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 »
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 »
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 »
This weekend I came across photos and video from our family vacation to Oregon. It was a few years ago and we were visiting extended family in Portland. We took a day trip up to Mt. St. Helens. The day was overcast and the clouds covered the crater of the mountain. Just the same, Mt. St. Helens is a must see. I have included a QTVR (Quicktime Virtual Reality) panorama Read more »
Totally cool technology of the day. This morning my brother emailed me his streaming video page from his phone so I could watch the birth of my nephew half way around the world. As always, thank you Devin. Thank you for expanding my nephew pool and thank you for showing me some wicked cool technology. Qik video is fast, easy and good quality. And as with any new technology, it can be distributed instantly a 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…
