“I personally can’t stop worrying about the other things and the big picture what i wanted to do is encourage people to communicate that with everybody that they work with. That’s what everyone is trying to do. It’s easy to get lost in your area of responsibility and what you can control, but that’s not going to get us where we know that customer experience and user experience needs to go.”

“You know what really terrifies me? That so few people actually write about what they are doing. There’s so much intelligence lying around out there and not getting out. i just want to find a way toban get these folks in front of the people that need to hear them.”

“I’m with you!” you tweet, “but how can we blindly follow you with no manifesto?”. Fear not; using my own process I have carefully crafted a ten-point system (because ‘ten-point’ always sounds best, regardless of how many cogent points I can actually come up with) for a designer to keep in mind. Consider these a checklist that will help you achieve the pinnacle of a shining portfolio, and get that all important job in an interactive marketing agency, tur

Much more recently, I had the opportunity to work with a non-profit organization whose mission was to educate people about breast cancer, as well as provide an online forum for them to share and learn from one another. When interviewing the site’s users, it soon became clear how important these people’s stories were to them. They would tell the tale of their cancer, or the cancer of a loved one, and in each case the story was one of interrupted expectation—a major change of di

Finally, consider how the execution of these kitchen ideas were affected by Leonardo himself. Leonardo was famous for procrastination. For example, it took him many years to complete “The Last Supper”. When you look at the body of his art work, you will discover only a small set of completed masterpieces. From an execution perspective, we see only one resource (Leonardo) for all these ideas. Leonardo was overthinking and underdelivering on his promises, which is a nightmare on a

The economics are different in selling consumer products than when developing software for enterprises—UX matters more for consumer products. Jeff Bezos cares if users know how to click the button that puts money in his pocket more than Larry Ellison cares about any button in Oracle software. Larry makes money even if people can’t use his software. Oracle sells support contracts and professional services to fix things customers don’t like. Amazon and other online businesses can

Management support is critical -if the project is a “nice to have”, it is doomed. Each project should report what they contributed to the library and what they consumed. A developer’s performance evaluation should list what they contributed to the library and what they re-used -Both save the firm money. At a firm I worked at – a single component, taking 2 weeks of two developers’ time, was re-used over 200 times. This saved 16 person-years of effort -this is real mo

Managing ‘internal design complexity’ relies upon a paradox. The phrase implies the complexity of any given single feature. However, the significance of ‘internal’ complexity is not constrained to a single feature. Managing internal design complexity requires us to assess the solution at two levels simultaneously. Only through critical end-to-end analysis of the solution can we make a similarly effective judgement about whether any single feature is as simple as it can&md

Although it is a really easy trap to fall into, if you simply ask users about what would make life better, you will rarely get meaningful answers. They are just not good at envisioning revolutionary solutions, and basing your designs on those responses won’t get to a breakthrough in your design. In this presentation, Amy Cueva and Megan Grocki discuss how research inspires design and how reality inspires creativity. They focus on activities such as Laddering, Game play, Storytelling and Tr

Is there any theoretical framework information architects can use to inform their design decisions? Perhaps our field is too young to have a mature theory, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a set of immutable principles that give us a sense of quality in IA. Daniel Brown talks about eight principles that influence the rules and frameworks that govern the experience, why each is important, and why they are immutable. After sharing examples of each principle, he concludes with a r

You don’t get a second chance to make a great first impression—and that includes kickoff meetings. After one too many unproductive kickoffs, Happy Cog reinvented its project definition process around full-day, interactive activities and collaborative design exercises. Kevin Hoffman, Experience Director at Happy Cog East, explores approaches for identifying business strategy, company culture, and project risks before you even shake your client’s hand for the first time. He then

At Mad*Pow, they leverage the disciplines of Human Factors, Psychology, and Visual Design to create engaging experience that maximize customer acquisition, increase attention, and reduce costs. The American Society of Information Science & Technology: Since 1937, ASIS&T has been THE society for information professionals leading the search for new and better theories, techniques, and technologies to improve access to information.The IA Summit: the premier gathering place for information architect

At Mad*Pow, they leverage the disciplines of Human Factors, Psychology, and Visual Design to create engaging experience that maximize customer acquisition, increase attention, and reduce costs. The American Society of Information Science & Technology: Since 1937, ASIS&T has been THE society for information professionals leading the search for new and better theories, techniques, and technologies to improve access to information.The IA Summit: the premier gathering place for information architect

At Mad*Pow, they leverage the disciplines of Human Factors, Psychology, and Visual Design to create engaging experience that maximize customer acquisition, increase attention, and reduce costs. The American Society of Information Science & Technology: Since 1937, ASIS&T has been THE society for information professionals leading the search for new and better theories, techniques, and technologies to improve access to information.The IA Summit: the premier gathering place for information architect

It took both the telephone and the mobile phone 15 years to amass 100 million users, but Facebook did it in 9 months. We see more and more people becoming connected on online social networks, and it seems our networks are growing exponentially. But the reality is, social networks rarely add to our number of connections. We’ve already met almost all the people we’re connected to on social networks. We’re already connected to these people offline. Social networks simply make the