remove yet, but as I progress yet and don’t fall away and it becomes I know. I don’t know how to make separate versions of my site in english and spanish to support both demographics without simply having english speakers skipping the spanish and spanish speakers skipping the english yet. I’m working on it though. I don’t know my way around wordpress (the engine that fuels this blog) yet. I’m getting there.

Diciendo “no sé” tambien puede ser dificil porque la palabra puede quedar usted nunca va a saber. La verdad es mas acerca de “No quiero saber”, “No estoy interesado con sabiendo ahora”, o “No ya sé.” Es este ya que puede aliviar el miedo con admitiendo carecer de conocimiento a usando la verdad positivamente. Hay muchas cosas yo admitia que no ya sé. No aprendí suficiente a quitar ya, pero mientras aprendiendo ya y no desaparecian y quedaron Yo sé. No ya sé como a hacer separado verciones de mi página web en ingles y en español (o cuando escribí este articuló era la verdad.) Pero estoy trabajando con este. No ya sé como a usar Wordpress (la sistema de este blog). Estoy acercando.

I don’t know how to stomach Iceland’s Hákarl delicacy yet, but I don’t think I will ever want to know that one.

No ya sé como a comer La delicacia Islandés Hákarl, pero no pienso que yo nunca quiero saber como.

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