UXmatters July 2007 issue

Five new articles in the July 2007 issue of UXmatters, the user experience web magazine:

Your design is infringing on my patent: the case against user interface and interaction model patents and intellectual property
By Paul J. Sherman
“Despite what the intellectual property lawyers and patent-squatter holding companies claim, many studies across many industries and domains have established that patents inhibit competition and stifle innovation. […] Open standards and narrowly scoped patents that cover unique solutions to limited problems encourage healthy competition and help build vibrant, free markets. And they would also lead to greater opportunities for all of us who work in user experience.”

What puts the design in interaction design
By Kevin Silver
“Interaction designers need to embrace the magic—by realizing that design is rooted deep beneath the aesthetic surface and provides a process that reacts easily to misfits in context.”

From reluctance to enjoyment: my journey through CHI 2007
By Isabelle Peyrichoux
“On Sunday, April 29, 2007, when flying from Montreal to San Jose to attend my first CHI conference, I worried I might have made the wrong decision by choosing CHI as my conference for this year. […] Surprisingly, just four days later, my mood was exactly the opposite: I just didn’t want to leave San Jose and my fellow CHI attendees, with whom I’d had so much fun. I was ecstatic about my CHI experience. What happened in those four days that made me go from one extreme feeling to its opposite? It’s all about international usability, peanut butter, candies, and field studies.”

Conference review: CHI 2007
By Pabini Gabriel-Petit
“I had a wonderful time at CHI despite the limited amount of content for designers and my being unable to get into the courses I’d wanted to attend. I particularly regret missing Kim Goodwin’s course, “Where Usability Meets Desirability: Visual Design with Personas and Goals.” I heard it was great. To enable CHI to reach its full potential in coming years, I hope its organizers take an iterative approach to designing the conference and solve the problems that exist.”

Comparing UXD business models
By Jim Nieters and Garett Dworman
“The CHI 2007 Management Special Interest Group (SIG), “Comparing UXD Business Models,” [enabled] participants [to] compare different models of UX organizational design. Our intent was to share experiences and systematically explore them in the hope that this information will aid companies in structuring their internal UX functions. To this end, we generated SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analyses of four UX business models. In this article, we are sharing what we learned by performing SWOT analyses on several UX business models during the SIG.”