All posts about
User experience

User experience is about how a person feels about using a product, system or service. (source: Wikipedia)

Agile UX: It’s not as bad as you think

We never thought that, didn’t we?

“As Agile has become the standard working model for development teams, UXers are, oftentimes grudgingly, learning to integrate into existing Agile development teams. But few are exploring how a UX team can use Agile techniques, and perhaps more importantly an Agile mindset, to improve team performance and morale. It turns out that when done right, Agile can help UXers achieve personal and strategic goals, giving value and purpose to the problems UX teams face daily. Sound too good to be true? If so, read on to learn how this cross-functional UX and architecture team used an Agile approach to improve our product, team performance, team member engagement, job satisfaction, and influence.”

Becky Bristol a.k.a. @paintingblue and Nicole Derr a.k.a. @Nicole_Derr ~ User Experience Magazine

UX writing: The case for user-centric language

Sometimes you just have to change the label to make a ‘new’ start.

“UX writing recognizes language as an intrinsic part of a user’s experience with a product. UX writers think intentionally about how words alone can facilitate – or get in the way of – users’ goals. As a discipline, UX writing lets you manipulate language. It helps you prod your users one step closer toward desired actions. Indeed, validating the effectiveness of language – on websites, apps, and other digital products – is just as important as other areas of UX research.”

Alana Schroeder a.k.a. /alana-schroeder | @ealanaschroeder ~ Boxes and Arrows

Are you ready for the next evolution of UX: the human experience?

Adding to our acrosoup: HX.

“The human experience trumps everything, and a product or service that’s designed with a contextual view of someone’s life will dominate the marketplace. For makers this means creating desired experiences through their products and services that users crave. But user experience always fits somewhere within the great context of one’s life. This is key. The human-centered design ethos is gaining momentum as context plays a greater role in the design of everyday things. So perhaps it’s time to expand the idea of what a product is to reflect that shift.”

Paul Campillo a.k.a. /paulcampillo | @paulcampillo ~ Typeform

Why ‘design for experience’ is becoming the new normal

Experience design at the big consultancies. It’s getting more crazy day by day.

“Experiences are intrinsic to each individual; they are subjective by nature. In fact, we cannot design how our clients will experience our products or services. What we can do, instead, is coming up with design that can positively influence that personal, unique experience.”

Anna Vassileva a.k.a. /anna-vassileva ~ PWC.lu

Are we taking the ‘U’ out of UX?

Acronyms never live long.

“User experience is a huge buzzword these days. Although seemingly self-explanatory, some companies aren’t getting the point—they’re still overlooking behavioral experience in lieu of look and feel. Many of the ads I saw reserved their most specific and vivid language for the visual design end of things. It left me scratching my head and wondering if only the most sophisticated—and largest—companies truly wanted UX and had the budget to support it. Are other companies just paying lip service to the current buzz by hiring visual designers and labelling them UX?”

Mark Richman a.k.a. /markjrichman ~ Boxes and Arrows

The business of UX strategy

HCI and UX connected to the business world.

“The majority of business versus UX design choices are influenced by a combination of market megatrends and sales distribution channels. Within this context, the trade-offs vary by industry. The design constraints placed upon an FDA-regulated mobile health solution cannot be compared to those of a chat app for teenagers that blocks parental access. However, the requirement for high-quality UX has become universal to achieve success across all distribution channels and industries. Therefore, every digital product or service requires a UX strategy that considers the business dimensions described here and more. Doing so optimizes for a high-quality user experience in conjunction with the best commercial outcome possible. Finally, it needs to be loudly emphasized: Even the most exhaustive UX strategy must be frequently revisited because the underlying market megatrends and constraints evolve continuously to disrupt the most carefully crafted plans of mice and men.”

Daniel Rosenberg a.k.a. /danielrosenbergux

The UX of Design Systems: On Google’s Material Design and the templatization of digital products

Now that the hype on Google MD has faded, we’re waitng for the next killer DesSys.

“What is new is that today design systems can be more than printed design manuals. We have the ability to write design systems in code and use them directly in digital products. (…) All this critique of design systems is essentially an argument for UX designers to create design systems that grow from user-centric research. As UX designers, you are here to bridge the aesthetics with the functionality of digital products. Rather than starting with a fascination of design systems, you have to first of all focus on the user and let that inform your design system – and keep doing that over time. You have to argue for the process of understanding your users, talking to them, learning from them, and drawing up coherent systems that work on behalf of them. If you do this, systems are an incredibly powerful way of creating products that are beneficial to both companies and users.”

Rune Madsen a.k.a. @runemadsen

Preparing your UX career for Virtual Reality

Digital designers really need to understand the underlying technologies. As always.

“Designers will need to ramp up on new design skills to make a smooth career transition to the design of immersive experiences when the inevitable wave of new VR and AR design projects hits the pipeline.”

Pabini Gabriel-Petit a.k.a. /pabini | @pabini ~ UXmatters

The mythical UX designer: Five common misconceptions

Myths are eternal stories of fantasy in the minds of many.

“Exploring the truth about the type of people who do UX. Ah, the UX designer. A mythical figure in high demand these days. Sought after for their skills in empathizing with customers, designing digital products that people love, and their peculiar love of collaboration. Their natural habitat is anywhere there are interfaces to problem solve for – in product-based companies like Adobe or Shopify, in-house at some of the largest institutions such as banks or government, and selling their services at agencies like the Nielsen Norman Group and Pivotal Labs. But what’s the truth behind the rumors about this particular creature, and if you are considering becoming a UX designer, what are some of the misconceptions you might have? Let’s bust five myths about UX designers, and I’ll share some of my personal experiences along the way.”

Linn Vizard a.k.a. /linnvizard | @wittster ~ Adobe Creative Cloud courtesy of @peterme

Customer Experience: Moving from moments-of-delight to moments-of-transformation

Some really deep thinking regarding human experiences, situated in the 21st century.

“Recently I read research reports on Customer Experience (CX) that I should have found unsettling but thanks to the journey of discovery I’ve been on during the last few months, which included slaying a rather pesky design hydra, I have embraced this as the start of exciting transformational things to come. “

Werner Puchert a.k.a. /wernerpuchert | @weenerdawg ~ Extraordinary Blog

The UX of AR: Toward a human-centered definition of Augmented Reality

Augmentation of the mind, not of ‘reality’.

“The challenge with tech-oriented definitions is that they tend to keep the tech at the heart of the matter and neglect the people, or end users. As a result, applications are driven by what kind of technology is available for an AR-enhanced project, rather than being driven by the type of human experiences we want to create through augmentation. To resolve this, we need to bring user experience more prominently into the AR conversation.”

Kieran Evans a.k.a. @kieranevans1 and Jes A. Koepfler a.k.a. @jeskak ~ UXPA Magazine

Seven steps to creating a solid UX strategy

Seven, that’s all.

“Everyone knows that the first step in any business venture is research on the path to creating a strategy. This strategy determines how you’ll function and guide the decision-making process. A website project – whether it is for a business or not – should follow the same concept. Without a solid user experience strategy, the design is likely to lack the features, elements and overall usability that make the website popular among visitors. While the idea of creating a UX strategy might not sound like a lot of fun, it’s a valuable exercise. And when done well, and with purpose, can definitely be enjoyable!”

Carrie Cousins a.k.a. /carriecousins1 | @carriecousins ~ designshack

The internet of things: Interaction challenges to meaningful consent at scale

Giving consent respects humanity.

“Having strong, clear apparency to real semantic and pragmatic transparency as a backbone to meaningful consent will also help clarify risks within the data flows of large-scale, heterogeneous IoT infrastructures, from homes to cities to national infrastructure. Overall, by improving apparency to s/p transparency, we make meaningful consent possible. When meaningful consent becomes part of a system, entirely new kinds of services may be imagined that create value based on visible, shareable data. We can also make services more resilient. To get there, we need the design acumen of HCI researchers and UX practitioners to help design, deliver, and evaluate apparency interactions at IoT scale.”

M.C. Schraefer et al. ~ Interaction magazine Volume XXIV.6

Ideation in practice: How effective UX teams generate ideas

Many good ideas, far less good execution.

“Data from 257 UX professionals shows that quality UX ideas come from ideating early in the design cycle, drawing inspiration from user research, and working with a group. Many struggle with generating ideas because they lack time, managerial support, and a methodology for conducting effective ideation sessions.”

Aurora Harley a.k.a. /auroralharley | @aurorararara ~ Nielsen Norman Group

The role of storyboarding in UX design

Getting closer and closer to film making.

“To come up with a proper design, UX designers use a lot of different research techniques, such as contextual inquires, interviews and workshops. They summarize research findings into user stories and user flows and communicate their thinking and solutions to the teams with artifacts such as personas and wireframes. But somewhere in all of this, there are real people for whom the products are being designed for.”

Nick Babich a.k.a. /nbabich | @101babich ~ Smashing magazine

Building a UX Team: Change is the only constant

Design is team work.

“This journey is just beginning. There are many new areas of design to explore. As a father of a 2-year-old boy, I want to be responsible and contribute in a creative way, to ensure we gift a better world to our future. We can look beyond our immediate projects to explore the technical, social, material, and theoretical challenges of designing technology to support collaborative work and life activities.”

Moin Bhuiyan a.k.a. @bhuiyan_moin ~ UXPA magazine