Quote on designers and expert subjectivity

“An expert subjectivity is needed in design, because “design professionals” require a cultivated ability to read socio-cultural signs and trends; a creative and reasoned ability to explore alternative futures; a verbal ability to articulate these activities; a receptiveness to alternative framings and a willingness to explore highly variable alternative directions; and above all a personal […]

On deprivation and user experience

In the book, “Experience Design: Technology for All the Right Reasons” by Marc Hassenzahl (2010), there’s a section labeled, “Do needs have different priorities?” Below is last paragraph of that, “Identifying situations, which imply the systematic deprivation of a need, is an important starting point for Experience Design. It is difficult to “sell” an experience […]

Definition of “an experience-oriented approach”

Below, there is an extract (part of the introduction) from the paper “Experience-Oriented and Product-Oriented Evaluation: Psychological Need Fulfillment, Positive Affect, and Product Perception” by Hassenzahl, Wiklund-Engblom, Bengs, Hägglund, and Diefenbach (2015). Sometimes I feel that we have diluted the notion of UX. However, this text reminds me that academia is there for the study […]

Online resources about research and for a PhD dissertation

This is a personal post about online resources that talk about conducting research. I expect this list to be organic, and this is for me to not forget while I’m working on my (HCI + design) dissertation. However, I hope it’s helpful for you too!

CHI 2016 Workshop on Visual Literacy & Human-Computer Interaction

ATTN: We have extended the submission deadline for the CHI 2016 Workshop on Visual Literacy & HCI to February 1st, 2016 Call for Position Papers: “Visual Literacy & HCI” CHI 2016 Workshop to promote visual literacy as first class competency in HCI research and practice ============================= OBJECTIVE ============================= The goal of this workshop is to […]

UI/UX Patterns Libraries List

Because my research is related to user interfaces, I thought it’d be a nice idea to create a Pinterest board in order to start collecting UI/UX samples. Nevertheless, colleagues have showed me this cool UI pattern libraries, whose content is great for both practitioners and researchers. Therefore, I’ll use this post to create a list for these online […]

Google’s material design

Google has launched its new design guidelines called “Material Design”. The name caught my attention, since I’m convinced, as visual designer, that observable pixels are really material to play; that is, to create user interfaces. What’s the possible meaning of this called design language? Well, I bet that my understanding of observable pixels as actual material is not […]

Participatory Design: making, telling, and enacting.

“Design participation is an evolving practice of making, telling and enacting. The iterative flow of events between these activities is essential, not only for participation to occur naturally, but for participation to occur with ease and with joy. When we can fully engage people’s minds, hearts and bodies in imagining and expressing future situations of […]

The circle as the king of flat design

One interesting aspect that we can notice about flat design interfaces is the recurrent use of circular forms. When circles and circumferences are employed to compose interface widgets, they seem to express time effectively without the necessity of more visual information.