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“I believe that the strategic process of experience engineering is why it is imperative that the benefits of Service Design are communicated to and supported by people working at the highest organisational business level.”
(Richard Arnott a.k.a. @servicejunkie ~ Curiosity Junkie)
“Kids are special. There is no doubt about that. But it does not explain why they also need special attention when it comes to user research. Here are 5 reasons why we need to start doing user testing with kids and why it’s very different than what we know from testing adults.”
(Sabina Idler a.k.a. @SabinaIdler ~ UXkids)
“If our community is going to actively sell the concept of user experience, we need hard data. Yet at every conference I attend, I hear about new tools, new techniques, new processes – but almost never about unassailable scientific results that demonstrate replicability. Sadly, most of the case stories I hear are merely glorified advertising. Moreover, like touching the hot iron as a child, learning about what doesn’t work is also important.”
(Eric Reiss a.k.a. @elreiss ~ FatDUX)
“Usability findings derived from a broad base of diverse studies have higher credibility than those based on many users with a single stimulus.”
“The methods of experience design uniquely situate experience designers to address employee disengagement in textured ways. By uncovering the root behavioral causes and co-producing solutions with employees, experience designers can create the right kind of resources, which empower organizations to own their desired change over time. As employee experience design is not a tidy activity, this article will focus less on concrete deliverables or step-by-step how-to-recommendations. Instead, a working framework is presented to assist experience designers in thinking through their own process-centric approaches and solutions.”
(Liana Dragoman a.k.a. @ldragoman ~ UX Magazine)
“It is difficult for those not in Research & Development, Quality Assurance, Marketing or other non-customer related departments to immediately see the reasoning behind the need to hire a UX Manager. This is understandable. Those in more financial or executive positions have their own sophisticated sciences and logistics with which to be concerned and are forced, often against their desires, to leave the ‘creative’ sciences to those who specialize in them. With that in mind, this article will list ten reasons why all enterprise level businesses need a UX manager. Before continuing to read, please note that some of these aspects come as a result of the user experience development phase, rather than being components directly thereof. All people in leadership naturally understand that one ripple in a pool affects all the others, making resultant factors just as vital as direct ones.”
(Danielle Arad a.k.a. @UXMotel ~ UsabilityGeek)
“So why are relatively few companies turning to UX professionals or implementing in-house practices? The answer, somewhat predictably, is often cost or lack of human resources. But Is it worth it? Here we take a look at the issues, trends and health of the UX industry. (…) A UX or interaction designer (PJB: sic!) must think about how to conceive and design complex sequences of loosely choreographed interactions and rise to the specific challenges imposed by multi-channel and multi-platform services, managing their constant evolution. It’s hard to deny that the rise of a UX design community has done wonders to improve the perceived quality of many recent products and services. In the future, business is likely to call on them even more.”
“We talk a lot about cross-channel experiences and how to address these new challenges as designers, but what about using our design skills, our hard won knowledge and empathy for customers to help companies decide what products and services will help grow their business? While companies are coming round to the value of customer experience, they’re struggling to acquire the skills needed for creating and managing touch points as well as understanding and prioritizing needs. And when we’re talking multi-channel ecosystems, who’s better equipped to address this complexity than those who have the skill set to not only understand it, but to design it and guide how it’s built. From optimizing the cross-channel customer experience, to creating new product and service extensions, we’re heading into a prime moment for bringing our toolkit into the business arena. This talk is meant to be both a thought starter as well as a lively group discussion around how UX can begin to play a substantive role in a company’s digital strategy. Using examples from my own experiences and input from a variety of seasoned practitioners, we’ll examine the challenges and map the opportunities across our own journey as UX professionals who are starting to think about what’s next.”
(Cindy Chastain a.k.a. @cchastain ~ Interaction 13)
“People mix the terms UI and UX together. UX is tricky because it doesn’t refer to any one thing. Interface design, visual styling, code performance, uptime, and feature set all contribute to the user’s ‘experience’. Books on UX further complicate matters by including research methods and development methodologies. All of this makes the field confusing for people who want to understand the fundamentals.”
(Ryan Singer) courtesy of thomasmarzano
“Why do we even need web navigation at all? Well, for one, navigation provides access to the content of a site. But more important, it’s the way that it provides access that makes navigation necessary. After all, site search also provides access to content. Why not just have site search and be done with the problem of designing and maintaining a complex navigation system?”
(James Kalbach a.k.a. @JimKalbach ~ Experiencing Information)
“I’m fascinated with the concept of applying storytelling principles to the processes of product development to create great user experiences. Of recent interest is the similarity between making a film and creating a digital product or service.”
(Sarah Doody a.k.a. @sarahdoody ~ UX magazine)
“The design community has done its fair share to shape a UX-centric product-development culture, and in the last ten years, the practice of UX design – also often labeled with the same “UX” acronym – has arisen in parallel with the market relevance of UX itself. Even though the term “experience” and the expression “user experience” have both been abused to the point of sounding like yesterday’s tired buzzwords, it is hard to deny that the rise of a UX design community has done wonders to improve the perceived quality of many recent products and services.”
(Fabio Sergio a.k.a. @freegorifero ~ FastCo.Design)
“A lot of designers seem to be talking about user experience these days. We’re supposed to delight our users, even provide them with magic, so that they love our websites, apps and start-ups. User experience is a very blurry concept. Consequently, many people use the term incorrectly. Furthermore, many designers seem to have a firm (and often unrealistic) belief in how they can craft the user experience of their product. However, UX depends not only on how something is designed, but also other aspects. In this article, I will try to clarify why UX cannot be designed.”
(Helge Fredheim a.k.a. @helgefredheim ~ Smashing Magazine)
“New technologies have always produced unintended consequences. But user experience designers and engineers face a number of new ethical challenges today with the rise of technology and our interaction and dependence on it. UX designers’ primary job is to improve usability and extend productivity. But they also have a responsibility to address the unintended consequences of new technologies, some of them with a clear ethical dimension. Following is a look at some of the principle ethical quandaries that UX designers will run up against and must deal with responsibly.”
“Unfortunately, boardroom UX literacy does not develop by itself. It is the role of UX leaders to create an environment in which it can develop within their companies’ leadership teams and to provide meaningful data to which it can be applied. (…) I would suggest that the root cause leading to CEOs remaining underserved by the typical usability data available to them is a continued lack of business leadership focus and practice understanding among the UX community.”
“But the great equalizer to make this experience economy a true, two-way economy may be the simple sensor embedded in my clothing, car, or public space. Digital value exchanges are beginning to extend far beyond the screen of my phone or laptop. Embedded sensors will allow me to increasingly exchange my activity for currency.”
“Apple keeps doing things in the Mac OS that leave the user experience community scratching its collective head, things like hiding the scroll bars and placing invisible controls inside the content region of windows on computers. Apple’s mobile devices are even worse: It can take users upwards of five seconds to accurately drop the text pointer where they need it, but Apple refuses to add the arrow keys that have belonged on the keyboard from day-one.”
(Bruce Tognazinni) ~ courtesy of freegorifero
“Interaction design is a young field. At least, that’s what we as interaction designers keep telling ourselves. And of course, in comparison to many other fields we are respectfully young. But I get the feeling that we use it more as an excuse to permit ourselves to have an unclear definition of who we are – and who we aren’t.”
“(…) when a UX designer is integrated into an agile team and helps model the business processes, interaction channels, and user behaviours at the start of a project, it gives everyone a clear, common vision of what they’re working with, and it provides a foundation to build upon going forward. When a UX designer asks the right questions during evaluation, the models evolve, the requirements become clearer, and ‘bad ideas’ are caught before it’s too late. And, when a UX designer facilitates group thinking and collaboration on a daily basis, design decisions get made faster and team members have a stronger sense of ownership of the final product.”
(Andrew Wright ~ nForm)
“We believe that creating objects that people love requires the right tools and methods. In fact, using the wrong method can lead to bad design decisions. But with over 200 methods and tools available, which ones could you use in your situation? That’s why we give you access to a large chunk of the worlds’ created methods, tools, techniques and resources for User Centered Design. We are making all of them searchable and executable. You can even publish your own method.”