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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!!

• 15 Ways to Increase Trust in Your Landing Pages | Unbounce
  Web visitors are a fickle bunch. They’ll stop by your landing page after becoming interested in your banner ad or Google AdWords ad, and then they’ll put on their “Judge Every Book By It’s Cover” hat and give you roughly 5 seconds to impress them.
• Content strategy is, in fact, the next big thing
  I think it’s because the reality of social media initiatives—that they’re internal commitments, not advertising campaigns—has derailed more than a few organizations from really implementing effective, measurable programs. Most companies can’t sustain social media engagement because they lack the internal editorial infrastructure to support it.
• Managing UX teams
  I gave a talk yesterday at the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) conference about managing user experience teams. (It’s a version of a talk that I gave last year at the IA Summit and again at UX Week.) In it, I talk about the importance of personality in hiring, and how personality and can make or break a fit.
• Surprise as a design strategy
  "A surprise reaction to a product can be beneficial to both a designer and a user. The designer benefits from a surprise reaction because it can capture attention to the product, leading to increased product recall and recognition, and increased word-of-mouth. Or, as Jennifer Hudson puts it, the surprise element 'elevates a piece beyond the banal'. A surprise reaction has its origin in encountering an unexpected event. The product user benefits from the surprise, because it makes the product more interesting to interact with. In addition, it requires updating, extending or revising the knowledge the expectation was based on. This implies that a user can learn something new about a product or product aspect." (Geke D.S. Ludden, Hendrik N.J. Schifferstein & Paul Hekkert)
• Experience Maps
  An interesting depiction of user experience has surfaced the other week over at the nForm blog in the form of an experience map. Gene and his team has come up with a way to represent gaming related experiences of three distinct gamers. In a way then this is a merger between a persona and a time based representation. The other interesting thing about this is the visualization and separation of at least three types of experiences: ongoing, exploratory and influenced. Each type of experience has been shown in a standardized and specific way. Furthermore, the diagram also captures and represents a variety of channels which the personas are utilizing at a given point in time. Overall, it’s always interesting to see when designers attempt to convey such comprehensive and unified high level deliverables.

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!!

• UXBASIS
  UX Basis is way of combining the numerous tools available to us and forming a unified process that sits within a digital agency and it’s other important departments – creative, tech and client services. The beauty about the model is it is fully adaptive to any clients needs, can fit with tech’s agile process and incorporates creative and development at key stages in the creation process.
• 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines « Smashing Magazine
  Everyone would agree that usability is an important aspect of Web design. Whether you’re working on a portfolio website, online store or Web app, making your pages easy and enjoyable for your visitors to use is key. Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work. Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines that may help you improve the user experience on your websites.
• Hundreds Tens Units / Products / Alan Chair
  Beautiful!
• The point of personas « People & Technology
  The first thing to realize about personas is that they are primarily roles that users take while interacting with a system. But, instead of referring to users collectively (or to their more abstract role), we create a persona as a tangible representation. This turns out to be a good thing from a psychological perspective since research shows people are more likely to feel positive about an individual than they are a group with similar characteristics.
• Integrating Prototyping Into Your Design Process – Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design
  Just like with any other UX research or design tool, context plays a critical role in determining how effective prototyping will be for you.

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

I recently gave a presentation about personas, and specifically how they can be used throughout a project lifecycle to ensure the highest quality. I thought I’d share that presentation with you. I’m a big fan of the approach to presentations advocated by Garr Reynolds in his book Presentation Zen. When I present my slides have no more than 1 – 3 words on them. That way people listen to what I’m saying. I also tell people that I am happy to share my slides and notes with anyone that would like them. My notes tend to be bullet points only, that way when I speak I’m not reading, I am working from my brain and it’s more of a conversation with the audience. This conversational tone is more engaging (I hope). Anyhow, on to the presentation!

Life before Personas

This is my vision for how life must have been for users before Personas came into widespread use. A barren desert with users wandering forlornly around the worlds of the internet and software. Stumbling around looking for an oasis of usability and accessibility!

It stuns me when I think that Personas really came into popular use after Cooper’s The Inmates are Running the Asylum. Things must have been (and were) pretty bad before that. Thankfully though, Personas are coming more and more into widespread use. There is still, however, some fear and reluctance towards their use.

Primarily this is down to the cost and time it can take to create them, and in some cases a failure to see the great benefits that they have. I think that we, as user experience professionals, need to be better at communicating their value and selling their uasefulness. Primarily we need to be able to demonstrate that the cost and time spent has far more value that just the Persona itself. (more…)