A presentation for Usability and User Experience 2005 – “Companies are aggressively trying to seize the minds, hearts, and spirits of people by innovating their products through basic listening and responding.” (Dirk Knemeyer – Involution Studios)

“In the spirit of convergence, the user experience diagram rationalization brings together the goals, processes, and disciplines that are responsible for great products.” (Luke Wroblewski – Functioning Form)

“Imagine teaching User Experience? What would a UX curriculum feel like? What would you want them to know at the end of it? Good UX crosses, technical (information and technology), reflective (testing and pyschological) stuff, creative (design and emotion), sales (marketing and business) and social network boundaries without even trying, before breakfast. Here is one of those thinking-out-loud diagrams, packed full with my pet hobby horses.” (Tom Smith)

“For years the question of ‘Who owns user experience?’ has been a topic of serious debate in our field. Frankly, it’s getting to be a bit silly, so this week I’ve decided to end the debate by just answering the question. And in the interest of making the answer understandable to all, I’ve decided to explain it in the simplest way I know how… this of course would be through the use of N-dimensional optimization theory.” (Tom Chi – OK/Cancel)

“(…) organized around our principals. We’re industry-leading design professionals who work directly with you to provide the innovative design solutions you need to maximize your business success.” (Dirk Knemeyer & Andrei Michael Herasimchuk) – best of luck

Presentation slides included – “Companies are slowly beginning to understand that ‘it’s all about the experience’. But too many companies stumble by trying to replicate the retail experience online, rather than focus on ways to deliver a better online experience.” (Kevin Kearney – New York City Chapter Usability Professionals’ Association) – courtesy of noisebetweenstations

“In our Points of View papers, we offer our insights on topics related to our solutions and client projects. We examine current technologies or marketing approaches, share best practices and explore emerging trends. Our Points of View are based on analyst and industry research, as well as on-the-ground experience with our clients.” (Avenue A | Razorfish)

“(…) I proposed a framework for analyzing products in a holistic way to include their attractiveness, their behavior, and the image they present to the user — and of the owner. In this work on design, these different aspects of a product were identified with different levels of processing by people: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. These three levels translate into three different kinds of design. Visceral design refers primarily to that initial impact, to its appearance. Behavioral design is about look and feel — the total experience of using a product. And reflection is about ones thoughts afterwards, how it makes one feel, the image it portrays, the message it tells others about the owner’s taste.” (Donald Norman)

“Brains love play. Find a way to bring more play (or at least a sense of playfulness) into someone’s life, and you might just end up with a fan. (…) Brains evolved to play, and apparently the bigger the brain, the more likely it is to play. Play turns the brain on.” (Kathy Sierra – Creating Passionate Users) – courtesy of theotherblog

“Google has found that competing sites have a hard time maintaining the level of feature restraint that Google adheres to. (…) it is quite difficult to remove something once you have added it. This is especially true in large organizations with pronounced vertical structures and vertically based incentive systems.” (LukeW – Functioning Form)

“Experience design requires that we design for all five senses. It is safe to say that over 99% of what is happening on the Web relates only to our sense of sight. On the surface, this might seem a logical and obvious state of affairs. In reality, it is a reflection of some mental laziness and of not thinking outside the computer screen.” (Dirk Knemeyer – Digital Web Magazine)

“In the Spring of 2004, Spirit Softworks and Peak Usability conducted an international online survey of salaries for user experience design and usability professionals. World wide, 821 respondents completed the survey. This report documents the results of that survey, breaking down salaries by type of employer, geographical region, role, project focus, education, years of experience, and gender.” (Spirit Softworks & Peak Usability)

“An intuitive interface doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when one of two specific conditions are met. In this article, Jared describes the critical relationship between current knowledge (what the user knows when they encounter the design) and target knowledge (what the user needs to know to accomplish their goal), showing the two conditions that lead to an interface users will perceive as intuitive.” (Jared Spool – User Interface Engineering)

“In 2002 the dissertation ‘Designing Emotions’ was published. This book, in which five years of research is reported and discussed, should appeal designers and researchers who are interested in the emotional responses evoked by products. In the book it is discussed what an emotion is, how products evoke emotions, an how these emotions can be measured and influenced. On this page you can view the table of contents and download the introduction and summary.” (Pieter Desmet – ID Studio Lab)

“What user experience information is most essential? What core user experience concepts and skills should be conveyed to every member of a web development team? As I pondered these questions, it occurred to me that I was missing something important. I was forgetting that user experience is not just about concepts and skills, it is also about perspective. I needed to teach the students to think like user experience professionals. In fact, I needed to do that first, because this would make it easier for the students to acquire the necessary concepts and skills.” (Jason Withrow – Boxes and Arrows)

“It’s hard to break into the user experience community unless you were born wearing their official T-shirt. (…) Who are these user design people, I often wonder, and why do they sound so angry about their work and each other?” (Kimberly Krause Berg)

“Business-to-consumer electronic commerce on the Internet has revolutionised the purchase of products and services by giving consumers round the clock access to worldwide providers. However, B2C e-commerce has also shown to be associated with a myriad of factors hindering adoption and usage by private customers. Such factors include concerns regarding security and privacy, the unfamiliarity of some online services, lack of direct interaction with products, salespeople and fellow shoppers and the generally low credibility of online information. These factors were collectively defined as ‘trust issues’, as they refer to a purchase decision customers have to make in a situation of uncertainty and risk.” (Florian N. Egger – ecommuse)

“It’s done people — read Business Week instead of Alertbox for a change, and you’ll see everyone is already on board! Hass and Standford are adding design to their curriculum, the MFA is the new MBA, and so on and so on… They are sold on what you do: now you have to actually live up to their expectations. Scared yet?” (Christina Wodtke)

“One could argue that user experience is just as, if not more, important than say development but at the moment, we don’t have the understanding and penetration that the staffing reflects this. If anything, UX staffing is one tenth or even one hundredth of development.” (Kevin Cheng – OK/Cancel) – courtesy of nick finck

Dirks presentation from BayDUX on December 8, 2004 – “The term ‘user’ is outdated and dehumanizing, but it is understood and accepted by most organizations in our industry. (…) Every member of a UX Design team should be involved in different types and levels of research. It should be hard-coded into every function. Research is the most important part of good design.” (Dirk Knemeyer – Involution Studios LLC)