“Stories are a way of communicating that goes back to before recorded history–and are just as important in modern culture. They are how we put information into a memorable and compelling form. Every culture has its stories–some say that a culture is a group of people who share a common set of stories about who they are and how they live.” (Whitney Quesenbery – uiGarden.net)

“The practice of user experience lacks the historical pedigree of many of its constituent elements, including human/computer interaction, library science, social-science research methods, product-development methodology, and, most of all, design. What it does enjoy, however, is a pragmatic, multidisciplinary approach that encompasses the intertwined social, economic, and technological forces it engages. It’s a contingent amalgamation – an assembly of what works – and a set of perspectives and problem-solving techniques that define how we, as practitioners, think about creating products and services.” (Joel Grossman – UXmatters)

“This paper draws inspiration from diverse media to understand what constitutes experience. In doing so, it seeks directions for building experience into design of elearning products.” (L. Ravi Krishnan and Venkatesh Rajamanickam – uiGarden.net)

“(…) I like the tight coupling between user experience and the organization (the sender, the product). But then, it’s not really a tangible, easy-to-use definition. I want something that everybody can understand. Users, web developers, designers, business analysts, clients must all be able to agree on the same definition and understand the definition in the same way. In my opinion this tends toward being too philosophical.” (Jesper Rønn-Jensen – justaddwater.dk)

“(…) we are honored and motivated to be providing the leadership for UXnet in these formative years.” (UXnet) – congrats to dirk et al.

“(…) awarded to Donald Norman for the development of the field of user-centered design, which utilizes our understanding of how people think to develop technologies designed to be easily usable.” (The Franklin Institute)

“Magic as an alternative UI metaphor has appeared a number of times in HCI writing in the last 20 years, talked-about by many of the greats in the field. Now we can actually implement some of it, I figured it may be useful to go back and see what has been written about it in the past. Here is a list of publications that have talked about magic or enchantment in HCI contexts.” (Mike Kuniavsky – Orange Cone) – courtesy of boingboing

Free registration required – “This area of our web site offers many articles, video’s and presentations for downloading for personal, non-commercial use. We hope the material will be of inspiration to you!” (European Centre for the Experience Economy)

“(…) every ‘new’ Web 2.0 aspect was already thought of much earlier, but that at that time, the concepts weren’t recognized as being very distinguished.” (Ferry den Dopper – Tam Tam)

“User experience and usability are two different things. And usability does not always imply a system or interface that does not require any learning, or any enquiry, or any challenge on the part of the user.” (Leisa Reichelt – disambiguity)

“Should User Experience stand alone? If standing alone, User Experience can still risk being treated as a resource. But, the above-referenced VP of Customer Experience Research & Design thinks his group should stand alone. And in some companies, it does stand alone.” (Richard Anderson – riander)

“It is an interesting mix of ‘information’ (information architecture, information science, …) and ‘ experience’ (user experience, experience design, …). A few years ago I proposed the term as a way to describe an industry, but the idea did not stick.” (Keith Instone)

Position papers of the workshop – “On 6 September 2005 twenty participants from England, Scotland, Wales, Northen Ireland, the United States, Sweden, and Germany met to discuss about emotion and their role in HCI. We actually found that there are so many aspects of HCI related to emotion, and of emotion related to HCI, that we won’t be able to discuss them all on one day (what surprise!).” (Emotion in HCI)

“Modern technology and commerce permit global distribution of products and services; User diversity: Ever increasing variety of group demographics and individual needs/wants; Traditional user interface design and usability disciplines (to improve performance and productivity); User experience design issues: Even more complex and challenging; Cultural analysis offers a way to understand, even measure, differences and similarities of UX.” (Aaron Marcus)

“Part of the challenge of this project was the relative universality of search. For many users, search has become so familiar that it’s a de facto means of navigation. Meanwhile algorithms have become more advanced, and the number of indexed pages has grown exponentially. There’s potential to do so much more with search, but there are relatively few standards for how to present users with more options.” (Ryan Freitas – Adaptive Path)

In: DIS04 Conference Proceedings, Cambridge, MA, August 2004 – “Understanding experience is complex. Designing the user experience for interactive systems is even more complex, particularly when conducted by a team of multidisciplinary experts. (…) In this paper, we argue that an interaction-centered view is the most valuable for understanding how a user experiences a designed product.” (Jodi Forlizzi and Katja Battarbee)

“Over the last decade, ‘user experience’ (UX) became a buzzword in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design. As technology matured, interactive products became not only more useful and usable, but also fashionable, fascinating things to desire. Driven by the impression that a narrow focus on interactive products as tools does not capture the variety and emerging aspects of technology use, practitioners and researchers alike, seem to readily embrace the notion of UX as a viable alternative to traditional HCI. And, indeed, the term promises change and a fresh look, without being too specific about its definite meaning. The present introduction to the special issue on ‘Empiral studies of the user experience’ attempts to give a provisional answer to the question of what is meant by ‘the user experience’. It provides a cursory sketch of UX and how we think UX research will look like in the future. It is not so much meant as a forecast of the future, but as a proposal – a stimulus for further UX research.” (Marc Hassenzahl and Noam Tractinsky)

“The purpose of this article is to provide you with a way to measure the level of effort required to successfully complete a project in respect to user experience. This is a powerful merging of project management, user experience, requirements and best practices. And, it is simple enough for a little monkey to use. More accurately, it is simple enough for me to use.” (John Rhodes – Apogee)

“Different traditions have different ways of categorizing experience. For the spiritual and the formally religious, it’s the peregrinations of the soul. Professionals of a more scientific bent situate experience in the same realm as perception and cognition, physical and psychic processes built into human beings and other living things that are, even to the scientistis, frankly still a mystery. Then there are the opportunists who take experience for granted and forge ahead with the project of altering minds by tripping people out with ‘new’ and ‘better’ experiences (at least in their own estimation).” (Bob Jakobson – Total Experience)

“We are moving from static pages with their clunky, slow repainting of the page to fluid, dynamic displays, where the movement is a major part of the charm. We are moving from behaviorally effective designs to ones that add emotional engagement.” (Don Norman)