7 deadliy sins of User Research

http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/7-sins-of-user-research.html

Power of Developing Liking

Traditionally we all have subjects or topics from school that we consider ourselves "good" at, and to an extent these are the topics that help us shape our thinking or even our careers at times.

But if you were to reverse question the thought of how does one become good at something, you tend to see that we develop a strange kind of liking towards the topic as kids.
When we like something we have a natural inclination to do that thing more repetitively. By saying this i don't intend to say that liking makes us an expert automatically. But Liking surely acts as one of the key recipes towards developing the expertise. If you like something you tend to become more curious towards that topic, you make special efforts at times to make urself spend more time in that domain.

Lets for example look at a kid who develops a liking towards geography and due to that you would see that his attention span towards geography is high. Hence he would grab more knowledge make more meaning out of it. Its a strange kind of purpose he develops in his mind if he likes something. If asked for a rationale chances are that he may even create a valid rationale to support his liking, because deep down inside all he knows is..."He Likes it".

Deciding or feeling or acting upon what we like, it seems, begins the very day we are born. We spend the rest of our lives sorting out how we feel about everything else.

As research shows it may be more difficult to pin point "Why we like what we like" , but even if we dont know that, we atleast know that promoting or motivating what we like can create wonders not just for you...but also for the world..(unless you like something harmfull)

So What do you like the most?

P.S.: I just remembered i had written something on a similar topic some time back...Read it here

Applying Emotional Design...

An excerpt from Trevor van Gorps article Emotional Design with A.C.T. – Part 1

As human beings, we assign personalities to objects, interfaces and websites based on the way they behave and appeal to our senses. Even though we consciously know that computers and media are not animate and do not have feelings, we still respond socially and automatically when viewing, interacting and evaluating them.⁵ It has been suggested that products should be viewed as “living objects with which people have relationships.”⁶ Through the relationships that are formed by using products, people can be made to feel happy or sad, angry or passive, relaxed or anxious, proud or ashamed, and motivated or demotivated.

Good Online Courses List

For all you Geeks out there :)

http://www.onlinecourses.org

Amazing New Desktop Interaction metaphor

This is truly wonderful

10/GUI as the author calls it. Also i love the way the video is executed. Amazing.

http://www.vimeo.com/6712657

Enjoy..

Data Vizualization Collection

http://abduzeedo.com/beauty-infographics-and-data-visualization

Another good site where i got the link from:
http://www.mento.info/abotis/tags/graphics

Time Magazines 50 best sites

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/completelist/0,29569,1809858,00.html