February 2012

Three Of My (Somewhat) Intelligent Insights From ICC

And a mess it is.

Or, Why I Didn't Get to See Many Palms in Palm Springs - "Content is innovation; Content everywhere raises new questions for credibility and ethics; We're in this content mess together - and we'll fix it together."

(Colleen Jones a.k.a. @leenjones ~ Content Science)

Posted by PJB on February 29, 2012 | Classification: Content management - Content strategy - Events | Permalink

Future-Ready Content

Future-proof might be a better qualification.

"The future is flexible, and we're bending with it. From responsive web design to futurefriend.ly thinking, we're moving quickly toward a web that's more fluid, less fixed, and more easily accessed on a multitude of devices. As we embrace this shift, we need to relinquish control of our content as well, setting it free from the boundaries of a traditional web page to flow as needed through varied displays and contexts. Most conversations about structured content dive headfirst into the technical bits: XML, DITA, microdata, RDF. But structure isn't just about metadata and markup; it's what that metadata and markup mean. Sara Wachter-Boettcher shares a framework for making smart decisions about our content's structure."

(Sara Wachter-Boettcher a.k.a. @sara_ann_marie ~ ALA Issue 345)

Posted by PJB on February 28, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Don Draper is the Antithesis of User Experience

Oh no! Not him again!

"User Experience is about gaining insight on customers and prospects, and guiding the design of products and services based on direct input from those people on a regular basis. UX is NOT about getting people to do what companies just want them to do. UX is OPPOSITE of advertising. UX is about making things that people actually need, not trying to convince people that they should want them."

(Whitney Hess ~ Pleasure & Pain)

Posted by PJB on February 28, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Is there such a thing as content strategy?

There is no such thing as... A rhetorical question?

"Strategy is defined at a senior management level. Good content can help implement that strategy. (...) To me the essence of strategy on the web is customer centricity. The Web is about the rise of customer power. Social media is just one example of that."

(Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on February 27, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Bylines for Web Articles?

Mobile anonymous.

"Should you say who wrote the content on your site? Sometimes yes (for credibility), sometimes no (for brevity). And rarely in mobile."

(Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on February 27, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy - Mobile design | Permalink

3 Myths of Customer Experience

And these are just three of them. Many more to come

"(...) sought to address some of the biggest red herrings in UX today. Ultimately, I want to turn 'myths' into 'truths' and introduce my definition of Experience Strategy as well as the critical notion of the 'Aspects of the Experience'."

(Zachary Paradis a.k.a. @zacharyparadis)

Posted by PJB on February 24, 2012 | Classification: Customer experience - User experience | Permalink

Rage Against the Machines: A Keynote by Genevieve Bell

And they are not Luddites.

"Today technological devices have become so much a part of our lives that we need them alive or dead. Bell closes by challenging designers to rebalance the users relationship with technology by approaching each project through designing relationships and not interactions."

(Ciara Michelle Taylor ~ Core77)

Posted by PJB on February 23, 2012 | Classification: Events - Interaction design | Permalink

Make Content Strategy the Foundation of Social Service Design

Content, interaction, service, design, architecture, experience, ... all elements of the UX soup.

"Content is a key element of customer experience. It may well be one-way to begin with-a white paper, a podcast, and so on-that people read or listen to. But in all its glory content should serve as a primary, integrated element of interactive experiences."

(Rohn Jay Miller a.k.a. @rohnjaymiller ~ Social Media Today)

Posted by PJB on February 23, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy - Service design | Permalink

What is User Experience Strategy, Anyway?

Like all strategies, it's still a strategy. A plan to walk the talk.

"User experience strategy builds upon an organization's business and product strategies through a shared vision for a product or service from the end user's perspective. UX strategy can also extend beyond a single product to create a vision for what a customer's interaction with your company will be like across multiple products and touch points over time."

(Catriona Cornett a.k.a. @inspireUX ~ The Archer Group)

Posted by PJB on February 23, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Tools supporting the design process

Cross-channel becomes touchpoint orchestration.

Example: Touchpoint orchestration ~ "Consumers interact with companies in many different ways. They may receive corporate information through publicity in the media, they see brand advertisements on TV or in magazines, they interact with personnel during the buying process or at the customer service desk, they unwrap packaged goods, they sample products in stores, and so on. Ideally, the different design elements that consumers experience should work together like the instruments in an orchestra to create the overall experience. Just like the instruments in the orchestra each have a different character, the design elements do not need to be similar in order to work together in creating a great and engaging experience. Touchpoint orchestration makes sure that all different elements work together and in the right order, in order to create the desired user experience."

(Experience Driven Innovation)

Posted by PJB on February 22, 2012 | Classification: Customer experience - Service design - User experience | Permalink

User Experience The Don Draper Way

Is Don Draper (a.k.a. Mad Man) becoming the reference for all things and beyond? Used to be Peyton Place.

"Like so many things related to technology and new media, champions tend to push a bottom-up strategy. But, my point for this series is to complement the current groundswell by convincing executives and decision makers to lead top-down strategies that covey a vision for what customer experiences should involve. Then, and only then, we can inspire incredible UX to in turn bring that experience to life. Everything starts with defining a vision that articulates the view of the customer journey not just as you see it, but what it is that customer would appreciate, relate to, and value."

(Brian Solis a.k.a. @briansolis ~ Fast Company)

Posted by PJB on February 22, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

More Lessons in the Art of Empathetic Design and Spontaneity from Degas

Theatre and art as sources of UX inspiration. Just like "Art as Experience" (John Dewey, 1932)

"Degas may have said that he knew nothing of inspiration or spontaneity, but in reality, he knew their meaning better than most artists. More important, he understood the work that is necessary to make either happen. So, I continue to be fascinated by Degas, his process, and the beauty of his work. Therefore, I am choosing to get a little off topic to explore some important lessons from Degas and what I like to call his performance art."

(Traci Lepore a.k.a. @TraciUXD ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on February 21, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

The World of Services User Experience

We call this an ego-document in the positive sense of the word.

"Practicing user experience as part of a larger services organization is hardly ever just about designing the user experience of a particular product. Any UX professional in a services role taps deeply into the human-relationship side of the discipline of user experience. The world of services user experience is challenging, fast paced, and, in some ways, different from a lot of other UX roles. I will be sharing this world with you in future columns."

(Baruch Sachs a.k.a. @basachs ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on February 21, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Experience Design is The Future of Mobile Payments

Is XD now becoming the next silver bullet?

"A holistic experience is key to the future of mobile payment services. No one player currently owns the mobile payment eco-system but those who emerge as the preeminent players will be the ones that embrace seamless integration of partnerships, interoperability, product, services, and user experience. There's an opportunity for the major/minor players of mobile payment services to create a differentiated, distinguishable, and ownable service experience (...). Lastly, those who pay attention to and design for local market needs and use cases, will dramatically increase mobile payment's chances for widespread adoption and success."

(Perry Chan a.k.a. @perrychan ~ Sapient Idea Engineers)

Posted by PJB on February 20, 2012 | Classification: Mobile design | Permalink

Could service design give you competitive advantage?

The answer is 'yes', I guess.

"In today's business environment, if you don't make a conscious effort to design the delivery of your service it will just form itself - for better or worse."

(Mike Lorge ~ TechDay)

Posted by PJB on February 20, 2012 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Convenience: The third essential of a customer-centric business

Never seen 'convenience' as a quality attribute for user experience, like usable, useful or desirable.

"Technology and innovative design have made many products and services more predictable and efficient, the two lower levels of Different's 7 Essentials of Customer Experience. Convenience, the next essential of customer experience, is a critical factor in determining how customers make decisions about what to buy, what services to use, where to go, and with whom to engage. Conventional wisdom says that convenience is a factor of time and effort. On the surface, that's true, but if you dig a little deeper to fully understand service convenience, you need to consider another factor: perception."

(Ari Weissman a.k.a. @TravelingRE ~ UX Magazine)

Posted by PJB on February 17, 2012 | Classification: Customer experience - User experience | Permalink

Why Personas are Critical for Content Strategy

Personas are great for any UX field, content strategy included.

"The most popular content strategy tools borrow from the discipline of information architecture, but there is one invaluable tool that is imperative to the process of strategy and implementation of tactics that we can thank our user experience cousins for: personas."

(Kristina Mausser a.k.a. @krismausser ~ Johnny Holland Magazine)

Posted by PJB on February 16, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy - Personas | Permalink

Is this the beginning of the 'Success by UX' era?

There are many ways to success. UX being one of them. More and more so in the Experience Economy.

"While some people see differentiation via user experience as a bit of a copout, there's a lot of empirical evidence that suggests a product that solves a real problem with a simple, easy to use interface will succeed."

(Andrew Cross a.k.a. @cross_andrew)

Posted by PJB on February 16, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

The De-Evolution of UX Design

InfoArch gets rehabilitated.

"By bringing the IA phase back and by concentrating first on the information, several things will happen. First, your sketching and interface design becomes much, much better because you have prioritization and buy off on the content, context, and users you are designing for. This means that your wireframe/prototyping phase becomes a lot more about the interface and not what content should go in the interface and why. Second, you are showing your stakeholders that UX design truly isn't just form, but really is also about function. We are moving away from the interface, which is how we started, and towards a real solution of which the interface is only a part. Third, we stop lying to ourselves, and we stop saying that the best UX solutions aren't just the coolest or the best aesthetically, but they are those that take content, context and users into consideration while creating an aesthetically appropriate interface. Most importantly, we stop UX's slide down the evolution scale back towards the time of print design and outputs, and instead continue our climb up the mountain towards being the user experience experts."

(Elisabeth Hubert a.k.a. @likehow22)

Posted by PJB on February 15, 2012 | Classification: Information architecture - User experience | Permalink

My Interaction12 Recap: As long as it's gotta be

IxDA 2012 as a thriven, inspiring and interesting event.

"The Interaction conference platform is the most visible and energetic of all the organization's endeavors thus far, even though just a tiny percentage of IxDA members are able to attend in person. This year, even as IxD12 attendance grew to 750 people, that percentage diminishes because the organization now counts somewhere around 35,000 members in its digital forums, with over 100 local groups operating in cities around the globe. Only about 40% of the attendees came from North America this year, with over 32 countries represented."

(Elisabeth Bacon a.k.a. @ebacon ~ Devise)

Posted by PJB on February 15, 2012 | Classification: Events - Interaction design | Permalink

Why User Experience Is Critical To Customer Relationships

See, UX gets picked up by the 'big guru guys'. Let's see what they do with it.

"User experience is a priority that should, in some way, find a home within the design of any new-media strategy. (...) User experience is now becoming a critical point in customer engagement in order to compete for attention now and in the future. For without thoughtful UX, consumers meander without direction, reward, or utility. And their attention, and ultimately loyalty, follows."

(Brian Solis a.k.a. @briansolis ~ Fast Company)

Posted by PJB on February 14, 2012 | Classification: Customer experience - User experience | Permalink

Disruptive Innovation

Or how UX and CX can be disruptive. Love the comments.

"A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network. The term is used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect. Although the term disruptive technology is widely used, disruptive innovation seems a more appropriate term in many contexts since few technologies are intrinsically disruptive; rather, it is the business model that the technology enables that creates the disruptive impact."

(Clayton M. Christensen a.k.a. @claychristensen ~ Interaction-Design.org)

Posted by PJB on February 14, 2012 | Classification: Technology - User experience | Permalink

Message and Medium: Better Content by Design

Content is all that matters. To begin with...

"In this presentation, live at An Event Apart, Kristina Halvorson teaches you to identify your key business messages, understand how they inform your content strategy, and learn how they impact multi-channel content development and design."

(Jeffrey Zeldman a.k.a. @zeldman ~ An Event Apart)

Posted by PJB on February 14, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Mobile Sites vs. Apps: The Coming Strategy Shift

In the end, open standards will always survive proprietary technologies. But it can take a while.

"Mobile apps currently have better usability than mobile sites, but forthcoming changes will eventually make a mobile site the superior strategy."

(Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on February 13, 2012 | Classification: Mobile design - Tablet design - Usability | Permalink

TapSense: Enhancing Finger Interaction on Touch Surfaces

A completely new HCI paradigm sets in.

"At present, finger input on touch screens is handled very simplistically - essentially boiled down to an X/Y coordinate. However, human fingers are remarkably sophisticated, both in their anatomy and motor capabilities. TapSense is an enhancement to touch interaction that allows conventional screens to identify how the finger is being used for input. This is achieved by segmenting and classifying sounds resulting from a finger's impact. Our system can recognize different finger locations - including the tip, pad, nail and knuckle - without the user having to wear any electronics. This opens several new and powerful interaction opportunities for touch input, especially in mobile devices, where input bandwidth is limited due to small screens and fat fingers. For example, a knuckle tap could serve as a 'right click' for mobile device touch interaction, effectively doubling input bandwidth. Our system can also be used to identify different sets of passive tools. We conclude with a comprehensive investigation of classification accuracy and training implications. Results show our proof-of-concept system can support sets with four input types at around 95% accuracy. Small, but useful input sets of two (e.g., pen and finger discrimination) can operate in excess of 99% accuracy."

(Chris Harrison) courtesy of dansaffer

Posted by PJB on February 12, 2012 | Classification: HCI - Tablet design | Permalink

Timeless Advice About Chief Customer Officers

How come I mistrust companies which appoint a CCO? AAPL doesn't have a CCO.

"Chief Customer Officers can be valuable in the right environments."

(Bruce Temkin a.k.a. @btemkin ~ Customer Experience Matters)

Posted by PJB on February 10, 2012 | Classification: Customer experience | Permalink

UX and the Kano model

Cross-pollination with another practice.

"The model (...) helps you analyze the customer experience of your product (or service), which ultimately allows you to invest more wisely in customer experience improvements."

(Christian Holst ~ Baymard Institute)

Posted by PJB on February 07, 2012 | Classification: Customer experience | Permalink

What we talk about when we talk about sketching

Always draw when explaining something.

"The sketching is highly generative, best done in a focused session under the influence of caffeine and noise-canceling headphones. My brain has a tendency to free associate and sometimes these sessions spiral out of control, but they are useful activities to conduct at the beginning of a project, as I begin identifying (and blowing past) the tacit boundaries of a space."

(Dane Petersen a.k.a. @thegreatsunra ~ Adaptive Path)

Posted by PJB on February 07, 2012 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Structure First. Content Always.

First, second, third... sequential thinking. Think parallel, synergy, dialectic.

"There is an emerging fallacy in our industry recently. The idea that you cannot create good design without knowing your content. (...) You can create good experiences without knowing the content. What you can't do is create good experiences without knowing your content structure. What is your content made from, not what your content is. An important distinction."

(Mark Boulton a.k.a. @markboulton)

Posted by PJB on February 07, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy - Information design | Permalink

How Taxonomy and Metadata Leads to Findability

Taxos and metadata have been around for centuries. Locked in the paper technologies.

"Taxonomy and metadata are becoming much more popular these days. Companies need to keep track of their information, but can't use traditional classification systems, such as Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress Subject Headings. In the last 10 years, faceted taxonomies have taken on new importance on the web; XML has upgraded the visibility of metadata. Having the skills to create taxonomies and metadata will serve you well. Most people don't have the instinctual skills to create information organization structures that are useful or the practical knowledge and experience to be confident in the structures they create. Understanding how taxonomies and metadata feed into user interfaces allows you to recommend good designs that improve findability."

(Theresa Putkey ~ E3 Content Strategy)

Posted by PJB on February 07, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy - Metadata | Permalink

Dealing with Difficult People, Teams, and Organizations: A UX Research Maturity Model

The baby, toddler, teenager, and adolescent phases of UX research.

"An increasing number of organizations and individuals who develop software products, Web applications, Web sites, or other digital products are gaining a better understanding and appreciation for user experience and UX design and research. Subsequent to the introduction of some magnificent products and services that many executives now own or use-such as smartphones, tablets, Web applications, social media, and video games-they have gained a better understanding of what UX design and research can do to boost the success of a business offering."

(Tomer Sharon a.k.a. @tsharon ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on February 06, 2012 | Classification: Design research - User experience | Permalink

IA Strategy: Addressing the Signatures of Information Overload

Info overload gets to be a IA/UX issue as well.

"The one thing we know about information overload on the Web is that we don’t know enough. The rapid rate at which people and organizations create and propagate information complicates our getting a grip on information overload in the domain of information technology. Our information includes things like our Honey-Do lists, gigabytes of digital documents, and the deluge of email messages that pile up in our email inboxes. The amount of information we consume and manage is growing in both its volume and volatility. Probably worse than the self-inflicted burden of information glut that we've invented for ourselves is the fact that the less we know about information overload, the less we can know about the relevance of our collective stockpiles of information."

(Nathaniel Davis a.k.a. @iatheory ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on February 06, 2012 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

The QofC Interview: Luke Wroblewski, Author of Mobile First

LukeW and Forbes: quite a combination.

"To me it seems more like inside-out versus outside-in. Inside-out thinking is, This is our process, this is our org chart, this is how we do things, and everything is sort of we, we, we. And they try to project that out to the world. Versus outside-in is like here's some poor guy who's going to wind up on our website, let's look at it from his perspective. He doesn't care that we have these fifteen departments. He doesn't care about these fifteen processes that we have for making decisions, he wants to do blank. And just kind of flipping your mindset like that can go a very long way."

(Anthony Kosner ~ Forbes)

Posted by PJB on February 05, 2012 | Classification: Interviews - UCD | Permalink

Information Overload Is Not Unique To Digital Age

I'm always thrilled when new historical connections are found.

"It is a constant complaint: We're choking on information. The flood of data on the Web has reached mind boggling proportions, and it shows no signs of stopping. But wait, says Harvard professor Ann Blair - this is not a new condition. It's been part of the human experience for centuries."

(Ann Blair ~ NPR)

Posted by PJB on February 05, 2012 | Classification: Classics - Information design | Permalink

The User Experience Integration Matrix: Integrating UX into the Product Backlog

As long as we see UX projects as software engineering projects and not the other way around, the plus and minus sides of the magnet will not connect.

"Teams moving to agile often struggle to integrate agile with best practices in user-centered design and user experience in general. Fortunately, using a UX Integration Matrix helps integrate UX and agile by including UX information and requirements right in the product backlog. While both agile and UX methods share some best practices-like iteration and defining requirements based on stories about users-agile and UX methods evolved for different purposes, supporting different values. Agile methods were developed without consideration for UX best practices. Early agile pioneers were working on in-house IT projects (custom software) or enterprise software."

(Jon Innes ~ Boxes and Arrows) courtesy of janjursa

Posted by PJB on February 03, 2012 | Classification: Technology - User experience | Permalink

Lost Stories Information Design History

Information design, one of the many giant fields on which shoulders we stand.

"In a competitive business marketplace, not everyone wants to acknowledge that each generation tends to learn from, build on or divert from the previous generations ideas and output. We see this phenomenon clearly evident in the various streams of Information Design history."

(GK VanPatter ~ Humantific)

Posted by PJB on February 03, 2012 | Classification: Classics - Information design | Permalink

Why External Links Should Open in New Tabs

Unfortunately, many users don't even notice a tab has been initiated. Back, back, back...

"When most designers design websites, they don't pay much attention to links. As long as the link works and takes users to the right page, everything is fine. However, a great user experience goes further than that. There are certain links that should open in new browser tabs, and ones that should open in the same browser tab. It's important for designers to know the difference."

(UX Movement) courtesy of rolandnagtegaal

Posted by PJB on February 02, 2012 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

The top mistakes UX designers make: the writeup

As long as UX designers learn from their mistakes.

"Rather than talk about tactical mistakes, such as in prototyping and running studies, I focused on the ones we overlook the most, about attitude and culture."

(Scott Berkun a.k.a. @berkun)

Posted by PJB on February 01, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink