Document Engineering in User Experience Design  

Document engineering is a methodology for specifying, designing, and deploying the information models and repositories that enable document-centric applications, and a synthesis of information and systems analysis, business process modeling, electronic publishing, and service-oriented architecture.

Glushko, Robert J. University of California Berkeley (2008). Articles>Document Design>User Experience

The Elements of User Experience  

The Web was originally conceived as a hypertextual information space; but the development of increasingly sophisticated front- and back-end technologies has fostered its use as a remote software interface.

Garrett, Jesse James. JJG.net (2002). Articles>Information Design>User Experience>Web Design

Engagement: Should We Care?

These days, the idea of customer engagement is almost as hot as Web 2.0--and almost as controversial. As busy UX professionals, should we invest our time and energy in caring about engagement, or is it just another buzzword? I think we do need to understand customer engagement, so that, at a minimum, we can respond intelligently to questions about it from marketers or executives. We might even glean some useful insights from thinking about engagement. This column aims to cut through the hype and reveal the potential value of engagement.

Jones, Colleen. UXmatters (2008). Articles>User Experience>User Centered Design>Audience Analysis

Engagement: Should We Care?

These days, the idea of customer engagement is almost as hot as Web 2.0--and almost as controversial. As busy UX professionals, should we invest our time and energy in caring about engagement, or is it just another buzzword? I think we do need to understand customer engagement, so that, at a minimum, we can respond intelligently to questions about it from marketers or executives. We might even glean some useful insights from thinking about engagement. This column aims to cut through the hype and reveal the potential value of engagement.

Jones, Colleen. UXmatters (2008). Articles>User Experience

Engaging User Creativity: The Playful Experience

With so many choices as to how we can spend our time in the digital age, attention is becoming the most important currency. In today's splintered media environment, new digital products and services must compete with everything under the sun, making differentiation key to developing an audience that cares, invests, and ultimately drives value.

Follett, Jonathan. UXmatters (2007). Articles>User Experience>User Centered Design

The Enterprise User Experience: Bridging the IT/Marketing Divide

Within the corporate world, the clash between marketing and IT teams is a well known, but little discussed subject. Often, the marketing or corporate communications team owns the vision for online efforts, while the tech team owns their execution.

Goodman, Bob. UXmatters (2005). Articles>User Experience

Envisioning the Future of User Experience

Perspectives on the role UX professionals will play in the future and a few forward-looking predictions about the field of user experience.

Sherman, Paul J. UXmatters (2007). Articles>User Experience>Planning

Everything in Moderation: Using Content Units to Manage UX

I’ve found that separating client requests into content units removes uncertainty and offers clearer direction, while helping your client recognize each individual request as a deliverable, requiring assignments and responsibilities. To do this, I follow a four-step process that helps delineate what content units each section of a Web site must cover—as opposed to content that acts as filler, or filler units.

LaFerriere, Keith. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Project Management>Planning>User Experience

Expanding the Approaches to User Experience

Jesse James Garrett’s 'The Elements of User Experience' diagram has become rightly famous as a clear and simple model for the sorts of things that user experience professionals do. But as a model of user experience it presents an incomplete picture with some serious omissions—omissions I’ll try address with a more holistic model.

Olsen, George. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>User Experience>User Centered Design

Framework of Product Experience

In this paper, we introduce a general framework for product experience that applies to all affective responses that can be experienced in human-product interaction. Three distinct components or levels of product experiences are discussed: aesthetic experience, experience of meaning, and emotional experience. All three components are distinguished in having their own lawful underlying process.

Desmet, Pieter and Paul Hekkert. International Journal of Design (2007). Articles>User Interface>Human Computer Interaction>User Experience

The Gap Between 25 Seconds and 5 Seconds

If designers took the perspective of users in the design of air conditioners, perhaps the wait for the cold air would not have been 25 seconds, unless you really think that 25 seconds of waiting time is fun for users.

Jiong, Zhou. uiGarden (2007). Articles>User Interface>User Experience

Getting Started with Graphics for an Enriching User Experience

Good web design does not necessarily mean good use of colors and layouts, but it does transcend beyond it. Design elements like color, font, size, frame, etc. play an important role nonetheless, but what is more important is that how it affects the aesthetic sensibilities of the users. The warmth and the feel of the web site, or in another words, the texture of the web site is a crucial area to turn our attention to. By texture of the web site what it means is the subtleties of the surface of the web site. Varied aspects as discussed in this article, when sensibly used -- and in combination with good deign skills aimed at creating intuitive appeal -- are of definite help of when it comes to developing engaging graphics on your web site.

Rahbre Azam. Amateur Writerz (2008). Articles>User Experience>Technical Writing>Graphic Design

Ginny Redish

Ginny Redish has been in love with language since she was twelve. And today? It's only logical--she creates conversations between people and computers.

Adlin, Tamara and Janice C. 'Ginny' Redish. UX Pioneers (2007). Articles>Interviews>User Experience

Global Market, Global Emotion, Global Design?

In the current discussion of where design is going and what matters, there is an emphasis on the user and his or her (emotional) experience. It is a hot topic in books, blogs and the minds of industrial designers and interaction designers, worldwide. The importance of a focus on (emotional) experiences in addition to a merely technological or functional focus is being stressed by professionals with many different cultural backgrounds.

van Hout, Marco. uiGarden. Articles>User Centered Design>User Experience>Emotions

Good Products Don’t Make Up for Bad Service … But They Help

Jeffrey Kalmikoff is partner at skinnyCorp and chief creative officer at Threadless. In this article he relates what a trip to a sandwich shop can teach you about customer service.

Kalmikoff, Jeffrey. Vitamin (2008). Articles>User Experience>User Centered Design

Helping Users Become Experts

Helping users move from being perpetual novices to experts is a tough task. As this blog post argues, good documentation helps. But you also need to create a product that users can be passionate about.

DMN Communications (2008). Articles>Documentation>User Experience

How to Succeed As a First-Time UX Manager

In my last column, I suggested that being a manager of UX is no better—and no worse—than being a great designer or user researcher, but the roles are very different. In fact, as the book The First 90 Days [1] points out, the skills that make you successful as an individual contributor are not the same skills you need as a leader.

Nieters, Jim. UXmatters (2008). Articles>User Experience>Management>Collaboration

Human-Computer Interaction: Guidelines for Web Animation

Human-computer interaction in the large is an interdisciplinary area which attracts researchers, educators, and practioners from many differenf fields. Human-computer interaction studies a human and a machine in communication, it draws from supporting knowledge on both the machine and the human side. This paper is related to the human side of human-computer interaction and focuses on animations.

Galyani, Golnessa Moghaddam and Mostafa Moballeghi. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>User Experience>Flash

The Iceberg Analogy of Usability

Developers sometimes ask which aspects of look and feel contribute most to the overall usability of an application or Web site. They are typically surprised when I answer that the 'look and feel' aspects aren't the major contributors at all. Look and feel have been popular discussion topics for many years, and some developers have proposed various schemes purporting to allow an easy swap of one look and feel for another. They were perhaps compelled to this thinking to compensate for an inadequate understanding of their users. Around 1990, I became alarmed by the popularity of design architectures advocating paradigms like the User Interface Management Systems (UIMS) that enable a pluggable look and feel. Many of my colleagues and I felt that look and feel represented only the tip of the iceberg. We felt that the set of concepts users must learn and understand to use a product or Web site effectively is actually the most important factor.

Berry, Dick. IBM (2001). Articles>Usability>User Experience>Web Design

IDEA 2008: An Interview with Bill DeRouchey

Bill DeRouchey is fascinated with buttons and the history of interface design. He talks to us as he prepares for IDEA 2008, October 7-8. In Chicago, Bill hopes to help attendees expand their sources of inspiration to include just about anything in their everyday lives.

Unger, Russ. Boxes and Arrows (2008). Articles>Interviews>User Interface>User Experience

Immersion in Videogames

User experience is a term that is widely used these days to refer to all sorts of interactions between people and technologies. But when it comes to videogames, experience is the only sensible word to use. Games are pure experience. And the range of experiences they offer is huge from what it is like to land a 747 at Heathrow Airport to slaying space dragons with a team of like-minded warriors. Thus, when it comes to really understanding user experience in games, it can be hard to say anything that would apply in general. However, one expression that does seem to crop up regularly, and that gamers relate to, is that games are immersive: when people are having a good experience, they get lost or immersed in the game and the world outside the game fades into the background. So what is this notion of immersion? What causes it? And is it the heart of what makes a good game? These are the questions that I have been trying to answer, together with my colleagues and students, over the last few years.

Cairns, Paul. uiGarden (2008). Articles>User Experience>User Centered Design>Games

Interactions 08 in the Garden of Good and Evil

An interview with Dan Saffer, 2008 Conference Chair and IxDA Director. Dan discusses the context of the organization, how the conference emerged and formed, what the conference will be like, and how one might get a flavor even if attendance is not an option.

Baum, Chris. Boxes and Arrows (2008). Articles>Interviews>Interaction Design>User Experience

An Introduction to User Journeys

User journeys are a method for conceptualising and structuring a website's content and functionality. These journeys allow us to shift away from thinking about structure in terms of hierarchies or a technical build; instead you create a narrative around your user's needs.

Hobbs, Jason. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>User Experience

iPhone Evaluation Report

User Centric, a privately held usability consulting firm based in Chicago, evaluated the long-term usability and user experience of the iPhone in 2007.

uiGarden (2008). Articles>User Experience>Usability

Is Beauty the New Usability Attribute?

The beauty of a product can influence the users' overall impression or general user satisfaction of the product. Think iPod. But how do you measure that?

Hall, Mark D. and Kathleen Straub. Human Factors International (2005). Articles>Usability>Aesthetics>User Experience