“Author and Happy Cog founder Jeffrey Zeldman answers the question: what does a web designer need most? Skills and knowledge of software, of course, but empathy – the ability to think about and empathize with your user – is by far the most important. Good useful education is hard to find, and within companies there is often no departmental standardization. Good graphic design is not the same as good user experience design, he explains. In fact, ‘good web design is invisible’ – it feels simple and authentic because it’s about the character of the content, not the character of the designer.” (AIGA Gain 2008)

“The reason I think this is important is that I’m seeing too many people buy into User Experience methodologies that are half-baked, if baked at all. User Experience, for most people, boils down to making pretty interfaces. Good color palettes, Flash for everything, and anything that sort of looks like a Mac interface are often presented as the whole of good User Experience. I’m not saying these things aren’t good and very, very important; they’re just one small piece of the much larger User Experience field.” (RJ Owen – InsideRIA) – courtesy of thehotstrudel

“Over the past twenty years, the field of user experience has been fortunate. Software and hardware product organizations increasingly have adopted user-centered design methods such as contextual user research, usability testing, and iterative interaction design. In large part, this has occurred because the market has demanded it. More than ever, good interaction design and high usability are part of the price of entry to markets.” (Paul J. Sherman – UXmatters)

“So, you’ve wrapped up your customer research, completed your personas, and have even written a few scenarios that show how users would want to interact with your brand new product. What’s next? What happens to the personas and scenarios once you’re ready to start requirements definition and design. Are you sure you’ve adequately communicated the type of system your users need to the Business Analyst and Interaction Designer on your team?” (Richard F. Cecil – UXmatters)

“Creating exceptional experiences online, and developing efficient interactive marketing, is much about storytelling. We develop stories that excite and motivate people, and platforms where people can come create and edit their own stories. Interactive storytelling is in many ways more complex than traditional movies or theatre, but IAs can still learn a lot from scriptwriting techniques.” (Karri Ojanen – Threeminds)

“This diagram also begs the question: what is user experience design by itself, those areas that aren’t filled up with other bubbles?” (Dan Saffer – Kickerstudio)

“I’m sitting in a conference room with a coworker and two clients. It’s chaotic, hot, and a challenge just to walk around without tripping on the mess surrounding us. We are in the midst of designing and are buried in paper and sharpies and flipcharts. The walls around us are covered with consolidated data from requirements gathering and flipchart pages we’ve filled with our thought processes. Every few minutes, we need to retape some piece of paper that’s in danger of falling into a crumpled heap on the floor. Then, suddenly, I’m gripped with the feeling of déjà vu. It seems like I’m working on the same design I’ve worked on a thousand times before—and I’m getting bogged down in the details to boot! It’s at once disheartening and terrifying. But I’m the lead on this project, so I need to drive the team forward—which presents a challenge at this particular moment.” (Traci Lepore – UXmatters)

“(…) people are starting to make decisions based on other criteria than pure performance and that the overall user experience is becoming a bigger differentiator. – User experience is the primary battlefield and everything else is a distant second.” (TG Daily) – courtesy of usabilitynews

“(…) the Europeans should have known that if they put up a website about The Europeans, that lots of people would want to go look at it. That’s just Lisa’s common sense website visitor analysis.” (Lisa Welchman)

“If Web 2.0 was all about fostering social interconnectivity, then the loosely termed Web 3.0, appears to be about the intelligent web. It’s about, amongst other things, contextually aware user interfaces (UI’s), hyperconnectivity, the semantic web and intelligent agents. These are all concepts which have existed for a very long time.” (Chris Khalil’s Musings)

“(…) user experience is not best thought of as an activity or function, but as a mindset. ” (Peter Merholz – Adaptive Path)

“Welcome to the inaugural installment of ‘Everyware: Designing the Ubiquitous Experience“, a column exploring user experience and design in the era of ubiquitous computing. Through this column, interested readers can investigate the expanding wavefront of the ubiquitous experience as it impacts design, covering topics ranging from ubiquitous computing to near-field communication, pervasive computing, The Internet of Things, spimes, ubicomp, locative media, and ambient informatics.” (Joe Lamantia – UXmatters)

“While prototyping with XHTML isn’t tied to a specific design process, iterative development seems to effectively leverage its strengths. There are many reasons for this, but perhaps the most significant is that in both cases the prototype, and later the application itself, doubles as a specification. We’ll explore what that means in a bit, but first let’s walk through a suggested process for prototyping with XHTML.” (Anders Ramsay and Leah Buley – Boxes and Arrows)

“(…) Greg’s one-page list of theatrical tips are as good a guide to customer experience, service design or even presentation technique as you will find on any business bookshelf.” (Work•Play•Experience)

“This article examines what works and what does not work well when selling UX within an organization, identifies barriers you might encounter to the adoption of UX methods in your organization, and discusses how to package and present UX to stakeholders. In this article, we’ll try to avoid just being prescriptive. Rather, we’ll pose questions along the way, regarding what has worked well for you. (…) As industry’s adoption of UX broadens and more of us find ourselves in situations where we need to sell UX, we need to be prepared to do so effectively.” (Daniel Szuc, Paul J. Sherman, and John S. Rhodes – UXmatters)

“Metaphor teaches. Metaphor influences. Are you drawing on its power? Perhaps not, because many major works on writing for interactive products make little mention of it. To help encourage better use of metaphor, this column describes both the usefulness of shallow metaphors and the potential of deep metaphors, while offering tips and examples.” (Colleen Jones – UXmatters)

“I’m following the ‘credit crisis’ with my CXP hat on, and specifically look at how banks try to keep their customers calm, explain what is happening in simple language, and make it easy for worried customers to talk to someone at the bank. Because it is hard to find out what instructions employees are getting to comfort customers, or what mail is being sent to customers, I went to the homepages of the top 20 banks in the UK and checked the experience customers are receiving.” (Tim van Tongeren – The Experience Design Scout)

“To make UX strategically relevant – so UX is not an afterthought, but can contribute to strategy – you need to produce stunning results that blow away your stakeholders. Then, you’ll be able to hire more world-class researchers and designers. Once you have truly great people onboard, work to build trust. Achieving this, in part, depends on your organizational structure, so demonstrate your thought-leadership by recommending the right model for the organization, not just the model that’s right for you at the moment.” (Jim Nieters and Laurie Pattison – UXmatters)

“Given the evidence and potential for aesthetics’ overarching effect on human-computer interaction, it would seem timely to explore the themes summarized above in more depth. While a lively debate is to be expected in this workshop, the overriding goal is to define and formulate a possible HCI research agenda on these topics. To achieve this, the seminar will bring together seasoned researchers who share a deep interest in aesthetics; prominent designers who are grappling with the concept theoretically and in practice; and graduate students who are likely to provide fresh perspectives.” (Seminar site)

“While the report is 4 years old, our experience is that the findings are relevant still today, and we use the models in this report often in our client work. It’s satisfying that Forrester’s report seems to validate Janice and Scott’s research, and we’re happy to share it with you free of charge.” (Peter Merholz – Adaptive Path)