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Feedback as in critique for designers on design.
“Feedback, in whichever form it takes, and whatever it may be called, is one of the most effective soft skills that we have at our disposal to collaboratively get our designs to a better place while growing our own skills and perspectives.”
Erin Casali a.k.a. @Folletto ~ A List Apart ★
We explain it again and again, over and over. Until (…)
“Usability testing is a core component of User Centered Design and can be used at any stage in the process. It provides valuable insight into the mind of the user, giving us a better understanding of users’ mental models, and it helps to highlight issues that might negatively impact the experience, while also pointing to solutions. If you are new to Usability Testing and want to learn more or just interested in how someone else approaches it, this article gives an overview of how to set-up and run a usability test, and provides a checklist of things to do to complete a usability testing project.”
Gerry Duffy ~ Boxes and Arrows ★
Taking the human perspective in all technology achievements.
“Our people-centered design principles support the goal of providing and informing with data to allow people more opportunities in their work. In our experience, there are three key principles organizations need to hold up as pillars for any AI implementation: transparency, explainability, and reversibility. (…) There are three methods that companies can take to put these principles into action in their AI projects. These methods aim to reduce the risk of introducing poorly tuned AI systems and inaccurate or biased decision-making in pilots and implementations.”
David A. Bray et al. ~ MIT Sloan Management Review ★
The big four going UCD and tech.
“Artificial intelligence technology can result in artificial stupidity if it’s poorly designed, implemented, or adapted. What’s crucial? Ensuring it’s designed to help humans think better.”
Jim Guszcza ~ Deloitte Insights ★
Design for trust is the best design principle for IoT.
“The internet of things requires a different, expanded kind of design. It’s all about paying attention to several principles (and thousands of trifles).”
Dieter Petereit a.k.a. @dpetereit ~ noupe ★
In principle, you can outsource anything. In practice, it’s not always the best option.
“You’ve got an idea or perhaps some rough sketches, or you have a fully formed product nearing launch. Or maybe you’ve launched it already. Regardless of where you are in the product lifecycle, you know you need to get input from users. You have a few sound options to get this input: use a full-time user researcher or contract out the work (or maybe a combination of both). Between the three of us, we’ve run a user research agency, hired external researchers, and worked as freelancers. Through our different perspectives, we hope to provide some helpful considerations.”
Chelsey Glasson et al. ~ A List Apart ★
UX designers have to become computational thinkers as well.
“UX designers have years of experience in creating the best design elements, and most of the time the results of which carries a UX designer to be largely positive in terms of increased interaction and achieving the bottom line. However, there is a gap between the positive change brought by UX designers and what should be the utopian final script interaction. The results may be better, but the UX design in this world cannot guarantee that every user will like everything on the website or application. There will always be some people who adore in other parts of the conversion path with a focus on UX. The main reason for this is not enough customization in the UX design to optimize the interests of each user separately. Each user is different and needs a different treatment. UX design works on a global level but there is still a gap and potential that can be achieved and brands help to invest more in significant UX design.”
Melissa Crooks a.k.a. /msmelissacrooks ~ home toys ★
From a real thought leader.
“This talk is about process, how we design, and how we can improve how we design. (…) In sum, design is conversation for action, and models help the conversation converge.”
Hugh Dubberly a.k.a. /hughdubberly ~ Dubberly Design Office presentations ~ courtesy of @pboersma
Having to deal with other people is often a pain. Designers included.
“After any amount of time in the design industry, you’ll most certainly hear someone refer to users as “dumb.” People talk about having to “dumb down” interfaces, design for “the lowest common denominator,” and try to make applications “idiot-proof.” Designers say it themselves once in a while. The really terrible designers say it repeatedly. (…) This sort of thinking discounts a key component of good design: human psychology. Understanding some basics of user behavior, then applying them to design, is one of the most important things a company can do. Here are 14 things you should know about the people who use your websites and applications.”
Robert Hoekman Jr. a.k.a. /rhoekmanjr | @rhjr ~ FastCo.design ★
UX design more and more involved with UX culture design and change.
“To set expectations properly, while no one’s learnings in six Mondays would approach the equivalent of earning a graduate degree in Anthropology or Sociology, they don’t need to. However, people do experience significant change toward integrating human experience into their work, along with plain speech and good reason. Let’s call that buy-in. Over time, repetition of such experiences converts their conscious acts into mental pathways and muscle memory. This feeds the unself-conscious mind and heightens creativity. While this experiment is clearly an oversimplification, it offers a powerful demonstration of integrating disciplines into actual practice. The aim of the experiment is to lower or even remove the barrier to entry from UX research.”
(Michael Davis-Burchat, Daniel Szuc and Josephine Wong ~ UXmatters) ★
A tool is just a tool, based upon a concept model which might not be true.
“The success of every business depends on how the business will meet their customers’ needs. To do that, it is important to optimize your offer, the website, and your selling methods so your customer is satisfied. The fields of online marketing, conversion rate optimization, and user experience design have a wide range of online tools that can guide you through this process smoothly. Many companies use only one or two tools that they are familiar with, but that might not be enough to gather important data necessary for improvement. To help you better understand when and which tool is valuable to use, I created a framework that can help in your assessment. Once you broaden your horizons, it will be easier to choose the set of tools aligned to your business’s needs.”
(Bartosz Mozyrko a.k.a. @UsabilityTools ~ Boxes and Arrows) ★
From left to right (process), top to bottom (organization). Now, it’s a circle for process and a network for organization.
“The representation of an actual UX design process with a design model probably presents an overly simplified view of the process. However, the design model serves a descriptive function. Additionally, having an abstract representation of the design process in the form of a design model highlights the essential forces driving the process of UX design: simultaneous changes in the problem and solution spaces. In this article, I’ve proposed a possible adaptation of the spiral model for a UX design process. By incorporating continuous changes to our understanding of the problem space into a systematic investigation of the solution space, we can synchronize these self-reinforcing forces and generate high-quality UX designs. However, several important aspects of the UX design process require further discussion of empirical evidence and feedback – for instance, adapting this model to agile software development.”
From positive thinking and doing to happiness.
“The Positive Design Reference Guide focuses on the why, what and how of human experience – both in general, and in relation to design for well-being. The guide provides you with a quick entry point into the variety of theories that we believe can be relevant for well-being-driven design. It comprises 29 models, theories and frameworks, separated into two sections. The first section presents a collection of theories drawn from (positive) psychology, and the second section presents a collection of theories and frameworks drawn from (positive) design research.”
(Simon Jimenez, Anna Pohlmeyer & Pieter Desmet ~ Delft Institue of Positive Design) ★
Empowerment: Kickass power users.
“As an accessibility researcher, I have noticed that some of the best work comes when there are people with disabilities on the design and development team, contributing to all aspects of the design and implementation, not just as participants in user studies. I call this strong engagement by users design for user empowerment, meaning, in its strongest sense, that the users of the technology are empowered to solve their own accessibility problems. Here, I will try to explain, mostly using examples, why this approach is so powerful.”
(Richard Ladner ~ ACM Interaction Magazine March/April 2015) ★
Sometimes there is fundamentally something wrong: Big Bang.
“Before you throw out the old and bring in the new, make sure you have solid evidence that doing so is necessary to achieve user-centered goals.”
Consolidation is the best fundament for innovation.
“(…) our quest to discover what a mature, holistic practice and project framework looks like; what we need to think about in designing the future of business, and the nature of a successful project team.”
(Daniel Szuc, Josephine Wong, and Michael Davis-Burchat ~ UXmatters) ★
Changing perspectives can become lost in translation. It’s a competence, not an activity.
“The UX industry devotes considerable attention to the concept of empathy, and rightly so, as understanding our users and their needs is foundational to delivering quality experiences. Still, empathy and insights alone do not automatically create those experiences. What matters is how cultivating empathy alters our decisions and behaviors.”
(Lyle Mullican a.k.a. @mullican ~ A List Apart)
Compelling case study of how Intuit embraced UCD to the max.
“Brad Smith describes Intuit as a 30 year old startup where all 8,000 employees are entrepreneurs, and it is everyone’s job to create, invent, and improve their customers’ lives. The most powerful tool they have to do this is user-centered design, which allows them to improve their customers’ lives and create delightful experiences. As long as they hold on to that – regardless of what method they wrap around it – they’ll continue to be successful.”
Progressing on the design maturity path for all designers: from wicked problems to complex systems.
“For many years, together with a number of design educators, I have been discussing how design can address the complex socio-technological systems that characterize our world. The issues are not new: many people and disciplines have grappled with them for some time. But how can design play a role? Do our educational methods, especially the emphasis upon craft, prepare designers for this? What can design add?”
UX getting confronted with higher order concepts.
“If you listen closely to the stories, you can hear the underlying user experience interactions. You can hear where those interactions went well and where they failed. The promises can be the key to how you deliver better products and services.”
(Jared Spool a.k.a. @jmspool)
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