Art begins with resistance – at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

- Andre Gide

One test is worth a thousand expert opinions.

– Bill Nye, the Science Guy

Paul Adams interview from Tomer Sharon on Vimeo.

This is an interview with Paul Adams about getting stakeholder buy-in for UX research. The interview was conducted by Tomer Sharon, a Google UX researcher, for his book, “It’s Our Research: Getting stakeholder buy-in for user experience research projects”.

Paul currently works as a Product Manager at Facebook and he is the author of the book Grouped. He is recognized as a leading thinker on designing social interactions, and spent four years at Google, leading user research for their social web projects. Before Google, Paul worked as a User Experience consultant at Flow, leading research and design projects for clients including the BBC, The Guardian, Vodafone, UK Government, and Betfair. Before that, he worked as an Industrial Designer, designing electronic appliances at Dyson and car interiors at Faurecia. Paul is a strong advocate of observing behavior in peoples’ own environment, and believes that this helps to create compelling experiences, and he writes a popular blog at ThinkOutsideIn.com.

Unless an action is rightly thought out and its steps rightly planned, every stage of its performance will probably remain vague and therefore unsatisfactory for the doer and all those concerned.

- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

In the editing process, I delete what I do not want to use, move what remains around if necessary and add elements that I feel will make my visual statement as clear and understandable as possible.

- Gerald Brommer

We are still living under the reign of logic: this, of course, is what I have been driving at. But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism that is still in vogue allows us to consider only facts relating directly to our experience. Logical ends, on the contrary, escape us. It is pointless to add that experience itself has found itself increasingly circumscribed. It paces back and forth in a cage from which it is more and more difficult to make it emerge. It too leans for support on what is most immediately expedient, and it is protected by the sentinels of common sense.

- André Breton

As long as the documentation clearly delineates the design strategy and interface structure I think the choice between wire-framing and prototyping often lies in the audience for the document. Some clients will never read an annotated wireframe but they might click through a prototype. Alternately, some developers hate prototypes because they don’t always reflect the exact functionality that they suggest. In either case, think about who is going to use them instead of jumping whole hog into one camp.

The preso also contains a couple videos that make wire-framing seem way more exciting than it really is. Maybe I’ll show them to my Mom.

Age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.

- Fausto Coppi