Art, science, & pasta
Today I came across a really appetizing interesting site, which is an excerpt from a book called Pasta by Design, by George L. Legendre. What is so wonderful about it – to me at least – is that it brings together the math which produces the curves in the pasta, the technical reproduction of the pasta shape (which looks like a stipple contour drawing!), and then photographs, a brief origin / history of the shape, and even recommendations on how to eat it! You can browse the interactive site on the New York Times website. And a shout-out to one of my favorite bloggers Nathan Yau at...
Read MoreDisplaying data
In a post some time ago, I wrote about my growing interest in data visualization, and its importance as (1) my team’s work in User Experience consulting was gaining more exposure with executives, and (2) we began working with larger datasets that lend themselves well to these types of representation. I continue to see the importance of these methods to support our User Experience work. In reading some industry news recently, I came across an interesting article from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) called A Tour through the Visualization Zoo. I found it to be a...
Read MoreEnd-user or business stakeholder?
[This is a modified version of a post I made internally on SAP's Lean Transformation blog. I've removed a few of the details about sales compensation, the process diagram, and the system screenshots.] One of the significant challenges we face in the User Experience work we do at SAP is working with business stakeholders who really feel that they know the end-users whom they represent in governing bodies, and that they can speak on behalf of those end-users. While in some cases that might be the case, I would argue that it’s the exception rather than the rule. If you read my...
Read MoreData visualization
In a paper I co-authored for EPIC 2007, I wrote about a pie chart that I used to depict the research findings from my first ethnographic research study inside SAP in 2005. With the exception of my dissertation research, which I had ‘distilled’ into a 300-page book, I had no experience in presenting complex, qualitative research to an executive audience in the corporate setting. Like a typical consulting engagement, I had about 80-100 hours worth of findings, but less than an hour to make a compelling statement about what I had found. I used the pie chart as a door-opener for...
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