Partial Recall

Links for 2012-08-24

Rob Fay — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 19:19:50 +0000

Why Customer Experience Is The Only Thing That Matters [Fast Company - Aug 13, 2012] – The only source of competitive advantage is the one that can survive technology-fueled disruption: an obsession with customer experience.
7 Core Ideas about Personas and The User Experience [Measuring Usability - Jul 31, 2012] – Here are seven core ideas everyone in the UX field should know about personas.
Turning Customer Intelligence into Innovation [Harvard Business Review - Aug 20, 2012] – Companies seeking to more formally intertwine intelligence with innovation should consider three straightforward starting points:
* Mandate that everyone in the company increase the amount of time they spend with customers – however much time your company is spending, it is probably not enough.

* Find simple ways to make customer conversations more frequent. Consider forming a lead user panel or creating an online community like those offered by CommuniSpace.

* Build a little-bets lab, a mechanism by which you can selectively introduce early ideas to the market. For example, at beta620.nytimes.com, users can test drive early experiments offered by The New York Times Company. Little bets labs facilitate the thoughtful process of strategic experimentation that typifies successful innovation.
The Anatomy of an Experience Map [Adaptive Path - Nov 30, 2011] – I’m often asked what defines a good experience map. You could call an experience map a deliverable, although, as the current 4-letter word of UX, that may make some people gag a little bit. But really, it’s a model. A model on steroids. It’s an artifact that serves to illuminate the complete experience a person may have with a product or service.
A Happier Workplace: 4 Tips From Iceland [Inc.com - Aug 20, 2012] – 1. Create a Community
2. Encourage Broad Interests
3. Put Family First
4. Provide Healthier Food
Designing For Device Orientation: From Portrait To Landscape [Smashing Magazine - Aug 10, 2012] – Nearly all mobile and tablet applications would benefit from being designed for device orientation. This article covers some of the basic concepts that designers and developers can use to add device orientation to their process. We’ll present some of the challenges when designing for device orientation, along with some solutions.
How to choose the right UX metrics for your product [Design Staff - Mar 27, 2012] – I’m part of a group of quantitative UX researchers at Google, and we like to think of large-scale data analysis as just another UX research method. We’ve developed a couple of useful methods to help choose and define appropriate metrics that reflect:
- The quality of user experience (the HEART framework)
- The goals of your product or project (the Goals-Signals-Metrics process)
Story-centered design: Hacking your brain to think like a user [Design Staff - Mar 22, 2012] – I start designing by thinking of a story that’s critical to the product’s success. There are probably a dozen or so stories that make up the core of any product, but I just pick one to start. Then I build a storyboard – a lot like a comic strip. If I already have wireframes in mind, each frame of the storyboard can be a screen in the interface.
Separate Mobile Website Vs. Responsive Website [Smashing Mobile - Aug 22, 2012] – It just so happens that the two US presidential candidates have chosen different mobile strategies for their official websites. In the red corner is Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s dedicated mobile website, and in the blue corner is incumbent Barack Obama’s responsive website.

Links for 2012-07-23

Rob Fay — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 19:18:52 +0000

Just What is a UX Manager? [Adaptive Path - Jun 20, 2012] – Someone who manages user experience has stuck their neck out and said they’ll deliver business outcomes through improving the experience that customers have with a product or service. That doesn’t mean soft results like better user testing results, that means delivering the things businesses ultimately care about: adoption, growth, revenue, retention, and margins.
That means you believe UX is a force that can not only improve people's experiences but that it can also drive business.
Why I’m leaving SEO [Jonathon Colman - Jul 09, 2012] – That’s why I entered the Information Management graduate program at the University of Washington’s Information School a year ago. I’m deeply interested in the connections between people, information, and technology and this program provides a world-class education that balances focus across all three of these components. Since then, I’ve learned about structuring information for findability and use, designing across channels, managing information organizations, conducting statistical analysis, information retrieval, the systems development lifecycle, and much more.
Multi-Device Layout Patterns [Functioning Form - Mar 14, 2012] – Through fluid grids and media query adjustments, responsive design enables Web page layouts to adapt to a variety of screen sizes. As more designers embrace this technique, we're not only seeing a lot of innovation but the emergence of clear patterns as well. I cataloged what seem to be the most popular of these patterns for adaptable multi-device layouts.
5 Really Useful Responsive Web Design Patterns [Design Shack - Mar 27, 2012] – Responsive web design requires a very different way of thinking about layout that is both challenging and exciting. The art of layout was already complex enough for the centuries that it was defined by fixed elements, now things are becoming exponentially more complicated as layouts become increasingly adaptive.
To help reprogram your brain to consider layouts in new ways, we’re going to take a look at some interesting responsive design patterns that are being implemented by talented designers all over the web.

Links for 2012-06-22

Rob Fay — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 19:17:14 +0000

Design Patterns: When Breaking The Rules Is OK [Smashing UX Design - Jun 06, 2012] – I started wondering when breaking a pattern in favor of something different or better might actually be OK. We all recognize and are quick to call out when patterns are misused. But are there circumstances in which breaking the rules is OK? To answer this question properly, let’s go back to the beginning.
20 lines of code that will beat A/B testing every time [Steve Hanov's Programming Blog - May 28, 2012] – In recent years, hundreds of the brightest minds of modern civilization have been hard at work not curing cancer. Instead, they have been refining techniques for getting you and me to click on banner ads. It has been working. Both Google and Microsoft are focusing on using more information about visitors to predict what to show them. Strangely, anything better than A/B testing is absent from mainstream tools, including Google Analytics, and Google Website optimizer. I hope to change that by raising awareness about better techniques.
Etsy’s Winning Secret: Don’t Play The Blame Game! [Business Insider - May 15, 2012] – 3 Tips from Etsy on adopting a blameless culture:
-Assume good will. “Employees are making decisions based on what they think is right for the company,” said Allspaw.
-Identify causes, not culprits. Accountability happens naturally as people learn the facts. Focus on exploring what happened – and recognize that in complex systems, there’s rarely one root cause.
-Take your time. People used to blaming cultures may take time to come out of their shell and share mistakes and learnings freely.

Links for 2012-06-05

Rob Fay — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:15:50 +0000

5 Useful Lies to Tell User Research Participants [UX Booth - Jun 05, 2012] – If you’ve ever run a research or usability test, you’ll know they can be tricky to facilitate. After all, you’re dealing with people; and people come with a whole host of existing preconceptions, personalities, emotions, and experiences. One thing that can help you to gain more honest and thereby useful feedback from research participants is, in fact, to lie to them.
Uninspiring by design [Washington Post - May 23, 2012] – I think it’s time for this industry to wake up to design. To wake up to beauty in form and function. I think it’s time that technology companies started taking a long, hard look at what they’re putting out into the world. Hopefully, they’ll start to realize that competition takes more than “me too.”
Customer experience: The natural ally for UX in business [Informaat - May 02, 2012] – But being a successful company in customer experience is not easy. eConsultancy recently found two great barriers to deliver the required customer experience: the organisational structure (think silos, departments and business units) and the complexity of the phenomenon. User experience can help. The scope of customer experience is broader than the scope of user experience. It comprises all touchpoints between a company and its customers. The rise of customer experience and user experience has been concurrent, but user experience probably has more traction in terms of concrete roles within organizations.

Links for 2012-05-01

Rob Fay — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:36:53 +0000

How to Win the UX War Within Your Organization [UX Booth - May 01, 2012] – When companies don’t care about user experience, it is clearly reflected in the products they create. Although everyone can agree that software should be intuitive, user-friendly, and aesthetically pleasing, many managers aren’t willing to invest the time and resources it takes to build something compelling. A large part of our job as UX advocates, then, is explaining design’s impact on the company as a whole. Determining which battles to win and which battles to lose – even intentionally — can help you win the UX war.
4 Key Insights From The 57-Day, Blitzkrieg Redesign Of Google+ [Co.Design - Apr 25, 2012] – Co.Design talked to Google+ lead designer Fred Gilbert to unpack the subtle brilliance behind their awesome redesign–a redesign that was completed in less than two months–and his notes are full of lessons that could hone the experience of almost any product.
Firms Push Visual Note Taking to Spark Creativity, Sharpen Focus [Wall Street Journal - Apr 24, 2012] – Put down that smartphone; pick up that pencil. Employees are being encouraged by their companies to try visual note-taking to explain complicated concepts to colleagues and clients.

Links for 2012-04-17

Rob Fay — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:35:30 +0000

In Silicon Valley, Designers Emerge As Rock Stars [Business Insider - Apr 13, 2012] – The new breed of “user experience” designers – part sketch artist, part programmer, with a dash of behavioral scientist thrown in – are some of the most sought-after employees in technology.
More potent experiences come from ‘reductive’ design [Cisco Web Experience - Feb 19, 2012] – Sometimes, to create a high-quality experience, a product just needs some time to simmer.
Soups, sauces, and consommé are the result of boiling down to an intensely flavorful product and technology can benefit from a similar process of distillation.

The reductive process in cooking derives a more concentrated mixture with less volume than before the boiling but with a much greater quality. With frequent stirring, the impurities are brought to the surface and removed, leaving a more concentrated, and potent, product.

Links for 2012-03-08

Rob Fay — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 17:16:59 +0000

Pinterest’s Founding Designer Shares His Dead-Simple Design Philosophy [Co.Design - Mar 07, 2012] – Design is shrinking the gap between what a product does and why it exists. Designing is not just about picking the right font or gradient. Stop thinking about design in terms of wire frames or visual style; it is about the product as a whole. Designing is figuring out the purpose of your product and how you orient everything else around it.
How Apple’s Top Secret Product Development Process Works [The Next Web - Jan 24, 2012] – Many aspects of Apple’s product development process have long been shrouded in mystery. The process is discussed in a new book Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired – and Secretive – Company Really Works, by Adam Lashinsky, which is out now. The book talks about a variety of different aspects of Apple as a company; its philosophy, its hiring process and its legendary secrecy.
Which One: Responsive Design, Device Experiences, or RESS? [Functioning Form - Feb 29, 2012] – As more organizations realize they need to invest heavily in multi-device Web designs, the inevitable question of “how” comes up. Responsive Web design, separate sites, or something in between?

Links for 2012-02-13

Rob Fay — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:15:43 +0000

Out of the box [Vitamins - Sep, 2011] – Most phones come with flimsy manuals with complicated language and jargon. These books, which can live on a bookshelf actually contain the phone. Each page reveals the elements of the phone in the right order, helping the user to set up the sim card, the battery and even slide the case onto the phone. The second book is the main manual – the phone actually slots into this and becomes the center of attention. Arrows point to the exact locations the user should press, avoiding confusion and eliminating the feeling of being lost in a menu.
Integrating UX into the Product Backlog [Boxes and Arrows - Feb 03, 2012] – Teams moving to agile often struggle to integrate agile with best practices in user-centered design (UCD) and user experience (UX) in general. Fortunately, using a UX Integration Matrix helps integrate UX and agile by including UX information and requirements right in the product backlog.

Links for 2012-01-31

Rob Fay — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:19:29 +0000

How to Approach a Responsive Design [Upstatement - Jan 26, 2012] – Here at Upstatement, we experimented with how to solve design and layout problems within a responsive framework. We learned a helluva lot as we went, like how to choose the right design software, strategies for thinking through breakpoints, and some best practices for designing in the browser.
The Eye of the Brainstorm [Cooper Journal - Jan 31, 2012] – While people think and behave differently when they are in large groups versus when they are alone, I also believe that people behave still differently when they are in the presence of only one other person. This is often overlooked, yet I believe that creative people can be at their most effective when they work in pairs.
The Shift From Watching TV to Experiencing TV [ReadWriteWeb - Jan 25, 2012] – As more and more devices in your home get connected to the Internet, the user experience becomes increasingly important. It’s hard enough to use your PC sometimes, let alone fiddle with the remote on your Internet connected TV! So over the coming months we’ll be exploring the world of User Experience design (a.k.a. UX design). We’ll be interviewing UX experts and reviewing products that get it right – and some that get it wrong. We’ll start by looking at how the user experience of televisions is becoming more interactive and what this will mean to your TV consumption habits.

Links for 2012-01-04

Rob Fay — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:17:31 +0000

Why Best Buy is Going out of Business…Gradually [Forbes - Jan 01, 2012] – I’m not shilling for Amazon or any other successful online retailer here. My point is much more basic. Amazon neither invented nor appropriated its basic strategies from Best Buy or anyone else. It simply does what consumers want. Best Buy does what would be most convenient for the company for consumers to want but don’t, then crosses its fingers and prays. That’s not a strategy – or not a winning strategy, in any case, now that retail consumers aren’t stuck with the store closest to home.
A Journey Across the Main Stream: Games for My Mother-in-Law [Gamasutra - Sep 01, 2010] – Veteran LucasArts and Telltale Games designer Dave Grossman says gaming’s limited appeal could come down to “some very basic assumptions we make about the audience versus the actual thought processes of that audience.” So he tested Telltale’s Sam & Max adventure game series on his mother-in-law.
The 5 Hardest Jobs to Fill in 2012 [Inc. - Dec 19, 2011] – After engineers, the biggest challenge for companies is finding high-quality creative design and user-experience talent. Since almost every company is trying to create a highly compelling user experience that keeps people engaged with their product, it is tough to find people who have this type of experience (especially with mobile devices including tablets) and a demonstrated track record of success.