BlobFisk.com

Very interesting video about how storytelling affects our brain chemistry, and hence can effect behaviour change:

Also worth a watch is Paul Zak’s TED talk:  http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_zak_trust_morality_and_oxytocin.html. He also has a dedicated website to the subject of storytelling:  http://futureofstorytelling.org/.

Designing What’s Never Been Done Before
 http://www.uie.com/articles/never_before_design/

The psychology of discounting: Something doesn’t add up
http://www.economist.com/node/21557801 

Responsive e-commerce design
http://www.cxpartners.co.uk/cxblog/responsive-e-commerce-design/ 

Situational Awareness: A Method for Mobile Content Planning
http://johnnyholland.org/2012/07/situational-awareness-a-method-for-mobile-content-planning/ 

Shell’s Social Media Campaign Backfires:

http://www.buzzpatrol.com/is-shell-social-media-campaign-troll-the-best-ever/

Shell’s Trolled Social Media Campaign

Perception Strategy: The Emotional Side of User Experience
http://www.forumone.com/blogs/post/perception-strategy

Perception Strategy: The Emotional Side of User Experience Part Two
http://www.forumone.com/blogs/post/perception-strategy-emotional-side-user-experience-part-two

The New Airbnb Focuses On Pretty Pics Rather Than Searches
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670158/the-new-airbnb-focuses-on-pretty-pics-rather-than-searches#1

The Beginners’ Guide to Benchmarking User Experience
http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/guide-to-benchmarking-UX.html

The State of Mobile Commerce: How Facebook Is Losing The Retail War
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-state-of-mobile-commerce-how-facebook-and-pcs-are-losing-the-online-retail-war-2012-6

The 7 Biggest Creativity Killers

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1680919/the-7-biggest-creativity-killers

Alex Horstmann’s user experience, usability, design, eCommerce and design bookmarks for November 23rd.

• James-Lange theory – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  The James-Lange theory refers to a hypothesis on the origin and nature of emotions and is one of the earliest theories of emotion, developed independently by two 19th-century scholars, William James and Carl Lange.
• Web Content That Persuades and Motivates :: UXmatters
  There are several key elements that are missing from a large number of Web sites, and these missing elements often lead to bad user experiences and the total ineffectiveness of those sites.
• » Design Jam London 1 Johnny Holland – It’s all about interaction » Blog Archive
  Design Jams are one or two day design sessions, during which people team up to solve engaging UX challenges. While conferences and talks are very popular in the UX community, we don’t have many events for actual collaboration, like the ‘hackdays’ enjoyed by the development community. Only a few UX designers participate in hackdays or open-source design initiatives –  how can we change this and get UX designers more involved? How can we introduce them to open collaboration formats? The idea of an event to get designers together to learn from each other while working on actual problems was born. Design Jams champion open-source thinking & sharing and are non-profit, run by local volunteers. The London team are Desigan Chinniah, Johanna Kolllmann, Joe Lanman and Franco Papeschi.
• E-commerce (A-Z of user experience design resources)
• Bounce Rate Demystified
• Agile UX in Practice | Agile UX
  Agile development and user experience can work brillantly together… well, but how?<br />
  <br />
  Even if the effort related to Agile User Experience (Agile UX) continues throughout the project (with “just in time” designing and user testing) the User Experience foundations must be initiated at the very beginning of the project, during the first sprints.
• Stressed Out About Holiday Shopping? Your Customers Are! | experience matters
  Regardless of their budget though, consumers told us that holiday shopping is stressful. Of course there are obvious reasons like crowded malls, outrageously chaotic traffic conditions and increased family obligations, but consumers face other speed bumps that companies can help with.

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

Alex Horstmann’s user experience, usability, design, eCommerce and design bookmarks for November 18th.

• Weary of online booking, clients return to travel agents – USATODAY.com
  Vacationers who hire Suzanne Burr book their travel the old-fashioned way. They tell Burr where they want to go and what they need when they arrive, and leave it to her to make it happen.
• Google AdWords: Website Optimizer Help
  This handy calculator helps you estimate the potential duration of your experiment. Try out various numbers of combinations and see how they affect the length of the experiment. For pages with very high traffic, the differences may be negligible.
• The Battle Between Thoughts and Emotions in Persuasion — PsyBlog
  Nowadays people tend to use 'I think' and 'I feel' interchangeably. For some this is a linguistic faux pas, but what about psychologically? Does it make any difference whether what you say is couched in 'thinking' or 'feeling' terms?
• Mobile User Experience Trends on the Horizon | UX Magazine
  The majority of the world's digital experiences now happen through mobile devices linked by wireless networks. It is this untethered medium that is defining future trends in user behavior, sweeping away the legacy of interaction methods established for fixed computing scenarios.
• Verified by Visa and Mastercard SecureCode are broken and need to be fixed | cxpartners
  Verified by Visa and Mastercard SecureCode are broken. At cxpartners we’ve watched hundred of users on e-commerce websites and seen some serious trust and usability issues that are hurting e-commerce. Our clients have seen conversion rates drop because of it. E-consultancy published an article over a year ago with specific examples of 3D secure harming sales.
• Failure by Design / FINCH
  Losses feel worse than gains feel good. Rationally we should treat losses and gains the same. But that isn’t the way we are built. Consider how people make decisions when buying and selling stocks. Most people will sell stocks that go up in value, but they will tend to hold onto stocks long term that are going down in value. Selling the losing stock will make the loss tangible and the feeling of that is much worse to deal with. No one wants to lose. It’s painful.1
• Introduction | The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web
  Robert Bringhurst’s book The Elements of Typographic Style is on many a designer’s bookshelf and is considered to be a classic in the field. Indeed the renowned typographer Hermann Zapf proclaims the book to be a must for everybody in the graphic arts, and especially for our new friends entering the field.

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