#29558
Is it more important for your web site to be desirable or accessible? How about usable or credible? The truth is, it depends on your unique balance of context, content and users, and the required tradeoffs are better made explicitly than unconsciously.
Morville, Peter. Semantic Studios (2004). Design>Web Design>User Experience>User Centered Design
#30461
User Experience Design and Usability
Blog on interface design, interaction design and usability.
Lipiec, Maciej. User Experience Design and Usability (2007). (Polish) Design>User Experience>Interaction Design>User Centered Design
#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
#30626
User Experience Inside and Out: The Strategy of Persuasive Design
Presents a strategic roadmap for user experience design. Combining usability with the science of persuasion, learn how you can: impact online decision-making and user motivation; create a dashboard-based framework to measure and track user experience; integrate your customer channels and internal-facing systems; and help executives appreciate and understand the value of user-centered thinking and design.
Nadel, Jerome and Jay More. Human Factors International (2007). Design>User Centered Design>User Experience>Usability
#29496
User Interface Design Newsletter
Monthly articles on the latest usability research and its practical implications for user interface design.
Human Factors International (2007). Journals>User Interface>User Experience>User Centered Design
#30625
Who's Keeping Score? The Value of Usability Scorecards and Metrics
Explains how HFI's evolving set of user experience metrics can help you: quantify best practices in design at a site, sub-site or page level; prioritize your usability resources across a range of projects; get valuable feedback quickly, in 'design time'; track and benchmark user experience over time; learn how you score against your competitors; and synthesize your various user data streams into an integrated UX dashboard.
Goddard, Phil and Susan Weinschenk. Human Factors International (2007). Design>User Experience>User Centered Design>Podcasts
#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
#34170
Bringing Holistic Awareness to Your Design
All of the members of the best teams could tell us, with relative ease, the top five business goals of their application, the top five user types the application was to serve, and the top five platform capabilities and limitations they had to work within. And, when questioned more deeply, each team member revealed an appreciation and understanding of the challenges and goals of their teammates almost as well as their own.
Selbie, Joseph. Boxes and Arrows (2009). Design>User Experience>Usability>User Centered Design
#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
#35240
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
#35381
We don't really know what attention is, despite all the mumbo-jumbo spouted by Nobel laureates. My guess: most of what people say about attention is hogwash: mere anecdotes, or flimsy cultural norms offered up in a 'be productive, be happy' wrapper. Whenever business thinkers seek to apply an economic metaphor to human cognition, it is a mess: remember "knowledge management"?
Boyd, Stowe. SlideShare (2007). Articles>User Centered Design>User Experience>Emotions
#35487
Designing for B2B and Enterprise Applications
It's not uncommon to hear people complaining about the poor user experience of some B2B and enterprise applications. Read through these top tips to help you design enterprise applications that offer a better user experience and increase productivity.
Baxevanis, Alexander. Webcredible (2009). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>User Centered Design>User Experience
#35493
When writing software, *please* don't give error messages that are only meaningful to developers of the software. Microsoft used to be awful for this: "System fault at DEAD:BEEF, please contact your system administrator". Which would've been cool, except that I *was* the system administrator.
Bailey, Jeff. LiveJournal (2009). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>User Centered Design>User Experience
