::slingthought::

Yummy grid and type on Unit Interactive’s site. Hit their blog for details about their redesign.

There’s a plethora of job titles floating out in the Webosphere.  I’ve been gathering them from things like LinkedIn, Search Engine Keywords, Job Boards and other Social Networking Tools.  I’m curious about how you or your organization has positioned your role within our collective profession.  Take a look at how I’ve started to organize the job titles above and let me know if I’ve missed something or if I’m way off the mark.  This is work in progress.

I operate under the “User Experience Strategist” moniker.  Let me explain why I’ve chosen that specific label.  I have a multidisciplinary approach to user experience opportunities.

I have backgrounds and expertise in the following:
- Visual Design and Communications
- Illustration
- Usability
- Information Architecture
- Interactive Marketing

I specifically selected “User Experience” because I’m passionate about looking across the experiences that human beings have with the Web, Email Marketing, Intranets, and Web Applications/Services.  I haven’t spent as much time in the mobile field, but it certainly relates as being a user experience.

I decided to use the label “Strategist” because I may be looking at applying my collective background, or I may only utilize Information Architecture.  As a strategist I look at a plan of attack or approach for the overall experience.

Any contributions you may have to this organic categorization will be helpful for us all.  My intention is to help better define how we talk about and position ourselves to clients, recruiters, and other business professionals.  Please leave a comment and even some rationale behind your title if you feel like it.  I’d love to update the mind map with new labels that haven’t been accounted for.  Reminder- this is how I’m looking at things.  How does your point of view differ?

Scrutinizer is web browser, based upon the Adobe AIR toolkit and the WebKit browser, that offers a simulation of the human visual system.  It helps you get a better grasp on how users might be looking at your site or application design.

This video is an interesting peek at the science about how we see and perceive information on screens and might help you plan how to organize, group or re-arrange some of the screen elements in your experiences.

Here are two competing Mind Mapping Applications.  You can likely tell from the color palettes of the screen shots which platform each application was created for.  Let’s pretend that you don’t know…

Which looks more approachable? A. or B.

If you selected A, then you were drawn to MindNode for the Mac.  If you chose B, then you are looking at MindMapper Pro 2008 for the PC.

Sure you might feel like you got all the features imaginable for your $249 if you bought B, but there’s just something about the simplicity of the UI in A.  It even presents new users with info on how to start adding nodes right out of the gate.  Did I mention it’s about $15 USD?  The lesson…I don’t have to see everything at my disposal at once.  Tuck things away in a neat, easy to reach spot and I’ll use features when I need them.

Money and platform aside, the uncluttered default view of MindNode has converted me to a fan.  I use it to organize thoughts, prep for presentations, organize the structures of  sites and even keep track of requirements for that next Web app.

Sometimes its just fun to compare Apples with, well, Windows.

Nice breakdown, from 2002 mind you, by Challis Hodge on Experience Design Roles.  The thoughts are still relevant today.

From what I can tell from the screenshots, iNotes has a relatively clean user interface and might prove to be useful for corporate users.  Ahhh, the good old days when Lotus Notes was the sanctioned corporate app.

Here are some interesting samples of image zooms.  I like the subtle fadeout transition on Example 5.  All would work nicely in an eCommerce experience for decision support in the browsing process.

Here’s another slick jQuery user interface design with smooth transitions.  Big fan of the silhouette of the glasses with a scrollbar for browsing the collections of glass styles.  Many thanks to Faderisimo for pointing out this minimal, sophisticated example to me.

You can see it here.

Whoa, I did not see that coming.  Collaboration is everywhere and now it’s on the iPhone and iTouch.

The video touts some slick features like the meeting calls you and you can also chat with participants.

I want to believe this would work for watching a presentation, but I’m skeptical.  I’d also like to see how screen sharing looks and I want to know if you can listen to the audio via headphones on the iTouch.  I assume you can.

Regardless, it seems like a killer app for mobile professionals.

Brooklyn-based Carrot Creative has a unique jQuery navigation scheme that acts a bit like Flash, but its not.  The navigation experience is elegant as the pages shift into focus.  What really brings a smile to my face is all the attention to little details in the creative.  Even a normally mundane page like “Staff” is fun to browse.  The employees have their photos shot on a big, carrot orange couch.  Looks like a blast to work there.  Jealous.