All posts about
User experience

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

UX in the Boardroom: A Solid Case for Investing in UX

Added on 21 September 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Some think the best way to demonstrate the value of usability in a corporate setting is to emphasize the resulting cost savings. While that may be sage advice in some organizations and industries, following it in the information technology and government arenas would cost you respect and a meeting. For some years, I was guilty of following this tack—before I discovered what really matters to executives, learned how finances and budgets work, and realized the true value of user experience lies not in cost savings at all, but in intangibles.” (Kate Walser – UXmatters)

(Preso) Designing Social Interfaces: 5 steps, 5 principles, 5 anti-patterns

Added on 18 September 2009 Peter Bogaards
“In this presentation we share a family of social web design principles and interaction patterns to help user experience designers and strategists grapple with the social dimensions of their products and services. The family of patterns, principles, and practices provides a framework and starting point for the conceptual modeling of any interactive digital social experience.” (Erin Malone & Christian Crumlish)

HCI 09: Interaction gets all Emotional

Added on 15 September 2009 Peter Bogaards
“The ubiquity of computing means it’s now present in all aspects of our lives, and – perhaps not unexpectedly – that increasingly means our emotional lives. Emotions drive a huge proportion of what we do and likewise, our interactions with technology impact on our emotions. Emotion as a ‘property’ to take into account during design and usability evaluation featured in many papers – hinting at a whole new field of emotional design to come.” (Usability News)

User Experience Designer vs. Creative Director

Added on 8 September 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Professionals within our industry are completely awash with opportunities by which they can tweak and cajole better user experiences from their projects. The difficult part is maintaining quality across all of these channels. Because of how multifaceted User Experience is, a user experience designer begins to take on a more directorial position within a project/company, which I see as analogous to that of a creative director.” (UX Booth)

The Art and Science of Experience Design

Added on 1 September 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Businesses that historically have approached things in a purely scientific manner are now trying to engage their users at a more fundamental level. Through great experiences. And great experiences, the way in which these stories unfold, have this innate ability to change or enhance the way in which people view and interact with their world. We’re not advocating that we throw our concerns about platforms and technology considerations out the window but rather how best to combine them with thoughtful, engaging design principles. The Art and Science behind great experiences balancing one another in harmony, embodied within the end product.” (Christian Saylor – InsideRIA)

The Ambivalence of Engaging Technology: Artifacts as Products and Processes

Added on 1 September 2009 Peter Bogaards
“In this paper, I will discuss several cases in order to explore how technological artifacts engage and are engaged in larger sociotechnical arrangements. I will show how they inscribe a certain relationship between users and designers and a certain level of engagement.” (Cristiano Storni – Nordic Design Research Conference 2009 Engaging Artifacts)

Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product

Added on 31 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“A product is actually a service. (…) In reality a product is all about the experience. It is about discovery, purchase, anticipation, opening the package, the very first usage. It is also about continued usage, learning, the need for assistance, updating, maintenance, supplies, and eventual renewal in the form of disposal or exchange.” (Donald A. Norman – Interaction Magazine XVI.5 Sep/Oct 2009)

Online Advertising: Factors That Influence Customer Experience

Added on 19 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“In this article, I’ll discuss the cognitive elements at the intersection of advertising and human behavior. By taking an approach to advertising that looks at the impact psychological factors have on customer behavior, I’ve learned that customers respond directly to online advertisements, as we can see from their emotions, behavior, and interactions on the Web.” (Afshan Kirmani – UXmatters)

Inside Out: Interaction Design for Augmented Reality

Added on 19 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Many people enter the inside-out world of augmented reality (AR) by doing something as ordinary as visiting a major city like New York and trying to get to a local friend’s favorite pizza shop, somewhere deep in Brooklyn, via public transportation. Standing in Times Square on a summer evening, they might hold up a new smart phone and pan it slowly around the Square to see a pointer to the nearest subway entrance overlaid on their phone’s video display of the buildings around them.” (Joe Lamantia – UXmatters)

Effective UX in a Corporate Environment: Part I

Added on 19 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Today’s consumers have growing expectations for higher quality and ease of use in new products. They typically evaluate brand values and product specs before paying top dollar for products. Companies are scrambling to align their brand touchpoints and gain loyal customers for their current and future product lines. Without strong brands, consumers buy with their wallets, not their hearts. They may miss product innovations companies have designed to fill major gaps in their markets and increase their market shares—even products they’ve painstakingly tested with users.” (Janet M. Six and Chris Anthony – UXmatters)

The iPhone is Not Easy to Use: A New Direction for User Experience Design

Added on 18 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“I live and breathe user experience design, and yet it took me two years to get myself the device referenced by almost every single presentation about user experience since 2007… Apple’s iPhone. My reasons were very specific and perhaps boring, but what is interesting is the perspective this wait has afforded me. Since it was released, the iPhone has grabbed an astonishing share of mobile Web traffic, been regarded as a ‘game-changer’ in both the design and business worlds, and has even been referred to as the ‘Jesus Phone’. Now that I’ve owned one for two weeks I’ve developed a different perspective. The iPhone is surprisingly difficult to use, but it sure is fun! And that is why it’s a game-changer.” (Fred Beecher – Johnny Holland Magazine)

Mobile User Experience Research: Challenges, Methods & Tools

Added on 12 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“The main goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers from industry and academia, designers, and creators of mobile research tools to discuss methods, tools and infrastructure for mobile UX and HCI research. To achieve this goal, we plan to provide a forum for participants to share past experiences, success stories, failures and associated learnings, as well as recurring problems; to jointly prioritize these; to map out the dimensions required of mobile research tools, and translate some of these into draft requirements and low-fidelity prototypes for novel research tools.” (CHI ’09 Workshop)

Does Your Client Need a Consultant or an Agency?

Added on 4 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“There are no hard-and-fast rules for judging whether a consultant or an agency is a better fit for any given project. Aside from time, money, and required skills, there are a variety of other factors to consider—for example, the stage of the product development process at which you’re asked to come in, whether an engagement is one of strategic guidance or tactical execution, and the maturity and capacity of the client’s team.” (Whitney Hess – UXmatters)