8 Ways To Identify Unmet Customer Needs (Jeff Sauro)

Innovation can't be legislated. It can't be bought. Where does it come from? Innovation comes from identifying customers' needs and meeting them. Easy to understand. Hard to do. Companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Intuit understand this--and they're doing it. Uber's success, for example, has come not from building new, better taxis but from seeing--and then solving--people's transportation problems. (measuringusability.com)

Google UX design with heart (Eman El-Koshairy)

Ever since I started getting into User Experience Design, Google has always been a great inspiration. Simply because as a user, Google has always been able to know what I need, buckle it up in a simple nifty feature that makes you go “Of course, how could I’ve lived without that?” while I had never really thought I was missing that feature. Does this ring a bell? Let me share with you afew examples, that left me with “Aww” at first experience. (medium.com)

8 Major Design Festivals You Should Hear About (Anamaria)

Being a web designer implies staying in front of a computer almost the entire day. The Internet, this modern tool of trade, keeps all web designers connected to the latest devices, design news, inspirational info and other designers. With the Internet, sharing your projects, thoughts and new ideas is only a few clicks away. But it’s even more exciting when you can share your projects and ideas with your peers within a festival specially tailor for this purpose. International design festivals are no longer a new thing. They gather thousands of people who share common interests and enable them to communicate, exchange thoughts on their work and further develop partnerships. (topdesignmag.com)

Building Minimum Viable Products at Spotify (Chris Bank)

Many companies face the paradox of wanting to build a delightful product without knowing if people actually want the product until it’s released. Spotify’s vision was to give people the right music at the right time while incentivizing artists by paying them based on number of shares their music received. A tall order, no doubt, when you consider how hard it is to build out such a platform, let alone make it profitable. Yet Spotify defied the odds and grew from zero to over 1 million paying subscribers in the US — a market foreign to Spotify’s native Swedish team and one already teeming with competitors. (speckyboy.com)

Balancing Product UX and Lean Execution (Chris Bank)

What matters more: killer UX that makes people want to use your product, or shipping the things people want quickly and staking down a huge share of the market? If the UX is bad, people won't want to use it. On the other hand, if someone else gets it there first, people are happy to use what is available and help to improve it with feedback as it grows. People have been struggling with these opposing interests long enough that we thought it important to outline a better way to think about the problem, depending on what stage your company is in. (uxmag.com)

What people DON'T GET about MVP (Jan Jursa)

What people DON'T GET about MVP. I want a car, not a bloody scooter! (img via http://bit.ly/Yq0fI1) #mvp https://twitter.com/IATV/status/515873729063436288

Environmental Communications: How Understanding Experiences in Virtual Space Can Influence the Design of Experiences in Physical Space (Laura Keller)

UX professionals are accustomed to thinking about how people interact with digital user interfaces. Whether we’re designing a mobile application or a marketing Web site, it’s in our DNA to consider what would be the optimal experience for people. But digital user interfaces are not the only elements of an experience with which people interact. In services, people may also interact with each other, with processes, with communications, and with physical spaces, and it’s the responsibility of the service designer to understand their needs and create an optimal experience that considers all of these diverse elements. Plus, while the goal of a service designer is to think holistically about how these elements work together in a service experience, each element has its own discreet set of design considerations. (uxmatters.com)

"CUBI: A User Experience Model for Project Success" (Corey Stern)

We all want to be a part of compelling creative projects—projects that solve business problems and engage users through meaningful and valuable experiences. However, given tight budgets and timelines it's challenging to create genuinely innovative design, identify gaps in the process, and consider the variety of factors for effective user experience. To solve these common challenges, I researched existing user experience models or frameworks and found that most UX diagrams are confusing, unorganized, complex, or antiquated, making them useless for designers and clients. That’s why I decided to create my own model. (uxmag.com)

The Culinary Model of Web Design (Antoine Lefeuvre)

We call ourselves information architects, web designers or content strategists, among other job titles in the industry, including the occasional PHP ninja or SEO rockstar. The web does owe a lot to fields like architecture, industrial design, or marketing. I still haven’t met an interaction cook or maitre d’optimization, though. No web makers turn to chefs for inspiration, one might say. (alistapart.com)

UI, UX: Who Does What? A Designer's Guide To The Tech Industry (Lo Min Ming)

Design is a rather broad and vague term. When someone says "I'm a designer," it is not immediately clear what they actually do day to day. There are a number of different responsibilities encompassed by the umbrella term designer. (fastcodesign.com)

How To Give Back To The Design Community (Addison Duvall)

We’ve all seen example after example of perfectly rendered designs that tickle our imaginations, and sometimes even make us a bit jealous. It seems as though some designers are divinely talented, able to create amazing work with almost no visible struggle at all. To some designers, this is an inspiration. To others, however (probably most of us), it can be a little frustrating. (hongkiat.com)

Form Usability: Validations vs Warnings (Jamie Appleseed)

There’s a major difference between form validations and warnings. Form validations enforce a set of rules and won’t allow the user to proceed, while warnings alert the user about possible problems but will allow them to proceed. While e-commerce sites would do well in adopting both strategies, it’s unfortunately few that make use of warnings (our checkout benchmark study found that 64% don’t have ‘address warnings’), and similarly regrettable we often observe sites enforcing overly restrictive form validations that completely block a (small) sub-group from completing their purchase. (baymard.com)

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Freelance Vs. In-House: Which Produces The Best Designers? (Addison Duvall)

One of my favorite things, besides design, food, and writing about design and food, is perturbing my fellow designers with strange questions. You guys should try it sometime; it’s really fun. Anyway, today I was thinking about the dynamic of an in-house work environment, and how it compares to freelancing. I’ve done both, and I definitely have some thoughts on the matter. (hongkiat.com)

Does Originality Matter in Web Design? (Ezequiel Bruni)

My memory isn’t perfect, but I can say with some certainty that I’ve never actually copied a design. Not pixel-for-pixel, at any rate. I’ve stolen ideas, to be sure. (Don’t look at me like that. Everyone does it.) I’ve replicated cool concepts just to see if I could. (medium.com)

The Perils and Perks of Designing with Parallax (Diana MacDonald)

How many times has a client, manager, or colleague from a different department asked you to deliver something because it’s trendy? They’ve seen it, they want it. Relevance, be damned. How often has this trend been completely unsuitable for your website project? Saying “no” and explaining why a trend makes no sense for your website can be a challenge, so it’s helpful to understand what value a trend can add, and how to apply it effectively in your circumstances. (sitepoint.com)

User Interface 18 giveaway: "Last Year’s Featured Talks. No Strings Attached" (uie.com)

"Axe Requirements-driven Product Design" by Jeff Gothelf, "It’s a Great Time To Be a UX Designer" by Jared Spool, "Get More from User Research" by Kim Goodwin... and many more. (uie.com)

Why Banks Need to Revamp their User Experience (Rich Berkman)

The most interesting things happening in financial services are not happening in financial services. Thanks to a slew of new and older digital apps and websites, such as Apple Pay, Venmo, Square, Mint, and PayPal, kids can borrow money from their parents via text message or sign for a pizza delivery (including tip) on their phones. Families can use analytic tools to drill down through their own financial data to see where their money goes and how to cut spending. These tools have made every aspect of financial management—including transfers, payments—incredibly intuitive and easy. (uxmag.com)

3 Old and Outdated UX Patterns (And How to Fix Them) (Annarita Tranfici)

In one of my recent articles, The Evolution of the Hamburger icon we talked about the history of this commonly-used pattern, and about who’s using it and why. In fact, there have been many recent discussions in UX circles that have raised the unintuitive nature of the hamburger icon and issues in several cases. In this article, I thought we’d focus on three other very common 2014 UX patterns. Each one is so prevalent and humdrum that we may not even think twice when we employ them. (sitepoint.com)

Don't let team politics get in the way of shipping great design (Daniel Burka)

Shipping great design work is a struggle. You can have expert-level knowledge of Photoshop, color theory, copywriting, grid systems, and branding — and still consistently ship crap products. Things happen: colleagues meddle with your work, interfaces get implemented poorly, compromises cut to the bone, and great ideas fall to the cutting room floor. (gv.com)

How Flat Design Increases Conversion Rates (Giles Thomas)

There are many arguments for and against flat design, so in this article I wanted to take a quick look at how flat design can actually affect your bottom line. When it comes to arguments, nothing speaks louder than actual dollars. (speckyboy.com)

The Role of Iterative Usability Evaluation in Agile Development: A Case Study (Yanfei Ma, Yunhui Lu, and Dinara Saparova)

The agile approach to software development has significant impacts on the practice of user-centered design (UCD), including usability evaluation. To better understand the role of iterative usability evaluation during agile development, we recently conducted a study whose focus was the usability evaluation of a personal health–management system. The complexities of healthcare systems require thoughtful and well-structured usability evaluations—especially when the design process occurs within the context of an agile development process. (uxmatters.com)

4 User Experience Fails That Impact The Conversion Of E-Commerce Sites (Stan Roach)

There are plenty of reasons why some e-commerce sites rake in the big bucks, while others do not. The reasons could be anything ranging from bad quality products to an unbearably long registration process and from lack of responsiveness to an inability of the web property to exude trust and credibility. (usabilitygeek.com)

15 Must-Read Guides for UX Professionals: Written or Praised by Industry Leaders (Chris Bank)

The field of UX is daunting without the right guidance. So many subjective questions pop up on a daily basis. How do we provide access to secondary navigation without cluttering the interface? What UI patterns are the most intuitive? How do we fulfill the logical and emotional needs of users? Answer one of them, and five more will inevitably pop up to take their place. (onextrapixel.com)

A to Z of example UX docs and deliverables (Neil Turner)

Following on from my article about how to create great UX documents, I thought that it would be useful to collate some example UX documents and deliverables together. This should hopefully provide a bit of inspiration and assist when it comes to choosing the type of document(s) to produce. For each document / deliverable I’ve included examples, together with a quick outline and links to more information. (uxforthemasses.com)

A history of iOS design from iOS 1 to iOS 8 (marie)

With Apple releasing the iPhone 6 tomorrow. We thought it would be great to go through the history of the iOS design, from iOS 1 to the most recent iOS 8. Throughout the years Apple has brought us everything from Copy Paste, to Siri and the App Store. (designreviver.com)

4 Web Design Elements That Help You Sell the Products on Your Online Store (alexbu)

All eCommerce store owners know sales are the key to business growth. The best way to increase sales for your store is to have the right marketing strategies. There are basically two key elements of online marketing. The first is to drive traffic to your website and the second is converting this traffic into customers. (designfloat.com)

Improving Mobile Interfaces with Rich-Touch Interactions (Chris Harrison)

Today’s mobile devices are incredibly sophisticated computers with multi-gigahertz, multi-core, hardware accelerated graphics, network connectivity, and many gigabytes of high-speed memory. Indeed, the smartphones we carry in our pockets today would have been deemed supercomputers just twenty years ago. (uxmag.com)

How to create great UX documents (Neil Turner)

Like it or not the UX profession is very much in the documents game. From personas to wireframes and from user journeys to sitemaps, UX is knee deep in documentation. Even with the Agile UX drive to keep documentation to a minimum (which I whole heartedly agree with), in the same way that a football team can’t score goals without a bit of passing (unless you have Maradona on your team); a design team can’t create great designs without a bit of documentation. Sure it’s scoring goals that everyone is working towards but the passing is a necessary step on the way (even if it often gets forgotten about). (uxforthemasses.com)

UX vs. Product? (Christian Reiter)

There are many apps out there with either a great user experience and are fun to use or on the other hand solve a real problem with so much value in it but with a really bad design. But what we need is more stuff which does both great. Every product needs to solve a real problem, or more generally, be of value for the user, and to communicate the solution to that problem in a clear and concise way. (mobxcon.com)

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The Ethics of UX Research ( Nicholas Bowman)

As a UX researcher for a social media operation, Ute considers different interface designs that might allow users to make more social contacts. Ute gets a radical idea to test her hunches: What if we manipulated some of our current users’ profile pictures and measured the impact of those changes on their friends list? If successful, her research would provide valuable insight into the social media design elements most likely to result in sociability online. Of course, a successful study would also diminish the experiences of thousands already using her company’s service. In Ute’s mind, this is a simple A/B test, yet in the wake of recent controversy surrounding social media research, she’s starting to wonder if she should be concerned about the ethics of her work. (uxbooth.com)

6 Tips for Creating an Effective Survey (Erin Hogg)

There’s a good time, and a not-so-good time, for everything. This rule of life applies to surveys as well. In surveys, situations may exist for you that make it a good idea to field a survey, Diana explained. This could include scenarios of when you want to understand your customers’ motivations or characteristics. Maybe you’re looking to expand your product lines and want to know what your customers would like to see offered. (marketingsherpa.com)

In praise of beautiful advertising (John Collins)

News – both the written word and video – has never been more widely consumed but the traditional business model that has supported its production is busted. (insideintercom.io)

Designing the new Foursquare (Sam Brown)

Earlier this year we sat down as a company and looked at all the amazing pieces of technology we had built. Foursquare then had two distinct use-cases — keeping up and meeting up with friends, and finding places to go — and we’d tried just about every way possible to have them live together in a complementary way. We came to the conclusion that there were millions of people that want a better and more personalized search experience than currently exists, but are averse to check-ins and location sharing. (medium.com)