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I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Think Vitamin » Fred Wilson’s 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps
  In February 2010 Fred Wilson, a New York based tech investor, spoke at the annual Future of Web Apps Miami conference. His talk, clocking in at just under 30 minutes, looks at his top 10 principles for creating a successful web app. A full transcript is available below.
• Memory Inception: Three Keys To Creating A Great User Experience For Your Product
  Ever read a great book? What do you remember about it? Maybe a few dramatic moments, some wild story twists, and most definitely the ending. Your product is just like a book. You’re telling a story to your customers and they’ll remember only a select few moments from what you tell them. What are these moments? Can you use these moments to plant a memory in a customer’s mind?
• Russia in color, a century ago – The Big Picture – Boston.com
• Now that the oil well is capped… – The Big Picture – Boston.com
• How the top ten airlines in the world use Facebook | Tnooz
  US-based Delta Airlines secured nothing if only bragging rights last week when it unveiled the world’s first airline booking engine within Facebook.<br />
  Obvious questions came over its effectiveness as a marketing tool, value to the consumer, impact on its existing booking channels and integration (or not) with existing social media features on Facebook.<br />
  The answers to all of these take nothing away from the fact that Delta is taking Facebook seriously and its move is likely to trigger a wave of similar applications being launched by other airlines.<br />
  But what of the other leading airlines around the world?
• disambiguity » Adaptability – Essential Soft Skills for User Experience Practitioners
  As User Experience practitioners, we spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the skills we don’t have or have enough of and trying to acquire them.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I love Seth Godin – if you don’t already, I recommend that you take a look at his (short and inspirational) Seth’s Blog. Here’s a talk he gave at TED on marketing that sums up why Seth is so great!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Reductionism in Web Design
  It’s important to define what reductionism is in the context of web design. While ideas towards reductionism vary depending on who you ask, a simple definition is that reductionist methods boil down complex things to simpler things, which might include modularizing the system into more digestible components; all of this while avoiding losses in value (fidelity) and usefulness.
• The Web Strategy Pyramid: A Well-balanced Web Strategy
  To deliver a site that gives users the experience they are looking for, we need to set it upon a solid foundation of content, usable navigation, and strong SEO practices.
• Beyond the Web Experience | Blog | Nick Finck | UX/IA Pro, Speaker, and Community Cultivator.
  I find it interesting that whenever I talk about experience design people assume I am talking about web based experiences only.  An experience is the holistic perspective, everything from experiencing interfaces, websites, physical interfaces, the environment, even the smells and tastes.  Within a single day I came across three seemingly un-related topics that were all tied into user experience.. or perhaps more accurately, the human experience. 
• Designing with Paper Prototyping | UX Booth
  Prototyping is key to any successful design. Paper prototyping is usually the first step, but does it fit into a world where mobile devices are king? Yes, but not using the conventional method. Combine the physicality of the device and the power of paper prototyping and you have a solution that’s fit for the new era of computing.
• Defining Design – Surface vs. Substance | Front to back
  What is design? Most people will answer that question by pointing to a designed object – the iPhone, for example. Now that’s good design! The Mini Cooper. London’s famous map of the Tube. Anything ever built by Norman Foster. That’s design, right?
• A List Apart: Articles: Flexible Fuel: Educating the Client on IA
  Information architecture (IA) means so much to our projects, from setting requirements to establishing the baseline layout for our design and development teams. But what does it mean to your clients? Do they see the value in IA? What happens when they change their minds? Can IA help manage the change control process? More than ever, we must ensure that our clients find value in and embrace IA—and it’s is our job to educate them.
• Links : Quantitative Research Methods and Statistics – Methodspace – home of the Research Methods community

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• SEOmoz | Lessons Learned from 21 Case Studies in Conversion Rate Optimization
  Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the newest darling of Internet Marketers, after all what good is traffic if it doesn’t convert. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it), unlike Pay Per click (PPC) marketing, CRO isn’t a game of how much money you can throw. In fact, this field requires as much creativity, as it requires monetary investment. That’s what makes conversion rate optimization a fair arena. Your well-funded, bigger competitors can of course beat you at generating more traffic but they can’t beat you at the conversion rate game (unless you allow them to).
• How to Foster Cross-Functional Collaboration on Wireframes | Forum One: Internet Strategy, Social Media, User Experience and Web Site Development
• A List Apart: Articles: No One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas
  No. One word, a complete sentence. We all learned to say it around our first birthday, so why do we have such a hard time saying it now when it comes to our work?<br />
  <br />
  Guilt. Fear. Pressure. Doubt. As we grow up, we begin to learn that not doing what others expect of us can lead to all sorts of negative consequences. It becomes easier to concede to their demands than to stand up for ourselves and for what is right.
• A List Apart: Articles: Kick Ass Kickoff Meetings
  During project-based work, every freelancer, agency, or internal department has “the kickoff meeting.” In theory, this meeting should have all the energy, excitement, and potential of the opening salvo of the Superbowl. Project team members should be inspired coming out of that meeting, full of ideas, and a desire to begin exploring solutions. Agencies and freelancers should begin to see their clients as friends and collaborators with unique insights that can only come from frank, open discussion of the design challenge at hand. But this rarely happens.
• From the Archive: American Cities Pre-1950 – Plog Photo Blog

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• moritz.stefaner.eu – Elastic lists
  Elastic lists allow to navigate large, multi-dimensional info spaces with just a few clicks, never letting you run into situations with zero results. They enhance traditional UI approaches for facet browsers by visualizing weight proportions, animated transitions, emphasis of characteristic values and sparkline visualizations.
• How Organizations Can Best Support Beginner UX Designers | inspireUX – User Experience quotes and articles to inspire and connect the UX community
  There are many resources available for beginner UX designers to learn about the field on their own. In particular, Whitney Hess’ blog post series “So you wanna be a User Experience Designer” (part 1) (part 2) outlines a fantastic list of books, blogs, events, organizations, lists, workshops, conferences, and education references that can help those new to the field learn the ropes.
• Akamai Reveals 2 Seconds as the New Threshold of Acceptability for eCommerce Web Page Response Times
  The most compelling results reveal that two seconds is the new threshold in terms of an average online shopper’s expectation for a web page to load and 40 percent of shoppers will wait no more than three seconds before abandoning a retail or travel site. <br />
  <br />
  Additional findings indicate that quick page loading is a key factor in a consumer’s loyalty to an eCommerce site, especially for high spenders. 79 percent of online shoppers who experience a dissatisfying visit are less likely to buy from the same site again while 27 percent are less likely to buy from the same site’s physical store, suggesting that the impact of a bad online experience will reach beyond the web and can result in lost store sales.
• Demystifying Usability : New Study- Gender differences in Web Usability
  Comscore just released a new study last month (June 30 2010) entitled Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet (download here).<br />
  <br />
  The worldwide study adds some key insights into the growing research on gender differences on the Web and in particular around social networking usage. Why is this a big deal?
• The Four Phases of Design Thinking – Warren Berger – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review
  What can people in business learn from studying the ways successful designers solve problems and innovate? On the most basic level, they can learn to question, care, connect, and commit — four of the most important things successful designers do to achieve significant breakthroughs.
• Psychological Study of Web Designs | Abduzeedo | Graphic Design Inspiration and Photoshop Tutorials
  A website is the window to the soul of an Internet business as well as the people behind it. It may have a positive or may be a negative effect on your end result. If you take the time to think about what your visitors want and how they want to get it, then you’re already on the right track to creating a site that will tap into the psychological drives of your target audience.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!