R Sloan's Design Experiences

When I was growing up, i always worked harder than most of the kids I knew on their school work. I did not make A’s nor was I a book worm. Most things I was being taught at the time just held no interest for me…science captured my attention but more from a practical application rather than therorical or historcal scene. Sure, like all kids I liked dinosaurs and atoms but what was more interesting was invention– the creation of something from nothing.

I always relished the thought of some-THING that could make me more than I am. Not as much mech, like Ripley in Aliens (see alien breeder scene), or clever on the spot life saving inventions like McGever, but more like the know it alls alla James Bond and associated Q organization. Bond on most occations knew almost everthing there was to know about the topic at hand. Moreover the Q organization where always off inventing new and glorious ways of protecting their agents. Absolutly wonderful stuff…

So wonderful, when asked my junior year about my future vocation, my response was ‘inventor.’. This quickly became industrial designer…a jack of all trades and…well, we will leave the rest of that phrase for later…

Toddling into the industrial design field imparted ne with
So when I think of bond and Q, I think of me and my iPhone

Being new to social communication, I find the user experience for Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, and Facebook all very interesting.

Moreover, I have a true desire for all of these applications to work seemlessly together. However, being a user experience professional, I understand seams are facts of life – whether ‘code’ or ‘market share’ based.

On Facebook, the main interaction, to communicate, is somewhat circular and muddled; i.e.

• the inbox versus status update;
• replying to a comment inline or from someone’s wall

all seems all very confusing.

It may be confusing, however, it is still quite pleasant to run into a new user experience challenge. It makes me realize how challenging it maybe for users in the enterprise application and tools space to have multiple ways of to perform the same task.

Granted, enterprise applications are for professionals motivated to learn these application versus social communication applications. However, on some level I would argue those that users of the social communication applications are equalily as motivated to learn Facebook’s somewhat unnatural mental models.

More later…

R Sloan's thoughts on user experience.

A little about me…

I am a designers.

Trained as an industrial designers, I am a practicing user experience designer.  I switched because the user experience (then new media) space was moving faster in all respects.

In this web log, my intentions are to write about new user experiences via problems I face at work, recollections as a practitioner, and adviser.  Moreover, I will pose questions to, hopefully, a larger community, teach, and learn in turn.

Please come back and I will do my best to be consistent in my queries, positions, and responses.

Good designing,
Sloan