How mature is your omni-channel content strategy: A model to assess how you’re doing

Added on 8 December 2015 Peter Bogaards

A brain dump of how to assess a content strategy in a channel-oriented ecosystem.

Disclosure: I work at Informaat experience design (The Netherlands) ~ “Designing for omni-channel ecosystems not only deals with the interactive and visual elements of experiences, but also has a significant content dimension. In this post, the role, value and meaning of content in products, services and brand experiences are addressed. In this context, omni-channel content strategy is a mandatory precondition for excellent customer experiences and should be part of the customer experience excellence of organizations. For the purpose of analysis, we developed a maturity model with which we can assess the current state of omni-channel content strategies and for identifying steps towards excellent customer experiences in ecosystems with omni-channel services.”

Peter Bogaards a.k.a. /peterbogaards | @bogiezero ~ Informaat BiRDS ★

What UX roles you need and why

Added on 8 December 2015 Peter Bogaards

Roles and activities, responsibilities and points-of-view in UX are changing all the time.

“When thinking about what UX roles a given team requires, so much depends on the nature of the company and the type of project. But there are definitely some UX roles that most teams need when designing and developing applications. Let’s start with the most obvious, then work our way to those that are more obscure. Finally, I’ll describe the soft skills that all UX professionals need to succeed.”

Christian Rohrer a.k.a. /crohrer | @christianrohre ~ UXmatters ★

Why content reigns supreme in UX design

Added on 2 December 2015 Peter Bogaards

Finally, content is discussed by UX designers. Why does it take so long?

“We know that it’s not edgy to defend one of the most timeless pieces of advice in design, but we’re not doing it to grab attention. We simply believe that it’s far too easy to overlook content as a design fundamental when the bulk of work focuses on visual design elements.”

Jerry Cao, Kamil Zieba and Matt Ellis ~ FastCo.design ★

Micro-moments: Are you designing for them?

Added on 2 December 2015 Peter Bogaards

Moment-of-truth, the tiny versions.

“Mobile devices have changed our lives in many more ways than we can realize. They are just part of us now, and we have lost sight of how we behaved before. As user experience designers, we also have to play the part of anthropologists: well, a little. We need to understand our target users’ culture. In these fast-paced times, it can be hard to get time to stop, stand back, and look at what’s going on in the big picture. However, that’s the point: given that smartphones alone have changed life so much, it might take some effort to stop peering into their screens and see what’s happened to us as a species!”

Muriel Garreta Domingo a.k.a. /murielgd ~ Interaction Design Foundation ★

How to balance design guidelines for children

Added on 23 November 2015 Peter Bogaards

Guidelines for specific groups must be very specific.

“Creating design guidelines for products whose users include kids requires an evolution in our thinking beyond the guidelines we typically follow. The users, content, and context dictate the appropriate design guidelines. For kids, you might start with the type of product.”

Jonathan Evans a.k.a. /jonathanhevans | @jhewiz ~ UXmatters ★

Design leadership: What’s next?

Added on 18 November 2015 Peter Bogaards

The big boys from the 20th century have many ideas about Design.

“It’s the greatest time to be a designer. Learn to talk the language of business and the language of technology, but lets not forget where we come from. Convergence is happening faster than we can imagine right now, and there is no better time to be a designer.”

Thomas Lockwood a.k.a. /thomaslockwood | @ThomsLockwood ~ FastCo.design ★

The user as network

Added on 11 November 2015 Peter Bogaards

The user (a.k.a. the person) is only an entity in a network of relations, connections, and bi-directional arrows. Outside the network, it’s just a nobody.

“The user has become central to the way technology is conceptualized, designed, and studied in sociotechnical research and human-computer interaction; recently, non-users have also become productive foci of scholarly analysis. This paper argues that a focus on individualized users and non-users is incomplete, and conflates multiple modes of complex relation among people, institutions, and technologies. Rather than the use/non-use conception, I argue for conceptualizing users as networks: as constellations of power relations and institutional entanglements, mediated through technologies.”

Karen E.C. Levy a.k.a. @karen_ec_levy ~ First Monday 20.11 ★

How Apple is giving Design a bad name

Added on 11 November 2015 Peter Bogaards

It’s lonely at the top. In the end, you only can look inward.

“Once upon a time, Apple was known for designing easy-to-use, easy-to-understand products. It was a champion of the graphical user interface, where it is always possible to discover what actions are possible, clearly see how to select that action, receive unambiguous feedback as to the results of that action, and to have the power to reverse that action—to undo it—if the result is not what was intended. No more. Now, although the products are indeed even more beautiful than before, that beauty has come at a great price. Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people don’t realize exist.”

Donald A Norman a.k.a. /donnorman | @jnd1er and Bruce Tognazinni a.k.a. /bruce-tognazzini | @asktog ~ FastCo Design ★

How to implement gestures into your mobile design

Added on 10 November 2015 Peter Bogaards

Gestures are based on sign language with a touch dimension. With AR is becoming real sign language with the Digital.

“Gestures are the new clicks. Every app, game or tool you open on your phone must includes a swipe, tap or pinch to function. These gestures are the secret to making great mobile apps work. And there’s a lot that goes into it. With clicks, designers and developers really only had to think about where they wanted the action to appear on the screen. With gestures, you have to consider the type of physical action, its location on the screen, and whether users can intuitively find and touch it.”

Carrie Cousins a.k.a. /carriecousins1 | @carriecousins ~ TNW ★

Creating good user experiences by focusing on content

Added on 9 November 2015 Peter Bogaards

There comes a moment, UX professionals will start designing from-out the content.

“Content is everyone’s business. People in many different roles work toward shared project goals—whether they’re content strategists, UX designers, product managers, or Web developers. The outcome of both business-focused and user-centered goals is the user’s experience, and that user experience should have one thing at its heart: content. The more you can embed content strategy into every step of your design process, the better the user experience will be. It is essential both that content be useful and that its presentation be usable. After all, it’s the content that brings users to your Web site.”

Robert Mills a.k.a. /robertmills81 | @RobertMills ~ UXmatters ★

Long-term exposure to Flat Design: How the trend slowly decreases user efficiency

Added on 9 November 2015 Peter Bogaards

First it looks better, then it start to deteriorate.

“Clickable UI elements with absent or weak visual signifiers condition users over time to click and hover uncertainly across pages-reducing efficiency and increasing reliance on contextual cues and immediate click feedback. Young adult users may be better at perceiving subtle clickability clues, but they don’t enjoy click uncertainty any more than other age groups.”

Kate Meyer a.k.a. /lauracreekmore | @kate__meyer ~ Nielsen Norman Group ★

The curse of metadata

Added on 2 November 2015 Peter Bogaards

Metadata is the most important data. Even more important than big data.

“More meaningful than font, placement and format of printed documents, metadata in the digital world delivers opportunity that was unknown in the 1990s. Shifting from the print world to the internet, Creekmore learned the potential value of metadata. But effective use requires clarifying goals, applying metadata strategically and purposefully, and standardizing metadata practices to manage document classification. Common pitfalls among those who appreciate what metadata can offer are designing content management systems with too many or too few metadata options. To avoid excessive or insufficient metadata, information architects must fully understand users’ needs, differentiating daily requirements from occasional ones. Building a simple metadata schema for current use is ideal; focusing on unlimited future possibilities or building an elaborate but unwieldy system is unrealistic.”

Laura Creekmore a.k.a. /lauracreekmore | @LauraCreekmore ~ ASIS&T Bulletin Oct/Nov 2015 ★

Object-oriented UX

Added on 20 October 2015 Peter Bogaards

Object think helps any designer tremendously.

“That’s OOUX: putting object design before procedural action design, and thinking about a system through the lens of the real-world objects in a user’s mental model (products, tutorials, locations), not digital-world actions (search, filter, compare, check out). We determine the actions after first defining the objects, as opposed to the traditional actions-first process that jumps straight into flows, interactions, and features.”

Sophia Voychehovski a.k.a. /sophiav | @sophiavux ~ A List Apart ★

Six indicators of an organizations UX maturity level

Added on 15 October 2015 Peter Bogaards

Is growth always a matter of maturity? Then you must define the end state: death.

“Organizations are seeing the value of hiring user experience (UX) professionals and incorporating user-centered design. Big name companies such as Google and Apple have incorporated UX design as a centerpiece of their successes. The overall maturity of UX design in creating software and technology has made huge leaps over the past few decades. However, like any function or practice, not all organizations have adopted or embraced UX design to the same degree or at comparable levels of maturity.”

Jennifer Fraser a.k.a. /jenniferfraser | @jlfraser & Scott Plewes a.k.a. /scott-plewes ~ Macadamian ★

Scripted interaction

Added on 15 October 2015 Peter Bogaards

It seems hard to design for interaction when technology is evolving very rapidly. Unless you approach the problem in a more abstract fashion.

“Interaction design is a label for a field of research and for a practice. When we design interactive tools and gadgets we do interaction design. But what is it that we’re designing? And is this practice changing? Let me reflect on this a little bit.”

Mikael Wiberg a.k.a. /mikael-wiberg ~ ACM Interactions ★

The good, the bad, and the ugly: A language of critique for information architecture

Added on 13 October 2015 Peter Bogaards

I always love some deep thinking on information architecture. It’s not that often I encounter it.

“IA is more than wireframes. But we’re confined by the mindset that thinks IA is a box to check off on a project plan. If you find this a problem, you’ll want a way to change the discourse. A language of critique is going to help you become a better, more influential UX professional. We can all use that.”

Stacy Surla a.k.a. /stacysurla | @stacysurla ~ Fritillaria ★