Category: User Experience

Everynow

May 26, 2013

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Devices, Information Architecture, Interface, Reference, Technology, Ubiquitous Computing, User Experience

We are living in a time where there are not only many concurrent realities existing at once, but our understanding of “Now” is perhaps broader and more broken than most any time since the Middle Ages started sprouting into the Renaissance. This is nowhere more prevalent in our understanding of the future, particularly the near…
Broken Decade Precedes It Works Decade

Apr 28, 2013

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Enterprise, Mobile, Personal InfoCloud, Portability, User Experience

I had long forgotten this Carl Steadman response to Michael Sippy’s “Just One Question – What do you want for Christmas”, but the response from 1997 is fantastic and frames the 1990s as the broken decade. (I’ll wait for you to go read it) I’m not so sure that Carl’s broken decade got better in…
Mistaking the Edges for the Norm

Jun 22, 2012

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Applications, Community, Social Software, sxd, Technology, User Experience, Web/Tech

One of the best lessons from social quantitative analysis in grad school (public policy) was learning to understand if you are viewing edge cases or the norm (mainstream). Humans have some common traits, but when you start to design or develop any sort of program (be it government services or social software) you start to…
Beyond Simple Social Presentation

Jun 8, 2012

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Complexity Lenses, Enterprise, Knowledge Management, Social Lenses, Social Software, sxd, User Experience

We have been here before. Where we are with social tools in organizations has been done before and not overly well. But, where we are today is a place we have been twice before in my working career. We had groupware and knowledge management tools in this same spot. Similar promise and similar success both…
Presenting “Beyond Simple Social” In SF May 30th

May 25, 2012

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Complexity Lenses, Enterprise, Social Lenses, Social Software, sxd, User Experience, Web

I am presenting “Beyond Simple Social” at Salesforce in San Francisco on Wednesday, May 30. Please join us – Eventbright free ticket. Interfaces for social software are simple. But designing, developing and managing social platforms is not. I will present some of the lenses he uses to help companies increase user adoption and engagement by…
Urban Planning to Social Business: Social that Scales

Mar 14, 2012

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in City Planning, Community, Complexity Lenses, Enterprise, Knowledge Management, Social Lenses, Social Software, sxd, Urban Planning, User Experience

Overview In November of 2011 Gordon Ross and I presented What Urban Planning Can Teach Us About Social Business Design at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara (the presentation is loaded at the end of this post). I was excited about the presentation as it was a great opportunity to place the foundations of…
Getting Beyond Simple Social

Mar 3, 2012

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Community, Enterprise, Knowledge Management, Social Software, sxd, Technology, Tools, User Experience, Web, Web/Tech

“Social is hard!” is something I hear repeatedly by most of my clients and those I talk to. It is one of the issues I continually run across in my work with organizations trying to better understand social software and collaboration tools for their organization as well as helping vendors better understand their gaps and…
Removing Trust

Jan 25, 2011

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Community, Enterprise, Identity, Knowledge Management, Social Software, sxd, Technology, User Experience, Web, Web/Tech

About two years ago I made a conscious effort not to use the term “trust” and encouraged those I was engaging for work and social interactions not to use the term. The problem is not the concept of trust, but the use of the term trust, or more accurately the overuse of the term trust.…
5 Enterprise 2.0 Myth Mantras that Must Die

Jun 19, 2010

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Community, Conferences, Enterprise, Knowledge Management, Privacy, Social Software, sxd, User Experience

This week's Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston was quite good. It is one of the few conference I still won't miss. The conference is a good mix of vendors, implementers, and those who live with those results while working hard to improve upon this. This conference is a great place to talk with people who…
Understanding the Cost of We Can’t Find Anything

May 20, 2010

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Access to Info, Enterprise, Folksonomy, Information Architecture, Knowledge Management, Model of Attraction, Refindability, Social Software, sxd, Technology, Tools, User Experience

One problem I often hear when talking with any organization about new solutions is understanding the cost and inefficiency of their existing way solutions, processes, or general way of doing things. In the past year or two I have used various general measurements around search to help focus the need for improvement not only on…