David Eagleman wearing the sensory vest

Jason is 20 years old and he’s deaf. He puts on a special vest that’s wired so that when it receives data, it sends pulses to his back.

The vest is connected to a tablet. When I say the word “book” into a microphone that feeds into the tablet, the tablet turns the word into a signal that is sent to the vest. Jason now feels a pattern on his back through his sense of touch. Initially, he can’t tell you what the word is. I keep saying words and he keeps feeling the patterns. Eventually, he’ll be able to tell me the words that he’s hearing. His brain learns to take the pattern and translate that into words.

The interesting thing is that this happens unconsciously. He doesn’t have to consciously work at learning the patterns.

This describes an actual project by David Eagleman, a neuroscientist from the Baylor College of Medicine.

Sensory Substitution — Eagleman calls it sensory substitution. Information comes into your body and brain from your eyes, ears, touch, and so on. But did you know that the brain is actually quite flexible and plastic in this regard? When data from the environment comes in, from any of the senses, the brain figures out the best way to analyze and interpret it. Sometimes you’re consciously aware of the data and its meaning, but most of the time your brain is analyzing data and using that data to make decisions, and you don’t even realize it.

Sensory Addition — Eagleman takes the idea of sensory substitution a step further, to sensory addition. He has people (without hearing impairments) put on the vest. He takes stock market data and uses the same program on the tablet to turn the stock market data into patterns, and sends those patterns to the vest. The people wearing the vest don’t know what the patterns are about. They don’t even know it has anything to do with the stock market. He then hands them another tablet where a screen periodically appears with a big red button and a big green button.

Eagleman tells them to press a button when the colors appear. At first they have no idea why they should press one button versus the other. They’re told to press a button anyway, and when they do, they get feedback about whether they’re wrong or right, even though they have no idea what they are wrong or right about. The buttons are actually buy and sell decisions (red is buy, green is sell) that are related to the data they’re receiving, but they don’t know that.

Eventually, however, their button presses go from random to being right all the time, even though they still don’t know anything consciously about the patterns. Eagleman is essentially sending big data to people’s bodies, and their brains interpret the data and make decisions from it—all unconsciously.

Engaging the unconcsious for big data — Big data refers to large data sets that are combed for predictive analytics. The idea is that if you can collect massive amounts of data, even disparate data, and analyze it for patterns, you can learn important information and make decisions based on that information. Data sets of Internet searches, Twitter messages, meteorology, and more are being collected and analyzed. But how do you convey the information in a way that makes sense? How can you get the human mind to see patterns in what at first seems like meaningless data? The conscious thought process is not very good at this task. The conscious mind can handle only a small subset of data at one time, but the unconscious is great at taking in large amounts of data and finding patterns. If you want to see the patterns in big data, you have to engage the unconscious.

A Sensory Room — Other scientists are also working on the idea. Jonathan Freeman, a professor of psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Paul Verschure, a professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, have created the eXperience Induction Machine (XIM). The XIM is a room with speakers, projectors, projection screens, pressure-sensitive floor tiles, infrared cameras, and a microphone. A person stands in the room and big data visualizations appear on the screen. Freeman and Verschure monitor the response of the person in the room through a headset. They can tell when the person is getting overloaded or tired, and then they can make the visuals simpler.

Go direct — When you work with big data, consider the idea of bypassing complex visual analysis and how to represent the data analytically. It’s probably better to feed the data directly to sense organs and let the brain do the analytics.

For more information — Here’s a great TED Talk by Dr. Eagleman

If you liked this article, check out my new book, which covers this topic and 99 others! It’s shipping any day now.

CodeCombat

CodeCombat is an HTML5 role-playing game (RPG) that teaches you fundamental programming concepts.

In CodeCombat, you play a hero adventuring through the game’s levels. The first level is Kithard Dungeon, which covers basic programming concepts. You’re faced with coding challenges throughout your journey, and if you overcome them, you’ll unlock the next level and earn experience points (XP) that you can use to improve your hero.

CodeCombat is appealing to young, aspiring programmers. According to an in-game survey, 62% of CodeCombat’s users are under 18 years old.

CodeCombat supports five programming languages: JavaScript, CoffeeScript, Lua, and Python. The game covers a wide range of programming topics — strings, variables, method invocation, vector drawing, and much more.

Code Hunt

Code Hunt is a Sci-Fi-themed HTML5 game developed by Microsoft Research.

In this game, you play as a code hunter tasked with repairing code so that it returns the expected result. There are 14 levels, called Sectors in the Code Hunt nomenclature, for you to complete.

Code Hunt supports either Java or C#. Programming concepts you’ll learn include arithmetic, loops, and conditional expressions.

Teachers who would like to extend the game with additional Sectors can do so by first reading the Code Hunt Designer Manual.

CodinGame

CodinGame is a huge suite of challenging games for programmers. If you want to improve your coding skills, playing CodinGame is a fun way to do so.

Over 20 programming languages including PHP, C, and JavaScript are supported by CodinGame. The user interface is feature-packed and can be customized. For example, you can choose your code editor’s style: "Emacs", "Vim", or "Classic" (the default theme).

The game can be played on single player mode or multiplayer mode. In multiplayer mode, you can solve CodinGame challenges with other users.

Screeps

Screeps is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) for JavaScript programmers.

The game is an open-world strategy game where you control units, called creeps, that will help you mine resources, establish your territory, and so forth. Being a multiplayer online game means your creeps will be alongside the creeps of other players.

Controlling your creeps involves writing JavaScript. (Screeps = scripting your creeps.) To learn how to play the game, hit up the docs.

FightCode

In FightCode, the objective is simple: Create a robot that will defeat the robots of other players.

How do you create a robot? By writing some JavaScript. For example, you can use the .rotateCannon() method to rotate your robot’s cannon by a certain number of degrees when a certain event happens.

Before building your indestructible, world-dominating robot, the first step you’ll need to take is to read the docs to learn how to code a robot.

Read Next

10 Puzzle Websites to Sharpen Your Programming Skills

15 Free Books for People Who Code

5 Good Habits That Will Make You a Better Coder

Jacob Gube is the founder of Six Revisions. He’s a front-end developer. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 5 Games That Teach You How to Code appeared first on Six Revisions.

You can’t just stop after creating an experience map. That’s because a good current-state experience map is simply oozing with potential: the potential to create an even better experience. But how do you move forward? How do you see the opportunities? Well, it’s a little easier when you know what to look for, what the patterns of success are.

From a wealth of work in this space, we’ve found some common patterns that have emerged when we travel from current-state experience maps to bringing about future-state experiences. Here are the categories of solutions we’ve seen turn up repeatedly, a list we hope generates ideas and debate over how to best improve the customer experience you’re managing:

Erasing Troughs
A particularly bad point in the experience becomes the memorable moment to customers. By solving these troughs you can turn a low moment in the experience into a smooth moment, letting another great moment stand out for the customer. Or, with a great solution, you might even invert the trough into a new memorable peak in the experience. For example, GE Healthcare redesigned their medical imaging equipment so that children would find the experience less scary.

Early Solutions
A pervasive or reoccurring problem in the experience can often be solved by looking upstream in the experience to find where the problem could be avoided or diminished by setting better expectations or putting the customer on a smoother path. For example, a homebuilder creates an at-home guide for customizing your new home’s build-out so that the decisions would be less daunting when you arrive at their design center.

Strong Starts
Akin to Early Solutions, these are strong starting experiences that set the customer up with better expectations and greater likelihood for actually making it to the rest of the experience. For example, unboxing and on-boarding experiences are designed to get customers started successfully so that they begin engaging with a new product or service and are therefore more likely to adopt it for regular use.

Strong Ends
The end of the experience is one of the two things customers remember about their experience (the other thing being the best or worst part of the experience, according to the Peak-End Rule). Finishing on a relevant high note helps send customers off with a very positive recall of their journey. For example, some services work to give you tangible evidence of what they did for you as a final point of uplift.

Earlier Starts, Later Ends
What’s the customer doing immediately before or immediately after their journey with you? One of the best ways to improve their experience might be by meeting them where they’re at or taking them to the next step of where they’re going. Changing the “goal posts” can change your metrics and results in big ways. For example, take it from Twitter when they gained big by focusing on converting non-users to not just new users, but active users.

Smoother Handoffs
One of the easiest things to find and often the hardest to orchestrate are better handoffs between touchpoints and moments. Customers quit the journey or have big frustrations when they seemingly have to start over again when switching touchpoints. Smoothing these out means erasing the seams between internal business units and departments to work in a forward flow with the customer. Both OpenTable and Starbucks have started offering Uber rides within their mobile apps to remove the seems between finding a location and getting there to enjoy it.

Skips and Jumps
Completely remove steps or stages of the journey that you can do on the customer’s behalf. For example, Intuit’s SnapTax does the data entry work for customers by uploading and transcribing a photo of their W-2 form (a tax form for employees stating how much money they were paid by their employer).

Magnifying Peaks
You might have a strong point in the experience that you do better than anyone, but not every customer experiences it or it simply doesn’t stand out. Magnifying peaks means scaling the peak to everyone possible, setting expectations that something great is going to happen, and then embellishing so the customer feels it full-force. For example, Netflix builds up expectations for the release of it’s own content, such as House of Cards, and makes it available, the entire season in full, to every one of its subscribers.

Total Reimagining
It’s a completely new experience, taking advantage of capabilities that current providers just haven’t or just can’t take advantage of. In many cases, this might involve reversing assumptions about how the experience is enabled. For example, Airbnb has reimagined rentals, orchestrating an entirely new type of experience so you feel at home wherever you are in the world. Today, Airbnb is one of the biggest providers of overnight rentals, yet they don’t own any real estate.

Reordering
The order of stages and steps in the experience is driven by a business process. Meanwhile, the customer’s natural decision-making process happens in a different order. This means re-ordering the business process to work the way the customer does. For example, Warby Parker’s Home Try-On experience moves the purchase moment to a point after you’ve had five days to try out five frames at home.

Intelligent Experiences
Better knowledge of the customer and digital services allows for journeys to feel smarter: journeys that sense context, anticipate needs, proactively adapt, respect people, and continuously measure and improve the outcomes. Yes, I totally stole this from the qualities of “intelligent experiences” of Mike Wittenstein written up in the CX Outlook. For example, Disney’s MagicBand combines knowledge of the guest and knowledge of park conditions to create better experiences within what remains to largely be the same resort environment as always.

Of course, which category of solution depends on your experience. To really improve the customer experience you have, you’re going to need to use not just one, but a few of the types of solutions above.

As we age, we increasingly depend on public services and the community for support. Well-designed public services can greatly affect the lives of the elderly and their experiences of healthcare. Experientia collaborated with DesignSingapore Council on understanding how the elderly interact with public services and how we can look towards improving their lives with design.

On 1 October, DesignSingapore Council will launch the book “Design for Ageing Gracefully – Rethinking Health & Wellness for the Elderly (Public Services)“, that it co-developed with Experientia, the global user experience research and design consultancy.

The publication is the result of a major research ethnography and service design project focused on elderly Singaporeans and their caregivers. The project was conducted in anticipation of a profound upsurge in the aged population in Singapore – and how design can help to support, even enrich, the process of ageing. It identifies global trends in the healthcare industry and gaps in people’s experiences in using existing healthcare services, and proposes design innovations for Singapore’s public healthcare system.

The project involved the team of the DesignSingapore Council’s Asian Insights & Design Innovation (AIDI), in addition to Experientia, and is part of the broader “Rethinking Health and Wellness for the Elderly programme” steered by AIDI, with the participation of healthcare professionals, infocomm specialists and designers.

The book launch will take place on October 1st, 10am at the National Design Centre auditorium in Singapore. Michele Visciola, president of Experientia, will be a guest speaker at the launch.

The book will be available for download after the launch.

Here are some of the leading insights and trends, as well as design proposals and concepts:

INSIGHTS/TRENDS

It takes a village: new models of care
There is greater attention on deepening relationship and extending connection between individuals and their family members, friends, community, caregivers and care partners. There will be a shift towards “networked care”.

Internet of everything: technology and care
Information can be used and turned into actions to create new capabilities, richer experiences and unprecedented economic opportunity for businesses, individuals and countries. Technology will also alleviate the current intensive labour and resources needed in care-giving.

The new face of the elderly: awareness and prevention
Next-generation seniors must now start to prepare for their future by supporting and making an impact on care for the aged. Raising awareness, educating and empowering people to embrace and prepare for ageing allows them to play an active and valuable role in society.

DESIGN PROPOSALS/CONCEPTS

Coordinated, holistic care agency integrating bottom-up and top-down approaches
An appointed agency that coordinates, manages and integrates the programmes implemented by government agencies and social groups such as voluntary work organisations, service providers, grassroot leaders, caregivers and community groups.

Pairing up students with elderly person for activities such as a walk, an MRT ride, or grocery shopping
Facilitate matching, incentivising and ideas. Student participants will get school reward points. This is a social innovation concept that connects people, cultures, healthcare and infrastructure.

Mobile café in HDB void decks by “senior navigators” who are paid senior citizen volunteers
Open café set-up which provides beverages – and is also a point to disseminate information on health, provide financial and nutrition counselling and other meaningful services.

The post [Experientia book] Ethnography on elderly health and wellness appeared first on Putting people first.

Straight Facts

• Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
• Balsamiq Mockups
• Sketch
• Keynote
• Macaw

1. Introduction
2. Empathize
3. Define
4. Ideate
5. Prototype
6. Test

The Good

The Curriculum

The Web App

I feel real, real good about those check marks.

The (Well, My) Mentor

Be Forewarned

The Time Constraints

The Community

One of my projects—A UX research plan—which everyone else in the course can see.

The Final Verdict

• As an experienced designer, I had new moments of insight when working on old concepts, like playing with “How Might We” statements—questions that guide the quest for solutions based on insights gained in research—for the first time in ages. Awesome.
• Mentors are invaluable. My mentor in particular—once again—she rocked.
• Though it’s rocky at the moment, I applaud Designlab’s efforts in starting community interaction. It is really, really tough, and I imagine with time they’ll be going strong.
• I’m left wondering how the other courses are, which is a good sign!

The post UX Research & Strategy: a Designlab Course Review appeared first on UX Booth.

Hmmm, it likely took you 15 seconds to read the above paragraph, so maybe I’ve already lost you.

Clicking and/or sharing doesn’t equal reading — A lot of money has changed hands over pay-per-click and page views, both of which measure the success of online advertising by counting clicks. Haile says that’s the wrong measurement — Instead of clicks, we should concentrate on the amount of attention the audience gives, and whether they come back.

Another action that is traditionally sought after is sharing on social media. Can you assume that if people share an article, for example, on Facebook, or tweet about it, that they’ve read what they’re sharing?

The relationship between reading and sharing is weak —  Articles that are read all the way through aren’t necessarily shared. Articles that are shared have likely not been read past 60 percent.

According to Adrianne Jeffries, Buzzeed and Upworthy report that most tweets occur either at 25 percent through the article or at the end of the article, but not much in between those two extremes.

Takeaways (if you even got this far!):

• Don’t assume people are reading the whole article.
• Put your most important information before the 60 percent point of the article.
• When you want people to share the article, remind them to do that about 25 percent of the way through the article and again at the end.
• Don’t assume that if people shared the article that means they read all or even most of it.

For more information:

Haile, Tony. 2014. “What You Think You Know about the Web Is Wrong.” http://time. com/12933/what-you-think-you-know-about-the-web-is-wrong

Adrienne. 2014. “You’re Not Going to Read This.” http://www.theverge. com/2014/2/14/5411934/youre-not-going-to-read-this

If you liked this article (and if you actually read to the end!), you might want to check out my new book, which covers this topic and 99 others! It’s shipping any day now.

Lastly, It might be too late to ask this (more than 25% through the article!): If you liked this article, please share it with your network.

View Larger Version

Note: For Photoshop commands that are displayed in blue, such as "Quit", "Close", and "Merge Layer", you must also press Ctrl on Windows or Command on Mac OS. For example, to issue the "Quit" command, press Ctrl + Q if you’re on Windows or Command + Q if you’re on Mac OS.

This excellent resource is by ZeroLag. ZeroLag provided me with a special version of their existing Adobe Photoshop CS6 Shortcuts Cheatsheet. The version I posted here doesn’t display their logo.

Related Content

• 70 Excellent Photoshop Resources
• Open Source and Free Alternatives to Photoshop
• Why Sketch is Ideal for Web Designers

Jacob Gube is the founder of Six Revisions. He’s a front-end developer. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Cheatsheet: Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts appeared first on Six Revisions.

UX strategist and researcher Alex Schmidt argues that in a world full of security breaches, snooping, and third-party data aggregators, you should know where your users’ data goes. In this article, she explains why it’s time we make privacy part of our product design process—and helps us figure out how to build it into our requirements and skill sets.

“Just as we have a responsibility to design accessible products, even when it’d be easier not to, we have a responsibility to consider privacy. We all have a role in shaping the way products are delivered, ensuring they serve users’ interests in an era when the notion of private life has been thoroughly compromised. So let’s do it mindfully, not limiting our considerations to features that users see. Instead, let’s look underneath and above, reach further into the future, and think bigger about what user experience is.”

The post Privacy is UX appeared first on Putting people first.

Making a Market for Acts of God: The Practice of Risk Trading in the Global Reinsurance Industry
By Paula Jarzabkowski, Rebecca Bednarek, and Paul Spee
Oxford Scholarship Online
April 2015

Abstract

Reinsurance is financial market trading in the risk of unpredictable and devastating disasters—e.g. Hurricane Katrina or the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami—that are increasing in frequency, severity, and cost. Reinsurance insures insurance companies, enabling them to pay claims arising from their losses; a market mechanism that provide a critical social and economic safety net.

To demonstrate how risk is calculated and traded globally, this book uses real-life tales from an ethnographic, “fly-on-the-wall” study of the global reinsurance industry over three annual cycles. Underwriters were shadowed around the world as they traded risks through multiple disasters. Readers witness the desperate hours of pricing Japanese risks during March 2011, while the devastating aftermath of the Tōhoku earthquake is unfolding. There are authentic observations of reinsurers in Bermuda, London, Continental Europe, and South East Asia as they evaluate, price and compete for different risks during their everyday practice.

Understanding how this market for disasters works has never been more critical, given the impact of climate change and increased global connectivity, where a flood in one country can trigger losses to supply chains around the world. The book develops a novel concept of how global markets work, advancing scholarship and challenging current thinking about how financial markets trade in intangible assets such as risk.

Authors

Paula Jarzabkowski, Professor, Cass Business School, City University London
Rebecca Bednarek, Research Fellow, Cass Business School, City University London
Paul Spee, Senior Lecturer, Queensland University

Review

A reflection by Gillian Tett, Financial Times journalist and social anthropologist:

As consolidation has taken hold, this has cut sharply the number of players who handle reinsurance products — meaning that the sector now looks less like a diversified “market” than a club. And while the insurance companies say they want to “diversify” their risks, they are all doing this in exactly the same way — which produces less, not more, diversity.

Video

In this Insurance Institute of London lecture (April 2015), Professor Paula Jarzabkowski launched her book “Making a Market for Acts of God: The Practice of Risk-Trading in the Global Reinsurance Industry” which explains the practice of risk training in the global reinsurance industry today.

The post [Book] The first-ever ethnographic study of the global reinsurance industry appeared first on Putting people first.

Understanding the Connected Home: Thoughts on living in tomorrow’s connected home
By Peter Bihr and Michelle Thorne
Berlin, September 2015
Available on GitBook

We know that connectivity increasingly makes its way into our living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms. Into our smoke detectors, lights, door locks, kitchen scales and ovens. We bring in more connectivity through fitness tracking wristbands and our phones and tablets, and take it along when we get into the driving computers that are our cars.

Understanding the connected home – how it can be structured it, how it can be designed, how we can engage with it and turn it off – these questions will be essential for living in this century.

This publication kicks off an exploration of various aspects of the connected home. It started out as a series of blogposts, but it became clear that we would want to increase the scope. So in a one week book sprint, we put down the ground work for an ongoing research project.

This collection of content – we consider it a 0.9 version of a book that is still in beta – will help us map out the terrain, and start conversations with future collaborators. It also serves as a pool of content that is still under development.

The authors

Peter Bihr explores the impact of emerging technologies. He founded The Waving Cat to help apply the insights through consulting, R&D, conference and publications.
As a strategy advisor, he helps organizations large and small excel in an environment shaped by digitization, connectedness and rapid change.
He has co-founded and chaired many acclaimed emerging technology conferences including ThingsCon, UIKonf and Cognitive Cities Conference, and serves as co-chair of Interaction16.

Michelle Thorne wants to challenge the power structures of the past by making and teaching technology differently. She explores the web of things at the annual Mozilla Festival, in a co-authored blog with Jon Rogers and by facilitating workshops.
As Mozilla’s Director of Web Literacy Programs, Michelle creates volunteer-led programs that cultivate leaders who teach and advocate for the web. Through a network of local learning clubs, grassroots teaching campaigns and annual leadership development events, she’s served thousands of professional educators and activists.
Michelle has a dedicated interest in open practices and design, contributing to Open Design Now, curating Berlin’s DMY Maker Lab and co-authoring the book An Open Web.

The post [Free eBook] Understanding the Connected Home appeared first on Putting people first.

Our world is continuing to become more complex, more intense and more data driven. Yet counter-intuitively, this is making the human element more and more important.

In an interview at Intel’s Transform IT show, Genevieve Bell, Vice President and Fellow at Intel, explains that more data does not equal more truth, it just equals more data.

In the interview [Episode 1 | Episode 2], she shares that we need to understand the “why’s” if we want to make sense of all this data and prepare for the transition as technology becomes more and more invisible and organic – and why this represents a huge opportunity for leaders that can embrace the human side of the future.

The post [Video] Genevieve Bell on finding the ‘why’ in a complex, data-driven world appeared first on Putting people first.

Big data opens up whole world of insight for designers, but only if we focus on the actual users behind the numbers, writes Maya Nix, the Marketing Content Producer for ClickTale, in this UX Magazine article.

“When it comes to UX, before we jump on the big data bandwagon, we need to challenge its predominance. UX professionals cannot create an experience for figures in a database or tracking systems, and designers must keep focusing on real people rather than on numbers. Online experiences must remain geared toward real users and their interests, goals, and desires.”

The post Is it time to forget Big Data and focus on real people? appeared first on Putting people first.

Cost reduction, on the other hand, lies at the hands of the chief operating officer or the chief financial officer, corporate offices that are rarely visited by business anthropologists.

Andreas Wester Hansen believes a fruitful new alley of engagement for corporate anthropologists would be to get involved in cost optimization initiatives in large companies

The post Using business anthropology for strategic cost reduction appeared first on Putting people first.

Strategy Means Putting People First

• What do they need to be able to do, and why do these things matter to them?
• What do they want from us, and how is that related to other goals they may have?
• How does using our product fit with other products they may be using?
• What do they expect, based on their experiences with similar (or even dissimilar) products?

Why the Strategy Plane Rules Them All

The UX designer’s job is not only to address information concerns and the related needs of users — it’s also to insist on being very selective and analytical in designing task flows and functional elements that serve a greater goal. And that greater goal is what I call the value loop: creating something that delivers value to users, so that value also comes back to the product’s creator in the form of increased use, efficiency or good old fashioned dollars and cents. UX strategy is the origin of the value loop, the part that you absolutely, positively have to get right if you want the finished product to be around longer than ten minutes. The strategy plane is where you think first: where you work to uncover and qualify user needs, where you ensure that you understand all relevant business objectives. It’s where you begin planting seeds of product success — or failure. Correctly identify and address these needs and objectives, and you deliver an experience that is the answer to someone’s prayer. Guess wrong, or don’t do enough digging, and you identify the wrong needs and objectives. Which turns the product into everyone’s worst nightmare, including yours. When it comes right down to it, design of any kind really means problem solving. Here’s some advice given to me by a colleague many years ago that couldn’t possibly be more true: If you’re a designer — experienced or fresh out of school — I want you to understand that you will not find inspiration looking at the work of other designers. Let that sink in a minute. I say again: you will not find inspiration. What you will find is someone else’s solution to someone else’s problem. You’re looking at the end result, not the process. And the process, my friends, is where the power of design really lies. The first thing you have to do, no matter what you’re creating, is identify the problem — and then make sure it’s actually the right problem to solve. When I was in college, my professors drilled the following fact into our heads, over and over across our four years together: If you don’t come up with a good solution to something, it’s likely that you don’t have a very good problem. That’s a roundabout way of saying that the key to successful design is identifying the right problems to solve. User experience design essentially explores feasible solutions to strategic design problems:

• What matters most?
• What issues have the most impact, the most measurable value?
• What can we do to address these issues, and do we have the time, money and personnel to take that action?
• Is it realistic that we can provide a solution to this particular, precise, complex problem?

Anything involving human beings is inherently messy. We’re interesting creatures. What we say doesn’t always match what we do, and in general we can be very difficult to please. So any problems that involve our using something are typically difficult to solve. And if they aren’t, raise the red flag — because that’s a sure sign you’re on the wrong path. Joe Natoli’s new book, Think First: My No-Nonsense Approach to Creating Successful Products, Memorable User Experiences + Very Happy Customers will be available in eBook and Paperback October 5th, 2015. Visit givegoodux.com/think-first to find out how you can get 3 free bonuses worth $600 when you buy Think First the week of launch!

The post Think First: A No-Nonsense Approach appeared first on UX Booth.

This new Mr Tappy model is about 1/3 smaller than the original model, making it easier for you to lug around in your laptop bag and less tiring for users to hold during testing.

Comes with a neat little carry bag.

Inside the box you get various bits and bobs. The device itself is basically just some aluminum struts with a base at one end to attach your mobile device, and an HD webcam at the other end.

The webcam is mounted on a ball joint and the couplings are really well machined so it doesn’t wobble around.

The base has either velcro attachments or a suction pad on the other side. The suction pad sticks to the smooth surface of an iPhone surprisingly well. I initially started to panic thinking I’d glued it on permenantly, but it actually comes off with a gentle twist, leaving no residue.

You also get an extra arm (useful if you’re testing huge tablets) and a connector for other kinds of cameras.

Finally here’s a screengrab of the video quality. Even though it’s not pin sharp, it does automatic white balancing and focusing, which makes it a lot less hassle to use than alternatives like the Ziggi HD. The benefit of Mr Tappy over a software solution like Reflector is that it works on any device with no preparation. Your users can just stick their own device on the pad and you’re away.

I developed the workshop at Involution Studios in late 2012 with Erik Dahl and Rachel Mock for Interaction13 in Toronto. The workshop evolves from physically acting out each binary, experimenting with various combinations of the binaries to create efforts, and then actually using the efforts in something that resembles a really really weird bodystorming exercise. The value comes from the physical exploration of a framework–you really learn a lot just from taking an abstract thing and making it real with your body, and in doing so, it becomes very clear that the relationship between our cognition (especially from an emotional perspective) and our physicality is a two-way relationship.

The workshop is hard to explain, but it looks exactly like this:

After the workshop, we got some really great feedback on potential applications of the framework, such as gestural input, observational research, developing video personas, service design, interface design, and more. The most common feedback was around the re-framing of the fundamental understanding of movement:

As I walked down the sidewalk, it was as though there were a new UI inside my brain–like ‘virtual reality’, except it was just ‘reality’–and the meters in the heads-up display had labels of weight, space, and time.
Then I started messing with the dials, and it was kind of crazy exploring that 2x2x2 while passing as a passerby. (I also realized that my default walk-to-work gait is strong, direct, and sustained, though kicks into sudden within two blocks of Market Street.)

If you’re interested in bringing the workshop to your studio, email me at scott@adaptivepath.com

But… we all also know it’s a hassle to create contracts. If you’re a solo freelancer or a small agency, chances are, you already have way too much stuff on your plate. Also, you might not have the necessary legal background to be able to create an effective project contract.

This is where Bonsai, a resource that provides free contracts for freelance designers and developers, can help you. They had a Stanford-educated lawyer write a contract template that’s easy to understand, and have decided to share it for free.

Here are the steps for creating your own freelance contract using Bonsai:

1. Click the Create a Contract button.

   

2. You’ll then be asked what contract you’ll need. You have three choices: Development, Design, or Development & Design.

   

3. You’ll then be asked to fill in some details about you and the project — basic info, scope of work, payment terms, and the time frame of your project.

   Fill out some basic info.

   Describe the scope of work.

   Specify how you’d like to get paid.

   Specify the timeframe/schedule of the project.

After all of that, you’ll end up with a customized freelance contract that looks something like this:

This is a pretty good service that Bonsai is offering for free. It seemed too good to be true, so I emailed the co-founder of Bonsai, Matt Brown, to see what the deal was. "The contracts are totally free and will always be, since we don’t think we should charge for something that should be standard," Brown said. "We’re working on other products that more directly help freelancers get paid and we’ll take a cut of revenue from that."

Related Content

• 6 Good Tips for Your Freelance Design Contracts
• Avoiding Unscoped Work from Unreasonable Clients
• A Beginner’s Guide to the Business Side of Freelancing

Jacob Gube is the founder of Six Revisions. He’s a front-end developer. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook.

The post An Easy Way to Create a Freelance Contract for Your Projects appeared first on Six Revisions.

The post A Strategy Can Make Or Break Design appeared first on UX Booth.

BrightByte Studio

nclud

Digital Kitchen

W&Co

creanet

Weightshift

Nine Sixty

Acumenium

Stockholm Design Lab

Dogstudio

Hum Creative

ustwo

AQuest

Studio Brave

Huncwot

b.a.-ba

Folch

Ghostly Ferns

C100

ManvsMachine

MamboMambo

2A Studio

Weblounge

Night Owls

VCG

Appart

Rifle

Future Büro

Mast

BANK

INDUSTRY

Large Creative

hive

Immersive Garden

SouthSouthWest

Hi-ReS!

Public-Library

Clusta

Lab21

Project 53

Level 2 Design

Burnkit

ISL

King

Colt

Brooklyn United

BASIC

Oxen

Sabbath Visuals

Stupid Studios

Related Content

• 50 Beautiful Blog Designs
• 50 Awesome App Websites for Inspiration
• 50 Portfolio Websites for Inspiration

Jacob Gube is the founder of Six Revisions. He’s a front-end developer. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 50 Design Agency Websites for Inspiration appeared first on Six Revisions.

These are all valuable, mind you, but they’re only a small part of what it takes to deliver a successful product–one that provides value to users and, therefore, value back to the business. One that helps people do things quicker, easier, faster, more accurately or more efficiently, in addition to looking good and not causing eye strain.

Great UX isn’t a product of the tools you use, and it isn’t what you build or design on screen. It’s how you think about those things.

Great UX isn’t a product of the tactical work you do; it’s a product of how you decide what tactical work to do. It’s not the decisions you make; it’s how long and hard you think about and arrive at those decisions. It’s not about how content, data or controls look on the screen; it’s about whether those things belong there in the first place.

How UX Design Typically Happens (And Why It’s Wrong)

I spend a great deal of time working with design and development teams in enterprise organizations and mid-size companies, and there are some commonalities in the way they begin the process of UX, design, and development.

And before you read this next bit, I want you to understand that I’m not picking on anyone; I absolutely understand why it happens.

Here’s what I see a great deal of:

• Starting with themes. For example, if the team’s building with Bootstrap, the first thing that happens is they choose a pre-built Bootstrap theme and run with it. The chosen theme essentially becomes the foundation of the project’s UI and UX design, and it stays that way through launch. The pre-built theme probably looks nice, but it was created in a vacuum. The theme doesn’t take into consideration the project’s unique design and development challenges.
• Starting with the work of other designers or developers. One of the most daunting things in life is a blank page, or a blank screen. Starting is the hardest part. So we hit up Pinterest, Behance, Dribbble, etc. to look at the freshest, newest, hippest UIs. But if you’re a designer or developer — experienced or fresh out of school — I want you to understand that you will not find the answer looking at the work of others. What you will find is someone else’s solution to someone else’s problem. The problem you have to solve belongs exclusively to you, to your client, and to your users. Mimicking someone else’s work won’t solve it.
• Starting with current UI trends. Flat design, anyone? Flat design has obviously become a widespread trend. And while it’s appropriate in some instances, it’s being applied haphazardly to all manner of interactions. Designers are adopting the look without taking the time to think about whether it’s appropriate for the situation or whether people will understand what they see. And a great deal of flat design I see is applied without visual affordances, which makes it difficult for the user to understand that what they’re seeing is interactive. That it can be tapped or swiped or clicked to make something happen. Visual affordances clearly communicate purpose and function,and you cannot remove them and expect people to know what to do.

Why Does This Happen?

There are some very good reasons people take these approaches. In most cases, these courses of action with regards to UX design are symptoms of one or more of these scenarios:

• The team is short-handed and out of time. They’re working within a ridiculously compressed timeframe that doesn’t allow for any exploration or investigation into what’s most appropriate or even what the real strategic objectives are. The only objective is just to get the project completed.
• Other departments or management personnel are making the UX and design decisions. Someone is saying "make it look like Amazon," or whatever site, app or system they’re enamored with or believe to be best practice. Or they’re saying "we need to move to flat design like everyone else." The point is, they’re mandating solutions, usually before the team even understands what the problems are.
• The team is being asked to do things they don’t have a lot of experience with. If I had a nickel for every time a team of developers were tasked with the additional mountainous job of designing the UI and making sure the UX was great, I’d be retired and living on a desert island with little umbrellas in my drinks. Here’s the thing: UX is not UI is not Development is not Programming is not… you get the idea. It’s more than a little unfair to ask someone to do something they have no experience in or training for. But that’s exactly what happens; it’s a lot like asking your plumber to fix your car.

The Answer? Think First. Design Next.

The title of my new book, Think First, reflects my firm belief that strategic thinking is the foundation of great UX. Think First was created on the idea that a little strategic thinking goes a very long way. And that if you think first, you’ll find that the foundations of good UX will be evident in all you do. It’s the most critical part of everything we do as UXers, designers, developers, business analysts, product owners, and so forth. Because if you skip that part, or if you guess at what matters most, you’re likely designing and building something that people either don’t want or can’t use.

So the answer to the problems we’re discussing here is this: Think first. Design next.

Everyone, every member of any team, can and should contribute to great UX.

How? By changing the way they think about what they do during the day. By making sure everyone understands the strategy behind what’s being built. By getting everyone on the team in the habit of questioning what they’re about to do, of asking themselves questions like:

• Does the potential reward to users or to the business equal the time and effort we’re going to spend doing this?
• Does this feature or function really matter to people? Is it in line with what we believe they’ll find useful, usable or valuable?
• How do they expect this feature/function to work? Does this workflow run counter to what they’re used to?
• Will our users understand what this label means?
• Is what’s on this screen in line with what we know users need to see or do first? Is this data point we’re showing on an already crowded screen critical in enabling the user to understand or act, or is it just noise?

The answers build the foundation of the user experience. And when everyone filters their decisions and activities through that foundation, those daily decisions and activities change. For the better. And when you can’t do anything about unreasonable time and budget constraints, you’ll at least make better use of the time over the target you do have. You’ll be focusing on the important instead of the urgent.

Related Content

• UX Design Tips for Your App
• A Quick Introduction to Agile UX Design
• How Fonts Affect the User Experience

Joe Natoli is the author of Think First, a no-nonsense approach to creating successful products, memorable user experiences and happy customers. His online UX courses serve over 30,000 students, and he has consulted with and trained Fortune 500 and 100 organizations for nearly three decades. His articles, tips and advice can be found at givegoodux.com.

The post Why Great UX Starts Between Your Ears (Not on the Screen) appeared first on Six Revisions.

LABS ON THE RISE

The Breakfast B•Line

ENTER O3 LABS

O3 THEME MUSIC

There’s No Snooze Button on Awesome

SO FAR, SO GOOD

• Keep it simple—I’d argue that some of our best labs work thus far has been our mini-labs projects. They basically have little-to-no-budget and are generally built to satisfy logistical problems around the office. Our Roombot project is an example of this. It’s a native OS X app that connects with our Google Calendars and office lights. As meeting times come to an end, the lights dim and people are notified that it’s time to clear out for the next group. Believe it or not, this only took about a week to produce and has found its way to client proposals already.
• Value, not polish—It’s easy to go off on tangents with these things. As an agency, we’re crazy about fine points and extra polish on everything we do. With labs work however, we needed to change that mindset to focus on delivering value, not polish. So, for example, interfaces tend to be minimal and rather bland in favor of providing more functionality.
• Empathy for our clients—I think the best result of our labs work is how much it has made us empathize for our clients. While a core tenant of our business is to collaborate and “partner”, sometimes it can be difficult to see things from a client’s perspective when you’re deep in the trenches. When we’re building our own products, we’re far more cost conscious from both a time and materials standpoint.
• New skills and services to offer—Certainly the most important value for O3 as a business is to develop our core skillset in order to create more value for our clients. From a technology perspective, this means that we’re starting to think outside of the browser to provide solutions that transcend desktop or mobile devices. From an experience standpoint, we’re now forced to consider physical processes as they relate to the digital experiences we create.
• Great for marketing—So while it’s not our only reason for implementing this program, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also state how successful it has been as a marketing initiative. We’ve received numerous mentions in various publications. That’s a win / win.

TO LAB OR NOT TO LAB

The post Do Innovation Labs Live Up to the Hype? appeared first on UX Booth.

1. Brain Sparks

This podcast is hosted by usability and UI design expert, Jared Spool. This podcast offers up a ton of value because you will hear many industry leaders — the same folks who frequent the conference circuits — share insights on usability, UX design, and UI design.

My favorite episode: Kim Goodwin – Using Scenarios to solve problems. In this episode, Kim and Jared talk about how user scenarios are great for expressing design problems and desired solutions by putting the user and his/her requirements in the proper context.

2. The Dirt Show

The Dirt Show is a podcast hosted by the team behind the UX design agency, Fresh Tilled Soil. One cool thing about this podcast is some topics follow a mini-series format, with multiple episodes and different guests talking about the same topic. For example, they have a mini-series on topics such as "designing your career" and "designing the future".

My favorite episode: Designing for Space Exploration with Jesse Kriss of NASA’s JPL. To date, this is in my opinion the best episode of The Dirt Show. This particular episode talks about how NASA uses hologram and virtual reality technology to create 3D worlds that mimic data captured by Curiosity, one of the Mars exploration rovers. For science! You can really feel the enthusiasm in the hosts’ voices because the topic is so cool.

3. The UX Intern

You should listen to The UX Intern podcast for a couple of reasons: There are only 12 episodes, so it will be easy for you to catch up and complete the whole series, and the episodes feature an all-star cast of best-selling authors and speakers in the UX industry. The likes of Steve Krug, of Don’t Make Me Think fame, and thought leaders whose work you will eventually come across if you are a UX professional, such as Aaron Walter from MailChimp, have made appearances on The UX Intern.

My favorite episode: I can’t pick one particular episode because I think each one is a gem in its own right. I recommend going ahead and giving them all a listen.

4. UX Podcast

This podcast broadcasts every other week and has some really high-quality content. The hosts regularly appear at UX design conferences, interviewing speakers right from the stage for UX Podcast episodes. They also do what they call "link-shows" where they take a few key articles that are trending and discuss the implications of the ideas presented in the articles.

My favorite episode: Imposter syndrome with Amy Silvers & Lori Cavallucci. While this podcast is mostly about UX, my favorite episode is a deep conversation about imposter syndrome. I believe that this episode helps a lot of working professionals who don’t know that what they are feeling and going through is common.

5. UX & Growth

The recently-launched UX & Growth podcast focuses on how startups can leverage UX to help grow their company. This podcast contains a ton of high-quality content and good discussions around topics surrounding UX design. It’s interesting to learn about UX from a perspective that’s not focused on design, but rather on business objectives.

My favorite episode: Human to Human UX. This episode covers how companies can use the human connection to enhance how people feel about brands. They mention some good examples of companies that do this well.

6. UX Pod

Although UX Pod hasn’t released a new podcast episode since late-2014, it’s still a treasure trove of information. If you are new to UX, this podcast is a great place to start.

My favorite episode: Designing good five-second tests. In this episode, the discussion revolves around five-second tests for rapid design feedback. They discuss how and when to use this type of test, and share examples of when it’s effective and when it’s counterproductive.

7. UX Radio

UX Radio is a podcast about information architecture (IA), UX, and design.

My favorite episode: Curating UX Expertise with Louis Rosenfeld.

8. UX Mastery Podcast

UX Mastery is a website that hosts a lot of useful articles and content related to user experience design. The site also has an infrequently updated podcast.

9. UX Discovery Session

The host of this podcast, Gerard Dolan, interviews prominent people in the UX field. What’s up with the name of the podcast? According to the site, "A discovery session is an opportunity to learn about a relevant topic, generate ideas that expand a new technique or practice, or brainstorm concepts and ideas for the next new thing."

10. IncrementalUX podcast

At this point, you may have realized how passionate I am about UX and podcasts. I’ve realized that you can, in fact, learn a lot about the subject just by listening to podcasts while on the go (for example, during your daily commute to work).

That had me wondering how awesome it would be if I started my own podcast and got a chance to interview industry leaders in the field of UX. By seeking out experts and teasing out UX design techniques from some of the best minds in the industry, I hope to help people incorporate user experience design into their workflows. So I started the IncrementalUX podcast. Feel free to give my podcast a try and give me your feedback.

For a taste of IncrementalUX content, check out this episode: User Research with Danielle Smith. Dr. Smith is an exceptionally talented person, and we talk about several techniques for user research and testing in the episode.

What’s Your Favorite UX Podcast?

This is obviously not an exhaustive list of UX podcasts. I’m curious to find out what your favorite UX podcasts are, and I look forward to checking them out.

Related Content

• Quick Overview of User Experience for Web Designers
• A Quick Introduction to Agile UX Design
• UX Design Tips for Your App

Vinay Raghu is a UX consultant based in New Haven, Connecticut. He’s the founder and host of the IncrementalUX podcast. Previously, he was a senior UX engineer at Enqos and Runway2Street. Connect with Vinay via his website viii.in, Twitter, Facebook, and GitHub.

The post 10 Awesome UX Podcasts appeared first on Six Revisions.

Why Mentorship?

Designing Mentorships

My mentor did a really great job of not only helping me with the questions I had during the course, but [also,] during our first session, I remember how she encouraged me to finish the course and gave me tips on how to manage my time. This really helped to stay on course.” —Tim Akinbo, UX Research & Strategy student

My mentor was always helpful and engaging–and was never afraid to be honest about…the real world. I never felt like I was being judged for being a beginner; all of her advice was understanding and helpful for where I am in my career.” -Carrie Roberts, Design 101 student

Learn by Doing (but not in a vacuum)

Traditionally, we’ve been trained to regard the creative process as something that should be kept to ourselves. We’re supposed to toil in secrecy, keeping our ideas and our work under lock and key, waiting until we have a magnificent product to show before we try to connect with others. But human beings are interested in other human beings and what other human beings do. By sharing our process, we allow for the possibility of people having an ongoing connection with us and our work, which helps us move more of our product.” – Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!

Not All Feedback is Equal

What Comes Next?

• Seek ways to share work and gather feedback: Develop a habit of sharing works in progress, online or in person. Sites like dribbble.com are exclusively meant for this purpose. Establishing a tumblr is a less structured but equally great way to start.
• Become a mentor and pay it forward: Check company resources and opportunities to mentor other designers and researchers at work, or, check out Designlab’s current course offerings and mentor designers and researchers outside of the office.

The post The Value of Modern-Day Mentorship appeared first on UX Booth.

Over the past decade, Gallup has observed a growing arms race among brands to implement bigger and better customer experience platforms. These systems — also called customer experience platforms, customer experience management or CEX management — aim to capture customer feedback, analyze how a company manages and resolves customer problems and provide actionable insights to improve the customer experience.

Using this technology enables companies to quickly amass stockpiles of data about a customer’s experience at each touchpoint between a customer and a company, whether interactions are online or offline, mobile or social, or in person. Many companies purchase these systems hoping that the technology will help them bridge the gap from the corporate office to the front lines, ensuring employees consistently execute on the brand promise in each interaction.

The problem is, no customer experience technology platform, by itself, can provide deep insights into why customers do what they do. These systems can track an infinite number of transactions, but they can’t identify the key actions the company must take to gain more fully engaged customers.

To fully engage customers and achieve long-term growth, companies must connect with customers on an emotional level. Though customer measurement technologies offer valuable data, they often fail to provide insights into how companies can establish this emotional connection. By combining quantitative measurement with qualitative research and analysis, companies can determine which customer touchpoints carry the most emotional significance — and which are the most likely to build customer engagement.

The post Gallup: quantitative customer experience metrics aren’t enough appeared first on Putting people first.

Excerpt (above) – full replay

Abstract
H​ow do we nurture conditions in which a diffuse creativity can flourish and evolve through collaborative organisations and, in so doing, realise meaningful steps towards a more resilient and sustainable society?
In his talk at the RSA (on 30 June), Ezio Manzini, author of Design when Everybody Designs (MIT Press, 2015), builds on the experiences of the DESIS Network (DESIS: design for social innovation towards sustainability) drawing a picture of what design experts can do to amplify and support the on-going flow of radical, bottom-up social innovation and a more resourceful social economy. He describes emerging forms of collaboration between design professionals and others, where new solutions are suggested and new meanings created. A new paradigm and practices emerge based on a more engaged, innovative and sustainable way of being in the world.
In the excerpt above, Professor Ezio Manzini explores how emerging forms of collaboration in design practice are driving radical, bottom-up social innovation.

The speaker
Ezio Manzini, a leading thinker in design for sustainability, founded DESIS, an international network on design for social innovation and sustainability. He is Honorary Professor at the Politecnico di Milano, Chair Professor at University of the Arts London, and currently guest Professor at Tongji University, Shanghai, and Jiangnan University, Wuxi.

The post Ezio Manzini talk at the RSA (London) appeared first on Putting people first.

Back in May 2015, the Urban Futures team of the Future Cities Catapult (based in London, UK) completed a design research project around cycling.

This short project uses film to sketch out some possibilities of contemporary technologies such as wearables and Internet-of-Things, in order to imagine new user experiences for cyclists.

It’s covered in depth at Dezeen, the Design Catapult research blog, and now Dan Hill has published some background notes on his own blog, City of Sound:

“To some extent it’s an exercise in envisioning a possible future; albeit the future just around the corner. But the film attempts to locate that future in the everyday, to enable folks like transport infrastructure providers or technology companies to understand how they could work together to improve the ‘user experience’ of cycling. While suitably open, and non-prescriptive, it gives us a token to have those conversations with.”

The team was Claire Mookerjee (Project Lead, Urbanism) with design by Anastasia Vikhornova and film by Christian Schmeer, joined by Rebecca Jones (Technologist) from the Catapult’s Lab team with “a bit of input” from Dan Hill early on.

The post Prototypes capturing new user experiences for bicycles appeared first on Putting people first.

Swimming with Sharks: My Journey into the World of the Bankers
by Joris Luyendijk
Guardian Faber Publishing
September 2015 – 288 pages

Joris Luyendijk, an investigative journalist and anthropologist, knew as much about banking as the average person: almost nothing. Bankers, he thought, were ruthless, competitive, bonus-obsessed sharks, irrelevant to his life. And then he was assigned to investigate the financial sector.

Joris immersed himself in the City for a few years, speaking to over 200 people – from the competitive investment bankers and elite hedge-fund managers to downtrodden back-office staff, reviled HR managers and those made redundant in the regular ‘culls’. Breaking the strictly imposed code of secrecy and silence, these insiders talked to Joris about what they actually do all day, how they see themselves and what makes them tick. They opened up about the toxic hiring and firing culture. They confessed to being overwhelmed by technological and mathematical opacity. They admitted that when Lehman Brothers went down in 2008 they hoarded food, put their money in gold and prepared to evacuate their children to the countryside. They agreed that nothing has changed since the crash.

Joris had a chilling realisation. What if the bankers themselves aren’t the real enemy? What if the truth about global finance is more sinister than that? This is a gripping work of reportage about the time bomb at the heart of our society.

> Personal page | Former Guardian Banking blogger

The post [Book] Anthropologist observes the world of London bankers appeared first on Putting people first.

A few days ago researcher Ben Kraal gave a talk at UX Australia 2015 describing four years of research done by him and his colleagues on what people do in airports and what airport user experience really means. He just posted his slides and speaker notes.

Abstract

Airports are a consensual hallucination experienced by billions of people each year. Airport User Experience is lie we tell ourselves because the reality is too horrible to contemplate: there’s no such thing as an airport user experience. In this talk, I’ll describe four years of research on what people do in airports and you’ll find out what we really mean when we talk about airport user experience.

Over the last four years, my colleagues and I have been to big and small airports, in arrivals and departures, and we’ve looked at passengers and staff. We’ve followed people around, used eye-tracking to see if people really do read all those signs and we’ve recorded how people shop in excruciating detail. We analyzed what we saw and heard using statistical and qualitative methods and we used that analysis to build new ways to understand how people engage with complex service environments.

In this talk, I’ll first show how to see complex services, like airports, as service ecosystems comprised of smaller service building blocks that interact in particular ways — some are tightly linked and others never occur together. Second, I’ll show how people using complex services are trying to match their expectations with the features of the service environment. We call these features “elements” of the space.

Last, I’ll describe the role that the concepts of risk and engagement can play for different types of users in complex services.

This is a lot to cover in 45 minutes so I’ll be providing a downloadable background sheet that includes they key practical lessons learned, has additional detail on the research methods, analysis techniques and software used and has links to all my colleagues and my freely available formal academic work on airport experience.

Dr Ben Kraal is a Research Fellow with the People and Systems Lab and a lecturer in the School of Design at QUT.

Photo credit: @AndrewCave

The post What do people really do at airports? appeared first on Putting people first.

The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers
by Gillian Tett
Simon & Schuster – September 1, 2015
304 pages
> Extract

Abstract

From award-winning columnist and journalist Gillian Tett comes a brilliant examination of how our tendency to create functional departments—silos—hinders our work…and how some people and organizations can break those silos down to unleash innovation.

One of the characteristics of industrial age enterprises is that they are organized around functional departments. This organizational structure results in both limited information and restricted thinking. The Silo Effect asks these basic questions: why do humans working in modern institutions collectively act in ways that sometimes seem stupid? Why do normally clever people fail to see risks and opportunities that later seem blindingly obvious? Why, as psychologist Daniel Kahneman put it, are we sometimes so “blind to our own blindness”?

Gillian Tett, journalist and senior editor for the Financial Times, answers these questions by plumbing her background as an anthropologist and her experience reporting on the financial crisis in 2008. In The Silo Effect, she shares eight different tales of the silo syndrome, spanning Bloomberg’s City Hall in New York, the Bank of England in London, Cleveland Clinic hospital in Ohio, UBS bank in Switzerland, Facebook in San Francisco, Sony in Tokyo, the BlueMountain hedge fund, and the Chicago police. Some of these narratives illustrate how foolishly people can behave when they are mastered by silos. Others, however, show how institutions and individuals can master their silos instead. These are stories of failure and success.

From ideas about how to organize office spaces and lead teams of people with disparate expertise, Tett lays bare the silo effect and explains how people organize themselves, interact with each other, and imagine the world can take hold of an organization and lead from institutional blindness to 20/20 vision.

The Financial Times

> Excerpt from review by Felix Martin

“Of course, silos — both organisational and mental — are unavoidable in life. The benefits from specialisation are real, and mental building blocks are necessary if we are to think constructively at all. Hence when Tett moves on to solutions, her aim is not to investigate how we can eliminate silos, but how, as she puts it, we can master them instead of allowing them to master us.

She starts from the observation that what we are talking about, ultimately, is culture. That gives her a useful perspective on the silo effect. For Tett herself happens to have trained to the doctoral level not in finance or business administration, but in the science of human culture: Tett is an anthropologist. And she argues persuasively that the most successful masters of the silo effect in business and government are, in important ways, anthropologists too.”

The post [Book] The Silo Effect appeared first on Putting people first.

Our planet is becoming increasingly hot. We are facing climate change, social turmoil on local and global scales, and changing political and economic systems.

The symposium “Why the World Needs Anthropologists” (27 September, Ljubljana, Slovenia) will explore anthropology’s applied aspects and potential benefits for society, economy, and the environment.

Three keynote speakers – Genevieve Bell, Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Joana Breidenbach – will present the ways in which anthropologists can affect and improve the current circumstances often caused by human recklessness, and inspire us to join them on their missions. After the keynotes, the speakers will join a panel discussion, where they will be joined by guests Lučka Kajfež Bogataj and Lenora Bohren.

Genevieve Bell (wikipedia) is a Vice President and Intel Fellow in the Corporate Strategy Office at Intel. Genevieve currently leads an R&D team of social scientists, interaction designers and human factors engineers to drive consumer-centric product innovation in Intel’s consumer electronics business. She is responsible for setting research directions, conducting comparative qualitative and quantitative research globally, leading new product strategy and definition, and championing consumer-centric innovation and thinking across the company.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (wikipedia | personal site) is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). His publications span many genres and topics, largely focusing on the politics of culture and identity, globalisation and the history of anthropology. His latest research project ‘Overheating: The Three Crises of Globalisation’ is a comparative endeavour aiming to develop an understanding of local responses to accelerated change in the realms of economy/finance, climate/environment, and culture/identity.

Joana Breidenbach is the founder of betterplace.org, Germany’s largest crowdfunding platform for social projects, and the betterplace lab, a think- and do-tank focused on digital-social innovation. She holds a PhD in cultural anthropology and is author of numerous articles and books on cultural consequences of globalisation.

Lučka Kajfež Bogataj is Professor for Climatology at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Her current research interests include biometeorology, climate change scenarios and impacts on ecosystems.

Lenora Bohren is an environmental anthropologist and senior research scientist and director of the National Center for Vehicle Emissions Control and Safety (NCVECS) at Colorado State University, USA. She was also responsible for National and International Clean Air Conferences for over 25 years.

The post Anthropologists addressing burning issues on a hot planet appeared first on Putting people first.

Designing a study on Glass

The findings

Designing for Augmented Sociality

• Understand the social and contextual factors of an interface, just as much as the technical factors. Superior UX design can’t overcome negative social perceptions of technology. Remember, at one point society feared that telephones would also steal our privacy and now there are more registered phone numbers than people on Earth.
• Pay closer attention to the perceived usability of a technology. Potential users should know what a technology can and cannot do, and observers and social commentators need to know the same. For example, Google Glass does not have facial recognition software. Communicating the true scope of a technology’s capabilities can go a long way towards acceptance. Related to this, the possible benefits of a technology should be clearly communicated and for Glass, that this did not happen.
• Consider how a technology, and its interface, influence the reality of those using it. Talking to each other through a heads-up display is not the same as talking through one’s eyes, but it’s not an inherently bad experience either. Designers must move past anecdotes and assumptions and instead, step back and understand the media ecology—the larger system of communication—that their interfaces exist in. This final point is perhaps most relevant to UX, because it might help aid in the creation of a more meaningful and useful design philosophy.

The post Preparing Users for a Future of Wearables (Part 2) appeared first on UX Booth.

Ruxbin Chicago

Risotteria Melotti

The Eddy NYC

Brass

Quay Restaurant

Junction Moama

Marianne Restaurant

Arbor Restaurant

Baobab

Mercer Tavern

Whitmans

Brindisa Tapas Kitchens

Cow&Co Cafe

The Monocle Café

Drury Buildings

Fino Par

Colonia Verde

Bay Street Biergarten

Lemonade

Fuel Cafe

OLÉ SOIREE

Big Apple Hot Dogs

Restaurant Can Jubany

giraffe

Benito’s Hat

Cafe Sydney

Brae

Shizuku Ramen – Contemporary Japanese Restaurant

Jaffle Jaffle

Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant London

CARAVAN Restaurant, Bar & Roastery

Wired

Duke’s Brew & Que

Jacks Bar

The Paper Mill

The Kings Arms

Pitch

The Bancroft

Joe’s Garage

Maaemo Restaurant

Supreme Supreme

Gaucho

Chick’s Fry House

The Black Sparrow

easybistro.com

The Ordinary

Marco Grill

L’Amour Fou

Artifact Coffee

Related Content

• Food Icons: Free Icon Set
• 50 Clean Websites for Inspiration
• 50 Portfolio Websites for Inspiration

Jacob Gube is the founder of Six Revisions. He’s a front-end developer. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 50 Restaurant Websites for Inspiration appeared first on Six Revisions.

Zero UI is the concept of removing the barrier between user and device, and having a more seamless interaction with technology.

Industry advancements are moving towards not only more intuitive and integrated pieces of tech, but also an environment that creates less disconnect from our world, providing authentic, meaningful interactive spaces.

Zero UI is all about how we as the user interact with our content. Typically we have a device being interacted with directly through a touchscreen, or indirectly with a remote control. Zero UI is the push to become even more integrated with our tech. Touchless tech or Zero UI.

While a world completely devoid of physical interfaces may never be a reality, being less tied to our devices may be in the cards.

At the helm of this transition are gesture-based user interfaces. The gaming world has been one of the first to adopt gesture controls as a way of providing a more natural user experience.  Think Wii, PlayStation Move and Microsoft Kinect. Our ability to control our gaming console has become less tied to button commands and instead allows us to incorporate more properties of physical space and motion into our experience.

More recently, Google has announced an advancement to gesture control through Project Soli, a chip that will allow users to gesture above a device without needing to touch the screen directly.

Say "so long" to tapping tiny buttons on a small screen; with this project by Google, users will be able to press their fingers together and incorporate other hand gestures that simulate using physical controls.

Machine-learning technologies employed by companies like Nest are helping to further the idea of touchless interfaces.

Having tech that doesn’t get in the way is crucial to having devices that feel more like a part of our environment, rather than foreign objects taking up our space.

Just as our lives are multidimensional, our devices must also be able to have and understand a complete 360^o vantage point.

Related Content

• Poka-Yoke in User Interface Design
• Ideas to Keep in Mind When Designing User Interfaces
• A Quick Introduction to Agile UX Design

Jenna Palermo is a designer for ESPN and also an online design instructor. She’s based in Los Angeles, CA. Check out her projects on Behance, follow her on Twitter @wittythings, and visit her site: Yes Juliet.

The post Zero UI — The Future of Interfaces appeared first on Six Revisions.

Thierry Ambraisse

Molly & Me Pecans

Mancini Made

Julia Gavrilova

Tom Cole Architecture

Another Escape

Protest Sportswear

Junction Moama

Island

The Eddy NYC

Purgo Tea

dnlsptzk

Eight Arms

Peter Manning

Folch

Anchour

Designer Trek

Eye Heart World

Ariel Beninca

Martina Sperl

Lunet Eyewear

Your Majesty

The TriBeCa Penthouse

Final Cut

Jürg Lehni

Founded

Steven Holl Architects

Throne Watches

bauart

Bond Street

Kurppa Hosk

St. Mark’s Sq.

Bilder

Saboc

Famous Visual Services

1100 Architect

Naked

David Nolan Gallery

Gianni Botsford Architects

Lucia Cuba

Michael Reynolds

wildrenfrew.com

True

Bill Byron wines

BrightByte Studio

Global Wave Conference

Passenger Coffee

Overgrowth

The Garden Edit

WilkinsonEyre

Related Content

• Responsive Full Background Image Using CSS
• 30 Beautiful Web Designs That Use Photos as Backgrounds
• Websites with Large Background Images: 25 Inspiring Examples

Jacob Gube is the founder of Six Revisions. He’s a front-end developer. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 50 Beautiful Websites with Big Background Images appeared first on Six Revisions.

You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses huh, would ya?

Developing an augmented sociality

Social perception and technology adoption

External factors in technology adoption

The Diffusion of Innovations model, as explained by Everett Rogers. The blue line represents the proportion of adopters for each category over time, while the orange line represents the cumulative number of people adopting an innovation.

• characteristics of the adopters themselves
• the communication channels used to discuss an adoption
• the social system of an adoption, and
• an amount of time necessary for the innovation to be adopted

Explore the impact of social effects

The post Preparing Users for a Future of Wearables (Part 1) appeared first on UX Booth.

This infographic will remind you about the important web design do’s and don’ts when creating websites. There are tips in this infographic for every level of expertise and for every part of the website design and development process.

View Larger Version

View Larger Version

Related Content

• What Are Websites Made Of? (Infographic)
• The Takeover of the Mobile Web (Infographic)
• Web Developers vs. Web Developers (Infographic)

Bauke Roesink is the founder of PSDtoWP.net. He’s based in Groningen, the Netherlands. Follow him on Twitter: @BRoesink.

The post Infographic: 69 Web Design Tips appeared first on Six Revisions.

The idea is that designing for human experiences is transformative. It brings the needs of people to the forefront and allows businesses, organizations, and communities to solve problems and see possibilities in new, effective, and meaningful ways. Whether we’re talking about business, systems, government, or society; people matter most. We should treat them well, with thoughtfulness, empathy, kindness, and respect. And through this philosophy, we can create experiences that improve our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
It’s an idea that we share with our partners at Capital One, and we work hard to bring about every day. Together, we want to make sure this idea lives not only in our work, but also in a space where it can be grown, shared, and spread. So today, we’re excited to formalize and introduce that idea and that shared space as AdaptivePath.org.

What is it? It’s much more than site. In part, it’s that public side of Adaptive Path that you might be familiar with: the events we host to teach, learn, and become inspired from each other, plus the methods and tools we love to share. Only now, it’s on a mission that gives it more focus and clarity than ever before. The mission is to inspire, enable, and involve others to create great human experiences that impact the community and transform us all.

This evolution to AdaptivePath.org means we improve what we’re already doing while putting new things in play:

We’ll continue to host our annual events and multiple workshops, only better. We’ll keep on hosting Managing Experiences, UX Week, and the Service Experience conference. And quietly since the start of 2015, we’ve designed and programmed each event and workshop around its own specific contribution to the mission, whether that’s to grow leaders or inspire and enable us all to create better experiences. The result has been even more passion and resolve for us to deliver great events that lead to impact in the careers and work of those in our event community. It’s also led us to offer programs like student scholarships to UX Week so that we can encourage the next generation and create a more diverse community of professionals.

We’ll share more ideas, tools, and methods that contribute to our community of practice. We’ve already reorganized and curated what we think are some of our best into nine guides on topics like Experience Strategy, Service Design, and Design Management. Meanwhile, we’ve been greasing the idea-sharing-tracks so that there will be more to look forward to, and we’re extremely excited to be inviting the vast design talent at Capital One to share their best so we’ll have an even richer stream and exchange of ideas.

We’ll showcase our practices in action by applying them to—and eventually involving the community in—pro bono engagements and community programs. As a part of Capital One, we now have partners like Capital One Community Affairs through their Future Edge initiative. Relationships like these help bring design practices to organizations that are focused on benefitting communities through their charitable or philanthropic mission. Need examples? We’re happily continuing a relationship with the Richland Public Library system in their efforts to re-imagine public libraries as studios. We’ve also invested time in helping The Harris Foundation redesign RockIt!, their immersive learning program that brings financial literacy to public schools across the country. Our two-day workshop exploring different experiential opportunities led to a new curriculum, a roadmap for the future, and a solid plan for production and implementation. And we’re happy we got to play with the awesome team at IDEO.org last month to share the insights we’re uncovering about the financial world, offering new perspectives to their project working with the financial institutions that help fund farmers in Cambodia. In turn, they invited us to hear about the work they’re doing using design to solve issues around poverty, a dot-org-to-dot-org relationship we really hope to continue.
No doubt there are questions about how and why we’re going about this, some of which we ourselves haven’t fully answered. We’ve taken a swing at answering a few, but if we knew all the answers, that would make this whole endeavor much less interesting, wouldn’t it?

All told, we’re super happy for what we believe this change of three little letters in our name signifies for all the stakeholders: you, Capital One, us, and the people and experiences we all design for. Specifically for you, we hope it signifies commitment to continue doing much of what Adaptive Path has always done, only better. It is, after all, where it felt like we were heading all along.

Jesper Christiansen and Runa Sabroe of the Danish human-centred internal governmental body MindLab ask how to increase the effectiveness and legitimacy of public sector interventions – both by creating the actual outcomes that are politically intended, and by enabling a more open approach to governance by involving and building on the resources of citizens, communities and other users that could aid in addressing societal issues.

This question is currently being explored by Public and Social Innovation Labs (PSI labs) around the world. Embedding a human-centred design approach in the central admin- istration of government, PSI labs have the potential to address this question by contrib- uting to a shift in the culture of decision-making and by rethinking the practice of public policy. This allows PSI labs to create better outcomes and enable a more effective realisa- tion of political intentions and ideas.

They conclude:

PSI labs can be valuable assets in pursuing better public outcomes. Not only in creating user-centred solutions and service systems facilitating a new relationship be- tween system challenges and citizen interface. Nor only by opening up government to ide- as and experiences outside the system and working with citizens, communities, NGO’s and businesses to co-design and co-produce new solutions. But also by creating a new culture of decision making that transforms the way government works by institutionalizing a new organisational capacity to explore, learn, shape and adapt over time.

Jesper Christiansen (PhD, Head of Research, MindLab) works with complex change process- es and the relationship between strategy and practice in the public sector. He has completed his PhD at MindLab on public innovation with a focus on the cultural, epistemic and systemic implications. Jesper has responsibility for assigning the knowledge and research to Mindlab’s project work.
Runa Sabroe (Program Manager, MindLab) has extensive experience designing and implementing public development projects. As a program manager responsible for Ministry of Education at MindLab, she focuses on interdisciplinary collaboration. She holds a MA in Media Studies and is a popular speaker, facilitator and teacher in Denmark and internationally. She has collaborated with UNDP, the European Commission, Reykjavik University among others.

The post Innovation labs as public change agents appeared first on Putting people first.

As a Fulbright grantee, Emily Hong spent part of the last year researching the sharing economy in Seoul. One of her main findings? Korea actually has two.

The first is small-scale, hyper local and socialist in flavor. This first “sharing Seoul” is largely supported by the Seoul Metropolitan government, and consists of a handful of social entrepreneurs largely working through ShareHub, an outgrowth of the Korean chapter of Creative Commons.

The second is the polar opposite of the first, and encompasses Airbnb and Uber, the enormous, multinational corporations that remain those best associated with the term “sharing economy” worldwide.

However, she writes, in Korea, and also around the world, it is increasingly evident that to include this latter category of companies under the sharing label is a mistake:

Korea’s two “sharing economies” are moving in opposite directions. One operates at the microscale, comprised of dedicated individuals applying sharing principles to build communities in Seoul. Their operations are on the fringe, generating just enough revenue to keep the services alive. The other is increasingly capitalistic, driven by global flows of money and people.

Yet, despite their divergent paths, these two movements continue to be lumped under the same term: sharing economy. For its part, Airbnb, chafing under the confusion and baggage increasingly accompanying the term, has also become wary of the label ‘sharing economy.’

Hong ends with some provocative thoughts on what the two forms of “sharing” have in common.

The post What is the ‘sharing economy’? A perspective from Seoul appeared first on Putting people first.

How should companies think about design centricity? For Jon Kolko, vice president of design at Blackboard, an education software company, design thinking can define the way an organization functions at the most basic levels—how it relates to users, how it prototypes products, how it assesses risk. In “Design Thinking Comes of Age,” Kolko says that companies today must contend with unprecedented technological and business complexity and that design can help simplify and humanize complex systems.

There’s a shift under way in large organizations, one that puts design much closer to the center of the enterprise. But the shift isn’t about aesthetics. It’s about applying the principles of design to the way people work.

This new approach is in large part a response to the increasing complexity of modern technology and modern business. That complexity takes many forms. Sometimes software is at the center of a product and needs to be integrated with hardware (itself a complex task) and made intuitive and simple from the user’s point of view (another difficult challenge). Sometimes the problem being tackled is itself multi-faceted: Think about how much tougher it is to reinvent a health care delivery system than to design a shoe. And sometimes the business environment is so volatile that a company must experiment with multiple paths in order to survive.

Other articles from this month’s Harvard Business Review special on design thinking:

Design for Action
By Tim Brown and Roger Martin
In [this article] we’ll explain this new challenge and demonstrate how design thinking can help strategic and system innovators make the new worlds they’ve imagined come to pass. In fact, we’d argue that with very complex artifacts, the design of their “intervention”—their introduction and integration into the status quo—is even more critical to success than the design of the artifacts themselves.

How Samsung Became a Design Powerhouse
By Youngjin Yoo (Professor in Management Information Systems at Temple University) and Kyungmook Kim (Principal Designer at Samsung Electronics’ Corporate Design Center)
Shifting to an innovation-focused culture without losing an engineering edge is not a simple matter. Samsung’s success in making this shift can be traced back to a single early decision—to build design competency in-house rather than import it. The corps has helped institute policies and structures that embed design thinking in all corporate functions and provide a framework for reevaluating products in the face of dramatic technological change.

How Indra Nooyi Turned Design Thinking Into Strategy: An Interview with PepsiCo’s CEO
By Adi Ignatius
These days Indrea Nooyi, 59, exudes confidence. The company has enjoyed steady revenue growth during her nine years in the top job, and Pepsi’s stock price is rising again after several flat years. All of this frees Nooyi to focus on what she says is now driving innovation in the company: design thinking. [In this interview Nooyi] talked about what design means to her, the challenges in changing a culture, and her proudest achievement.

PepsiCo’s Chief Design Officer on Creating an Organization Where Design Can Thrive
By James de Vries
Mauro Porcini is PepsiCo’s Chief Design Officer—the first to hold the position—where he oversees design-led innovation across all the company’s brands under CEO Indra Nooyi. De Vries spoke with Porcini on a variety of topics, from prototyping to the essential qualities of a great design organization.

The post Jon Kolko: Design thinking comes of age appeared first on Putting people first.