- A Deep Understanding of Human Psychology & Research Methods
As Robert Fabricant says, human behavior is our medium. If you don’t understand people, you won’t be a good UX designer. You must have the capacity to hypothesize about the reasons behind the actions you observe people take. You must be able to see things from another person’s perspective. UX designers do more than think about what people do; they actively research it. You must also be familiar with psychological research methods designed to elicit and elucidate people’s perspectives. It takes talent and empathy to unearth these often well-hidden psychological constructs. This isn’t something just anyone can do.
- Competence in the Basics of Graphic Design
If you had to be a graphic designer to be a UX designer, I would have been fired long ago. Thankfully you don’t. But you do need to be competent in the most basic of basic graphic design principles. Graphic design breaks down into three elements: layout, color, and typography. What you need to know about layout is really Gestalt psychology. Things that appear closer together, bounded by lines, in the same color, etc. appear to be related. What you need to know about color is how to use adifference in color and its properties (hue, saturation, & brightness) to draw the user’s attention to important user interface (UI) elements. You also need to know how not to draw attention to unimportant elements. You need to know how to avoid the limitations of using color to convey information. Not everyone perceives color equally well. What you need to know about typography is how to use it to make content readable and scanable online. You also need to know not to use Comic Sans ever, apparently.
- An Awareness of and Interest in Technology
While I fundamentally disagree with the assertion that UX designers need to be expert coders, you do need to be fluent in technology. You should be able to understand technology well enough to communicate with developers, but you don’t need to have the skills to make it. While I absolutely cannot program my way out of a paper bag, having taken a few programming classes has helped me think like a developer when I need to communicate with them. Even if you haven’t done any programming, you can still communicate with developers if you’re interested enough in technology to learn. Ask questions if they start talking about things you don’t understand. Don’t just nod your head and say, “Mmm-hmm.” Interest is the first step toward knowledge.
- Verbal & Visual Communication Skills
UX design is all about abstractions until suddenly they are concrete and expensive to fix. You must be able to clearly communicate your ideas and the research findings they’re based on before that happens. You must be able to verbally describe everything from squishy user motivations to rigid, detailed sequences of events. But words can have different interpretations. You need to be able to supplement verbal communication with visuals. You don’t need to be an artist but you do need to be able to sketch your ideas on a whiteboard and create clean, clear prototypes and wireframes.
- Moderate Familiarity with Business, Deep Familiarity with Your Business
You need to understand the basics of how the business world works in order to effectively elicit and understand business goals. That doesn’t mean that you need to take an accounting class. Just think hard about value and what increases and decreases it. You do need to be very familiar with what your particular company or client finds valuable, though. On top of that, you need to be familiar with why your customers find your products or services valuable. To do that, you need to deeply understand the context in which they work.
- The Ability to Quickly Learn a Subject Matter Area
UX designers, whether corporate or consultants, are thrown into situations that they must understand from multiple perspectives. And quickly! Key to this is the ability to quickly master a subject matter area. This allows you to generate useful insights from user research and uncover hidden business goals by asking the right questions. This is crucial to good user experience design. This deep knowledge of context guides your design and allows you to make effective design decisions.
- Mediation, Facilitation, & Translation Skills
UX designers sit at the crotch of the Y. Business, technology, and users all intersect in our workMediation, facilitation, & translation skills are necessary to ensure that everyone’s perspective is accounted for.
While user goals can be uncovered through empathetic, open-minded research, business goals are often much harder. Different departments or business units often have different or even conflicting goals. I cannot overstate the importance of keeping these groups on the same page. On top of that, then you have to make it work in whatever technological context is required. Our jobs are not easy.
- Creativity & Vision
You need creativity and vision to take all of the above and mold it into a system that helps a business achieve its goals by making it easy and enjoyable for its users and customers to achieve theirs. You need the ability to both envision the big picture and craft the details. You need the creativity to innovate consciously and the drive to encourage innovation in others.
If you have all the characteristics I described above, you’re probably a good UX designer. But there is one single characteristic that makes the difference between a good designer and an excellent one… - Passion
In some ways, UX design is a worldview, something you just can’t turn off. Passionate UX designers constantly watch people do what they do and analyze why. They can’t help but redesign self-checkout machines in their heads after suffering through them. They create taxonomies for their kitchens and do interaction design on their living rooms. There is no interaction they have with technology or any other type of system that goes un-thought about.
Passion is the most important of all these characteristics. If a passion for UX is all you have, that’s a good place to start. That passion will drive you to cultivate the rest and success will soon follow.
| Another good article
A couple of months ago, I referenced variations of a boat metaphor (see Changing the course or pace of a large ship) that I have found is often used by User Experience management personnel to describe what it feels or felt like to build and establish a corporate User Experience function, get it understood and valued, enable it to contribute to a business to the extent that it can, etc. As I stated in that blog entry, one director described the pace of change he has been able to achieve as akin to the pace of an oil tanker rather than a speed boat. During our recently completed Managing User Experience Groups course, I used a part of that variation of the metaphor to learn about some of what is holding User Experience back or propelling User Experience forward in the rather wide range of companies represented by the students. More specifically, I used two forms of the Speed Boat exercise described in the recently published “Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play” (see The way we work has enormous power). For one exercise, I drew a speed boat and several anchors hanging from it on the whiteboard, and asked everyone to write onto post-its whatever has been holding User Experience back where they work and then place those post-its on the several anchors. Some of the “anchors” holding their User Experience “boats” back: lack of an executive user experience role lack of leadership an unclear business direction inconsistent impact of User Experience on the business lack of senior management and other key stakeholder understanding of the importance of user experience to success lack of understanding of user experience roles lack of understanding of user experience process user experience process is considered to be overhead different processes for different projects last-minute changes made by executives to user experience strategies an inability to develop innovative ideas too many people need to be OK with an idea or a solution a splintered user experience group excessive workloads shortage of user experience personnel/resources inadequate support resources applied to addressing features rather than wholistic design no continued evaluation of products (i.e., there is never a phase 2) fear of change; fear of users (who don’t like change) no explicit budget for user experience activities inappropriate balance between strategic work and implementation work nature of the physical work environment inadequate measurement or sharing of user experience success Are any of those akin to “anchors” holding User Experience back where you work? To learn what the students believe has been key to propelling User Experience forward where they work (to the extent that it has been propelled or is being propelled forward), I shifted the focus of the Speed Boat exercise from the anchors to — you guessed it — the engine propellers (see nearby photo). Interestingly, in several cases, “propelling forward” encompassed “moving upstream,” to use yet another metaphor which, at least on the surface, is moving in the opposite direction! Some of what has been key to propelling their User Experience “boats” forward: adding team members & expertise an executive champion situations in which user experience team input saved the company money executive support (which has enabled bypassing bureaucracy) exaggerations of the successes of the user experience organization hard work a dedicated prototype team that helps “show” what user experience personnel mean active participation by user experience personnel in meetings (e.g., product reviews) building relationships a better understanding & evangelizing of the design process client satisfaction; repeat business collaboration with developers success at customer demos of new concepts asking questions in meetings where you’re not expected to good customer feedback from UI reskinning outside validation of the user experience process talking about use cases and users to folks who typically only think about features the overall positioning of the company (which now focuses on user experience) PM & developer champions, who tell others to “go ask (the User Experience Lead)” early prototypes familiarity with the benefits of user experience process evangelizing bottom-up increased sales (because of user experience work) improved metrics for flows after redesigns combining UI, user research, visual design, & content/copy into a single department socializing personas to the rest of the company via large posters and information booklets good client feedback to design flexibility: a willingness to do “a little” (rather than a full-blown research-design process) so to prove value What a diverse collection of “propellers”! In the course, we examine all sorts of “anchors” and “propellers” — including many not appearing in the above lists — to help students figure out how to move user experience further forward where they work. What is holding User Experience back where you work? Why is that the case? What is needed to disengage those anchors and to propel User Experience further forward? Why bother with the speed boats and the anchors and the propellers? There are several reasons, but one of the most interesting, in my view, is how they appear to help tap what participants actually “experience” in their workplace. Note that at least one student plans to use a speed boat game akin to that described above to help in his process of working with others in his workplace to figure out how to move User Experience further forward. Perhaps you would find it of value to facilitate such a collaborative effort where you work. |
March 12th, 2010
Srikumar Rao: Plug into your hard-wired happiness
No Comments, Experience, by Nick.http://www.ted.com/talks/srikumar_rao_plug_into_your_hard_wired_happiness.html
| “The process of cutting out un-necessary distractions to aid thought, work and productivity”, my summary not a wikipedia definition.
While ist mainly about the world we live in today its useful in terms of UX as we should build software that focuses to a task and multitasking while perceived as a good thing is proven to be a bad thing for humans. The utopia of having one task to do at a time is never going to happen but the interference effect of modern communication is something we can work on. From what I have read being interupted has a huge effect on your ability to complete tasks on time, you loose much more than the time took, you loose focus and your brain is no longer attuned to the task, it’s estaimated it can take up to 2 hours for people to get back ‘into the zone’. A nice snippet to back this up “[While] performing cognitively demanding tasks, such as active learning and problem solving, involves executive brain mechanisms whose performance degrades significantly when they are interrupted…. It is a myth that humans are good at multi-tasking. Being bombarded with notifications from email, instant messaging, iPhone calls, text messages, Skype/iChat invitations, advertisements, lyrical music, etc., interferes with productive thinking and reading due to the architecture of the brain and mind.” Luc P.Beaudoin |
| Dont let branding kill your brand
Interesting Article. “That’s not one of our corporate colors.” The words hit you like a whiff of smelly cheese. You try to explain that, yes, the corporate colors are baby blue and yellow, but that combination isn’t optimal for building the main menu of a website. “Maybe, but we really need to stick to the brand guide approved by marketing. Maybe we could use different shades of baby blue and yellow.” Oh, the agony and ecstasy of brand orthodoxy. Designers have a love / hate relationship with branding documents and style guides. After all, it’s nice to have a defined style and brand manual. Accepted colors, approved iconography, exhaustively documented gradients and image libraries all make life easier for designers. They cut down on revisions and give us a place to start working. Unfortunately, most corporate style guides are not created with interactive experiences in mind. Unless you are lucky enough to be working for a company that was born digital, you’re likely to be faced with a lot of branding requirements that were created for the print world, not the digital realm. When corporate marketing departments dream of brand design, they only dream as far as they need. The expensive and time consuming process of extending the brand into an interactive concept is usually pushed off until it becomes absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, by the time some serious rethinking is required, a lot of people have gotten stuck in the mud of static branding. It’s completely natural for companies to resist straying from the handful of predefined styles that were never meant to address web forms, widgets, calendars and menuing systems. Whose fault is it really? As designers and user experience professionals, it’s easy to blame faceless corporate bureaucracy. It’s management’s fault; they don’t think about users. It’s marketing’s fault; they don’t understand the difference between a brochure and a web app. It’s the art department’s fault; they didn’t explain the difference between print experience and multimedia experience. Sure, there’s a lot of blame to go around, but the buck stops here. This is our job, and our fight, and ultimately our responsibility. There are a lot of designers and UX architects who are happy to go with the flow and let marketing dictate the terms of the design. If a poorly dictated design ends up crippling the user experience, well, that’s not their fault. But blame has a way of trickling down to the people closest to a project. Who’s going to take the bullet? The senior marketing executive who oversaw the project, or you, the worker in charge of actually executing it? Fault doesn’t matter. Responsibility does. At the end of the day, as user experience professionals, it is our responsibility to advocate on behalf of the user. That means we have to be champions of the user experience, and sometimes that means going against the status quo. User experience IS your brand Of all the arguments for modifying brand attributes to better suit a digital experience, the most compelling is this: The way users feel about their experience is inseparable from the way they feel about your brand. This maxim holds true for brick-and-mortar experiences as well as for digital interactions. A restaurant with great food but incredibly long lines and a bad wait staff will experience brand damage. The user experience is bad, and people will look elsewhere. The same thing will happen if your users get baffled by confusing menus, hard-to-read text, and perplexing layouts. The user experience is bad, and people will look elsewhere. The way a user feels when they come in contact with a brand interaction point will implicitly shape their image of the brand itself. This realization is a powerful tool for user experience professionals and can help snap clients and peers out of static thinking. Starbucks.com isn’t just green and white There’s no real doubt that sticking to brand guidelines is useful in creating a well-defined brand image. Marketing professionals have been embracing strict branding practices for years now, successfully shaping their brands into recognizable and even celebrated cultural touchstones. Still, no company should miss the forest for the trees. It is helpful to remember that even the most accomplished companies have become experts at modifying brand attributes to suit interactive experiences. This is done without sacrificing brands, but rather by extending them. For UX professionals, the key is to bring marketing decision-makers on board with the design process, empowering them to contribute to the effort of designing positive user experiences while providing the professional guidance to help them make good decisions. UX is the bridge between brand and customer. Ultimately, the strength of the design process will contribute to the success or failure of the entire brand experience. |
| By Peter Hornsby
Published: October 5, 2009 “Our designers spent at least a third of their day right on the shop floor; at the same time, there were usually two or three shop workers up in the design room conferring on a particular problem. That was how we kept everybody involved and integrated on a project.”—Ben Rich, about the development of the F117 stealth fighter [1] “Software engineers dealing with ill‑defined problems move repeatedly between examining scenarios, clarifying requirements, defining their solution at a high level, and doing low‑level design for difficult elements.” Traditional, heavyweight development methodologies can be very effective at solving well‑defined problems, where the person solving the problem has a clear understanding of the initial and goal states, the available options, and the constraints on the problem. At the opposite end of the spectrum are ill‑defined, so-called wicked problems. When it’s necessary to balance numerous, often‑conflicting factors, traditional development methodologies are much less effective. Raymonde Guindon demonstrated that—in stark contrast to the highly structured methodologies traditional software development organizations have used, moving from requirements through development to delivery—software engineers dealing with ill‑defined problems move repeatedly between examining scenarios, clarifying requirements, defining their solution at a high level, and doing low‑level design for difficult elements. [2] Agile development approaches are best suited to solving these kinds of thorny problems. Wikipedia defines agile software development, as follows: “a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self‑organizing cross‑functional teams.”—Wikipedia [3] Agile development is an interesting approach from a UX perspective for two reasons:
“Since agile methods appear to more closely match the way people typically solve problems, they can be helpful in solving the types of complex, interrelated problems organizations increasingly call upon UX designers to address.” Since agile methods appear to more closely match the way people typically solve problems, they can be helpful in solving the types of complex, interrelated problems organizations increasingly call upon UX designers to address. Understanding how user experience might operate in an agile development environment could help us respond more flexibly and effectively, regardless of the development methodology our organizations are using. The Agile Approach While there are a number of different agile development approaches, there are certain elements they have in common. The Manifesto for Agile Software Development states: “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan “That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”—The Manifesto for Agile Software Development [4] “Part of the motivation for the development of agile approaches was to create software in a more people‑centric way. So, philosophically, agile development approaches are more user centered than more conventional methodologies!” Part of the motivation for the development of agile approaches was to create software in a more people‑centric way. So, philosophically, agile development approaches are more user centered than more conventional methodologies! Agile teams are typically cross‑functional—with more emphasis on the skills of the team members than on organizational roles—and small—comprising less than 10 people. Development takes place through a series of iterations—typically lasting between 1 and 4 weeks. Through all stages of the development process, the team delivers working, tested software at the end of each iteration. Thus, while a team improves and adds functionality over the course of a project, working software is always available after the first iteration. Stakeholders prioritize requirements according to their business value, and working software is the primary measure of how a project is progressing. Each agile team includes a customer representative, who is available to answer questions regarding the problem domain. Challenges to UX “Establishing broad design principles early in the development process, understanding user characteristics and their probable demands on the software, and designing in a way that anticipates these—without committing to them—can maximize the degrees of freedom for a design.” In an agile development process, the regular delivery of software to customers as a team adds functionality is probably the single biggest challenge for UX designers, who must maintain, as far as possible, a consistent user experience across features, without changing UX redesigns’ regularly requiring users to relearn how to interact with the software. Establishing broad design principles early in the development process, understanding user characteristics and their probable demands on the software, and designing in a way that anticipates these—without committing to them—can maximize the degrees of freedom for a design. For an established team or problem domain, there may also be opportunities to reuse existing design components, or patterns. (For more about reuse, see my UXmatters column “Reusing the User Experience.”) To the furthest extent possible, UX designers must understand the planned direction for software development, particularly when designing navigation. In some development environments, it may be feasible for UX designers to work in parallel with the rest of an agile team, developing the UX design slightly in advance of the next development cycle. In later design cycles, being able to refactor the user experience can help keep an application’s design clean and flexible. (See my UXmatters column “Refactoring the User Experience.”) Having a customer representative as part of the development team can be a huge benefit on a project—particularly if the customer representative is also a target user. Team members can question the customer representative directly rather than having to rely solely on representations of users, and at all times, the team’s awareness of who they’re developing the software for remains very clear. For software with multiple target user groups, you must take care to avoid representing one user group over others, particularly if the customer representative is not from the primary user group. “Having a customer representative as part of the development team can be a huge benefit on a project—particularly if the customer representative is also a target user.” Stockholm syndrome, in which the customer representative comes to identify more with the development team than with the customer base, can sometimes be an issue. Addressing this problem could involve regularly changing the customer representative to reflect the primary user group for which the team is currently doing development. To maintain a degree of consistency across development cycles, interactions with customer representatives should supplement rather than replace established user-centered design techniques such as the development of personas and scenarios. With an actual user as part of a development team, UX designers’ role as a gateway to the understanding of users can be reduced, which may, in turn, free their time to focus on other issues. In some agile organizations, no one individual or team clearly owns the design and development of user experience. While collaboration is vital to an agile team, it is a collaboration between generalizing specialists. In an agile context, a UX professional must own user experience, but interactions with other team members should inform their design solutions. This, in turn, implies that UX designers on agile teams must be experienced individuals, who are able to make decisions about the user experience and plan within a broad framework. A greater challenge to implementing an agile approach exists in organizations where either some of the development work is outsourced or co‑location of the entire agile team is not possible. In such situations, teleconferences and video conferences can be useful in keeping the team coordinated. “Agile approaches present new challenges to usability testing as well, requiring you to ensure that your testing focuses tightly on the areas of the user experience that a development release affects.” Rapidly prototyping a user experience—using tools such as Axure or even paper prototypes—can let you elicit rapid feedback on your designs. As always, whenever possible, test the usability of your designs with representative users. However, heuristic evaluation techniques can provide high value for a minimal outlay of time and resources, and they can help other development team members understand the software’s user experience. Agile approaches present new challenges to usability testing as well, requiring you to ensure that your testing focuses tightly on the areas of the user experience that a development release affects. Some organizations using conventional development methodologies undertake usability testing just before a product’s release. However, in an agile environment, there are many releases, occurring at frequent intervals, so there is significant pressure to manage usability testing resources effectively. Usability testing may not always be appropriate, depending on the nature of a release. A development cycle with little or no UX involvement—such as one that focuses on improving the software’s performance—may require no usability testing. Having a customer representative on an agile team can offer greater access to representative users from the target user group as test participants. Summary “Agile development approaches present huge challenges to user experience, but also offer huge opportunities, particularly by bringing UX designers and software engineers more closely together to focus on clear, short-term goals.” Agile development approaches present huge challenges to user experience, but also offer huge opportunities, particularly by bringing UX designers and software engineers more closely together to focus on clear, short-term goals. Increased mutual understanding always promotes greater effectiveness, regardless of the development methodology your organization uses. Fundamentally, agile development approaches embrace fluid requirements and let you work the way people typically solve problems. Agile methods challenge UX professionals to be more flexible and adaptable, to work more closely with developers, and to have closer contact with a product’s users. They force UX designers to work more closely with other participants in the development process than traditional development methodologies do. This, in turn, places greater pressure on designers to understand the constraints all team members must operate within. Agile methods are not appropriate for all projects, but working in a more agile way can help UX professionals deal with changing requirements more flexibly |
Axure RP Pro 5.6
Just found this a few weeks ago, a wicked tool for designing interactions and wireframes, really focussed on UX/IA
Now all I need is a customer/partner who values UX enough to cough up nearly $600.00 for it 
I often come across brand in using colours for people’s UX.
| Interesting Article.
“That’s not one of our corporate colors.” The words hit you like a whiff of smelly cheese. You try to explain that, yes, the corporate colors are baby blue and yellow, but that combination isn’t optimal for building the main menu of a website. “Maybe, but we really need to stick to the brand guide approved by marketing. Maybe we could use different shades of baby blue and yellow.” Oh, the agony and ecstasy of brand orthodoxy. Designers have a love / hate relationship with branding documents and style guides. After all, it’s nice to have a defined style and brand manual. Accepted colors, approved iconography, exhaustively documented gradients and image libraries all make life easier for designers. They cut down on revisions and give us a place to start working. Unfortunately, most corporate style guides are not created with interactive experiences in mind. Unless you are lucky enough to be working for a company that was born digital, you’re likely to be faced with a lot of branding requirements that were created for the print world, not the digital realm. When corporate marketing departments dream of brand design, they only dream as far as they need. The expensive and time consuming process of extending the brand into an interactive concept is usually pushed off until it becomes absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, by the time some serious rethinking is required, a lot of people have gotten stuck in the mud of static branding. It’s completely natural for companies to resist straying from the handful of predefined styles that were never meant to address web forms, widgets, calendars and menuing systems. Whose fault is it really? As designers and user experience professionals, it’s easy to blame faceless corporate bureaucracy. It’s management’s fault; they don’t think about users. It’s marketing’s fault; they don’t understand the difference between a brochure and a web app. It’s the art department’s fault; they didn’t explain the difference between print experience and multimedia experience. Sure, there’s a lot of blame to go around, but the buck stops here. This is our job, and our fight, and ultimately our responsibility. There are a lot of designers and UX architects who are happy to go with the flow and let marketing dictate the terms of the design. If a poorly dictated design ends up crippling the user experience, well, that’s not their fault. But blame has a way of trickling down to the people closest to a project. Who’s going to take the bullet? The senior marketing executive who oversaw the project, or you, the worker in charge of actually executing it? Fault doesn’t matter. Responsibility does. At the end of the day, as user experience professionals, it is our responsibility to advocate on behalf of the user. That means we have to be champions of the user experience, and sometimes that means going against the status quo. User experience IS your brand Of all the arguments for modifying brand attributes to better suit a digital experience, the most compelling is this: The way users feel about their experience is inseparable from the way they feel about your brand. This maxim holds true for brick-and-mortar experiences as well as for digital interactions. A restaurant with great food but incredibly long lines and a bad wait staff will experience brand damage. The user experience is bad, and people will look elsewhere. The same thing will happen if your users get baffled by confusing menus, hard-to-read text, and perplexing layouts. The user experience is bad, and people will look elsewhere. The way a user feels when they come in contact with a brand interaction point will implicitly shape their image of the brand itself. This realization is a powerful tool for user experience professionals and can help snap clients and peers out of static thinking. Starbucks.com isn’t just green and white There’s no real doubt that sticking to brand guidelines is useful in creating a well-defined brand image. Marketing professionals have been embracing strict branding practices for years now, successfully shaping their brands into recognizable and even celebrated cultural touchstones. Still, no company should miss the forest for the trees. It is helpful to remember that even the most accomplished companies have become experts at modifying brand attributes to suit interactive experiences. This is done without sacrificing brands, but rather by extending them. For UX professionals, the key is to bring marketing decision-makers on board with the design process, empowering them to contribute to the effort of designing positive user experiences while providing the professional guidance to help them make good decisions. UX is the bridge between brand and customer. Ultimately, the strength of the design process will contribute to the success or failure of the entire brand experience. |
| Oh I love wikipedia!
Quick definition; User experience design is a subset of the field of experience design that pertains to the creation of the architecture and interaction models that impact a user’s perception of a device or system. The scope of the field is directed at affecting “all aspects of the user’s interaction with the product: how it is perceived, learned, and used.” The user experience User experience, most often abbreviated UX, but sometimes UE, is a term used to describe the overarching experience a person has as a result of their interactions with a particular product or service, its delivery, and related artifacts, according to their design. As with its related term, User Interface Design, prefixing “User” associates it primarily (though not exclusively) with digital media, especially interactive software. It most commonly refers to the result of a planned integration of software design, business, and psychology concerns. It can apply to the result of any interaction design. Voice User Interface (VUI) systems, for instance, are frequently mentioned as a type of user interface that can lead to a poor user experience. In the web world, user experience is sometimes conflated with usability, information architecture (IA), and user interface (UI) design, all of which are components of it. User experience addresses and integrates all user-facing aspects of a company, from email and web sites to off-site presence in print and on other sites. For a more generalized usage, which may include reference to physical environments, see experience design. The designers This field has its roots in human factors and ergonomics, a field that since the late 1940s has been focusing on the interaction between human users, machines and the contextual environments to design systems that address the user’s experience. [2] The term also has a more recent connection to user-centered design principles and also incorporates elements from similar user-centered design fields. As with the fields mentioned above, user experience design is a highly multi-disciplinary field, incorporating aspects of psychology, anthropology, computer science, graphic design, industrial design and cognitive science. Depending on the purpose of the product, UX may also involve content design disciplines such as communication design, instructional design, or game design. The subject matter of the content may also warrant collaboration with a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on planning the UX from various backgrounds in business, government, or private groups. The design User experience design incorporates most or all of the above disciplines to positively impact the overall experience a person has with a particular interactive system, and its provider. User experience design most frequently defines a sequence of interactions between a user (individual person) and a system, virtual or physical, designed to meet or support user needs and goals, primarily, while also satisfying systems requirements and organizational objectives. Typical outputs include: Site Audit (usability study of existing assets) Flows and Navigation Maps User stories or Scenarios Persona (Fictitious users to act out the scenarios) Site Maps and Content Inventory Wireframes (screen blueprints or storyboards) Prototypes (For interactive or in-the-mind simulation) Written specifications (describing the behavior or design) Graphic mockups (Precise visual of the expected end result) Benefits User experience design is integrated into software development and other forms of application development in order to inform feature requirements and interaction plans based upon the user’s goals. New introduction of software must keep in mind the dynamic pace of technology advancement and the need for change. The benefits associated with integration of these design principles include: Reducing excessive features which miss the needs of the user Improving the overall usability of the system Expediting design and development through detailed and properly conceived guidelines Incorporating business and marketing goals while catering to the user |
Take a look at his site and video, a great set of ideas for getting round some of the HUGE limitations of multitouch devices by providing haptic feedback.
http://hci.rwth-aachen.de/slap
http://hci.rwth-aachen.de/~weiss/SLAP/paper1356-weiss.mov