“This dissertation introduces an approach to understanding user experience that departs from the more traditional user or product centric approaches. This approach, co-experience, builds on an understanding of experience as social interaction. It focuses on how in and through social interaction experiences and their products come to find their place in people’s lives.” (Katja Battarbee – University of Art and Design Helsinki Dissertations)

“(…) design is often inappropriately framed in terms of efficiency and ease-of-use rather than the total experience.” (Richard I. Anderson – Riander)

“To accomplish our work, we must first understand the forces as best we can, then begin attempts to make something that fits the shape they suggest. A good process helps manage this difficult work: refine understanding, attempt to fit within their pressures.” (Marc Rettig and Aradhana Goel) – courtesy of jasonkottke

“Welcome to the UX Week Wiki – Feel free to change any page, that’s the point of a wiki.” (SocialText) – courtesy of jeffveen and peterme

“An industry that Kathy believes that we can learn from is the gaming industry. Game designers use two key techniques to keep players engaged in a game. First, they produce a state of flow. (…) flow is defined as the feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfillment. One situation that demonstrates flow is when we become so engrossed with something we are doing, we loose track of time. Secondly, game designers provide an experience spiral. Basically this involves using a compelling benefit to motivate players to complete the loop (the level).” (Kevin Shockey – ONLamp.com)

by Steve Diller, Nathan Shedroff, and Darrel Rhea – “A book about how people make meaning in their lives and how companies can use this understanding to create more meaningful and successful products and services. (…) The biggest driver for experience is innovation.” (Making Meaning) – courtesy of cph127

“Innovation emerges from truly understanding the fit between product and person. The understanding of real experience with a product and its fit to a lifestyle, affords insight into product and interaction design, feature priorities, and adoption cycles.” (Peter H. Jones – DMI) – courtesy of uxnet

“A design-focused approach to product strategy (…) employs direct customer observation, cross-disciplinary perspectives, and a willingness to rapidly build, iterate on and tear-down prototypes. One could argue it is the essence of trial and error problem solving.” (LukeW – Functioning Form)

Presentation from Spring 2005 Info Tech Conference – “The difference between a good website and a great website happens before you begin coding.” (Keith Instone)

“As a designer, I would love to be able to control more of the environment and experiences of my customers. Identically, as a business person, I would love to be able to control more of the environment and experiences of my customers. After all, the user experience is influenced by far more than the applications we are creating. And in order to best do our jobs, we must reach beyond our limited charge and traditional thinking to look at the problem in a more holistic way. It is what we get paid to do; it is part of what makes us designers.” (Dirk Knemeyer)

“Whether you know it or not, we’re shifting control away from our own interface to the interface of others.(…) For the most part, designers can’t control experiences because experiences are subject to the user.” (Joshua Porter – Bokardo)

Attendee blog posts, photos and attendee comments from Gel Conference 2005 (April 28-29, 2005 – New York City) (Gel 2005 – Good Experience)

“There has been much discussion among organizations and practitioners lately about the ownership of the user experience. So, who owns it? Or to put it another way, who is responsible for the user experience and who makes it work? (…)” – (David Hawdale)

Dirk’s presentation slides from User Experience and Usability 2005 (March 3, 2005), SXSW Interactive 2005 (March 14, 2005), DevGroup NW (April 1, 2005), and Blurred Boundaries/Focused Solutions (May 10, 2005) – (Dirk Knemeyer)

“The May + June issue of <interactions> is a special issue on ‘Whose profession is it anyway?’ – in part a reaction to some of the collaboration and cooperation discussions UXnet has been encouraging. This issue should be arriving in your mailbox any day now – it is also available in the ACM digital library where subscribers can download articles and non-subscribers can purchase items.” (UXnet) – my first pub in print.

“It is a source of perpetual amazement to me that so much focus, attention, and energy are given to the opinions of critics and analysts, who sit detached, off to the side, choosing to criticize the efforts of others for seemingly no reason other than to make a bold statement.” (Dirk Knemeyer)

“We should never talk about ‘user experience design’ — there is no customer or user-facing design that doesn’t involve a user’s experience. But we can talk about how our methods, processes, approaches, mindsets, and understandings can contribute to improving the user experiences of the products and services people deal with.” (Peter Merholz)

“This two-day meeting brought together people from many different user experience organizations to talk about how practitioners and organizations can work together.” (UXnet) – courtesy of digitalwebmag

“The brain is tuned to mirror the behavior of others, so if your passionate curiosity is stronger than the other person’s passive disinterest, you have a chance to ‘infect’ the other person. It’s not just that you know what’s exciting, wonderful, fascinating about a topic — it’s that you genuinely feel it, and this is reflected in the way you talk about it, not just the actual content of your words. Passion breaks through.” (Kathy Sierra – Creating Passionate Users)

“Kim Goodwin spoke about a subject that is of great importance to all digital product designers—getting buy-in for our designs and ensuring that they get built. First, she enumerated various reasons why a product might not get built as designed or even get built at all—some of which are beyond our control—like shifting corporate priorities. However, the substance of her talk was about the many things that we can do to help set the proper scope for our projects and get buy-in for our designs.” (Pabini Gabriel-Petit – BayDUX)