“But when the User Experience Iceberg is used to add context to the Elements, it illuminates the dark, unknown depths for project stakeholders who are new to UX. Because in the end, the unseen elements of user experience are the parts of the iceberg that will sink your project, while your stakeholders are busy focusing on the ‘tip’.” (Trevor van Gorp – Affective Design)

“Use this model to guide your thinking, processes, and approaches when making things for people on behalf of your clients. Its an hierarchy. Each level of need is only meaningful if the previous levels have been met. If you solve for the top of the pyramid your clients will be successful and their customers will be happy.” (Challis Hodge’s UXBlog)

“Recently, I have discovered a new emerging type of user experience specialist: the ‘persuasion architect’. This specialist has a marketing and sales background, and focuses on aspects of a Web site user experience design that contribute to ‘conversions’, that is, to the number or percentage of site visitors that ultimately contribute directly to the business goals of the site, such as buying a product, signing up for a newsletter, registering, using the site for support, etc. The design aspects that contribute to converting visitors into customers are quite different than aspects that contribute to making task completion easy and fast, making a site visually appealing, or architecting the site information or functionality in the most natural way.” (Deborah J. Mayhew – Journal of Usability Studies 3.3) – courtesy of markvanderbeeken

“What are the stories behind the truly great ideas? What are the obstacles that got in the way of these ideas? And, what’s the real story behind visionary products that do manage to make it through otherwise hostile environments? From sticky notes to the RAZR phone, the stories of how these things came to be typically includes some form ‘rebellion’ against business as usual— which in large organizations has a tendency to be about power, position, predictability, and a score of other concerns fairly well-removed from the idea itself.” (Stephen P. Anderson – poetpainter)

Interviews with Chris Fahey, Peter van Dijck, Anders Ramsay, and John Ferrera. (About UX Social)

“This is an excellent, well-written book packed with great advice from veterans in the field. It’s highly recommended and essential for anyone currently trying to innovate products and services in just about any field.” (James Kalbach – Experiencing Information)

“Suppliers sell. Customers buy. Various people discuss UX, but don’t really identify what it is. Agencies search for ways to offer this line of work to clients and seek best practises to develop UX. Holger Maassen posits his ideas about the process of planning and designing for User Experience Design-Planning (UXD-P) as Expectation Design.” (Holger Maassen – Boxes and Arrows)

“Focusing on the connective tissue between disciplines makes products holistic. This is the essence of experience design.” (Dan Saffer – Adaptive Path blog)

“The Roman philosopher Cicero stated, ‘Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.’ The trouble is, even though people have repeated this particular quotation over the past couple of millennia, our clients often push the limits excessively—beyond moderation—for both content and presentation. As a UX professional, how do you demonstrate to your clients the benefits of moderation in user experience? You show them.” (Keith LaFerriere – UXmatters)

“Being a consultant with experience in both traditional marketing research and user experience and usability gives me a unique perspective on a broad range of issues relating to customer experience. Not only do I have a good idea of what the other discipline does, I am a practitioner of the other discipline. However, in attempting to play both roles at once, I often find that client companies keep these two disciplines locked up in separate silos—usability research within IT and marketing research within the Marketing Services department. This can have a serious impact on the sharing of information relating to customer experience.” (David Kozatch – UXmatters)

“Well, not exactly … but two of my co-authors, Brandon Schauer and David Verba, recently gave a presentation on Subject To Change at Google and it was recorded on video. It’s a good overview of the main points of the book so we thought it would be good to share as a way to learn more about what the book has too say. Sit back, grab some popcorn, and enjoy.” (Todd Wilkens – Adaptive Path Blog) – courtesy of marcfonteijn

“A great user experience on the web site doesn’t mean squat if this back stage ‘content choreography’ goes wrong. So I’ve been saying that it is essential to consider the entire network of services that comprise the back and front stages as complementary parts of a ‘service system’. We need new concepts and methods in service design that recognize how back stage information and processes can improve the front stage experience.” (Robert J. Glushko – DocOrDie)

“Nokia has a long history in designing for experiences, as mobile phones are very personal and experiental devices. We have established processes to take user needs and wants into account when designing new concepts, and we do various types of evaluations with real users during the development process. Experience evaluations are, however, an area we want to improve. In this paper, we describe the user experience evaluation practices in the different phases of Nokia product development process.” (Virpi Roto et al.)

“This is my first column on the management of UX. In my column, I’ll articulate what I’ve learned from my experience as a manager, senior manager, and director and three years in intensive senior leadership development programs. Have you ever known a manager you felt shouldn’t manage people? Maybe you’ve worked for one. Most of us have at one point or another. On the other hand, most of us have also had great managers. What sets great managers apart from bad ones? That’s one of the questions I’ll explore in this article.” (Jim Nieters – UXmatters)

“Swimlanes are a great tool for helping clients understand users, business needs and technology all at once. They help bridge the differences between multiple stakeholders by showing all the ‘moving parts’ of an experience in one document.” (Gene Smith – nForm)

“Today, the design industry is at the threshold of a new epoch—a point of theoretically limitlessness potential for expansion. We must decide just how, going forward, we will relate to the people who use our designs—as people who are “busy and eager to get on with it” yet “alert and caring” or, much less constructively, as people who are merely “simple-minded and stupid.” Therefore, I want to propose the concept of experience partners as a whole new way of thinking about our customers as partners in holistic product experiences. We need new terminology to describe this concept, because the term users limits us to old ways of thinking about the world we live in and the products we develop. The term experience partners reflects an emerging paradigm shift from a focus on product features to instead conceptualizing holistic product experiences and embodies our best understanding of how to design products that create delight and become integral, harmonious parts of people’s lives.” (Greg Nudelman – UXmatters)

“The word experience has gained significant traction over the past 15 years. Beginning with the mainstreaming of the term user experience in the software industry and, later, extended to the work of marketing professionals who began thinking about marketing as being experiential, the idea of experience as a focused professional area of endeavor is alive, well, and growing rapidly. However, the more our space grows, the more confused and chaotic is our collective understanding of the meaning of these terms. To try to help clarify this murkiness, I want to share my definitional model for the fields of experience and provide guidelines for the use of various terms.” (Dirk Knemeyer – UXmatters)

“Much has been said about how the Web 2.0 era has fundamentally altered the way consumers interact online. But to what degree is today’s digital consumer really changing her online behavior? Are the hallmarks of Web 2.0 site design (tag clouds, wikis, social media, etc.) on the way to becoming mainstream hits or just techno-hype? And what are the implications for us, as experience designers, as we strive to create more useful and usable digital products?” (Garrick Schmitt – AA | Razorfish Digital Design Blog)

“Why is the lack of a shared definition? There are several reasons: First, UX is associated with a broad range of fuzzy and dynamic concepts, including emotional, affective, experiential, hedonic, and aesthetic variables. Typical examples of so-called elemental attributes of UX like fun, pleasure, pride, joy, surprise, and intimacy are but a subset of a growing list of human values. Inclusion and exclusion of particular values or attributes seem arbitrary, depending on the author’s background and interest. Second, the unit of analysis for UX is too malleable, ranging from a single aspect of an individual end-user’s interaction with a standalone application to all aspects of multiple end-users’ interactions with the company and the merging of the services of multiple disciplines. Third, the landscape of UX research is fragmented and complicated by diverse theoretical models with different foci such as emotion, affect, experience, value, pleasure, beauty, etc.” (MAUSE COST Action 294)

“Over the last several years we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of software applications offered over the internet. The ability to release user interface changes on a potentially daily basis has forced user experience professionals to rethink their traditional linear methodologies. With a new set of internet-based usability techniques as well as the remarkable ability to receive real-time, continuous feedback from end users, designers today have the potential to create the most usable and competitive software user interfaces to date.” (Katrina Rhoads Lindholm – ISD Symposium Spring 2007)