Beating the advice monster A few years ago a colleague of mine gave me this great piece of advise for workshop facilitation: "Never hold the pen" He meant, that I should try whenever possible to have participants be the ones who are writing things on the white board or on post-its. The temptation to give shape to other people’s... More
Human vs computer This may change at some point of course, but here in 2017 I reckon the table below is a good reminder of where to spend our time as designers. Things Humans are a best at Things Computers are best at Unstructured problem solving Calculations Defining what counts as relevant Pattern matching Remembering qualities Remembering linked... More
Evil Meta-moments I gave a talk on Meta-moments last year to a group of UX people. Went really well. Lots of smart, engaged, happy people. Then right at the end I got asked a question that nearly floored me. “Could you use Meta-moments to persuade people to do things that aren’t good for them?” In all the... More
It’s ok to be an introverted UX designer Over the holidays, I read a wonderful book called Quiet, by Susan Cain. She’s the powerhouse behind an entire quiet revolution – she’s got a TED talk, a podcast and a bunch of other stuff moving all around a powerful central concept: that there is an urgent need to do more to address the balance... More
A model for emotional experiences? Psychologically speaking we’re all quite similar aren’t we? Everybody has their own particular relationship to stress or fear or anger or whatever, but the same basic colours are there. They just get mixed differently. Pixar reduced it down to five basics emotions for the film Inside Out: Joy, Anger, Disgust, Fear and Sadness. They had... More
The attributes of a great notification About a year ago, I turned off all the notifications on my phone. I’m still happy for it to ring when I have a call or chirp to indicate a text. Though this is restricted to specific hours. A colleague had referred to ‘notifications as the new spam’, over lunch one day. This really resonated... More
What is personalisation and why do we want it? Jesse James Garrett’s famous diagram is in need of an update. The elements of user experience – see jjg.net That dividing line in the middle, the one that separates the static web from the dynamic web (‘web as pages’ vs ‘web as software’) should probably move to the right – or be removed altogether. Noone... More
Improving the experience of user experience work UX can be annoying. It can tell us things we don’t want to hear. It can ask too much of us. It can, at times, sound a little patronising. UX might forget about the need to balance the interests of the user against other interests – like those of the business or organisation. Strange to... More
Thoughtful journey moments User Journeys involve a string of linked moments that aim to provide a plausible (and hopefully a research-based) account of how someone might move towards greater levels of engagement with a brand, service or product. Each journey will usually involve lots of little events, culminating in one big moment where the user does that thing... More
