Ease of Use Outside the Box

As user experience designers in an enterprise, we find ourselves knee deep in pixels. Should we use a dropdown element or a set of radio buttons? 10pt or 12pt size font? A broad-and-shallow or narrow-and-deep information architecture? While such design considerations are necessary and important, we miss huge user experience opportunities outside the webpage, outside the website, outside the browser. By tackling inter-application usability opportunities, user experience (UX) professionals can make things easier in a big way.

Padilla, Mike. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Design>Web 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

Execution Is Everything

The number one enemy of any strategy is poor execution. All across the business landscape, the ability of an organization to execute its strategy is one of the most critical elements of success. And for an effective UX strategy, the broad range of elements requiring alignment and implementation make its successful execution all the more difficult.

Baty, Steve. UXmatters (2008). Design>User Experience>Information Design

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

Experience Design

It’s time for web designers to peek over the cubicle and start sharing ideas with their peers in related design disciplines. Jacobson suggests one way to do that in this overview of the emerging Experience Design paradigm.

Jacobson, Bob. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Web Design>Theory>User Experience

Exploring Types and Characteristics of Product Forms  

Incorporating emotional value into products has become an essential strategy for increasing a product's competitive edge in the consumer market. It is therefore important for product manufacturers to understand how products affect consumers' emotions. This study was undertaken to investigate the types and characteristics of household products that elicit pleasurable responses, in particular among young, college-age consumers. The results of the study could suggest the types and characteristics to consider when developing pleasurable products aimed at young consumers.

Chang, Wen-chih and Tyan-Yu Wu. International Journal of Design (2007). Design>User Interface>User Experience>Emotions

The Five Competencies of User Experience Design

This framework comprises the competencies a UX professional or team requires. The following sections describe these five competencies, outline some questions each competency must answer, and show the groundwork and deliverables for which each competency is responsible.

Psomas, Steve. UXmatters (2007). Design>User Experience

Flywheels, Kinetic Energy, and Friction

Whatever the purpose of the sites you work on, their success depends on visitors doing something. We want our visitors to sign up, or buy, or donate, or download, or apply, or post opinions, or pick up the phone and call us. One way or another if we are to judge our sites as being successful, they have to result in some kind of action on the reader's part.

Usborne, Nick. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>User Experience

Four Factors of Agile User Experience

One of the most important aspects of the work of designers do on a project is their ability to explain their choices and the reasoning that led to given design solutions--both to their clients and to other member of a product team. Clear communication is vital to the smooth progress of a project, as even a single misunderstanding or communication glitch can lead to mistakes during implementation.

Mascaro, Luca. UXmatters (2007). Design>Web Design>Agile>User Experience

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

From Satisfaction to Delight

At this point in experience design's evolution, satisfaction ought to be the norm, and delight ought to be the goal. As design professionals, how do we create opportunities for customer delight?

Hanna, Parrish. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>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 Hired: What Employers Really Want

We began to work on an event to gather professionals and employers to help us figure out what UX employers really want.

Sanchez-Howard, Olga. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Careers>Usability>User Experience

Getting into Government Consulting

From Washington, D.C. to Olympia, Washington, there's a rich potential for user experience consultants of all flavors to provide services to government. In this article I'll share some thoughts directed toward you, the independent consultant or small firm that would like to work with government.

McMullin, Jess. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Careers>Consulting>Government>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

Gunning for Google

Recent redesigns at Yahoo!, Microsoft Live Search, and Ask.com are providing graphically rich alternatives to the minimalist search giant.

Vella, Matt. BusinessWeek (2007). Design>Web Design>User Experience>Search