jmarquez.com

Asombro

Joaquín Márquez Correa — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:00:09 +0000

Fernando tiene 81 años. Es aficionado a la música y a la poesía. El sábado estuvimos en su casa y emocionado, me enseñó una canción que un amigo suyo le había pasado en un disco, sin nombre ni identificación. “No sé de quién es, pero es maravillosa”, me dijo. Era un tema de piano, con aires de tango. “Llevo una semana tratando de sacarla al piano, para escribir su partitura”, afirmó.

Con total naturalidad, saqué mi iPhone, abrí Shazam, acerqué el teléfono al altavoz y en quince segundos tenía toda la información sobre lo que escuchábamos: autor, intérprete, nombre del disco y sello discográfico.

Me metí en Google, hice una búsqueda y conseguí la partitura en PDF. Fernando, con los ojos como platos, me miraba como si fuese el brujo del pueblo. Estaba casi en shock. No dejaba de decir cosas como “increíble” y “gracias, gracias”. Para mí, que estoy todo el día rodeado de cacharros, era lo más normal del mundo.

Al salir de su casa, todavía con la sonrisa en la cara al recordar la sorpresa de Fernando, me asaltó un pensamiento al que no dejo de darle vueltas:
“¿Y yo, cuándo fue que perdí la capacidad de asombro?”.

Me quedé un poco triste, la verdad.

To Sweden once again!

Joaquín Márquez Correa — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:13:37 +0000

This year we’re heading to Sweden once again, because there’s gonna be a new edition of From Business to Buttons and we, The Cocktail, are going to be partners. We’ve made the conference’s site, also.

It’s going to be held in Malmö, southern Sweden, on 11ht and 12th of June.

Why you should register?
Because you will be able to attend very intersting sessions and meet great speakers, like Scott Berkun (author of the books “Making things happen” and “The Myths of Innovation”) and Garr Reynolds (author of “Presentation Zen”). Of course you’ll get the chance to meet also a lot of The Cocktail guys

Why you should register RIGHT NOW?
Because there’s an early bird registration fee until April 30 and if you insert this special code: FBTBdiscount, will get an additional discount of 15%.

See you there!

(Español) ¡Te buscamos!

Joaquín Márquez Correa — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:12:38 +0000

Sorry, this entry is only available in Español.

(Español) Metodología de diseño

Joaquín Márquez Correa — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:03:25 +0000

Common sense is not enough

Joaquín Márquez Correa — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:38:06 +0000

How many times I’ve used the expresion “common sense” to explain what I did when I was starting into interaction design and usability. We used to say that what we do was adding common sense to the Internet, to technology and interface design.

Not anymore.

I’m sure that common sense and “putting into the user shoes” is not enough. You need to know your user, because systems and users have evolved a lot. They have became more complex, more demanding… less naif.

User research, a discipline that seems boring and sometimes weird, is your best allied. Thanks to my colleagues from The Cocktail Analisys I confirm this certainty almost every day. They helped us to get to know those unknown people for whom we design products.

I know I can put myself into the place of a gadget consumer or a cooking enthusiast, because I’m one of those too, but am I supposed to apply “common sense” and “empathy” with a doctor or a financial analyst? It’s completely impossible, both are so different from me that I wouldn’t know what they need if I don’t research first.

It’s fascinating to participate in interviews and discussion groups before starting to design. You can discover hundreds of details that woul never be able to anticipate by using just common sense. And thanks to the great work of research specialists, you can have documents that support all the assumptions and decisions of the design phase.

Today’s users & consumers dominates Internet, knows about social networks, knows how to search and compare products and solutions that satisfy his needs. And too often, knows a lot more than you.

How are you supposed to design for this new user based only on your common sense?

No way!

Joaquín Márquez Correa — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:47:56 +0000

At least twice last week I get the same answer when I mentioned “community” and “blog” in a corporate client: “No way! That is good only to loose your time”.

It’s funny, because the first thing that cames to the mind of those executives is that blogs and social tools are something for procrastination and there is no chance that they can serve as a knowldege sharing or productiviy tools. Why is that? Is it related to the technology acceptance factor?

As you all know, it takes a certain amount of time for every technology to become part of the daily lives of people. It has been that way since ever, like it was with radio, TV, computers, mobile phones… ¿Do you think this is what is happening with social applications? I’m pretty sure about it, and we need to wait until it’s whole potential it’s being recognized in some corporate environments.

Or… maybe it’s us that we’re not doing well communicating what social applications can do for business?

Posting in english

Joaquín Márquez Correa — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 10:58:06 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot to start writing in English this blog, specially after talking to some people from Adaptive Path, Cooper and InUse in the last edition of From Business To Buttons, this year. They said that would be interesting for them to understand what we’re doing here in terms of design and usability. And I agree. I can read and talk in English and Spanish, so I can access a lot of interesting information from people around the world, but I know that not everybody is that lucky.

So, from now on I will try to do my best translating and making special post for you, english speaking people. I know my grammar is not the best and you’ll find a lot of writing mistakes here, but hey, it’s going to better than an automatic translator anyway

New York, New York

Joaquín Márquez Correa — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:16:28 +0000

I’m very excited planning one of my life trips: New York. I’ve been wanting to know that city for so many years and, finally, at the end of October my dream will become true thanks to my fabulous wife

It won’t be many days (only 6), but I think it would be enough to walk a lot and get to know the essentials. I can always go there again…

So, I will appreciate that you can share with us all your tips&tricks on this post’s comments. By doing that, I can have a little repository of notes that will be a great help for planning our stance.

The thing is that I haven’t found this feature in any travel planning web. I mean, everybody can save the places they know or where they want to go, but you cannot send specific recommendations to no one. Take this situation for instance: I say that I want to go to NYC and a friend of mine -from community X- has been there and have a lot of places and comments saved under his profile. The killer feature would be that he could send all of his data to me and be saved under “tips from your friends for your next trip”. Don’t you think that will increase collaboration and sharing between members of that community?

Anyway, since that feature is not active in any community that I’ve checked, please contribute by placing a comment here. Thanks a lot!

Faz magazine article

Joaquín Márquez Correa — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:36:50 +0000

Just arrived from vacations and I have a pleasant surprise: the second issue of Faz magazine (interaction design) is finally published. I’ve wrote an article for it: “Learning from video games”. Sorry but it’s only in Spanish (as the entire magazine).

But, if you are one of those who can read Spanish, you can download it on PDF:

Useless iconography: clothing care instructions

Joaquín Márquez Correa — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:31:26 +0000

The main idea behind designing an icon is to communicate a concept without words, surpassing language gaps and to save space in the place where the concept must be.

That’s why is so common to see icons on buttons, highways, street signs and in clothes. The problem is that, yn cloth, the icons are anything but easy to understand.

An icon must communicate a concept in an easy way, like an arrow meaning direction or a strike cigarette means a prohibition to smoke.

According to the book “Universal Principles of Design”, there are 4 types of icons: by resemblance (pretty recognizable representation of the concept), image (a plane represent an “airport”), symbolic (representation of something more abstract, like a lighting meaning “electricity” or a broken glass means “fragile”) and arbitrary (those icons that are universally accepted although they don’t represent something recognizable, like male and female icons).

In cloth care labels there are a mix of different type of icons, since you can find “resemblance” (a hand on a cube of water means “wash by hand”), image (an iron means instructions to iron) and arbitrary (a triangle represents “bleach”).

Ginetex (Groupement International d’Etiquetage pour l’Entretien des Textiles) is the responsible of this icon set design and it’s international spread since 1963. Every symbol is a trade mark and must be used according Ginetext rules.

What amazes me the most is that Ginetex claims to follow certain principles:

Symbols were created to avoid interpretation problems between consumers.

Symbols are easily understandable on every country, without the limitations of language and provides as many information as it’s needed for good care of clothes.

Easy to understand? Who can tell me the relation between a triangle and bleach? Or between a perfect circle and dry cleaning?

BTW, if the circle has a “W” inside then the icon means professional cleaning with water (so, language is an issue, because it resembles “wet” which is an English word).

I am amazed that nobody has ever thought that this icon set is poorly designed and, worst, that it has been adopted as an standard without worrying about consumers.

Is there anybody who wants to propose a new standard?