Below is a mindmap to get you started. You might need all or just a few of these items.

(click to enlarge)

What does your checklist look like?

View/download mindmap on Biggerplate

Here are the highlights of my experience…

The Design

• The screen is too small
• The ball sticks. (One of the more annoying features.)

Making Calls

• I can’t get reception in my apartment. Something I was able to do with my old mobile
• The phone is too wide. Holding it while talking is a pain…literally. Only solution is getting a mobile headset.

Browsing The Web

• Pages load so slowly. I barely use it
• Only sites optimized for mobile load relatively quickly. Even then I could go gray waiting on a page load

The Software

• The software doesn’t have a reset. If it crashes you need a new phone. I’m on my 4th.
• Keep too many emails on the device and performance slows to a crawl. (That is NOT in the manual. A Verizon employee told me that was one reason my phone was sometimes unresponsive)

The Apps

• App prices are totally ridiculous in comparison to other smartphones
• Upgrade an app software and re-entry of the app password is required EVERYTIME

Ultimately email is the only thing my BlackBerry is good for. Needless to say my first BlackBerry is going to be my last.

Some people love their Blackberry device. Me + BlackBerry just don’t play well together. How this phone managed to get four – five star reviews when it came out totally escapes me.

If you have any smartphone recommendations please feel free to send them my way.

What exactly does it mean for a site to be human-centered?

It means that you don’t have to look at the site and wonder what it is supposed to accomplish. What am I supposed do now?

A site that leaves you wondering why hasn’t achieved it’s goal. The action should be so bright you need to wear shades to not know what you’re supposed to do.

What story does a site/product tell? Is it clear? If it isn’t how can you fix it? Sit down and ask yourself what your audience might think.

Do a “What’s in it for me” a.k.a WIIFM analysis to see what your audience thinks your site is. If it fails that test you know you need to rework your site.

Your message isn’t clear.

Not to worry you can fix it. Put yourself in the position of what your potential visitor is looking for and why they are coming to your site. Make up a little story about what you want your visitor to do and that will help inform your design decisions.

Creating is something I have been doing since I was old enough to hold a crayon. Now that I work creating designs for online experiences I can see how my love of technology and design have merged over the years.

Without design we would all be lost. Our experience of our favorite brands would be diminished. We would not have that escape from reality or hit of dopamine we get when something feels pleasurable.

Being creative makes me get up in the morning and turn on my computer. Even on days I have writers block or whatever block it is. But I know once I get started the ideas will flow.

I design there for I am.

What about you? What makes you get up in the morning…

Designers have an essential social responsibility because design is at the core of the world’s largest challenges…and solutions

The tools that are currently widely available allows the average person to apply their design skills. Aviary, a startup in New York, has a suite of tools that gives people just that opportunity. So the excuse that price is a barrier to entry is no longer the case. There are also a lot of open source tools such as InkScape and Gimp to name a few.

If you want to design for fun or work you can ill afford not to think about the impact your work has on yourself and the world. What do you want to say and how loudly you want to say it are all key. You don’t have to reach a million people to make a difference. You just have to influence the behavior of one individual. A big noise might get noticed but doesn’t necessarily have a lasting impact on an individual.

Making a design that’s easier to use or making someone smile with one of my drawings is my small way of changing the world. What’s yours?

Customers don’t relate to anonymity on your part or theirs. If you want to differentiate yourself based on personalized service, you need to be prepared to interact with customers — even millions of them — as individuals. – Patricia Seybold and Ronni Marshak, Customer.com

An enterprise gets smarter and smarter with every individual interaction, defining in ever more detail the customer’s own individual needs and tastes. – Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Enterprise One to One

There is no artifice as good and desirable as simplicity – St. Francis de Sales

Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick one person — a real person you know, or an imagined person — and write to that one. – John Steinbeck

If you have an unhappy customer on the Internet, he doesn’t tell six friends, he tells 6,000 friends. – Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com

Jeff Bezos, is absolutely right, he should know people were in an uproar not to long ago on Twitter about something his company supposedly did.

The Internet has given us all a voice. But who is listening?

Well despite what big man Google has to say I don’t buy it. People are more interested than ever in making products or services that don’t suck. User-centered design can help do that.

The older population is on the threshold of a boom. According to U.S. Census Bureau projections, a substantial increase in the number of older people will occur during the 2010 to 2030 period, after the first Baby Boomers turn 65 in 2011. The older population in 2030 is projected to be twice as large as in 2000, growing from 35 million to 72 million and representing
nearly 20 percent of the total U.S. population at the latter date. – “65+ in the United States: 2005″ by the United States Census Bureau

© iStockphoto.com/laflor

In his 2002 article Jakob Nielsen’s Usability for Seniors said that seniors were the fastest growing segment of users of web users. As the above quote illustrates seniors are the fastest growing segment of the population. Even though the study by Nielsen was conducted in 2002 many of the same usability issues are common on sites.

I don’t think the issue of designing for an older generations is addressed enough. We are all going to age eventually. We will need reading glasses. We will lose our hearing. And to top it all off we might have cognitive issues as well. Maybe that’s why…people don’t want to think about it…sounds kind of depressing but only depending on how you frame it!

One point that I find interesting in Nielsen’s article is when he states that

Websites tend to be produced by young designers, who often assume that all users have perfect vision and motor control, and know everything about the Web. These assumptions rarely hold, even when the users are not seniors.

Young designers aren’t the only ones that make assumptions though but having taught younger designers I know how true his statement can be. I also have found that a lot of assumptions are made about what seniors are interested in doing with technology. The new population of seniors grew up with all the new gadgets and some aren’t afraid of technology. I don’t think all the rules that apply to how we develop strategy for the new crop of seniors…hmm..I don’t even like using that word. I just realized my dad is already considered a senior citizen!

A few issues that should be addressed when designing for seniors are

• Reduced visibility – therefore they need to be able to adjust the font size
• Hearing loss – if your site relies on sound or video make sure it can be close captioned
• Loss of fine motor skills
• Memory and learning impairment