Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Top Trends for User Experience Professionals

Monday, 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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Two ways to use storytelling in your presentations

Tuesday, 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 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. (more…)

Is the client ready for social media?

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

I found myself asking this question when one of our clients mentioned that they wanted to integrate social media in their customer facing website. I had just finished analyzing the data from a recent survey done to uncover the unmet needs of the users. All data indicated that the users of the website were very skilled at  getting their job done without having the need to engage with their peers. Which made me wonder why they would need social media. Digging deeper, I realized that 20% of the users had Facebook accounts but they had not used those accounts on a regular basis leave alone the option of using it for work. So while the client wanted to integrate social media to increase users’ engagement with the new site and stay ahead of the competition, I wondered if the users were ready for it. To get some answers I proposed doing what we love doing, talking to the users.

After doing a few telephone interviews with potential users, my gut reaction for introducing social media was positive. Here is why:
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