#30009
Beyond User-Centered Design and User Experience: Designing for User Performance 
The shortcomings and limitations of user-centered and user experience design are considered and contrasted with usage-centered design. The iterative, trial-and-error approach of traditional user-centered approaches is argued to lead to excessive dependence on user testing and user approval, leading to overly conservative designs. By contrast, model-driven approaches based on fine-grained task models have a proven record of leading to dramatic improvements in user performance through innovative designs.
Constantine, Larry L. Constantine and Lockwood (2006). Articles>User Centered Design>User Experience>EPSS
#25608
Crafting a User Experience Curriculum
It isn’t often that one has the opportunity to create a course about user experience, let alone an entire sequence of user experience courses. Jason Withrow's opportunity forced him to examine his perceptions of the user experience industry.
Withrow, Jason. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>Education>User Experience>User Centered Design
#30682
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
#30635
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
#21288
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
#29557
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
#31949
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
#32031
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
#26564
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
#28357
Metrics for Heuristics: Quantifying User Experience (Part 2 of 2)
In part one of 'Metrics for Heuristics,' Andrea Wiggins discussed how designers can use Rubinoff’s user experience audit to determine metrics for measuring brand. In part two, Wiggins examines how web analytics can quantify usability, content, and navigation.
Wiggins, Andrea. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>User Centered Design>User Experience>Heuristic Evaluation
#28532
User Experience in a Software Development Team
User Experience (UX) design is traditionally seen as the domain of user interface (UI) design, but within a software development team it should mean so much more! UX should permeate through the whole development team. It should influence the way middle tier developers' craft their components and the way database administrators create their tables, stored procedures and views.
Goddard, Matthew. uiGarden (2007). Articles>User Centered Design>User Experience
#22309
Why Consumer Products Have Inferior User Experience
Physical products, from consumer electronics to cars, are needlessly complex because they're developed by insular companies that continue to ignore the growing usability trend.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2004). Articles>Usability>User Experience>User Centered Design
#25076
Why Game Documentation is Essential to a Satisfying User Experience
Documentation and information organization are an integral part of video game construction. The video game industry may be one of the directions technical communicators will move toward in the near future.
Peterson, Martin. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>Documentation>User Experience>User Centered Design
#27023
I view a user experience as a conversation between people separated over the distance of time. At one end of that conversation are those who create the product; at the other, the people who use it. In between is the product itself--with a design that either helps or hinders; creates a barrier-free interaction or shouts in an unfamiliar language. Because this conversation does not happen in real time, we are not there to smooth over the rough spots and make sure that we have spoken clearly. Instead, we have to build our understanding of those users into every aspect of the design, by putting people--users--at the center of the design process.
Quesenbery, Whitney. UXmatters (2005). Articles>User Experience>Communication>User Centered Design
#32976
An Ethnographic Approach to User Experience: A Bibliography
A 2002 bibliography of writings in the area of ethnography and user experience.
Ferguson, Louise. Louise Ferguson (2002). Articles>Bibliographies>User Experience>User Centered Design
#33013
The key revolution of the Web is customer empowerment and engagement. The Web empowers the customer more than it empowers the organization. The implications are enormous.
McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2006). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>User Experience
#33158
Results of a Study about Online Experience
Users’ “enjoyment” of a site is tied closely to how easily they can find the information they want and stay oriented at the same time. I think this is a given for technical communicators; we know that users want to get answers as fast as possible, and documentation must be navigable.
Gryphon Mountain (2008). Articles>Web Design>User Experience>User Centered Design
#33934
Top Seven UX Design Definitions
Having determined to collect and share with you the top ten definitions of User Experience Design from the most credible sources, and so you to form your own, say, meta impression, I found the network falling just short. So, here are the top seven, with an invitation to you to contribute those definitions of user experience design (full three terms) that you find or know of. Inclusion is conditional, however, on a credibility standard that can only be defined as “secret sauce.”
Cummings, Michael. UX Design (2008). Articles>User Experience>User Centered Design
#33935
What Is User Experience Design
User experience design can sometimes be a slippery term. With all the other often used terms that float around in its realm in the technology and web space: interaction design, information architecture, human computer interaction, human factors engineering, usability, and user interface design. People often end up asking “what is the difference between all these fields and which one do I need?” This article examines the term and field of user experience to plainly extrapolate its meaning and connect the dots with these other fields.
Paluch, Kimmy. Montparnas (2006). Articles>User Experience>User Centered Design
#33936
User experience design is a subset of the field of experience design which pertains to the creation of the architecture and interaction models which impact a user's perception of a device or system. The scope of the field is directed at affecting "all aspects of the user’s interaction with the product: how it is perceived, learned, and used." User experience design, most often abbreviated UX, but sometimes UE, is a term used to describe the overarching experience a person has as a result of their interactions with a particular product or service, its delivery, and related artifacts, according to their design.
#33938
Ten Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design
The term “user experience” or UX has been getting a lot of play, but many businesses are confused about what it actually is and how crucial it is to their success. I asked some of the most influential and widely respected practitioners in UX what they consider to be the biggest misperceptions of what we do. The result is a top 10 list to debunk the myths.
Hess, Whitney. Mashable (2009). Articles>User Experience>User Centered Design
#34049
Empathy is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We have an ability to imagine things the way that others see them and how it makes them feel. We don’t even have to have a disability ourselves. Accessibility is NOT a checklist. Accessibility is about usability. Accessibility is a paradigm shift. Accessibility is a personal issue.
Foster, Rob. northtemple (2009). Articles>Accessibility>User Centered Design>User Experience
#34459
Out of Box Experience: Getting it Right First Time
The out of box experience (OOBE) describes the users first interaction with a product or service. In the technology sector this first experience invariably involves plugging stuff in, installing some software and crossing your fingers in the hope that the product will work. The problem is that, in far too many cases, it doesn’t.
Frontend Infocentre (2009). Articles>User Experience>User Centered Design>Usability
#34517
Growing Happy Users -- One Customer at a Time
Technical writing is a profession in transition. The way companies think of, use, and manage the people who help users make sense of and use products is absolutely changing. A lot of companies have started to use the term “information developer” to describe their technical writing positions. I don’t really care what label the profession chooses for itself, but I do know this: if technical writers don’t transition more than their job title then they will be missing out on a huge opportunity to move from the “gotta do it” category into the “can’t live without it” one.
Stern, Paula. LugIron Software Blog (2009). Articles>User Centered Design>User Experience>Technical Writing
#34945
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
