Observations from someone trying to build the whiteboard culture
Don Norman, author of several books including The Design of Everyday Things, writes that error messages punish people for not behaving like machines. The result is users frustrated at confrontational software that throws out perfectly good work.
The way forward is to stop punishing and start collaborating. This article begins that thought transition.
It is so easy to think of “Design” as making beautiful, pixel-perfect interfaces, but in reality, Design is far more than that. In this article, the author argues for a view of design that goes far deeper than the visual design layer. In fact, Paul Adams, the author, discusses 4 distinct layers.
If you concentrate mostly in the visual layer, that’s art. Still incredibly important, but it’s not “big-‘D’ Design.”
Recently, I wrote a post for the Cooper Journal, a resource that has been extremely helpful to me in the past.
Here, I examine helping the in-house UX team communicate the value of design to both peers and those in upper management using techniques I learned at Cooper’s Design Leadership training.
Bottom line: You sell design by being valuable
As a small business owner, writer, or content creator, it is tempting to consider using Facebook or some other platform as the place to go to for your content. Unfortunately, what you’re doing is described in this article as “sharecropping,” putting your hard work into building decent content that ultimately belongs to someone else.
Instead, build your own brand on your own website and with your own email list. The reward is much greater.
If you would like to start down this path, but are unsure where to begin, please contact me and I’ll help you get started.
Over time, email lists experience attrition (email subscribers disengaging). This article by BlueHornet’s Vice President of Strategic Services, Kara Trivunovic discusses ways companies try to solve this issue.
Keeping subscribers engaged is a longtime favorite topic of discussion. But over the last few years, as more inbox providers have adopted engagement as an inbox placement factor, the importance continues to grow.
User Experience design is not solely for digital products, it’s for any time human needs are involved. This article discusses how UX methods, particularly ethnographic research
Dear architects,You’re outdated. I know this because I once was one of you. But now I’ve moved on. I moved on because despite your love of a great curve, and your experimentation with…
Great interview with Jeff Gothelf on Lean UX.
From time to time, we revive our in-house book club to catch up on new themes, practices, or ideas out there in the design world. This month, we’re reading Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles.
Just the raw notes for now, folks. Tweet out using #lcmc13
What the Five(ish)
The web could have been a fad. Five foundations that have changed in the consumer mindset that companies are doing nothing about.
Be a customer. Who in the value chain deserves the most attention? Beats by Dre or Target where you bought some headphones?
Everyone.
We compete with everyone who has a piece of the value chain.
Kick starter is the power of direct relationship.
Big data = taking disparate data and use it to give you information that no human or computer could ever give you before. Not available to most
Use small data, connect with your consumer on a personal level.
Amazon knows a lot about you. Not many people are concerned with the personal information you’re giving, because it is helpful to the customer.
Utilitarian marketing. A new foot traffic. The home screen of digital devices. A world of narcissism. Branded apps must provide utility
Sit or Squat by Proctor and Gamble. Solve a problem.
DishTip – gives you the best dish near you (rather than restaurant)
Lego stores – needed an insight. That’s User Experience. Legos, can I build this? Created virtual box. When you hold it up to it, it virtually builds the set in front of your eyes
Passive vs. Active
Connect with your users actively when they’re active and passive when they’re passive.
Newspapers, we’ll just put banner ads around our articles. Newspapers took passive and put in active channel.
Google took active google ads and put it on an active channel (search) with active participants and makes more ad money than the entire print industry
What we have is a Frankenstein industry. Content on different channels, everything is just cobbled together.
Can you just put your tv commercials on YouTube? Of course not. Environment is different
One screen world
The only screen that matters is the one in front of you.
People don’t take this change very seriously. Turn it on and it works.
Technology has removed technology from technology. A simplified user experience
And it’s growing exponentially.
Not phones, they’re the remote controls of our lives.
Brand Narrative
How do customers
Direct relationships
Sex with data
Utilitarianism marketing
Passive v active
One screen world
New brand narrative
The Global Leadership Summit kicked off yesterday to 170,000+ people in 100 countries around the world. Leaders from every corner of the globe gather for this conference each year to study ways they can improve themselves as leaders as well as those they lead. It is an exciting opportunity to begin conversations and learn together what makes a great leader.
Here is a brief recap of day 1’s talks.
Content creators and curators, take note: people just don’t read everything you write. What to do? The NN Group (Jakob Nielsen’s company) suggests reorienting the way you write web pages. Most people scan your website, so make your website easy to scan. Hit the link below for more practical advice.
Excerpt:
They don’t.
People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page , picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across.
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-the-web/
The Resource section is a curated section of this website containing information and articles I find useful to my process. You may find them useful as well.