Five User Experience Trends « Bokardo – Social Design by Joshua Porter

February 9th, 2010

Five User Experience Trends

by Joshua Porter  |   5 Comments  |  shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/1614

Since my blog has been broken a lot recently I missed this excellent overview of Five User Experience trends by Gene Smith.

I can%u2019t help but agree with all of them:

1. Services as Software %u2013 Gene is one of the first people in the UX industry to admit that good enough, fast and cheap tools like usertesting.com will have a real impact. While most people still feel the need to argue %u201CUser testing is important%u201D%u2026the market is moving past that. %u201CHow fast can you measure?%u201D is as important as %u201CDid we find everything?%u201D
2. User Experience Analytics %u2013 Gene references a post I wrote called What Metric are you designing to improve today? and I think he%u2019s absolutely right (obviously). This is where I%u2019m focusing for the next year or more as I believe metrics-driven design is the future. I%u2019ll be talking about this at UXLondon and am working hard on this at Performable.
3. Content Strategy %u2013 My friend Kristina Halvorson saw this coming%u2026here is an excellent post in which she explains how content strategy is more than a bunch of tactics.
4. Return of the Mobile Web %u2013 Gene suggests that building apps using web standards is the eventual future of the mobile web, not getting locked into platforms like iPhone and Android. I would add to this by saying I actually think Apple would partially agree here%u2026they are pushing HTML5 like gangbusters so that this can be a reality.
5. A Real Experience Economy %u2013 Are people moving away from a world of things to one that values experience more? I think Gene%u2019s right on with this one.

Read the rest here: Five User Experience Trends I%u2019ll be Watching in 2010.

375 %u267B Tweet this |

Grab the Site RSS Feed

Check out my latest project: Make them Care!, a book on designing great sign-up experiences. Get reminded when it's published.

Previous

Google: Forms & Landing Pages are Key

Next

Are You Fun to Follow on Twitter?

via bokardo.com

Gene Smith seems right on with these. Makes me happy I just hired a great IA with great content strategy skills and strong interest in the web.

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Roundup of UX Applications | UX Booth

Reviewed Applications

1. ClickTale
2. Crazy Egg
3. Chalkmark
4. Feedback Army

Other Applications

1. Silverback
2. UserTesting
3. Loop11
4. UserZoom
5. Usabilla
6. Five Second Test
7. Feng-GUI
8. Clixpy
9. Concept Feedback
10. ClickHeat

via uxbooth.com

Nice review of the latest UX apps. They actually didn't mention that Camtasia is now Mac compatible too - but I like Silverback just as much.

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Why Design is a Method of Action (Eames)

To whom does design address itself: to the
greatest number (the masses)? to the specialists
or the enlightened amateur? To a privileged
social class?
To the need.

via blog.gentry.io

Nice article about Eames ideas about design. I like this answer.

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

LukeW's Social Site Use Data | Still interesting that Twitter is for 39 yr olds...

Globally, social networks and blogs are the most popular online category when ranked by average time spent in December. (source)

Consumers spent more than 5.5 hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82% increase from the same time last year. (source)

47% of online adults use social networking sites, up from 37% in November 2008. (source)

73% of wired American teens now use social networking websites, a significant increase from previous surveys. Just over half of online teens (55%) used social networking sites in November 2006 and 65% did so in February 2008. (source)

Facebook is currently the most commonly used online social network among adults. Among adult profile owners, 73% have a profile on Facebook, 48% have a profile on MySpace and 14% have a LinkedIn profile. (source)

Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis. (source)

Twitter is processing more than one billion tweets per month. January passed 1.2 billion, averaging almost 40 million tweets per day. (source)

The activity on Twitter has doubled since August 2009. January 2010 had 16 times as many tweets as January 2009. (source)

Twitter users were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, Twitter is seeing 50 million tweets per day—that's an average of 600 tweets per second. (source)

64% of Twitter’s users are aged 35 or older. The average Twitter user is 39 years old. (source)

Facebook now has more than 400 million active users. 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day. (source)

More than 100 million people actively using Facebook from their mobile devices every month. This comes less than six months after Facebook announced 65 million people on Facebook Mobile. (source)

Facebook says more than 3 billion photos are being uploaded every month, up from 2.5 billion in December, 2 billion in September and 1 billion in July. (source)

Facebook reported 1 billion items (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc) shared a week in July 2009, 2 billion shared a week in September, then a big jump to 3.5 billion in December, and another big jump to 5 billion a week as of February 2010. (source)

Facebook users are also posting 60 million status updates a day or 50 percent more than they were in September. However, the overall percentage of Facebook’s user base posting status updates has actually fallen with 35 of the 400 million users publishing these per day. (source)

61% of Facebooks’s users are aged 35 or older. The average Facebook user is 38 years old. (source)

There are more than 3 million active Pages on Facebook, nearly double the 1.6 million it reported in December. Pages that Facebook defines as local businesses went from 700,000 actives to 1.5 million. In other words, local businesses comprised half of the overall increase in active Pages over the last couple of months. (source)

13% of US traffic to big web portals — Yahoo, MSN, AOL — came from Facebook in December 2009. (source)

via lukew.com

Need some ammunition to convince your clients that social is important? Luke W has a great compilation of sources

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Three reasons why you should design for Mobile first. #ixd #mobile #ux

More often than not, the mobile experience for a Web application or site is designed and built after the PC version is complete. Here's three reasons why Web applications should be designed for mobile first instead.

1. Mobile is exploding

Though the Web has been accessible on mobile devices for years, today's smart phones are driving huge use of networked applications and Web content. Consider that AT&T, the exclusive carrier for Apple's iPhone, has seen a 4,932% increase in mobile traffic data in the past three years. And that's just the start.

• Heavy mobile data users are projected to triple to one billion by 2013. (source)
• Mobile internet adoption has outpaced desktop internet adoption by eight times. (source)
• Smartphone sales will surpass worldwide PC sales by the end of 2011 . (source)
• Over half of Android and iPhone users spend more than 30 minutes per day using mobile applications. (source)

Building mobile first ensures companies have an experience available to this extremely fast growing user base widely considered to be the next big computing platform.

2. Mobile forces you to focus

Mobile devices require software development teams to focus on only the most important data and actions in an application. There simply isn't room in a 320 by 480 pixel screen for extraneous, unnecessary elements. You have to prioritize.

So when a team designs mobile first, the end result is an experience focused on the key tasks users want to accomplish without the extraneous detours and general interface debris that litter today's desktop-accessed Web sites. That's good user experience and good for business.

3. Mobile extends your capabilities

The World Wide Web has been built on a foundation of rather simple capabilities (page markup, styling, and scripting) determined by what Web browsers can support. Web application developers -desperate to add innovative capabilities to this environment- have pushed the limits of JavaScript, browser plug-ins, and even Web browsers themselves to enable rich activities and interactions online.

But new mobile application platforms are introducing exciting capabilities that leave many PC-based Web browsers behind. Consider some of the capabilities offered to developers on Apple’s iPhone or Google’s Android platforms: precise location information from GPS; user orientation from a digital compass; multi-touch input from one or more simultaneous gestures; device positioning from an accelerometer; and many more.

Building mobile first allows teams to utilize this full palette of capabilities to create rich context-aware applications instead of limiting themselves to an increasingly dated set of capabilities.

via lukew.com

Luke makes a compelling argument here. Interestingly its clear that Google's CEO sees things exactly the same way.

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

NYT: On Wall Street, a Romance With the Curling Stone

It is about strategy and precision. Curling is like chess on ice, and that, Wall Streeters say, it part of its quiet appeal.

via nytimes.com

Well said! Now if I can just persuade everyone I know this is the case...

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Now that's what I call a wireframe!

via core77.com

Now that's what I call a wireframe!

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Designing To Innovate And Improve The World

So what does it take to cause millions of people to do things differently?

"In the old days it was all about [public service announcements]," he said. "The way we got people to think about drugs or smoking -- and it was quite a lot more complex than that. One role is that the private sector might have a bigger role to play than we thought in the past. What it actually takes to cause people's behavior to change are three things."

Brown is nothing if not practical. He doesn't approach a problem like a traditional wild-eyed activist. He realizes that it takes more than a PSA or a chain mail to change behavior. Here are his three things:

•Change In Incentives -- When it becomes cost-effective in the short term to purchase electric cars, a majority of Americans will start to do so.
•Tools To Enable Change -- The nicotine patch not only makes it easier for people to quit smoking, but it benefits private industry.
•A Shift In Social Norms -- This is the toughest one. Changing what is publicly acceptable can take generations to do, but we can help push it along. To continue with the smoking analogy, Brown points out how people cut down on smoking when it was no longer allowed in most offices. "If it's okay to smoke in the office, then people are going to smoke. If it's not okay, then people will smoke less," he said.

Keeping these three keys in mind, Brown believes object design has a place right beside public policy and corporate social responsibility.

via huffingtonpost.com

Interesting take on Persuasive Design [Thinking]. This is the 20,000 foot view.

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Role of Design in Business | understanding #ux #riskmitigation #marketing

there are four basic areas in which design has an important role to play in value creation:

Understanding the Consumer

Entrepreneurs and large companies alike invest heavily in understanding their consumers. Consumers themselves often give detailed suggestions about how to improve various offerings. Still, most products that perform as promised are rejected in the marketplace. So designers must not only synthesize functionality and aesthetics, they must understand a consumer's thought process and emotions in order to motivate behavior change.

Risk Mitigation

How many times have companies pronounced that an innovation failed because it was "ahead of its time"? How often does corporate risk aversion result in lackluster offerings that are ultimately taken off the market? Design is a process of synthesizing insights into a tangible offering in a way that addresses the goals of the company and the desires of consumers. Many of the firms that can perform at this level were early in bringing design into their cultures.

Boosting Marketing and Branding

Take a look at any list of the top global brands—including the one published by Bloomberg BusinessWeek. It's no accident that many of the world's top brands are also design leaders. Design is a fundamental part of creating an image and experience of luxury, exclusivity, and tribal belonging. And yet the consumers who purchase these items often select them because they see a little bit of themselves (or who they would like to be) on the shelf. That's great design. The 80% of new products that fail each year show that marketing and promotions can boost the impact of a good concept, but they can rarely compensate for a poor one.

Sustainability

Design will also be a fundamental part of one of the next great challenges to touch every industry. How can the need to consume be balanced with the need to be good stewards of the planet? How can brands retain their image and deliver a superior experience while reducing parts, waste, and carbon footprint.

via businessweek.com

I've always thought UX is a great Risk Mitigation tool and our UX research often fuels Marketing and Branding. Its not as clear how UX lends itself to Sustainability. Your thoughts?

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Flash vs. HTML5 | UX Magazine - no matter...#ux and #uxcommitment the key

the root causes for sub-optimal user experience have to do with lack of appropriate process, and governance, and lack of a genuine commitment to a quality user experience. Such a commitment would lead organizations to adopt a user-centered usability-oriented development process. Rather than taking these steps, we see a lot of projects that are “stakeholder driven” (i.e., driven by internal politics). Very few organizations center development around user needs by relying on objectively measured data about user behavior. Most enterprises don’t care enough about the user experience to change their habits (developer-driven, vendor-driven, stakeholder-driven). The principles of creating effective user experiences are well-known among successful external-facing ecommerce or consumer sites such as Amazon, Ebay, Expedia or Facebook. Unfortunately, it will likely be a long time before these principles become part of the average enterprise skillset.

via uxmag.com

Gotta love institutional job security. Don't let your clients forget. Looking forward to better experience one site at a time.

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

The Fundamentals of Innovation - BusinessWeek #ux

Steve Jobs is renowned for saying that "real artists ship.

via businessweek.com

Perhaps an overly ambitious title, but still interesting stuff here. It reminds us to get stuff out the door.

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

In Praise of Online Obscurity | Wired #socialmedia #ux

Why? Because socializing doesn’t scale. Once a group reaches a certain size, each participant starts to feel anonymous again, and the person they’re following — who once seemed proximal, like a friend — now seems larger than life and remote. “They feel they can’t possibly be the person who’s going to make the useful contribution,” Evans says. So the conversation stops. Evans isn’t alone. I’ve heard this story again and again from those who’ve risen into the lower ranks of microfame. At a few hundred or a few thousand followers, they’re having fun — but any bigger and it falls apart. Social media stops being social. It’s no longer a bantering process of thinking and living out loud. It becomes old-fashioned broadcasting.

The lesson? There’s value in obscurity.

via wired.com

Interesting thought. I've had trouble keeping up with my twitter followers and have a tenth of her followers.

Apart from lists, and using search for keywords (e.g., ixd, ux) how do you keep up?

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Fitting User Experience into an Agile Project Cycle #ux #agile

Advice From the Panel
The biggest takeaway for our team of Experience Architects was not to compromise user testing. Test early and test often. It's a great way to learn if the designs are usable, especially if you have a hunch that there are issues. Don't have a huge budget for testing? No problem ... there are some "guerilla" testing methods that can get you the information you need (see below). Some testing is better than no testing.

via threeminds.organic.com

Right. And the more you can get a scrum ahead with research, the better.

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Rich Internet Application Screen Design | UX Magazine #ixd

Designing a rich Internet application (RIA) can test even an experienced design team. The hardest challenge is to blend Web and desktop paradigms to create a responsive and intuitive experience. Some paradigms that exist in the desktop environment are ill-suited for the Web, while many of the Web paradigms people are familiar with (paging, explicit refresh) are no longer necessary with RIA technologies like Flex and Ajax. As this space matures, we are learning more and more about which boundaries can be pushed, and which patterns transcend time and technology

via uxmag.com

Exacatly what we found too - mixing metaphors = #fail

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

You will Retweet this...its awesome! #ux #persuasion

The results are surprising — well, to me, anyway. I would have hypothesized that there are two basic strategies for making the most-e-mailed list. One, which I’ve happily employed, is to write anything about sex. The other, which I’m still working on, is to write an article headlined: “How Your Pet’s Diet Threatens Your Marriage, and Why It’s Bush’s Fault.”

But it turns out that readers have more exalted tastes, according to the Penn researchers, Jonah Berger and Katherine A. Milkman. People preferred e-mailing articles with positive rather than negative themes, and they liked to send long articles on intellectually challenging topics.

Perhaps most of all, readers wanted to share articles that inspired awe, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list. In general, they found, 20 percent of articles that appeared on the Times home page made the list, but the rate rose to 30 percent for science articles, including ones with headlines like “The Promise and Power of RNA.” (I swear, the science staff did nothing to instigate this study, but we definitely don’t mind publicizing the results.)

“Science kept doing better than we expected,” said Dr. Berger

via nytimes.com

Our new motto: "Geek and awe"

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Top Sledding Sites in Washington DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia

There are plenty of good places to go sledding on a wintery day in Washington DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia. Here are some popular sledding hills around the DC area.

via dc.about.com

There's still time...

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

State leads nation in tech job growth

The state saw growth in the computer systems design and related services adding 5,3000 jobs in 2009 as well as the management, scientific and technical consulting, where 4,500 jobs were added, subsectors and in fact, led the nation in both. 

via bmoremedia.com

I hope our e.mag hires helped! Now we need to add to UX/IxD with equal gusto.

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Telling Your Website’s Story with Sketchboarding | UX Booth

An experience theme helps illustrate for your team the kind of experience which separate elements of a website should work to create; the kind of elements you will use to tell your website’s story. Effectively executed, experience themes objectify design and developments decisions which would otherwise be subjective. That alone is worth the upfront cost of introducing experience themes to the design process.

via uxbooth.com

Thinking about how best to use sketchboarding and experience themes. Nice links to many of the relevant sources in this article.

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Five jobs for Internet enthusiasts - CNN.com...User Operations Analyst???

User operations analyst

What one thing do advertisers and site owners want to know more than anything else?

How online users behave -- the pages they visit, how far they scroll down a page, how many clicks they are willing to make to find information and anything else that gives insight to how users navigate a site.

User operations analysts monitor how users interact with the site and they also answer users' questions or listen to their feedback to see what they want in a site. The analysts then share their information with the site owner.

via cnn.com

Doesn't this sound like a Usability or User Research pro to you?
I wonder where they got User Operations Analyst...

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

Snowy enough?

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous

The American Psychiatric Assoc launches DSM-5

DSM-5: The Future of Psychiatric Diagnosis

via dsm5.org

Have a look at the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Now is the time to comment on changes. V. important to those with affected family & friends. emagination.com produced this site.

Posted via web from John Whalen's Posterous