User Experience.UX Design

No one person or source can define a term. Vocabulary, like all symbolic systems, is only useful to the degree we share meaning and experience relating to it, and agree (ideally, with no social coercion) on what a term refers to. Dictionaries, at best, merely document our collective sense of meanings and associations. As there is much misuse of "user experience," with and without "design" affixed, and there is no dictionary entry for it (yet), here are the top seven definitions of ux design. I sought ten and came up wanting, so this entry comes with an invitation to you to contribute those definitions of user experience design (full three terms) that you find most precise or useful. Or add your own... inclusion is conditional, however, on a credibility standard that can only be defined as "secret sauce."

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Some prefer broad and inclusive definitions of User Experience (UX) design. Others (a few) claim The One True Meaning of it, usually in support of self interest. Both extremes muddy the semantic waters. Language best serves us when terms are both alive (evolving), and generally agreed. Here are a few collected definitions, for consensus, one more point of view, and the important career management perspective.

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Don Norman's book was copy-written in 1988, and this one proves once again that great books can remain relevant long after they first land in people's hands. Though its point of reference for computing and user interface design will seem charmingly innocent to 21st century readers, the books real topics, have not changed: people, how they do things, and what designers must do to reduce human confusion and anguish, and liberate humanity to enjoy doing what they want or must. The need for knowledge, insight and wisdom in user interface design, as Mr. Norman gently guides us through, is as urgent as ever. No UI, UX / UE, human factors engineer, user scientist, or professional designers of any kind should practice their trade without first reading with care Mr. Norman's now famous book.

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Book review of Information Dashboard Design, by Stephen Few. Published by O’Reilly, © 2006. I recommend Few's book highly, provided you aren't looking to expand much existing dashboard design experience. All the ideas, and examples of them, are presented fairly concisely....
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Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices, Dan Saffer's first and so far only foray in to print publishing, is a tight little knit of a book. Some passages, which could have tackled the beefier topics, play tag instead. Yet the page count makes it a good weekend read. What it may lack in depth, Dan more than compensates for with a great variety of ideas, images, interviews, and examples of ways we can, and should, design for interaction in smart and clever ways.
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User-friendly design is a term that has been around for ages. But what is it? What is good design? First we distinguish design from art in order to define design as a specific kind of craft: one of service and usefulness. Useful quotes and a list of characteristics of good design are provided. As it turns out, characteristics of good friendship are quite like those of good design. And that's a beautiful thing.

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Adaptive Path's Aurora hit the virtual reality streets today. Most likely you've already seen the video. Nothing new, not really. Apple has been whittling away at it, a byte at a time. The difference here is not the bytes, but the size: will it be hard for interaction designers to chew on, or will it help us solve problems standing too long on 2-D legs only, that 3-D can solve?

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In this second installment of Googleyness & Yahoo! we compare a second tier service of Google and Yahoo!, search engine marketing (SEM), to assess for ourselves which is "Googleyer" according to Google's own definition of Googleyness.

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UX Design Events Feed: conferences, meet-ups, and gatherings for commiseration between user experience designers, interaction designers, user interface designers, information architects, web application developers, user experience managers and directors, and others generally interested in web software.

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interview excerpts, clipped out to highlight Cooper's ideas about Agile, Extreme Programming, Open Source, and being a knowledge worker/programmer a post industrial age, working in commercial enterprises still organized around industrial age management models.

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User experience begins with the very first impression of a product or service brand. Many of us acknowledge the close relationship between information architecture (IA) and user experience design (UXD), as well as between IA and SEO. Here I draw direct lines between UX and SEO, to show how important a role SEO and social media can play in a comprehensive approach to user experience design.

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Designers often feel misunderstood and underutilized in their organizations. Is this because the other two main parts of the interaction design triad, business and technology, don't understand us? Or is it because we don't know enough about the contexts we're working in? Probably both. How do we change that? Here I combine the wisdom of Joseph Campbell with the experience of Luke Wroblewski in hopes that they will help you, too, bring the great "boons" of hard won user experience design knowledge back to the real world of business and strategy in a way that, as Campbell puts it, "in terms and in proportions that are proper to the world's ability to receive." The external readings footnoted are necessary for context.

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We all know the word "design," but do we understand it? In this second installment to Design Means Business, we level set design itself. To know if we've "got" design, we must first know what the word itself it means. Think you know? You might be surprised, or even learn something new. d

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This first Design Means Business installment addresses the business community, primarily. It aims to improve communication and collaboration between design and business partners working on web-delivered software projects. So UX and other designers may find it helpful, too.

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Recipes define both ingredients and process. One without the other will make mush of even the best stew, or mashup. Same for web applications. Yet too often solutions are under, or over, cooked. If method matters, shouldn't we be as methodical as any competent chef? After all, what is user experience if not a matter of taste, as well as real nutrition?

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User experience design and strategy are inseparable. Some say strategy is at the center of UX design. Which I wholly agree with. In this article we simply recognize the difference between business strategy and interaction design strategy, what they may, and may not, have in common, and what the purpose of interaction design strategy is. I don't pretend to have hold the strongest hand in this game, so your comments are strongly encouraged.

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