WYSIWTF

Including the notion that form (a.k.a. presentation) has meaning too.

“Arguing for ‘separation of content from presentation’ implies a neat division between the two. The reality, of course, is that content and form, structure and style, can never be fully separated. Anyone who’s ever written a document and played around to see the impact of different fonts, heading weights, and whitespace on the way the writing flows knows this is true. Anyone who’s ever squinted at HTML code, trying to parse text from tags, knows it too.”

(Karen McGrane a.k.a. @karenmcgrane ~ A List Apart)

Design for public good

Governments is some countries are stepping up regarding design and their added value for citizens.

“Design is a key source of innovation and therefore part of the solution to the growth challenge Europe is facing. Every day we see start-up businesses inspired by design and creative thinking, and leading global enterprises using it as a means to boost business development and gain competitive advantage. Worldwide there is also an increasing focus on how design and other creative skills can contribute to a green transition. A major part of a product’s environmental footprint is defined through the early design phase, so many environmental issues can be solved by focusing on reducing environmental impact early in the development process. Rapid urbanisation is another example. The rise of mega-cities with millions of inhabitants is increasing the need for design solutions both technical and social that can meet the challenge of creating sustainable urban environments on a huge scale.”

(Design Council)

Strategy and online: How online is changing the game and the playing field for strategy development

A great piece on being successful online, every designer, manager and marketeer should read.

“Strategy is about trying to take control and trying to win. Strategy is about trying to predict the future or at least enough of that future that will give you a competitive advantage. Strategy is about being specific. It is about helping you get from A to C by doing B. It’s about putting your cards on the table, placing your bets.”

(Gerry McGovern ~ CustomerCareWords)

The WorldWideWeb is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative

A proposal which changed the world forever.

“The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system. The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups. Originally aimed at the High Energy Physics community, it has spread to other areas and attracted much interest in user support, resource discovery and collaborative work areas.”

(CERN)

Service Design: Designing cross-channel service experiences

Listen to the thoughts, insights and ideas on service design of this illustrious trio.

“We’ll start with a brief introduction to Service Design and cover a case study from an insurance company to demonstrate its key service design ideas and methods. Gjensidige – Norway’s biggest insurance company – is a large organization dealing with an abstract “product” of insurance and financial services, but with outcomes that deeply affect people at critical moments in their lives. Building on Gjensidige’s strategy to be completely customer centered, we will show you how a service blueprint can bring together groups – like Marketing and IT – that are often misaligned and at times at war. We’ll also show you how cross-channel experience prototyping with customers and staff made two organizations (insurance and banking) feel like one to the customer.”

(Lavrans Løvlie, Andy Polaine, and Ben Reason ~ O’Reilly)

Steampunking interaction design

A kind of out-of-place and out-of-time way of designing.

“Contemporary Steampunk culture owes much to the Internet and the communities of practice that have arisen online to share techniques, post tutorials, debate principles, and generally create an ecosystem that supports and celebrates improvisation, exploration, experimentation, and bricolage.”

(Joshua Tanenbaum, Audrey Desjardins, Karen Tanenbaum ~ ACM Interactions May/June 2013)

Cognitive overhead, or why your product isn’t as simple as you think

Designing for simplicity versus complexity is a zero-sum game.

“Put your user in the middle of your flow. Make them press an extra button, make them provide some inputs, let them be part of the service-providing, rather than a bystander to it. If they are part of the flow, they have a better vantage point to see what’s going on. Automation is great, but it’s a layer of cognitive complexity that should be used carefully.”

(David Lieb a.k.a. @dflieb ~ TechCrunch)

Core questions for service design

The theatre metaphor really helps our thinking on services.

“These questions continue to apply in prototyping, building and all the way to delivery of new services and on into business as usual. I’ve used these same questions in co-design sessions, putting them directly in the hands of participants as they work on being a part of their own products and services.”

(Stephen Collins ~ acidlabs)

5 reasons why kids need special user research

Identified a new type of experience: KX (‘Kids Experience’).

“Kids are special. There is no doubt about that. But it does not explain why they also need special attention when it comes to user research. Here are 5 reasons why we need to start doing user testing with kids and why it’s very different than what we know from testing adults.”

(Sabina Idler a.k.a. @SabinaIdler ~ UXkids)

Selling user experience

Some would label this ‘evidence-based’.

“If our community is going to actively sell the concept of user experience, we need hard data. Yet at every conference I attend, I hear about new tools, new techniques, new processes – but almost never about unassailable scientific results that demonstrate replicability. Sadly, most of the case stories I hear are merely glorified advertising. Moreover, like touching the hot iron as a child, learning about what doesn’t work is also important.”

(Eric Reiss a.k.a. @elreiss ~ FatDUX)

Keynote: Health behavior change and beyond: The health benefits of success experiences

Great and important topic, the patient experience.

“While sustained behavior and lifestyle changes can lead to improved health outcomes, there may be another pathway to health. Namely, the increased sense of confidence and control that comes from being successful at changing ANY behavior, even if the change is not sustained, can also improve health outcomes. Learn how to avoid the tyranny of prescribed failure experiences. Learn how to prescribe success by aligning with passions, discovering patient-generated solutions, and celebrating success.”

(David Sobel ~ Healthcare Experience Design 2013, the presentation videos)

To Dwell Is To Garden: An empathic approach to employee experience design

CX being driven by the EX.

“The methods of experience design uniquely situate experience designers to address employee disengagement in textured ways. By uncovering the root behavioral causes and co-producing solutions with employees, experience designers can create the right kind of resources, which empower organizations to own their desired change over time. As employee experience design is not a tidy activity, this article will focus less on concrete deliverables or step-by-step how-to-recommendations. Instead, a working framework is presented to assist experience designers in thinking through their own process-centric approaches and solutions.”

(Liana Dragoman a.k.a. @ldragoman ~ UX Magazine)

The content strategy order of operations or ‘Dear Aunt Sally Can Perform Magic’

Mnemonic device for the UX disciplines: LATCH re-visited.

“The reason I ask has to do with something you may remember from early math classes when coursework introduced multiple types of operations. There needed to be a set of rules in place so that little Jimmy would know whether or not multiplication happens before or after subtraction. Enter the Order of Operations, a.k.a ‘Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally’.”

(Tom Harari a.k.a. @tomharari ~ iAcquire)