Human-centered CX: Uniting stakeholders across the enterprise

Added on 14 September 2016 Peter Bogaards

CX as an organizational dimension of performance.

“Customer experience is said to be a top business priority for most companies around the world. Many experts agree that investing in CX establishes a competitive advantage against companies that choose to solely prioritise the bottom line. While customer experience is a noble and important catalyst for business transformation, becoming truly customer-centric requires an introspective approach. This takes stepping back to define what customer experience really means from the customer’s perspective – what they truly value and also what’s primed, broken or missing to deliver next generation CX.”

Brian Solis /briansolis | @briansolis ★

IBM is gearing up to become the world’s largest and most sophisticated design company

Added on 12 September 2016 Peter Bogaards

After Apple with its focus on the design of artifacts, the next posterchild of design will be IBM with its focus on design in business contexts.

“IBM’s aggressive and zealous design-minded approach can help promote a more nuanced definition of design’s purview. Just by the scale of its presence in 170 countries, IBM can re-contextualize roles and careers for the design profession around the world. Expanding design’s influence beyond finessing shapes, beautifying screen interfaces, and tidying up presentations, IBM’s trained employees can demonstrate how design thinking can improve and humanize solutions for the world’s most urgent matters, from detecting cancer and fighting the Zika virus to providing drone operators with real-time weather data.”

Anne Quito /anne-quito | @annequito ~ Quartz ★

The Agile Manifesto for designers

Added on 8 September 2016 Peter Bogaards

No more documentation!

“Many say that UX design processes do not fit well into the agile methodology. As a UX designer who has experience working on both waterfall and agile projects—and many variants in between—I object to this assertion. The Agile Manifesto outlines twelve principles that guide the agile methodology. One by one, I’ll explain how each of these principles not only fails to conflict with good UX design practice, but can even improve it.”

Andrew Croce /andrewcroce @andrewcroce ~ UXmatters ★

Sensing the future of HCI: Touch, taste, and smell user interfaces

Added on 3 September 2016 Peter Bogaards

Using all the senses for information processing purposes.

“The senses we call upon when interacting with technology are restricted. We mostly rely on vision and hearing, and increasingly touch, but taste and smell remain largely unused. Although our knowledge about sensory systems and devices has grown rapidly over the past few decades, there is still an unmet challenge in understanding people’s multisensory experiences in HCI. The goal is that by understanding the ways in which our senses process information and how they relate to one another, it will be possible to create richer experiences for human-technology interactions.”

Marianna Obrist, Carlos Velasco, Chi Vi, Nimesha Ranasinghe, Ali Israr, Adrian Cheok, Charles Spence, and Ponnampalam Gopalakrishnakone ~ ACM Interaction XXIII.5 ★

What is the User Experience of content?

Added on 2 September 2016 Peter Bogaards

UX is the outcome, interacting with content.

“Good UX is all about getting out of the user’s way. A successful ecommerce site makes it phenomenally easy to shop, deeply evaluate, and compare products. The best sites let the audience do these things without even paying attention to how they get from product description to comparison chart to category page. Good content is about the same thing. The best content doesn’t draw attention to itself, but focuses instead on its subject matter–the information you as a marketer want to impart. Good UX is also about knowing what your user wants. Do the work up front (or have an agency do it) to figure out what your user wants, what they would ask if you were standing face to face. Don’t be afraid to ask the question, ‘Did you find everything you needed today?” in whatever form you can. Pay attention to the details of all your content. Improve what you have first, identify the gaps, then start knocking them out one step at a time.”

Augustin Kendall a.k.a. /augustinkendall ~ Portent ★ courtesy of petermorville

Designing desirable experiences

Added on 23 August 2016 Peter Bogaards

The holy trinity: Usable, useful and desirable experiences.

“There is no justification for designing something that doesn’t solve a problem. However, the whole world is ready to consume things based on their aesthetic elegance. We cannot ignore the value of beauty. So, as a designer, if you can use your problem-solving ability to create a product that has great utility—as well as characteristics such as desirability, elegance, and beauty—and inspires pride of ownership, you can create a delightful ownership experience. Human emotions such as joy, pride, and love will enrich your product experience and actually give life to the product, making its ownership compelling and truly fulfilling.”

Arindam Roy a.k.a. /arindam-roy ~ UXmatters ★

Understand the social needs for accessibility in UX design

Added on 18 August 2016 Peter Bogaards

Adding social value as designer is a must.

“As designers, we need to plan and design for accessibility in UX projects. We have the responsibilities, not only to our profession but also to our users and society, to design accessible digital solutions. One simple method of including accessibility in our UX projects is to assign a disability to one of the personas. Another method is to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), as developed by the W3C (directed by inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee) and inspired by the UN convention principles. As a community, we can remove discrimination against people with disabilities and protect their rights to be part of the society. By doing so, we will create access for all products and services that will delight everyone.”

Ruby Zheng a.k.a. /rubyzheng ~ Interaction Design Foundation ★

10 practical tips for increasing the impact of your research insights

Added on 16 August 2016 Peter Bogaards

We’re still at the level of (practical) tips, tricks, and do’s/dont’s.

“Turning research insights into positive action is a combination of what you do but also what you are able to empower others to do. Knowing your audience and bringing the right mindset to the table can go a long way to making an impact in your organization.”

Mike Katz a.k.a. /mike-katz ~ Boxes and Arrows ★

Cybernetics and Design: Conversations for Action

Added on 12 August 2016 Peter Bogaards

Becoming a classic for design in the new millenium.

“Working for decades as both theorist and teacher, Ranulph Glanville came to believe that cybernetics and design are two sides of the same coin. Working as both practitioners and teachers, the authors present their understanding of Glanville and the relationships between cybernetics and design. We believe cybernetics offers a foundation for 21st-century design practice.”

Hugh Dubberly a.k.a. /hughdubberly | @DubberlyDesign and Paul Pangaro a.k.a. /pangaro | @paulpangaro ~ Dubberly Design Office ★

When and how to create Customer Journey Maps

Added on 9 August 2016 Peter Bogaards

As said before. Customer journey maps, the personas of the 2010’s.

“Journey maps combine two powerful instruments – storytelling and visualization – in order to help teams understand and address customer needs. While maps take a wide variety of forms depending on context and business goals, certain elements are generally included, and there are underlying guidelines to follow that help them be the most successful.”

Kate Williamson a.k.a. @kateawilliamson ~ Nielsen Norman Group ★

Go holistic: Assess the maturity of your organization via the customer experience

Added on 18 July 2016 Peter Bogaards

Go holistic, go ecosystem and go outside-in. What a mind shift you get!

“The leap from UX to CX can be a huge mind shift for many organizations. This article spells out strategies and processes that provide a framework to assess the maturity of the CX within your own organization. (…) If your company’s CX maturity level is high, putting the customer first may be relatively simple. But if your company’s CX maturity level is low, becoming a CX-focused organization may be slow and cumbersome process. Either way, it is vital to ensure the customer is front and center in the organization’s strategic thinking. Employee training and well thought-out personas can facilitate this endeavor.”

Ger Joyce, Mindy Maxwell, Jay Brewer, Saurabh Dutta ~ User Experience Magazine 16.3 ★

Architects of information

Added on 14 July 2016 Peter Bogaards

Information intensive environments have not been this popular in Interactions Magazine.

“We live in a world where information is part of our everyday lives, where we don’t dedicate time to “doing computing,” where information is ever present and leaves a digital footprint, and where notions of online versus offline have become almost meaningless. As mentioned, we are heading toward a state where we will stop using computers and instead inhabit interactive and information-rich architecture. Many exciting challenges lie ahead. For example: How will we design the architectural interfaces to information and interaction to create relevant inhabitant experiences? How will we give inhabitants access to how their data is being captured, manipulated, used, and stored? What role can architecture play in protecting people’s privacy and security? What does an interactively augmented environment mean for how we perceive our environment when we already know that mind, body, and environment co-shape this? Given the large number of signposts in both HCI and architecture, we suggest that the only natural expectation is stronger ties between the worlds of information and the design of physical spaces to address the challenges we now face.”

Sheep Dalton, Holger Schnädelbach, Tasos Varoudis, and Mikael Wiberg ~ ACM Interactions ★

Careers in UX: How different organizations approach user experience design

Added on 13 July 2016 Peter Bogaards

Multiple flavors of how to embed UX design in orgs.

“When looking for a job in UX, the company, team, manager, and even sector, company size, and focus should all factor into finding the right place. The core skills for UX jobs are consistent across different kinds of organizations, but some might be a better fit for different work styles, personality types, or interests. I’m writing from the perspective of a UX researcher, but the following exploration certainly applies to other UX roles. I’ll be drawing on my experiences working at several different types of organizations, as well as numerous conversations with other UX professionals talking about their experiences. Let’s take a look at four different but common types of organizations that employ UX professionals, along with some pros and cons for working with each.”

Laith Ulaby a.k.a. /laith-ulaby ~ UX Booth ★

UX research methods

Added on 5 July 2016 Peter Bogaards

After design validation, we need more and more design and user research methods.

“From new ideas to proven standards in user experience research, our toolkit is a rich collection of ways to understand people and context. The articles in this issue feature innovations, like new ways to explore emotional response, to unusual places to conduct research, like trains, ferries, and conferences.”

The Magazine of the User Experience Professionals Association

IDEO’s secret recipe for an innovative design team

Added on 30 June 2016 Peter Bogaards

Design as a team sport. Getting rid of the genius designer myth.

“Hire for the right roles. Some people believe that founders are the only ones who can create company culture. It’s true that founders are usually responsible for creating the original values. Consider how Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Google defined the way they wanted their first dozen employees to feel at work. In fact many of the best-loved parts of the culture started before Google had 50 employees. But as a company grows, there are still opportunities for cultural recalibration. Here are seven roles of people who help define, harness, reflect, and embody culture at IDEO. Think of them as the new faces of organizational culture.”

Mollie West ~ AIGA ★

UX in Government: Why we need to stop calling it ‘Citizen Experience’

Added on 29 June 2016 Peter Bogaards

As long as the ‘C’ in the hashtag #CX refers to customer, citizen or community, there’s no improvement of clearity.

“Why not Community Experience? I know it puts less emphasis on an individual user than the word “Citizen” — but let’s admit it — citizen actually refers to someone who belongs in or to a context. See? The word citizen carries with it the idea of community any ways! And the communities our ‘customers’ (users, citizens) belong to, or feel excluded from, directly impacts how they experience our services in any case.”

Jamie Lee ~ Medium ★