Self-Service Design Matters “You may not have heard of service design yet, but I’d argue that it’s the most important design sub-specialty in the business world today. Service designers create intangible experiences: the series of interactions that you have as you book a flight, pay a bill, get a driver’s license, or go to the doctor…service design is critical to customer experience.” Forrester Research’s Kerry Bodine in her Customer Experience Day ... Read More >
Aug 20
Part 2: The Marriage of UCD and Agile Development – Tips for Success
Picking up where we left off last week, we continue our exploration of how to successfully marry UCD and Agile processes within the same development environment. The previous post covered the first 3 of 7 Tips for Success which focused on the important role collaboration plays, from building the right team through every phase of a project. Today we’ll talk about how experimentation, rhythm, focus and quality come into play. Tip 4: Encourage ... Read More >
Aug 13
Is the marriage of UCD with an Agile development process possible?
UCD with Agile Development Process is Possible! The Agile methodology has taken the software development world by storm over the last two decades, and with good reason. The focus on iterative and incremental development, cross-functional teams, and working software over laborious documentation fits well with our need to respond rapidly to an ever-changing technological landscape. However, the move to Agile has left many product owners, development teams, and ... Read More >
Apr 17
Institutionalizing User Centered Design at Your Organization
Embrace User-Centered Design Do you remember the first time you looked at your website through the eyes of a customer? It can be haunting to watch someone struggle to accomplish a critical task, and finally declare they’d give up in frustration. This is the defining moment when some organizations decide it’s time to embrace user-centered design (UCD) and build a culture that will nourish and sustain it. How to get started: But what’s the best way to go ... Read More >
Sep 24
Jumping on a User Experience Carousel Ride
Effective Home Page Carousels The ubiquitous carousel appears on most of today’s business websites. A carousel is the large banner of scrolling images usually taking up a home page’s most valuable “real estate” – at the top, or “above the fold,” of the website. As an example, see our own home page carousel. The large images auto forward or users can choose to scroll through the images to view at their choosing. Carousels usually offer some indication (or ... Read More >
Sep 12
The UX Myth of “Do it Yourself” Usability Testing
UX Myth Explained Earlier this year, .Net magazine posted an article that takes a close look at several myths often associated with usability testing. The article offers insight into five commonly held misconceptions about usability testing. As the article notes, usability testing of a product, application or website is by far the most widely used usability evaluation method. You can see from the spirited discussion in the comments section that several ... Read More >
Aug 22
A Can’t-Miss UX Resource Spotlights the Customer
Through our various user research projects related to product, application and website development, our passion is to integrate human factors and the voice of the customer in the design to help satisfy customers and keep them coming back. Because of this commitment, when we hear about resources that affirm the priority of customer experience, we stand up and take notice. That’s why we’re sharing news of an insightful book entitled “Customers Included: How to ... Read More >
Aug 13
Organizing Your Website or Application: It’s All in the Cards
Card Sorting Explained Most developers would love to get inside the heads of their typical users to see how their application or website can best be organized. How can the structure of information on a website or application make the most sense to the typical user? That’s a compelling information architecture-related question that is best answered by the research technique of card sorting. Card Sorting Defined In card sorting, researchers ask ... Read More >
Jul 25
What Does It Look Like When UX Takes the Lead?
We got a kick out of a recent Harvard Business Review blog post written by Robert Fabricant. His post entitled The Rise of UX Leadership begins by characterizing UX as “the new black” in business, borrowing from a fashion phrase to demonstrate the prevalence of UX in product strategy and development. This characterization certainly rings true for the companies to which we offer user experience services. In every engagement, the focus is on developing ... Read More >
Jun 26
UX and ROTI: What’s Your Return on Testing Investment Success Story?
What’s the value of a website or application with a great user experience? This compelling question should be driving all product launch strategies. The answer could be worth a half-million dollars. When TecEd presented at the 2011 Internet User Experience Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan, we explored this very question which is still relevant today. Our presentation about winning stakeholder support for UX research budgets shared findings from ... Read More >
