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Below you can see some of AM+A's work in the fields of icon design and globalization/localization. For samples of other work, please see our projects featured on amanda.com.
Icons
AM+A
has extensive expertise in visual communication. Below are samples of our
icon design work.
Adobe: Circulate™ Application Icon icons
Application
icon and UI design for a document management system
Camstar: Insite™icons
AM+A
designed the mental model, navigation, and icons for a Manufacturing Execution
System (MES) for integrating and managing information from the factory floor.
Cogito: Eye To Mind™icons
This
simple, neutral, quiet interface encourages exploration, and allows for
easy reuse of the shell for other titles.
Oracle: Educational Standardsicons
UI
Guidelines and icon design for a web-based training program.
SABRE: Graphical Seat Mapicons
Icon
designs excerpted from full project.
Globalization/Localization
AM+A's
core competence is user-centered design, which includes careful analysis
of globalization and localization issues to achieve optimum usability and
appeal. AM+A believes that cultural appropriateness must be a primary concern.
AM+A brings 20 years of experience to assisting its clients in developing
successful Web-based user experiences that account for diversity of users'
preferences, acceptance criteria, and constraints.
American
Airlines- SABRE Travel Information Network
AM+A
designed a radically innovative graphical user-interface for PlanetSABRE,
one of the world's largest extranets used by one-third of all travel agents
in the world, an extranet that appears in six languages. AM+A designed
multi-cultural icons and graphics to better communicate to international
users, e.g., different "postal mailbox" icons to stand for e-mail applications.
AM+A worked in total for six years with Sabre on most aspects of the application
suite.
Arabia
Online
Among
other design recommendations, AM+A advised a Jordanian site intended for
English-speaking viewers to reverse the screen layout direction for Western
readers and to use more appropriate Arab/Moslem colors for color highlighting.
Beckmman
Instruments
AM+A
designed user-interface standards for a clinical laboratory testing instrument
sold throughout the world by Beckman Instruments, a world leader of such
devices. User-testing in Europe affected some changes in recommendations
for icon design and color usage in AM+A's recommendations.
Computervision
Corporation
AM+A
provided design guidelines for approximately 10,000 icons being developed
by teams on four continents. AM+A attempted to steer the client's teams
to international, globally recognized forms.
Design
for Amenity
AM+A
presented a lecture about design of user interfaces to an international
design conference focused on making designers more sensitive to aesthetic
and cultural issues of design, as opposed to usability and pure-functional
issues.
East-West
Center, Honolulu, HI
Before
founding AM+A, Aaron Marcus was Research Fellow and team leader at the
East-West Center, Honolulu, HI. There he lead a team to design a non-verbal
pictographic-symbolic depiction of global energy interdependence intended
to be viewed by a multi-cultural audience in many countries. The displays
explained the relationships of energy production and consumption and the
need for regional cooperation.
Federal
Express
AM+A
completed the mental model and designed all screens for an intelligent
facsimile-device user-interface developed by FedEx. AM+A proposed that
the language style of the device be adjusted to local US dialects in different
regions of the USA, but this could not be considered under the constraints
of development schedule.
Japan
Patent Office
AM+A
wrote a detailed article about intellectual property issues based on US
practices for the Japan Patent Office Journal at its request. The Office
and the Journal were interested in studying the differences in international
practices of intellectual property protection.
JustSystems
AM+A
designed prototypes of innovative user-interface treatments for the dominant
word processing software manufacturer in Japan, JustSystems's Ichitaro.
The client wanted to use the creative insight ofa leading US design firm
to bring culturally innovative approaches to traditional designs of productivity
tool user interfaces in Japan.
Motorola
Corporation
AM+A
completed several projects for Motorola in the USA and Israel: Motorola
Personal Messenger graphical user-interface designs; Motorola/Israel computer-aided
software engineering system (CASE) user-interface design consulting; Computer
X user interface designs for a new workstation software; Personal Intelligent
Computer for a wireless pad; and a smart-car vehicle navigation system.
For the navigation system, AM+A designed multiple templates for navigation
data display (arrows, maps, text) to account for cognitive/cultural preferences
for a system intended for multiple languages.
Nokia,
Finland
AM+A
consulted on the design of the user-interface for the Nokia, Finland,
Communicator 9000 Internet-ready mobile phone before its introduction
into the USA. AM+A critiqued the terminology, layout, and mental model.
On
Lok
AM+A
consulted on the design of appearance standards and mental model for a
Multi-Professional-Team Healthcare-Information System intended to serve
paramedics, nurses, doctors, patients, and family of a Chinese community
health center. Screens needed to appear in Chinese and English languages.
Oracle
AM+A
designed and implemented the user inteface for a multimedia-based training
(MBT) CD-ROM product for Oracle Worldwide training that conformed to Oracle's
globalization guidelines (e.g., using separate text files for ease of
translation, leaving appropriate layout spaces for language-length differences
in text explanations, avoiding too culturally-narrow graphics, and avoiding
text within icons and other graphics. AM+A wrote all of the text for "Building
Effective GUI Applications with Developer/2000 Forms" because its
expertise lay within the field of user-interface design.
Predictor
Systems
AM+A
designed and implemented a CD-ROM-based executive-search product that
featured information-visualizations of "personal/cultural" indicators
and analyses of the prospective applicants skills and personalities to
determine a match with the "corporate culture" of the potential hiring
firm.
Prodigy
AM+A
analyzed Prodigy's demographics and designed multiple demographically-different
user-interface prototypes for home screens, e.g., for parents, young boys,
young girls, etc. AM+A also prepared Graphical User Interface Design Guidelines
for Prodigy.
Scitex
Corporation
AM+A
consulted on the design of several professional workstation products for
an Israeli industry leader of graphic arts design-workstations that needed
to meet international usage requirements, but with English as the only
language: Prisma User Interface Design; Alpha-1 System User Interface
Design; Prisma Forms Design; and Screen Design and Interaction for the
Vista Page Design System.
TeamWARE
AM+A
consulted on the design of several professional workstation products for
an Israeli industry leader of graphic arts design-workstations that needed
to meet international usage requirements, but with English as the only
language: Prisma User Interface Design; Alpha-1 System User Interface
Design; Prisma Forms Design; and Screen Design and Interaction for the
Vista Page Design System.
Research
Articles
resulting from our research interests.
Cultural
Dimensions and Global Web User Interface
Design: What? So What? Now What?PDF file
This
article, by Aaron Marcus, introduces dimensions of culture and how they
might affect user interface designs.
Extreme Design for Mobile Computing: User-Interface Design
of Baby Faces PDF file
Mobile computing and information appliances offer special challenges
to user-interface design. New paradigms are required to enable people
on-the-go to make smarter decisions faster. The lecture critiques current
and next generation products and offers some conceptual designs of new
approaches.
Baby Faces:
A Tour of Recent ProductsPDF file
This lecture was presented originally as the keynote lecture
for the Mobile Phone and Car Navigation Conference, Tokyo, February 2000.
The presentation has also been made, among other events, to the IIT Institute
of Design, Chicago; Sun Microsystems, Mountain View, CA; several Web Design
and Development conferences, CHI-2000 and CHI-2001, and other conferences
and corporate sites throughout 2000 and 2001.
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Aaron Marcus and Associates
Web: www.AMandA.com
Phone: 510-601-0994
Aaron Marcus
Principal
Phone: 510-601-0994
Email: Aaron - at - AMandA.com
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