I attended the #ixd10 conference last weekend in Savannah, and while better bloggers have summarized and analyzed the event, I’d like to share my own brief takeaway lesson.

Let your passion out into the world. Every single one of us is great at something unique, and we owe it to ourselves to share that with the greater community. That’s why I produce all this Axure stuff – because I’m good at it, and it makes people happy. Seriously: happy! That’s a damn good feeling.

Few professions provide this opportunity, this interconnectedness and openness that allow people of any age or location to make an immediate, positive impact across the world. Throughout the conference, as I sat through presentation after presentation of really cool people making really cool things, I realized yet again that the world is there for the improving. For each of us. So take some time outside of work to make something awesome – you’ll get back a thousand times what you put in.

Thanks.
-Loren

Maxure is here!

If you’re a Mac user like me, Axure may be one of the only remaining reasons you keep a Windows installation around. We’re almost out of the woods, because an alpha version for Mac has just been released. It still needs some work: some supporting features, like shared projects, haven’t made the cut yet. But the main prototyping features have been put in, with a new interaction editor that reduces the number of popup controls. Overall, it feels damn good to be working natively in OSX, and I can’t wait to see this evolve.

On another note, it sounds like Windows users will start getting updated functionality early next year.

Go download or read the official post.

New to Axure? Check out their official (and extensive) list of resources.

Kevin Wick has posted a very nice sketchy-styled Axure library.  I highly recommend it.

Prototyping in a very low-fidelity visual style generally helps your stakeholders provide feedback at the right level, as discussed in this article, and has been adopted by many other design tools, notably Balsamiq.

I recently joined a wave of about seven user experience professionals, with all of us participating and discussing, in real-time, the merits of Wave. In fairness, if you send seven UX snobs to review almost any interface, you can expect some berating. And this is a closed “preview” (read: beta) version. But what occurred was an absolute evisceration. In this post I attempt to distill the feedback by providing three criticisms and three suggestions about how Google Wave can be improved.

Read More…

Like using Axure as much as I do? Check out the first Axure-centered conference, AxureWorld 2009, on October 10. It’s all online, and completely free.

I’ll be presenting two panels: Variables and Conditional Logic; Raised Events, and Axure Tips and Tricks. There are a bunch of other great panels hosted by Axure ninjas: Fred Beecher, Jeff Harrison, Luke Perman, Mark Johnston, Dhawal Shah, and a Q&A session with the Axure folks themselves.

And a huge thanks to Ezra Schwartz for organizing the whole thing.

Web applications and sites these days are using many social features. This library, compatible with Axure versions 5.5 and up, contains many of the standard widgets you will need to prototype basic social functionality.

You’ll find a lot more than nice looking stencils – these widgets have polished interactivity, for your prototyping and usability testing needs. And always feel free to contact me if you have any requests or additions!

Preview | Download the Widget Library

(place the .rplib file in \My Documents\My Axure RP Libraries\ for it to load automatically when you start Axure) Read More…

Need a case study to help justify the ROI of performing even the most basic user testing? Look no further: The Dallas Cowboys’ new $1.2 billion stadium includes a vastly expensive, 180 foot HD screen that, besides its intended uses, hangs so low that punted footballs hit it (video). The estimated costs to fix this vary (one places the cost at $2 million), but it’s pretty easy to see the value of some perfunctory usability testing here.

When you’re building a football stadium, put football players in it and let them play. This also shows why user testing your own designs isn’t sufficient: I doubt Jerry Jones can punt a ball high enough to hit that screen.

I continually see folks asking for examples of Axure wireframes. We just relaunched engagebig.com with a fresh design and some simple interactions. The prototype for the site is now here for your perusal:

Engagebig.com v2 Prototype
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A Clean Design is now a lot cleaner. After some hard evenings spent sketching, wireframing, polishing, and coding, this site reflects, as much as possible, my own work and my views on the web in general. Let me know if you enjoy the graphic design – it’s the first full one I’ve ever done.

I invite you to check out some new content and some reorganized content at the work and projects pages, a better footer, and one miserable defeat to Internet Explorer’s vicious bug engine (can you find it?). I should also mention that IE6 is dead to me.

Thanks to everyone who reads and comments, expect more good content to follow.

I tried to log in to an old last.fm account today, which I have not accessed in years.  This should be simple for me using my handy-dandy password algorithm method – except that Last.fm wants to throw a curveball my way.  They require a username and password to login.  And, as their designers cackle maniacly smoking Havana cigars in their evil island fortress, they even require a username to retrieve forgotten passwords.

Let me make it clear to Last.fm and every other website in existence: I haven’t the foggiest clue what your specific username requirements were when I registered, or whether I decided to use my first name, full name, moniker, or favorite Steinbeck character.  But I do remember something very well – the same email that I’ve used for the last 6 years.  Ask me for that for login credentials, and we’ll get along just fine.

Interaction Designers – I’m looking squarely at you.  This is our job.  In my opinion, a username is a completely invalid login requirement for all but the most fundamental credentials, such as your OS account, or for bank accounts (which can claim the “higher security” excuse).  What do you think?

— Update —

@salConigliaro points out, “At the very least let me use my email address as my username.”  While I agree, this also means that your publicly displayed username, assuming that’s why the user name exists in the first place, has to be your email address.  For both privacy and formatting concerns, this may be less than ideal.