Experience Design (XD)

Remember Google Glass? That head-mounted computer resembling a pair of glassless eyeglasses? You are forgiven if you have forgotten. Google’s first attempt at ubiquitous computing sure had cachet when it went to market in the spring of 2014 and was dubbed the natural next step in digital-first design. That cachet disappeared less than a year […]

It’s that time a year again, the time where we focus on all that we are thankful for in our lives. That may be our family and friends, or more simple things like a good night’s sleep. This year, I’m especially thankful for the following 5 design resources, in no particular order because I’m equally […]

Part 2 of 2 We are rapidly moving into the holiday shopping season and retailers are in for a rubber meets the road experience. The tried and true sales gimmicks they’ve relied on in season’s past may not work so well this November and December. Consumers have become accustomed to receiving free shipping, price matching […]

As a user experience designer, I used to think that the worst designed websites were the best candidates for improvement. Symptoms of user experience debt may sound familiar to you – confusing navigation, excess clicks, accessibility violations, and painful load times. I applied to jobs thinking the larger the UX debt, the greater the opportunity. […]

It may seem odd that I would discuss an article from academia (A new movement strives for simplicity), but hear me out. Most of us are moderately or highly literate on our respective areas of expertise. But guess what? Our colleagues and clients may not be at the same level of know-how. I could make the […]

Part 1 of 2 How do you excite the imagination of your team to devise new ways of solving design problems, to create new ideas and better user experiences? Where do you start? Design firms, and those invested in design thinking and innovation, start by asking customers what they want. I’ll be the first to […]

Read part 1: The too familiar persona I imagine we’ve all used Cooper’s personas to routinely “engage the empathy of the design and development toward the human target of the design.” Nothing wrong in using goal directed personas, however one user profile model isn’t the best fit for every brand or its users’ motivations and […]

Design personas are user research models employed in various fields of design. Software design teams have been embracing personas in their work since roughly 1999, following Alan Cooper’s published work on goal-directed personas in his “Asylum” and “About Face” texts. They’ve become a user research staple, and the must-do-method for most of the products and services […]

Grace Lau, lead business consultant, Perficient XD, recently wrote an article for Boxes and Arrows on building the case for taxonomy. In the piece, she explores concerns surrounding ill-defined site redesign projects and the ROI of taxonomy. She also breaks down taxonomy  and compares it to her personal task of organizing spices in her kitchen to make […]

I was really intrigued when I heard Eric Quint introduce the scale and scope of his job on a Web Conversation by dmi.org to an audience from 40 countries. We were there to hear the 3M Company’s Chief Design Officer talk about change management. For those who are not familiar with 3M, their products are found […]

I just read Changing change management shared by David Stallsmith. No doubt digital (interactive media) and the software powering it can be incredibly useful for delivering and managing change within organizations. The descriptive and prescriptive digital examples discussed in the article seem to verify that digital is both positive and transformative when done right. And […]

Part 1 see: “Is software eating the world? Or, is it really customers?” In the earlier post I mentioned that more companies are focusing on the opportunities software offers to create customer value through the customer experience (CX). This rising development is a result of the rise in popularity of software, and it is spawning […]