October 2012

Orchestrated Content: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach

Next up: content choreography.

"In recent months, colleagues and I at Razorfish have been interested in a somewhat related effort to situate the practice and define how it gets things done. We have been looking at the discipline from a broader viewpoint, from the perspective of how content strategy abuts, intersects with, and influences other disciplines. We have proposed an approach to content that we call 'Orchestrated Content'. Rather than focus on how content strategists work within their own discipline, phase by phase through the duration of a project, we look at how our practice is deeply interwoven with many other practices and plot out how content strategy functions across disciplines. We embrace the inevitably porous nature of the practice and highlight its role in tying together the larger strategy of transforming businesses."

(Michael Barnwell ~ Scatter/Gather Razorfish)

Posted by PJB on October 31, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

The Experience is the Product

Product, service, platform, ecosystem, and experience. All the way.

"(...) Service Design is about creating meaningful experiences and meaningful interactions - for and with the customers. It's not about the products itself anymore (their features can easily be replicated) it's about differentiating products by creating new ideas and emotional interconnections."

(Pedro Custódio a.k.a. @pedrocustodio ~ NEXT Berlin)

Posted by PJB on October 31, 2012 | Classification: Service design - User experience | Permalink

Service design and economic crisis

My 10cc: "Crisis, what crisis?".

"Service design is human-centered and this has led to users actively taking part in the design process co-creating the service. This co-creation is one of the most important reasons why service design can have such a big impact on mobilization of citizens. Including the citizens in the creation or improvement of a service or process that aims at improving their everyday experiences helps, in addition to creating a better experience for them, remove users’ hesitations or inhibitions regarding adopting the service."

(Nelly Trakidou a.k.a. @NellyTrakidou)

Posted by PJB on October 31, 2012 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Substituting Information for Interaction: A Framework for Personalization in Service Encounters and Service Systems (.pdf)

Some new in-depth Glushko thinking.

"The service design literature contrasts information-intensive and experience-intensive domains and applications and makes proposals for different design methods that are most appropriate for each. This distinction seems sensible and useful when we contrast financial accounting with visits to Disneyland, but it begs some crucial design decisions for services nearer the middle of what is probably better viewed as a continuous design space. So instead of design principles or methods that assume a clear distinction, we propose to frame design decisions in ways that highlight the range of choices on the continuum between information-intensive and experience-intensive variations of a service system. We propose "substituting information for interaction" as this unifying concept in service system design. Interesting design choices arise in contexts where information accumulates through customer interactions and value can be created if the service provider can capture, analyze, and retrieve information about those interactions and the explicit or implied preferences in them. Here the degree to which the service provider can substitute information for interaction depends on the richness of the provider's customer model to predict his next interaction or information need."

(Robert J. Glushko and Karen Nomorosa)

Posted by PJB on October 30, 2012 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

It's all about the experience!

Digital agencies (also) discover experience design.

"The role of a business now is to orchestrate such experiences for its customers, in such a way that the memory itself becomes part of the product - the experience."

(Hyper Island)

Posted by PJB on October 30, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Content Strategy for Decision Makers: Connecting the dots between business, brand, and benefits

Content strategy 101 for people with a lot on their minds.

"If we were to sum up the mandate of a content strategy in a single phrase, it would be this: understand the gap between your user experience and your customers' needs, and fix it."

(Rahel Bailie and Noz Urbina ~ CS for Decision Makers)

Posted by PJB on October 30, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Behavior Design Bootcamp with Stanford's Dr. BJ Fogg

Buzzword galore.

"(...) it makes sense now to call attention to the distinction between Dr. Fogg's Behavior Theory – the emerging discipline of behavior design – and the widening concept of design thinking. In my mind, both occupy some similar space but are not mutually exclusive or competing thought architectures. BJ and I briefly discussed how design thinking and behavior design relate to one another, and he admittedly has not arrived at a definitive relationship, though he believes they are complimentary. I'm hopeful Dr. Fogg is willing to have an ongoing conversation with me about their relationship, and work with the design community to develop a framework in which behavior design and design thinking can be successfully leveraged together. Held in comparison, behavior design fits quite nicely into the larger Design Thinking or Human Centered Design process, and can be employed with great effect as part of a design thinker's arsenal."

(Ryan Wynia a.k.a. @ryanwynia ~ Technori)

Posted by PJB on October 29, 2012 | Classification: Design research - Information design | Permalink

Designing for the Sense of Touch: A New Frontier for Design

Touchy feely.

"Camille Moussette explores how interaction designers can leverage and embrace the sense of touch to develop interfaces and experiences that go beyond traditional visual and form-based aesthetics."

(Science Daily) ~ courtesy of jeroenspiering

Posted by PJB on October 29, 2012 | Classification: HCI - Mobile design | Permalink

User Experience is Not Just Design, It's the Key to Innovation and Growth

It's Garrett, not Garret.

"It's not every day you have Jesse James Garrett stop by to talk about the state of user experience and its role in the future of business. But, we were fortunate to have him visit the set of Revolution to talk about the importance of people and experiences and how UX deserves the attention of the c-suite."

(Brain Solis)

Posted by PJB on October 26, 2012 | Classification: Interviews - User experience | Permalink

Ditch Traditional Wireframes

Some still think they have value.

"Wireframes have played an increasingly leading role in the modern Web development process. They provide a simple way of validating user interface and layout and are cheaper and faster to produce than a final visual comp. However, most of the methods and techniques used to create them are far from being efficient, contradicting the principles and values that made wireframing useful in first place. While this article is not about getting rid of the wireframing process itself, now is a good time for questioning and improving some of the materials and deliverables that have become de facto standards in the UX field. To make this point clear, let's do a quick review of the types of wireframes commonly used."

(Sergio Nouvel a.k.a. @shesho ~ UX magazine)

Posted by PJB on October 25, 2012 | Classification: User research - Wireframes | Permalink

The end for keyboards and mice?

You ain't seen nothing yet.

"Apple's iPhone and its rivals may have introduced touchscreens to the masses, but now a raft of technologies promise to change the way we interact with computers forever."

(Paul Rubens ~ BBC)

Posted by PJB on October 25, 2012 | Classification: HCI - Mobile design | Permalink

Breaking Design Principles on Purpose

Rules and exceptions.

"Rules. They keep our designs clean, consistent, aligned, and focused. The core principles upon which good design is built are absolutely essential to the education of any designer. The great thing about design rules though is that they can and should be broken, granted that you know what you're doing. Read on to see some examples of effectively breaking design principles in order to improve a project."

(Jason Gross a.k.a. @JasonAGross ~ Design Shack)

Posted by PJB on October 24, 2012 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

10 Benchmarks for User Experience Metrics

Metrics of Usability or CX, framed as UX benchmarks.

"Quantifying the user experience is the first step to making measured improvements."

(Jeff Sauro a.k.a. @MeasuringU ~ Measuring Usability)

Posted by PJB on October 24, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

The Diagram of Information Visualization

Even business graphics is on the horizon. And that's not clipart in PPTs.

"In the last ten years, the area of Information Visualization has witnessed an exponential increase in its popularity. Diagrammatic reasoning and visual epistemology are becoming readily accepted methods of research in many academic domains. Concurrently, information graphics and Infovis have grabbed the attention of a larger mainstream audience."

(Parsons Journal for Information Mapping Volume IV, Issue 4)

Posted by PJB on October 23, 2012 | Classification: InfoViz - Information design - Information graphics | Permalink

The Importance of Knowing User Intent

Do you know what you want? I don't.

"Users don't always know exactly what they want. Sometimes they know only that they want help figuring out what they want. This makes figuring out user intent particularly challenging for marketers and product manufacturers."

(Jordan Julien a.k.a. @thejordanrules ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on October 22, 2012 | Classification: Design research | Permalink

Mobile Email Newsletters

Mobile newsletters, why not?

"Mobile use strengthens email marketing's benefits by offering ubiquitous newsletter access, but it also introduces new usability limitations for template design."

(Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on October 22, 2012 | Classification: Mobile design - Usability | Permalink

UX design for startups: The age of user experience design

Startups being the fertile ground for UX design. That's 'users' as in 'customers'.

"Like many of my contemporary UX Design peers, I started my career as a so-called usability specialist. Fascinated by ergonomics and cognitive science, I was working to make sure users were able to actually use interfaces. Armed with user research, heuristics and a little bit of prototyping, I was trying to find my place in the 'developer-oriented' world. This wasn’t easy."

(Marcin Treder a.k.a. @uxpin ~ NET Magazine)

Posted by PJB on October 19, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

The Catch Behind Design Thinking

Has Design Thinking lost its glory?

"Connecting design thinking with the broader context of problem solving has lead to the growth of two equally harmful myths: the guru designer and practice as a process, emphasizing on subjectivity or linearity where empathy, empowerment and divergent thinking are needed. Design thinking isn't saving the world or revolutionizing business, for sure, mostly because of these two illusory paths."

(Thierry de Baillon a.k.a. @tdebaillon ~ DeBaillon)

Posted by PJB on October 19, 2012 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

User Experience v. Customer Experience

Here we go again. DTDT, re-framed as "what came first".

"Customer experience is always a little tricky to explain. It's just so darn big. What doesn't it cover (not much) and who is responsible (good question). Often, customer experience is translated into user experience - the front-end digital experience of users."

(360 connext)

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

Bring Mockups to Life with Real Content

Content, the 80-90% driver of transformational user experiences.

"How do you create the perfect pitch for your new product or service? With a bunch of screens filled with Lorem ipsum? We don't think so! Here we share our experiences creating mockups for some tough presentations."

(Antun Debak a.k.a. @adebak ~ UX Passion)

Posted by PJB on October 17, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy - Prototyping | Permalink

The Languages of Design

Language, the tool of communication.

"It's common in design to discuss the "language of things", the language expressed by physical objects and digital systems. We often consider the visual layout of a website – how it guides a user; what the hierarchy of fields in a form might suggest; or what the look and feel of a product says about a brand or company – but what about that company's words; how do they fit into all this?"

(Angus Edwardson a.k.a. @Namshee ~ UX Booth)

Posted by PJB on October 17, 2012 | Classification: Design research - Information design | Permalink

The Power of Networks

Network, the underlying concept of the 21st century.

"We often take decisions by using the wrong or outdated tools and theories. Network science and tools are readily available to inform decisions in different sectors and organizations. Their adoption for decision-making should be further promoted."

(World Economic Forum)

Posted by PJB on October 17, 2012 | Classification: Design research | Permalink

Modelling is not the answer!

A model is what it is: a model.

"In HCI we have witnessed the rise and fall of conceptual modeling in general. The 1980s focused on changing human behavior, which was captured in models to inform designs. Around 1990 a second wave of HCI questioned the usefulness of this type of approach, pointing out how human behavior is contingent and situated, and that human beings actively work around whatever technical solutions exist. In more recent years, this has been supplemented with a focus on emotion and experience. More than ever, this research points away from conceptual modeling."

(Susanne Bødker, Niels Mathiasen, Marianne Petersen ~ ACM Interactions Sep/Oct 2012)

Posted by PJB on October 16, 2012 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

Lean Strategy for UX Design

The perfect mixology: strategy, lean, UX, and design.

"Lean strategy in UX design means getting to a simple, actionable statement about what problem we are going to solve for the user as soon as possible, so that the design process can proceed. In fact, lean strategy often happens in concert with design, enabling us to be more adaptive and to more easily apply our thinking to our designs. It's about being less precious and profligate with our decks and deliverables, freeing us up to bring greater clarity and focus to our ideas. It's strategy in motion, pressing us forward rather than holding us back until everything has been figured out and proven with mathematical certainty."

(David Gillis a.k.a. @davegillis ~ UX Magazine)

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

The Age of User Experience Design: Infographic

The numbers - if true - are amazing.

"The growth of the User Experience Design field is breathtaking, but well deserved. Thanks to UX Designers all over the world, the quality of products has increased dramatically. Design really does matter now. It’s a user centric world in which there’s not only Apple on the scene anymore."

(Martin Treder a.k.a. @marcintreder ~ UXPin)

Posted by PJB on October 16, 2012 | Classification: Information graphics - User experience | Permalink

Introducing the storygraph

Service design deliverable galore.

"The storygraph is a deliverable I made to visualize the user needs/touchpoint matrix. (...) Let's think about the customer's journey. As designers we can't have control over the path our customers walk. They can approach us from any possible touchpoint: our website, some else's website, phone, friend advice, our headquarter or any other physical location, remote help desk, social media etc. They use whatever they will to get informations or complete a task. From the customer’s point of view, they're just interacting with our brand. And they don’t care about what channel or system or device they're using. That's exactly why we have to."

(Raffaele Rainwiz)

Posted by PJB on October 16, 2012 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

How Visuals Can Help Content Strategists Find Their Voice

Visual thinking and communication, the way to tackle many wicked design problems.

"It's not just clients who are compelled by visuals. Visuals grab everyone’s attention in meaningful, memorable ways, whether we're trying to influence project managers or CMOs. Content strategists use words to argue our points, yet our colleagues (UX and Creative, and even Project Management) use visuals. We should, too. Not sure how to turn data into information?

(Tosca Fasso a.k.a. @toscafasso ~ SUBTXT)

Posted by PJB on October 15, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy - InfoViz - Information design | Permalink

The Ethnographic Praxis in Industry (EPIC 2012): Conference Proceedings

Or how epic is EPIC?

"The EPIC Conference promotes the use of ethnographic investigations and principles in the study of human behavior as they are applied in business settings. By understanding people, what they do, how they do it and how these change over time, we can create better business strategies, processes and products, as well as enhance and simplify people's lives. Beyond this, the conference aspires to promote the integration of rigorous methods and theory from multiple disciplines into business practices; to advocate business decisions based upon sound research; to promote public recognition of practicing ethnography as a profession; and to support the continuing professionalization of the field."

(EPIC 2012)

Posted by PJB on October 15, 2012 | Classification: Design research | Permalink

Empathy and Content Strategy: on Teaching, Listening and Affecting Change

Would this also apply to non-textual data?

"Our job is to help make useful, usable web things. Our job is also to ensure that the passion is passed along to the next in line – that we provide some level of empathy and empowerment for the people who will work the content long after we're gone."

(Corey Vilhauer a.k.a. @MrVilhauer ~ @MrVilhauer ~ Eating Elephant)

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

What Comes After the Touch Screen?

Explosion of input modes: from body to mind.

"Gesture control, devices that recognize different people, and tricks to make a screen feel as if it has physical buttons could be coming to your gadgets."

(Will Knight a.k.a. @willknight ~ MIT Technology Review)

Posted by PJB on October 12, 2012 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

Design thinking isn't about thinking. It is about doing.

Multi-disciplinary teams rulez.

"Products are developed by large multi-disciplinary teams. The teams deal with many topics requiring the expertise of several specialists simultaneously. They have to decide together if something is a problem; propose multi-disciplinary solutions; and align their activities into a seamless whole. Stated differently: team members have to think collectively, which is named team cognition. In September 2012, Guido Stompff received his PhD at Technical University of Delft, faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. The topic was team cognition in high tech development teams, and how designers contribute to it. This website are bits and pieces of his observations and findings, combined with reflections on trending topics."

(Guido Stompff a.k.a. @guidostompff ~ Team Cognition)

Posted by PJB on October 11, 2012 | Classification: UCD - User experience | Permalink

Content and the journey: Building a good user experience for news sites

Finally, content as main driver of the user experience.

"Discussions at recent news industry conferences have often referred to the importance of good user experience, particularly during discussions about how news outlets are reaching and interacting with their users on digital platforms. References to user experience could cover a range of aspects, including the user's journey through content, an app or a news website, the usability of those products and the experience of consuming a single piece of content. For the purposes of this feature I asked managing editor of the Wall Street Journal's digital network, Raju Narisetti, what user experience meant to him in the context of news and journalism."

(Rachel McAthy ~ Journalism.co.uk)

Posted by PJB on October 11, 2012 | Classification: Content strategy - User experience | Permalink

Thinking in Network Terms

Network replaces hierarchy, everywhere.

"We always lived in a connected world, except we were not so much aware of it. We were aware of it down the line, that we're not independent from our environment, that we're not independent of the people around us. We are not independent of the many economic and other forces. But for decades we never perceived connectedness as being quantifiable, as being something that we can describe, that we can measure, that we have ways of quantifying the process. That has changed drastically in the last decade, at many, many different levels."

(A Conversation with Albert-László Barabási ~ EDGE)

Posted by PJB on October 10, 2012 | Classification: Social Web | Permalink

Top 10 things still to fix in experience design

Figure that!

"As user experience extends itself across devices and channels in the years ahead the biggest winners will be companies that take a holistic and planned view of how it all works for the customer. (...) If user experience people are to be successful in changing the hearts and minds of these groups, then we need to seek out opportunities to speak with them on their own ground and use a vocabulary that resonates with them: tying UX to social benefit, improved business performance and new marketing opportunities."

(Ray McCune ~ Foolproof)

Posted by PJB on October 10, 2012 | Classification: Customer experience - User experience | Permalink

Tips For Facilitating Productive Critique

The critique makes the discourse.

"When making critique a part of your process preparation is one of the most important components. We have said in the past that critique is a process, not just feedback based on a gut reaction to work that is being reviewed."

(Aaron Irizarry a.k.a. @aaroni ~ Discussing Design)

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

Information Architecture in the Age of Complexity

The discipline is alive and kicking.

"If modeling is the act of establishing congruence between the elements and entailment structures of two systems, the object and its model, complexity is simply what belies modeling. Behavior in a simple model (and hence in a simple system) can always be correctly predicted: not so in complex systems."

(Andrea Resmini ~ ASIS&T Bulletin Oct/Nov 2012)

Posted by PJB on October 09, 2012 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Service design: Are we still talking about this?

A set of tools doesn't make it into a discipline.

"Is service design a field, a discipline or a practice? Probably not. It's a set of tools, a process and most importantly, it has a point of view. It's a logical, sequential process that understands the needs of both the users and the business."

(Chris Downs ~ NEXT service design)

Posted by PJB on October 09, 2012 | Classification: Events - Service design | Permalink

It's Time for the UX Community to Toughen Up

Screaming and kicking into the new phase.

"We, the UX crowd, are the new brand leads. We are the ones who will win battles and wars in customer perception and preference. Advertising leaves an impression, but digital interaction creates an immediate emotional state through functional creations."

(Andrew Heaton ~ Johnny Holland Magazine)

Posted by PJB on October 09, 2012 | Classification: Interaction design - User experience | Permalink

Demystifying UX Design: Common False Beliefs and Their Remedies: Part 1

Perceptions are all based upon belief systems.

"There are many common beliefs about UX design that are, unfortunately, based on casual and inaccurate observation. However, through systematically planned and conducted user research, we can see that some of these could not be further from the truth. In this series, I'd like to single out a few such design beliefs that meet two conditions: many product development professionals believe them and little user data supports them."

(Frank Guo ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on October 09, 2012 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Tips on Prototyping for Usability Testing

Make it as real as possible.

"(...) there are some differences between testing a prototype and testing a fully functional Web site or application. In this column, I'll provide some tips that can make your usability studies more successful and help you to avoid problems when testing prototypes."

(Jim Ross a.k.a. @anotheruxguy ~ UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on October 09, 2012 | Classification: Prototyping - Usability | Permalink

When Is User-Centered Design Selfish?

Is there any other design approach than UCD?

"Who benefits from user-centered design according to standard wisdom? Designers and their employers benefit, because they end up with better products. End users (that amorphous generalised group) benefit, because their software-using lives are more satisfactory. Researchers benefit, because they get papers published about their thoughtful and inclusive design methodologies. What I want to know is whether particular users who contribute to the design process actually get anything out of it? And do they stand to lose anything?"

(Judy Robertson ~ Communication of the ACM)

Posted by PJB on October 08, 2012 | Classification: HCI - UCD | Permalink

Tablets and the age of comfortable computing

Tablets are 'just' computers.

"Since their introduction in 2010, tablets have taken the mobile industry by storm, with sales expected to reach 120 million in 2012 alone. Whether novelty or need, tablets are clearly a big and growing part of the mobile device landscape that won’t be going away any time soon. Which begs the question: Now that these shiny new gadgets are finding their way into the world, how are people actually using them? In this talk, Rachel Hinman will share findings from her year-long study of tablet usage as well as provide design implications for designing tablet experiences."

(Rachel Hinman a.k.a. @Hinman ~ The Web and Beyond 2012 ~ Amsterdam)

Posted by PJB on October 08, 2012 | Classification: Mobile design | Permalink

Make It So: Apologizing for bad SciFi UI

Especially, his Keynote design was remarkable.

"Interfaces in sci-fi serve a primarily narrative purpose. They're there to help tell the story of how a character disables the tractor beam, or hacks into the corporate database, or diagnoses the alien infection. But what would happen if we tried to build these same interfaces for the real world? Some would fare just fine. Most would need a little redesign. A few appear to be just plain stupid or broken. They couldn't work the way they appear to. That is, until you use the technique of apologetics to discover that in fact far from being stupid, they're brilliant."

(Chris Noessel a.k.a. @chrisnoessel ~ The Web and Beyond 2012 ~ Amsterdam)

Posted by PJB on October 08, 2012 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

User Satisfaction vs. Performance Metrics

All you can measure...

"Users generally prefer designs that are fast and easy to use, but satisfaction isn't 100% correlated with objective usability metrics."

(Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on October 08, 2012 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

An interview with Ben Shneiderman

From the New New to the New. There's progress.

"HCI courses are still not mandatory for CS students. It is still a new discipline."

(It's our research)

Posted by PJB on October 05, 2012 | Classification: HCI - Interviews | Permalink

Why Big Content Is Worth the Risk

So from Big Data, to Big Content to Big Wisdom?

"We all want the low-hanging fruit, but let’s be honest - the low-hanging fruit is rotten, bruised, and covered with the grubby fingerprints of all the other spoiled brats pawing at it. There's a time for easy wins, but easy only gets you so far. Sadly, I see too many SEOs putting days or weeks of effort into crafting the perfect low-value scheme, when that same time could’ve easily gone into content that has real staying power and drives sales. I'm obsessed with 'Big Content' lately - resources that go beyond our narrow bins of blog posts, videos, and infographics. I'm going to show you how that obsession is paying off, and why building real content is easier than you think."

(Peter J. Meyers a.k.a. @dr_pete ~ SEOMoz)

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

Fixing A Broken User Experience

Addressing design in the enterprise.

"Understanding an organization and its users and designing the right interaction and visual system take exceptional effort. You also need to communicate that system to teams that have already produced work that doesn’t align with it. This isn’t easy work. In this article, we’ll introduce you to a strategy for fixing the broken experience that starts with surface improvements, goes progressively deeper into structural issues and ends with a big organizational shift."

(Stefan Klocek a.k.a. @klocekian ~ Smashing Magazine)

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