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New on UXmatters: June 19, 2017
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I’m going to open my new column Evolution of XD Principles with a quotation that actually contradicts my position:
“If you do it right, it will last forever.”—Massimo Vignelli
He’s wrong. Massimo is a very well-known, well-respected Italian designer who has impressed the world by successfully innovating products in a variety of disparate product spaces. But he’s wrong.
Design should always accomplish one key thing: demonstrate a thorough understanding of the people who will engage with a solution. A design should accommodate the well-defined mental model of those engaging with an experience. However, a challenge for UX designers is this: mental models represent collections of knowledge—and knowledge is never static. Forever is a fallacy.
With this premise in mind, my goal for this column is to write a series of articles that challenge traditional experience-design principles in a way that explores next-generation—and forgotten, last-generation—experience-design strategies.
Join me, as I explore such topics as why ugly products sometimes succeed, how some companies can dictate rather than accommodate usability patterns, and the hidden value of a user experience with a tinge of dishonesty. I’ll be leading you on a journey that will take us off the beaten path—one on which the only constant is change. Read More
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In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our expert panel considers the contributions of UX designers that are most and least important to the product-development process. Can we generalize about the value of UX designers’ contributions to product teams? Or is the value a UX designer provides unique to that designer? How can UX designers exponentially increase the value of their skills and contributions by inculcating an experience-first culture into a multidisciplinary product team? How can product teams make meaningful work?
The panel discusses the importance of UX designers’ being involved in the product-development lifecycle from the very beginning of a project, engaging entire product teams in the UX research and design process, and applying discoveries from research throughout the design process. Our expert panel also contemplates how UX designers can take a more active role in the development process, as opposed to simply executing requirements from product management. Read More
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If you’ve ever struggled to find user-research participants, you may have wished you had a list of people who have expressed an interest in taking part in future user-research activities. A user-research panel is exactly that: a list or database of potential research participants—who have given you their contact details and maybe some other information about themselves—that you can recruit for specific research activities as they come up.
We’re enthusiastic about user-research panels, but we’re also realistic about the amount of work they involve. So, in this column, we’ll briefly touch on the benefits of user-research panels, then present seven questions you should consider to ensure that your user-research panels are successful. Read More
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By Michael Morgan
You’ve just completed a readout of your latest ground-breaking research, presenting an hour-long slideshow, and hopefully, you’ve wowed your audience with what you’ve shown them. But all too often, after you’ve reported your research results, everyone returns to their workspace and develops a serious case of insight amnesia. Stakeholders quickly forget the juicy morsels of information that would make your company’s products better. Your insights remain stuck in your slide deck and may never again see the light of day.
There are two questions that arise from this dilemma: First, how can you make your research insights more readily available to product teams so they don’t have to slog through your deck to find them? There are multiple, well-known solutions to this problem. The second problem, which is the focus of this article, is how can you ensure that your product team uses your research insights? Read More
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By Alipta Ballav
Envision coffee machines that start brewing just when you think it’s a good time for an espresso, office lights that dim when it’s sunny and workers don’t need them, your favorite music app playing a magical tune depending on your mood, or your car suggesting an alternative route when you hit a traffic jam.
Predictability is the essence of a sustainable business model. In a digital world, with millions of users across the globe, prediction definitely has the power to drive the future of interaction. Feeding a historical dataset into a system that uses machine-learning algorithms to predict outcomes makes prediction possible. Read More
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Thank You to Our Sponsors!
We would like to thank our sponsors for their support of UXmatters!
One of the biggest challenges of designing user experiences in an agile world is fitting into agile processes. Compounding this challenge is that it can sometimes feel like engineers are from Mars and designers are from Venus. This is why it is essential to find ways of making User Experience techniques more Lean and agile.
Join Dean Barker, VP of UX and Agile coaching at Optum/UnitedHealth Group, as he discusses how to remove the waste from your UX processes for a truly Lean foundation.
This Webinar will teach you how to
- understand User Experience in the context of agile
- integrate Lean research techniques into an agile development process
- take an agile approach to UX design
View this free Webinar now!
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Conferences UXmatters Has Attended
Look for our conference reviews in upcoming editions of UXmatters.
::: O'Reilly Design Conference 2017, March 20–22, in San Francisco, California
::: TiEcon 2017, May 5–6, in Santa Clara, California
::: Enterprise UX 2017, June 7–9, in San Francisco, California
Sponsoring UXmatters
If your company offers products or services for UX professionals, sponsoring UXmatters provides an ideal way for you to reach your audience—the senior practitioners, managers, and executives who recommend and approve their purchase. If you want to inquire about sponsoring UXmatters, please contact us at sponsor@uxmatters.com.
::: Read more about sponsoring UXmatters.
Opportunities for Authors & Volunteers
If you are an expert in user experience (UX) strategy, any aspect of UX design, or user research who has strong writing skills, we welcome you to contribute to UXmatters. Please send an article proposal to us at info@uxmatters.com.
::: Read more about writing for UXmatters.
There are many opportunities for you to contribute to UXmatters. If you're interested in volunteering with UXmatters, please contact us at info@uxmatters.com.
::: Read more about volunteering with UXmatters.
About UXmatters
UXmatters is one of the foremost Web magazines for UX professionals. We deliver compelling content about developing effective UX strategies and designing digital-product user experiences that optimally serve people's needs and satisfy their desires. Created by and for UX professionals, UXmatters covers a broad spectrum of topics about UX management, strategy, design, and research for a diverse range of digital products—from Web, mobile, and desktop applications to mobile devices and consumer electronics products. Our audience encompasses people in all UX professions.
About User Experience
User experience (UX) encompasses all aspects of a digital product that users experience directly—and perceive, learn, and use—including its form, behavior, and content. Learnability, usability, usefulness, and aesthetic appeal are key factors in users' experience of a product. UX design takes a holistic, multidisciplinary approach to the design of user interfaces for digital products. It integrates interaction design, industrial design, information architecture, visual user interface design, instructional design, and user-centered design, ensuring coherence and consistency across all of these design dimensions.
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