Thin Slicing: Inside or Outside the World of User Experience?

People make decisions based on extremely small amounts of information, and very quickly. They call this "thin slicing". A significant amount of information is building in research journals such as the Journal of Consumer Psychology about what thin slicing is, how it takes place, and when it is active.

Weinschenk, Susan. UI Design Newsletter (2007). Articles>User Experience

Understanding the Persuasive Flow

Wiggly, distracting, or poorly placed ads irritate users. Worse, they teach site visitors to ignore whole sections of layout. Yet some online ads work. They capture visitors visually, and present an engaging hook. They get visitors to click. Even, at times, from the home page. So what's the difference?

Michaels, Mary M. UI Design Newsletter (2007). Articles>Web Design>Marketing>User Experience

Lessons from a Street-Side UX Designer!

This example offers some insights into how ‘the arousal of the feeling of trust’ is dependent on the design of features and overall user experience, for the business transaction to kick off. The learning can be particularly applied in the context of online business portals and websites.

Katre, Dinesh S. Journal of HCI Vistas (2007). Articles>User Experience>Case Studies

The Prism of User Experience

Practitioners of User Centred Design method tend to focus only on immediate user goals and short focused usability. What is meant by long term usability and long term user experience? It needs due attention because only then the impact of products on our environment and health gains prominence! If we take a long term perspective then what we consider usable based on our immediate experience might turn out to be a disastrous product.

Katre, Dinesh S. Journal of HCI Vistas (2007). Articles>User Centered Design>User Experience

Opportunity India: Interaction Design Market Potential

The Indian community of Interaction Designers and Usability Professionals is growing by rate of 20% annually which is far too less. Around 6 to 8 new design institutes have suddenly opened up in past couple of years (to name a few- Symbiosis Institute of Design, MAEER MIT’s Institute of Design and Creative-I College, Pune, Raffles Design International, Mumbai, IILM School of Design, Gurgaon, Wigan & Leigh College, New Delhi) But all these are indirect contributors to interaction design, as they do not offer education in that area.

Katre, Dinesh S. Journal of HCI Vistas (2006). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design

Usability Matters: Software Development and the Balancing Act Between Design and Usability

Marketing departments – especially in IT – like to speak in the modern lingo about a product’s innovative “Look and Feel”. While “Look“ refers to the design of the solution, “Feel” means usability, the quality of use. Developers of Content Management Systems and other enterprise IT solutions have to walk a fine line to meet the exacting demands of users in both areas. But in recent years a clear trend has become apparent: There is a drive towards the modern, “cool” product design where at a minimum usability takes a back seat, often to its detriment.

Bodemann, Jörn. Content Wrangler, The (2009). Articles>Web Design>User Experience>Usability

Adopting Documentation Usability Techniques to Alleviate Cognitive Friction

Usability is the combination of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which the users accomplish defined goals in a given environment. User-centered documentation matches the users' mental model, thereby helping the users find information they want quickly and easily in their hour of need. The list of documentation usability criteria is fairly subjective at this time, and various opinionated discussion groups have contributed to this. Usable documentation is based on a deep understanding of the users' tasks, and this understanding can only be gained through interviewing representative users. Applying information architecture techniques, the content within documentation should be properly chunked so that the users can assimilate the information properly. Procedural guides should have a well-defined and searchable index that enables users to connect key application terms to their correct context. User-friendly documentation is always succinct, but never at the expense of omitting critical/useful information. It should be developed using a structured process so that it starts with the big picture and gradually adds lower level of details, addressing the needs of every unique group of users. Finally, the documentation must be tested among a representative group of users, and their feedback should be incorporated to make sure that it has met all of the major usability criteria.

Biswas, Debarshi Gupta and Suranjana Dasgupta. STC Usability SIG (2009). Articles>Usability>User Experience>Documentation

Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product

A product is actually a service. Although the designer, manufacturer, distributer, and seller may think it is a product, to the buyer, it offers a valuable service. In reality a product is all about the experience.

Norman, Donald A. Interactions (2009). Articles>User Interface>User Experience>Usability

Effective UX in a Corporate Environment, Part II

In this column, which is the second of two parts, we’ll continue discussing how companies can ensure the effectiveness of User Experience within their organizations and current product development processes.

Six, Janet M. and Chris Anthony. UXmatters (2009). Articles>User Experience>Workplace>Workflow

Defining Social Media Settings

As we explore what social technologies can offer and the boundaries they can cross—boundaries that had confined the traditional Web—UX professionals must now take up a new design challenge. We must address the changing needs for social media and facilitate users’ taking better advantage of everything social media has to offer.

Asad, Junaid. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Web Design>Social Networking>User Experience

Effective UX in a Corporate Environment, Part I

To foster discussion about the issues companies face in trying to effectively integrate user experience into their current organizations and processes, we surveyed our panel of Ask UXmatters experts, asking them to give us their thoughts on these important issues.

Six, Janet M. and Chris Anthony. UXmatters (2009). Articles>User Experience>Workplace>Workflow

Inside Out: Interaction Design for Augmented Reality

While ubiquitous computing remains an unpleasant mouthful of techno-babble to most people who know the term, and everyware is still an essentially unknown idea, the visibility of augmented reality has surged in the last twelve months.

Lamantia, Joe. UXmatters (2009). Articles>User Interface>User Experience>Information Design

Online Advertising: Factors That Influence Customer Experience

In this article, I’ll discuss the cognitive elements at the intersection of advertising and human behavior. By taking an approach to advertising that looks at the impact psychological factors have on customer behavior, I’ve learned that customers respond directly to online advertisements, as we can see from their emotions, behavior, and interactions on the Web.

Kirmani, Shazeeye and Shamugam Rajasekaran. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Web Design>Marketing>User Experience

Using Wikis to Document UI Specifications

The role of the interaction designer is to specify the interface’s behaviors and elements, so that engineers know what to build and how the product should operate. This documentation is commonly known as a UI specification or UI spec. There are several applications for authoring a UI spec, with wikis being a relatively new tool. However, designers should be aware of a wiki’s benefits and drawbacks for documentation, since UI specs uniquely reflect a project and its context. The documentation needs are often based on the size of the project, launch date, team dynamics, audience, technology, and the product development process. The development process usually plays a major role in how teams interact and how work is completed or delivered, thus, there is a direct relationship between the UI spec and the process the team is using.

Gremett, Peter. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design>Functional Specifications

iPhone Is Not Easy to Use: A New Direction for UX Design

I live and breathe user experience design, and yet it took me two years to get myself the device referenced by almost every single presentation about user experience since 2007… Apple’s iPhone. My reasons were very specific and perhaps boring, but what is interesting is the perspective this wait has afforded me. Since it was released, the iPhone has grabbed an astonishing share of mobile Web traffic, been regarded as a “game-changer” in both the design and business worlds, and has even been referred to as the “Jesus Phone.” Now that I’ve owned one for two weeks I’ve developed a different perspective. The iPhone is surprisingly difficult to use, but it sure is fun! And that is why it’s a game-changer.

Beecher, Frederick. Johnny Holland (2009). Articles>Usability>Interaction Design>User Experience

Are We The Puppet Masters?

Through the designs we create, we have the ability to directly influence another person’s behavior. The ethical implications of this are important and not easily definable. I was interested in ethics before I ever considered becoming a designer, but the lessons I learned while studying philosophy impacts the way I view my designs. In nature, our goal is a good one. We strive to help others by improving the interactions that define their life. This drives us to create and innovate new ways of interacting with old concepts. The question remains, do we have the right to influence another person? Further, are there guiding principles we can follow that can keep us on the moral path? The answers to these questions rests on the shoulders of the whole community, not a single person or group.

Nunnally, Brad. Johnny Holland (2009). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design>Rhetoric

Who Watches the Watchman?

The watchclock is another kind of interaction design, one whose function corrals the user into a single, linear, constrained sort of behavior. The night watchman has a fundamental social constraint — the desire to not get fired from their job. This constraint allows the watchclock patrol system to work so effectively (some would say insidiously) as an interaction design instrument of control.

Fahey, Christopher. Graphpaper (2009). Articles>User Experience>Management>Interaction Design

Understanding the Experience of Social Network Sites

Although social networking sites have become the commonplace over the past eight years since the introduction of Friendster in 2002, designers have not yet explored two important notions: 1) What kind of social experience do social networking sites foster?; and 2) Do social networking sites encourage community?

Zollers, Alla. Johnny Holland (2009). Articles>Web Design>Social Networking>User Experience

Engaging the User: What We Can Learn from Games

As an Interaction Designer, I’m perpetually impressed with the continual design success inherent in most video games. We are taught to know our users by understanding their goals, leveraging mental models, and taking ourselves out of the equation in order to design useful and appropriate interfaces. And although a user-centered design approach is invaluable, I can’t help but wonder how game designers just seem to nail it time and again for what are large and diverse audiences.

Sasinski, Marc. Johnny Holland (2009). Articles>User Experience>Interaction Design>Games

User Stories: A Strategic Design Tool

A collaborative approach enables clients to actively participate in the process, increasing the likelihood of achieving a collective vision for the project. This article focuses on the first step in the journey towards collaboratively developing a User Experience Strategy and is concerned specifically with how user stories are generated, themed and prioritized.

Hagen, Penny and Michelle Gilmore. Johnny Holland (2009). Articles>User Centered Design>User Experience>Personas

Powers of 10: Time Scales in User Experience

From 0.1 seconds to 10 years or more, user interface design has many different timeframes, and each has its own particular usability issues.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Usability>User Experience>User Interface

The Seven Deadly Sins of Blogging: Sin #3, Being Boring

Being boring is sin #3 in my list of the seven deadly sins (which include being fake, irrelevant, boring, unreadable, irresponsible, inaccessible, and inattentive). Perhaps a more tactful way of saying something is boring is to say the writer neglects to “keep the audience’s attention.”

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Writing>Blogging>User Experience

Designing the Total User Experience: Implications for Research and Program Development  

Information design has traditionally focused on usability as measured by functionality and efficiency in the execution of user tasks. Newer approaches to experience design and new communication technologies such as the so-called Web 2.0 platform and its Ajax engine emphasize total user engagement with the technology and richer collaborations among users. These developments complicate traditional notions of agency by highlighting the role of technology as mediator between and among users. A project in Tech-Mediated Communication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, funded by the Society for Technical Communication, illustrates how these developments impact the development of novel and creative information resources, with several experiments in cross-cultural, community-oriented, and educational systems design. This work also emphasizes the need to develop research agendas and programmatic initiatives that support interdisciplinary collaborative design activities and thus help technical communicators to meet their collective responsibility to influence and shape the mediating technologies of the future by creating more engaging and more collaborative total user experiences.

Zappen, James P. and Cheryl Geisler. Programmatic Perspectives (2009). Articles>Education>Information Design>User Experience

Usability Testing Demystified

There seems to be this idea going around that usability testing is bad, or that the cool kids don’t do it. That it’s old skool. That designers don’t need to do it. What if I told you that usability testing is the hottest thing in experience design research? Every time a person has a great experience with a website, a web app, a gadget, or a service, it’s because a design team made excellent decisions about both design and implementation—decisions based on data about how people use designs. And how can you get that data? Usability testing.

Chisnell, Dana E. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Usability>Testing>User Experience

Three Decades of Research and Professional Practice on Printed Software Tutorials for Novices    

Provides a historic overview of research on printed software tutorials. Describes developments in design approaches, refinements in design, and user experience.

van der Meij, Hans, Joyce Karreman and Michaël Steehouder. Technical Communication Online (2009). Articles>Documentation>Help>User Experience