I recently read an article from Jared Spool, of User Interface Engineering, that was written as if he were writing about my personal experience. The article, Essential UX Layers for Agile and Lean Design teams, identifies key concepts I have found helpful with agile UX…
Define a big picture scenario that describes a holistic product experience the team is designing for. This is useful for extracting user stories necessary for sprint planning.
Identify a set of UX design principals that guide design decisions. If the principals are simple and easy to understand, the agile team members can easily adopt and promote these principals throughout the design and development process.
There are some innovations that really resonate with me. This is one such innovation. Dot, a 360 degree camera attachment for the iPhone, crosses the divide from passive to immersive image capture that places the viewer literally in the middle of an experience. What’s more, it’s interactive. You can pan the scene in motion. For $79 this will surely generate an entirely new genre of mobile video. YouTUbe be warned. Read more about the Dot project on Mashable
“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that. Read more »
“Death is very likely the very best invention of Life. It is life’s change event. It clears out the old to make way for the new….Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life….Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”
-Steve Jobs, 2005
Stanford University Commencement Speech
Here is another great video illustrating the evolution and impact of crowd sourcing on digital media. The video is done in the style Michael Wesch’s Web 2.0 video. Crowd-sourcing is a powerful method of data collection that evolves Read more »
The mobile product page redesign was a typical agile engagement. We had a two-week window to concept, develop and code the front-end. The project had an assigned Business Analyst, Project Manager, Marketing Manager, Mobile Product Manager and Lead Developer.
At the beginning of the project I gathered high level goals from the product manager that I used to frame the Sketch board session. I facilitated the session a few days later. This allowed key stakeholders to Read more »
Here is some video of the weforia team getting ready for the Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta in May. True die-hards, we practice after the local colleges and high school teams have cleared the Schuylkill. The views are Read more »
I was exposed to fine art at an early age. My grandparents were members of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and their study contained the Met’s, Seminars in Art series published in 1958. My grandmother and I would sit on the floor in her study and pour through the high quality inserts included in each volume.
I have carried on the tradition with my children, sitting on our living room floor, walking through the volumes, color inserts, and color stamps included with the series.
It can be challenge communicating the The ROI of User Experience across teams within a given organization. Here is a a well produced video that effectively communicates the material value of thoughtful design. The video is narrated by Dr. Susan Weinschenk, PhD, CUA, Chief of UX Strategy with Human Factors International.
For those who are involved with Product Development, the Process Classification Framework is a must have reference to ensure your organization has the necessary processes in place to succeed. The Process Classification Framework or PCF is a cross industry product development lifecycle standard that has been developed by an open source community of product development professionals and the APQC (American Productivity & Quality Center).
The PCF includes the fundamental stages and corresponding tasks within Read more »
We lost Nanny to cancer in January 2011. Here is a slide show of some of our favorite Nanny pics set to George Winston. She is always in our hearts and we will Read more »
Here is the Music Player. You need to installl flash player to show this cool thing!
Yet another GarageBand track but this one was created by Steve. Steve had a moment of inspiration and recorded several blues tracks using garageband. He then had a lapse of reason and shared them with me. So this is the beginning of a collaboration based on those moments of clarity and those other moments that are not so clear yet compelling just the same.
Here is the Music Player. You need to installl flash player to show this cool thing!
And another GarageBand track created between the minutes of the day. Unlike earlier audio sketches, this melody has more dimension. This was inspired by an earlier melody I developed on the guitar. It’s been awhile, hence the track title – So Many Days. The title also reflects my feelings about how many days we have with our friends and loved ones. No one knows when their time will be up. Live, love and express how you feel to those you care about.
In this presentation Adam talks about petabyte of data their design teams have access to for design decision, but more importantly, he speaks about the effectiveness of small teams, empowered to make decisions, utilizing feedback from multiple sources. Definitely worth a view…
When developing a strategy to institutionalize user-centered product design within an organization, it is important to understand your audience. There are many different roles within an organization however, when it comes to product development there are 2 main groups you need to work with when institutionalizing user centered product design.
The first group includes those individuals who Read more »
This may sound obvious but I have to say it. Companies cannot succeed without clear, easy to understand business objectives. Business objectives provide direction. Easily understood and highly socialized objectives are fundamental to efficient and effective operation.
So how do companies clearly define business objectives and ensure all development and operational efforts align directly under those objectives? It’s easier than you think. All the company needs is a D.A.D. Read more »
I recently read an article from Jared Spool, of User Interface Engineering, that was written as if he were writing about my personal experience. The article, Essential UX Layers for Agile and Lean Design teams, identifies key concepts I have found helpful with agile UX…
The mobile product page redesign was a typical agile engagement. We had a two-week window to concept, develop and code the front-end. The project had an assigned Business Analyst, Project Manager, Marketing Manager, Mobile Product Manager and Lead Developer.
