Dialogue around issues and ideas that impact user experience
Written by: Kelli Norland on July 12th, 2010
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According to Harvard Business Review editor Julia Kirby, 2010 may be the year for a resurgence in companies reconnecting with their users and focusing on user experience, but don’t forget about business analysis! It’s the BA’s job to ensure that the issues and business objectives are understood. When the solution involves end users (of a new or enhanced application/website/product), that’s where we need team up with a user experience (UX) professional.
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Tags: Business Analysis, User Experience
Posted in Tools and Techniques | 1 Comment »
Written by: Lori Baker on July 6th, 2010
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I used to consider failing as something to avoid at all costs. But occasionally something went wrong and I spent loads of time trying to figure out what I could do differently in the future. After years of beating myself up, I’ve come to appreciate failure. I learn something new and often it can open new avenues of creativity. This article includes a few ways to embrace failure. Read the rest of this entry »
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Written by: Mary Donnelly on June 16th, 2010
Besides using my iphone as a phone, I also use it to read emails, tweets, facebook status updates, yammer posts and TFLN (texts from last night). Most of the applications I use serve the same purpose—they provide content from various sources/ in
dividuals, and they all have either an equivalent desktop application or websites. As I’ve become intimately familiar with these apps, I’ve begun to appreciate some of things that one or another does, and I’ve found it increasingly annoying that all of the apps aren’t following suit.
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Tags: Facebook, iPhone, Mobile, Social Media, twitter, User Experience
Posted in User Experience | Comments Off
Written by: Fred Beecher on May 30th, 2010
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At Evantage, interactive prototyping and iterative prototype testing are key components of our process. We typically work on complex, business critical systems that must serve a wide array of audiences. Iterative prototyping and testing are absolutely crucial to designing a pleasant, usable experience for systems like these. There are many factors that contribute to the effectiveness of prototype testing, but one of the biggest is content. I recently cooked up a tool to help designers articulate their needs and get that content from those who have it.
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Tags: content, Prototyping, scenarios, templates
Posted in Tools and Techniques | 3 Comments »
Written by: Sheetal Dube on May 17th, 2010
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What are the key trends in the healthcare industry? What implications do they have on the design solution? If you are a product planner, business analyst or designer you may already be familiar with these questions. Lately, my projects have been focused in the healthcare space. Because of this, I have been studying the key trends and analyzing their implications on the solutions I design. In this post, I’ll share my learning and outline how I use them to guide my design process.
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Tags: Healthcare, mHealth, Mobile, Trends
Posted in User Research | 2 Comments »
Written by: Andrew Janis on April 29th, 2010
My name is Andrew Janis, and you haven’t seen me in this space before because I’m usually wearing the marketing hat at Evantage. That often means I’m knee deep in marketing analytics and occasionally working with someone on our UX team to analyze
usability test results in the context of real-world behavior.
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Tags: Analytics, User Experience, User Research
Posted in Analytics | 8 Comments »
Written by: Mary Donnelly on April 20th, 2010
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I have been tasked with creating an Axure prototype that will be demonstrated on an iPad. I’ve seen the iPad, played with the iPad, but this is first time I will be creating a prototype to be displayed on the iPad.
The first question I had was, “How will I get the Axure prototype onto the iPad? Is there an app for that? “
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Tags: iPad, iPhone, User Experience
Posted in User Experience | 4 Comments »
Written by: Mary Donnelly on March 18th, 2010
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“#deltafail What a clusterf**k! I’d rather crawl over broken glass with Danny DeVito on my back than fly in the USA” (@brucetiffee)
I haven’t been impressed with Delta lately but if I was given that choice, I’d choose the plane over Danny DeVito.
I have been a loyal Northwest Airlines (NWA) flyer since 2004 (mainly due to the fact that I live in or had lived in hub cities, first Minneapolis (MSP) and then Detroit (DTW)). I’ve been a Platinum Elite member since October 2007 which gave me a lot of perks until Delta introduced Diamond status, which makes Platinum mean less on Delta than it did on NWA.
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Tags: Social Media, twitter, User Experience
Posted in User Experience | 1 Comment »
Written by: Fred Beecher on March 11th, 2010
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Are you going to SXSW? If you are then check out “The Right Way to Wireframe!” This is a two-part talk in which myself and three other user experience designers tackled
the same business problem using different tools.
In the UX world, we don’t get to see each other’s work very much; this talk changes that. It shows how, no matter what tool you use, the important part is the thought process you go through to arrive at your solution. Here are the links to the two workshops:
The Right Way to Wireframe – Part 1
The Right Way to Wireframe – Part 2
Also, I’m running a little social & technological experiment… I’m sharing all the notes I take at SXSW with the whole world via Evernote. Of course I’ll take notes at panels, but the really interesting part of SXSW is the discussions on the side. Those’ll show up in my notes too. Here’s the URL if you want to follow along!
http://www.evernote.com/pub/fred_beecher/sxsw2010notes
The environment at SXSW is… well, I’ll be kind and say,
“fluid.” If you want to see what I may or may not be attending, check out my schedule on Sitby.Us.
http://www.sitby.us/schedule/fred_beecher/
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Tags: Presentations, SXSW
Posted in Tools and Techniques | Comments Off
Written by: Fred Beecher on February 22nd, 2010
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In my last article, I talked about our career path for UX designers. Developing something like that for your organization, while a
worthwhile task, is certainly not easy. Fortunately, there are range of things you can do yourself to move your career (and your paycheck!) upward! Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: career development, education, management
Posted in UX Career | Comments Off
Written by: Fred Beecher on February 15th, 2010
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User experience (UX) design has a reputation for being both hard to get into and hard to progress from. I talked about how to get into UX design in my last article, so now I want to talk about where you go once you get in. In some ways, this is actually a harder problem. There are books that introduce you to UX design but none that really show you how to branch out once you’ve established yourself as a UX designer. Fortunately, I work at Evantage, where in 2006 Mary Donnelly and I helped management and HR to define a comprehensive UX design career path. I’m going to share it with you here and then discuss some other options to consider in a follow-up article. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Career Path, Job Titles, User Experience
Posted in UX Career | 10 Comments »
Written by: Sheetal Dube on January 25th, 2010
2010 seems like a turning point for user experience professionals. The decade has seen success stories like Amazon and Zappos that have made businesses sit up and value the power of understanding customer needs. There has been a surge in people
across generations using online media for everyday activities and some of the trends in social media, mobile applications and technology have opened new doors for user experience professionals. At Evantage we have started experiencing the impact of some of these trends.
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Tags: Augmented Reality, Consumer Insights, GPS Technology, Mobile, Social Media, Trends
Posted in User Research | 6 Comments »
Written by: Lori Baker on January 21st, 2010
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Word on the street is that if you have a great site you should create a mobile app. I’ve been hearing it a lot from clients lately that everybody is on their phone and “if users could access our information then our product will be more valuable.” Is this just a fad or is it valid? Well, that depends on your customers and your business goals. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Interaction Design, Mobile, User Experience
Posted in User Research | 2 Comments »
Written by: Mary Donnelly on January 18th, 2010
It’s a new year. Time to start thinking about what conferences to attend in 2010. The following is a list of conferences we at Evantage are likely to attend (or have attended in the past) due to their content and location. This is not a compr
ehensive list. There are some conferences such as IDEA that I would recommend but they do not currently have information listed about a 2010 conference. Likewise, the Usability Professional Association annual conference is another one I would typically recommend, but due to its location in Munich, Germany this year, it doesn’t appear feasible (unless you have the travel budget). Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Accessibility, Interaction Design, usability conferences, User Experience
Posted in Conferences | Comments Off
Written by: Lori Baker on December 4th, 2009
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If you’re at a loss for what to get that special user experience designer in your life whether it’s because we’ve already bought it (“I need it to keep up on trends for work”) or you still aren’t quite sure what we do exactly, I’ve compiled a few ideas from the UX consultants at Evantage and my own Christmas list to help you out.
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Written by: Fred Beecher on November 16th, 2009
In the past few months I’ve taken on two and-a-half mentees through the Information Architecture Institute’s mentorship program (two are local, one is remote… sorry Tyler, I know you’re a full person!). This has got me thinking even more than u
sual about how to get started in user experience (UX) design, so viagra pills I’ve decided to save myself some time and write a post that collects all the resources and advice I
usually give out on this topic. I hope this is useful for you, but if you feel like I’ve missed something there’s a comments box at the bottom. ; )
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Tags: Getting Started
Posted in UX Career | 9 Comments »
Written by: Mary Donnelly on November 15th, 2009
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I recently had the opportunity to work on a Shared Axure Project. While I enjoyed the collaboration, I also learned several things you can do to make the process easier.
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Posted in Recent Posts | 1 Comment »
Written by: Lori Baker on November 10th, 2009
This Thursday marks the fourth year of World Usability Day. Held the second Thursday of November every year, it is an event that celebrates the design
around us that makes our lives easier. This year’s focus on sustainability and design.
Having always been an environmental geek, the theme of this year’s World Usability Day is especially important to me. Sustainability and creative reuse has been a focus of mine since I was in an organization lobbying for recycling containers in high school. I’ve always focused on how daily actions can affect the Earth. I was one of the few people who used her palm pilot to store directions to friend’s homes and measurements for an ottoman I was building because I did not want to waste paper. My current phone maps directions, stores measurements and even lets me check in for a flight without the hassle and guilt of paper. Not only does this design create less waste, it also makes me more organized.
The last few years has seen a greater consciousness in how we treat the world and how thoughtful design
of systems and products can improve someone’s day. Instead of jumping into design, we take a moment to study how people use existing technology and how they live their lives or do their jobs and then make recommendations for the systems and products they use. This may result in a higher initial cost, but the benefit is a long term
savings that resounds with many people in this economy. I realize that this doesn’t work for everyone. For example, my brother isn’t an eco freak like myself, but he loves smaller energy bills and I love that he makes less of an impact on the Earth.
Join the discussion of this year’s celebration. UPA chapters around the world have events focusing on sustainability and user experience. Find your local chapter event.
Tags: Interaction Design, User Experience
Posted in User Experience | Comments Off
Written by: Sheetal Dube on October 27th, 2009
If you have made presentations in the past, it is very likely that you have spent a fair amount of time thinking about ways to make it more engaging for your audience. I have grappled with this situation too. So when I saw a workshop on using
href=”http://www.presocamp.com/”>storytelling in presentations
, I registered for it. Here are a few things I learned.
The workshop provided practical tips to improve presentation content, delivery and brought forward two distinct styles for weaving stories into presentations. These styles emerged naturally during the impromptu presentations made by people in the audience and were not prescribed by our presentation coach Lynn Espinoza. Maybe that is why I found them to be more effective in communicating a message. Here are the two ways of using personal stories in your presentations to better engage the audience. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Emotion, Presentations, Social Media, Storytelling
Posted in User Experience | 6 Comments »
Written by: Fred Beecher on October 21st, 2009
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The week before last, the legendary Bruce Tognazzini posted an article to his AskTog column proposing a solution to several problems he sees with the home screen. I read it, but my reaction was not the fawning idolatry I’d expected. It’s very difficult for me to say this but… his redesign is inelegant. The problems he identified are real and relevant, but I couldn’t help but react negatively to what I perceived to be an aesthetic dissonance in his solution. It doesn’t fit the playful aesthetic that is characteristic of the iPhone OS. So I’ve let the problems steep in my brain for a few days, and I think I’ve come up with a more elegant (or at least more iPhone-ish) solution.
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Tags: Design Strategy, Emotion, Gestural User Interfaces, Interaction Design, iPhone, Mobile
Posted in User Experience | 3 Comments »
