July 2012

UX design and change management: A series of 10 parts

If change is the only stable factor, design can lead the way.

"I try to translate best practices from the domain of change management to the design domain. And from the other side, I identify where change managers need designers to achieve their change goals. To put it more clearly, design is change and change is design."

(Gerjan Boer a.k.a. @gerjanboer ~ βiRDS on a W!RE)

Posted by PJB on July 25, 2012 | Classification: Customer experience | Permalink

UX for Learning: Design Guidelines for the Learner Experience

Still convinced we can learn so much from the discipline of Instructional Design.

"With educational applications for kids, corporate eLearning, and online degree programs, more and more UX designers face design briefs for creating digital experiences with an educational purpose. Other applications, whether they're new or launching new features, often present micro-learning experiences that gently teach users how to use the software."

(Dorian Peters a.k.a. @dorian_peters ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on July 25, 2012 | Classification: Instructional design - User experience | Permalink

Is UX Strategy Fundamentally Incompatible with Agile or Lean UX?

As with all new things, it will take some time before UX Strategy establishes its position.

"UX strategy is about building a rationale that guides UX design efforts for the foreseeable future. UX strategy can be effective in an agile environment if you can complete the strategy before agile development begins. Following a lean UX process, you can develop a UX strategy that is sufficient when time and money are very tight, and you need to complete a working product at the earliest possible date. However, lean UX does not serve UX strategy well in large companies that can afford the time and resources to collect and analyze the data they need to formulate a strategic UX roadmap that produces a sustainable competitive advantage."

(Paul Bryan a.k.a. @paulbryan ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on July 25, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Bursting the Content Bubble (and Getting What You Want)

The context you're getting into as UX and its related fields of practice gets more complex every time.

Presentation video - "As content strategy people, we need to learn about sales, metrics, figures, change management, PR, and marketing, if we’re going to get our content strategy adopted by our companies and our clients. Which means stepping out of our comfort zones, and having the courage to learn about other disciplines. Kate shows us how, by sharing her recent experiences doing exactly that."

(Kate Kenyon a.k.a. @kate_kenyon)

Posted by PJB on July 24, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Unified Content Strategy: Fact or Fiction?

Caring is just one thing, paying attention is another.

"(...) the notion that customers don't care about the quality of content is bunk. People do care and content quality does reflect on the overall perception of the product and its creator."

(Val Swisher a.k.a. @contentrulesinc ~ Content Rules)

Posted by PJB on July 24, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy - Information architecture | Permalink

Making Sense of the Cross Channel Experience

Designing the white spaces, loud silences and waiting moments.

"The intention of this article has been to highlight some of our thoughts on creating pervasive information architectures. Our goal has always been to try to develop a practical framework that can be used early on in a design process to help us visualise the information space that we are so commonly being asked to design for nowadays."

(Jon Fisher a.k.a. @ergonjon ~ Humanizing Technology Blog) ~ courtesy of petermorville

Posted by PJB on July 23, 2012 | Classification: Information architecture - User experience | Permalink

Customer experience is the new brand

CX as the new black in marketing.

"The customer experience across every digital touchpoint – whether owned or earned – should be akin to a good waiter in a top restaurant, or a concierge in a top hotel. The thought given to the customer should be evident by the ease with which they can meet their goals. They should be able to move seamlessly, joyfully through the system."

(Phil Whitehouse ~ Nextness) ~ courtesy of alistapart

Posted by PJB on July 23, 2012 | Classification: Customer experience | Permalink

Digital-first companies thrive on mobile disruption. Everyone else struggles.

Every company a digital company means morphing atoms into bits.

"Organizations can't succeed in our new multi-platform, mobile world unless they transform themselves into digital-first businesses."

(Jonathan Kahn a.k.a. @lucidplot ~ Lucid Pilot)

Posted by PJB on July 17, 2012 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

New Ways of Visualizing the Customer Journey Map

Example of how InfoViz finds its way into Service Design.

"As the field of service design evolves so do the tools. At Adaptive Path we often find ourselves debating the form and definition of service design artifacts."

(Kim Cullen ~ Adaptive Path)

Posted by PJB on July 17, 2012 | Classification: InfoViz - Service design | Permalink

Everything can be beautiful

Beauty is a joy forever.

"To make something beautiful is about deciding what to make, exposing people to it, and claiming with authority that it is beautiful."

(Marc Hassenzahl ~ Interactions July + August 2012)

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

Designers on Top: Paola Antonelli on the Evolution of Design

Design and art, a strong pair.

"The quest for elegance and empowerment, or how design went from process to authorship. ~ In this wonderful talk from the 2012 EyeO Festival, playfully titled Designers on Top, MoMA Senior Curator of Architecture and Design Paola Antonelli offers a sweeping look at the evolution of design over the past few decades, and the past few years in particular (...)"

(Maria Popova a.k.a. @brainpicker ~ Brain Pickings)

Posted by PJB on July 16, 2012 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

The Psychology of Content Design

Content and Design are partners in a happy marriage.

"The way that we shape content is absolutely paramount to the success of our ventures on the web. Beyond this, the way that we design and craft user experiences should forever be considered not only important, but an integrated part of our content. With that said, this article is not an attempt to pit content against design. Instead, I will simply make the claim that good design is an integrated part of the content."

(Jonathan Cutrell ~ Tuts Plus)

Posted by PJB on July 16, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy - Information design | Permalink

Future of Work: Interview with Hugh Dubberly

So, don't think about designing things, but systems, as in biology.

"Understanding the soul of a product (or of an organization) requires a conversation - about what you believe in, about fundamental values, and about quality. These ideas must be argued and agreed upon. Likewise, expressing the soul of a product requires still more conversations, still more argument and agreement. At this level, design is conversation."

(Wilder Voices)

Posted by PJB on July 16, 2012 | Classification: Interviews - Service design | Permalink

The Most Important Usability Activity

In the end, it's all about use, isn't it.

"What's worth the most — field studies or user tests? Depends on your company's usability maturity, but user testing is the safe bet if you can do only one thing."

(Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on July 16, 2012 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Why Do We Need Navigation At All?

Structure being narrowed down to traveling through the infosphere as in Apple's HotSauce.

"Regardless of how you organize the content, the larger point is this: giving users a table of contents does much more than simply provide users with a means of navigating the content. The table of contents expresses the hierarchical relationships of your content, and by so doing gives users a sense of your content's overall story and structure. Even if users can't find the answer to their question by navigating the table of contents, they can find other meaning in browsing and perusing the structure of your content."

(Tom Johnson ~ I'd Rather Be Writing)

Posted by PJB on July 13, 2012 | Classification: Information architecture - Navigation | Permalink

The Content Strategy Knowledge Gap

Content rulez.

"Being smart about content is the road to success for all web professionals."

(Rick Allen a.k.a. @epublishmedia ~ Meet Content)

Posted by PJB on July 12, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

The case for responsive web content: it's all about the users

Every design discipline and concept comes back to the same place: the 'user'.

"Most responsive design projects start out as a functional or technical endeavour. I know our projects often do. But if responsive web design is device-agnostic, aimed at people instead of devices, we should try to finally step away from the technical and functional approach, and truly start to put content first."

(Christiaan W. Lustig a.k.a. @ChristiaanWLstg ~ .net magazine)

Posted by PJB on July 11, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Collaborative Prototyping, Groupthink and Design by Committee

Prototypes give you something to talk about and to point to.

"Collaboration in UX is more important than in other fields. Why? UX is all about communication. The dangers of insular thinking in UX are that other people can’t relate to our ideas, even if they are good. When people say "an engineer designed this," it's not because engineers are stupid or haven't thought the problem through. It's because their values (consistency, supportability, development costs) are not the same as the values of the user (easy, intuitive, powerful)."

(Andrew Mottaz a.k.a. @amottaz ~ Johnny Holland Magazine)

Posted by PJB on July 11, 2012 | Classification: Prototyping | Permalink

Using Neuroscience to Inform Your UX Strategy and Design

The brain and strategy, an ideal combination.

"Finally, the corporate world is catching up with UX fanatics. Companies are hiring UX designers and UX strategists like crazy. As these UX professionals complete projects, many organizations are happy with the new software they’ve created, but they haven’t necessarily learned why and how they can continue to implement better user experiences in the future."

(Lori Kirkland ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on July 10, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Ideo's Tim Brown

Getting a Tim Brown brain dump.

"He points to a problem in how we've thought about design, trained designers, and have practiced design. The great thing about designing simple products is that you can know almost everything about them: who made them, who they're for, how they were produced, etc. But as products get more complicated, it gets harder even for a team of designers to really understand what's going on. They get so complicated that there are lots of places design can fail."

(David Weinberger ~ Too big to know)

Posted by PJB on July 09, 2012 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Brand Touchpoint Matrix: The planning of Brand Experiences

BX: Definitely inside-out.

"We're living in a cross-media world where the planning of brand experiences are key to success."

(Jonas Persson a.k.a. @jonaspersson ~ Hello Future)

Posted by PJB on July 09, 2012 | Classification: Customer experience | Permalink

Perspectives in Experience Design

Well done, Milan!

"For me, the word Experience in the context of Design work refers to the way people experience the world, and making everything we produce fit into their lives. The word preceding Experience is about the perspective you use when talking about someone's experience, the roles and the scope you want to focus on. For an enterprise, this translates to the ways it chooses to appear in people's lives."

(Milan Guenther a.k.a. @eda__c ~ Blurring Boundaries)

Posted by PJB on July 06, 2012 | Classification: Customer experience - User experience | Permalink

"It is CX a new concept?"

"UX is an evolution of Web Usability". Know your history I would suggest.

"CX is nothing more and nothing less than applying process analysis methods for better understanding how to create value through customer interactions across the multiple user's touch points with the brand."

(Isabel Fernández Peñuelas ~ The Customer Experience Journey)

Posted by PJB on July 06, 2012 | Classification: Customer experience | Permalink

Developing a User Centric Content Strategy

What's wrong to make content just for yourself?

"Content should exist because there is a target set of audience - people who will read, watch, and/or look at your stuff. Keep in mind that the reason we are making content is not to make ourselves feel good, or to archive and document what our company is about. We make content for people - users who drop by in your site because they want to know you!"

(Sean Si a.k.a. @h3sean ~ SEO Hacker)

Posted by PJB on July 04, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Why The User Experience Can Or Cannot Be Designed

Designing the right circumstances so the proper experiences can emerge.

"It seems an endless discussion whether the user experience can or cannot be designed. The difficulty of the discussion lies in the level of abstraction. I believe that is because everything is an experience and everyone is a user. There is no standard definition, nor consensus among the practitioners, of what experience design really is. In this article I hope to shed some light on the issue. I will share my thoughts about the difficulties to design the user experience and give some practical tips how to overcome this challenge."

(Paul Olyslager a.k.a. @paulolyslager ~ Usabilia)

Posted by PJB on July 04, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

A Business Case For Transformative Services

And do transformative services deliver the same kind of experiences?

"What kind of services will we need to offer that will create both value in a changing society and a changing business environment? And what does value mean for individuals in a service context? In the following we want to look at 'transformative services' and the potential they offer for businesses. With transformative services we mean those services that change the way individuals or groups behave in order to foster wellbeing and satisfaction of the individual or group while providing sustainable business value."

(Melanie Wendland a.k.a. @MelanieWendland ~ Conversations by Fjord)

Posted by PJB on July 03, 2012 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Fonts for HD Screens

Typography post in an usability context.

"Decent computer screens with pixel densities of 220 PPI or more lead to new usability guidelines for on-screen typography."

(Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on July 02, 2012 | Classification: Typography - Usability | Permalink