27. März 2015

One Magic Formula to Calculate User Experience? (Wouter de Bres)

My quest for a formula to calculate User Experience started with a little experiment to see if I could calculate cognitive loading time of a design. When talking about loading speed of digital products the focus always seem to be the digital loading time, but we sometimes forget that trying to understand an interface also requires time – cognitive loading time. The more I thought and researched this problem, the more I discovered that loading time – digital and cognitive – might just be a small part of a bigger and more important question: Is it possible to quantify User Experience? (gibbon.co)

THE RISE OF ANDROID: How a flailing startup became the world's biggest computing platform (Lisa Eadicicco)

In 2004, Andy Rubin made an urgent call to his friend, Steve Perlman. Rubin’s startup, Android, was in trouble, he explained. Rubin didn’t like asking for money again, but the situation was dire. Android, which was creating mobile software for phones, was out of cash, and other investors weren’t biting. Perlman agreed to wire some funds as soon as possible. (businessinsider.com)

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12. März 2015

What if testing was a part of the design (Sandijs Ruluks)

One of the great benefits of digital design is that it can be tested and measured. Yet so many aren’t doing that. Partly we can blame the workflow, where the client buys the design from the designer and focuses on aesthetics, not the results. But what if that could be included into our deliverables? What if we provided the designs and helped improve them? I admit it's scary, since the new design might perform worse that the previous one. Then again, what if we improved the design based on the data we gathered and ended up doubling or tripling the conversions? The gains seem to be way bigger than the scars to your ego. (froont.com)

The Death of the Agency Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (Andy Budd)

If I lived and worked in San Fransisco, the current “death of the agency” debate may have slightly more poignancy than it does in the UK. San Francisco and the wider Silicon Valley is undoubtedly living through a huge tech bubble, and has been for some time. The slew of new tech businesses quickly hoovered up the local talent, before starting to ship them in from around the country and the rest of the world. This includes dozens of Brits I know who have left these shores for a better life in California. (andybudd.com)

Using Lean Analytics Principles to Build a Strong Company (kissmetrics)

Lean Startup is a methodology designed to get companies to adopt a Build, Measure, Learn product development cycle. This emphasizes that teams quickly build an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of a new product, measure how it performs, and learn from the experiment. The goal is to quickly go through this cycle to maximize learning and reduce costs in a short amount of time. The end result, ideally, is a more effective and agile company. (kissmetrics.com)

8. März 2015

They wanted to make a phenomenon. They made $10 million. The story of Crossy Road. (Dave Tach)

A few years ago, Matt Hall, the 39-year-old co-creator of the enormously successful Crossy Road, was a struggling, unprofitable video games developer living on an Australian sheep farm owned by his parents, chasing a dream of success that had come true for some friends but eluded him. (polygon.com)

Engagement loops are the best way to motivate people using game mechanics (Alper)

It has been a pleas­ure to see our asso­ci­ate Sebastian Deterding’s think­ing evolve through his present­a­tions over the years. It has been a treat to read every new deck and to fol­low his reas­on­ing in detail. You can also trace a very dis­tinct line about games, user exper­i­ence, psy­cho­logy and eth­ics that has become more pro­nounced over time. Recently Sebastian pub­lished “Magic Wonder Pixie Dust”, a present­a­tion which serves as our main ref­er­ence when design­ing for motiv­a­tion. This one comes in at 204 slides and it touches on everything you need to know to do this. I’ll go through it tak­ing the engage­ment loop slide as a guide (below and 101 in the present­a­tion) and talk about how we apply it as a design method in our day-to-day con­sult­ing work. (whatsthehubbub.nl)

The 5 laws of Interface Design (Kevin Hale)

Y Combinator's Kevin Hale teaches the 5 laws every software designer should know about interface design. He'll walk you through the experiments used to discover them and visualize the math in ways that makes it easy to see how to apply them in your day to day design work. (platzi.com)

Apple gold (Dr. Drang)

It’s inartfully put (140 characters is a bitch), but as a practical matter he’s correct. Apple’s patent application is for a method that allows them to make 18k gold that has, on a volume basis, less gold than regular 18k gold. (leancrew.com)

5. März 2015

Why Your Email Marketing Should be Based on the Customer Journey (Kath Pay)

What is email marketing? Is it simply sending emails (either batched or triggered), or does email marketing involve something much more than that? A few years ago, I coined the term “Holistic Email Marketing,” which I feel describes a more comprehensive approach for email marketers to take. I came up with this term in response to the typical situation in which an email marketer is focused on a company’s email marketing program that consists of only designing, writing, optimizing, and sending emails. (kissmetrics.com)

How Often Should You Post on Social Media? Benchmarks for 9 Different Industries (Maggie Hibma)

How often should you post to your social media accounts? For many marketers, this question is tough. Here’s why: Social media is a very flexible and fluid part of your marketing strategy. It’s not easy to draw the line between how much you could be posting and how much you should be posting. (hubspot.com)

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4. März 2015

Mystical guidelines for creating great user experiences (Tal Bloom)

The Jewish Torah teaches that the Creator created our world through ten utterances–for example, “let there be light.” The Jewish mystical tradition explains that these utterances correspond with ten stages in the process of creation. Every creative process in the world ultimately follows this progression, because it is really a part of the continual unfolding of the world itself, in which we are co-creators. (boxesandarrows.com)

7 Steps to Deliver Better Customer Experiences (Denise Lee Yohn)

A surprising thing happened during a recent brainstorming session I led for a retail client. We were supposed to be coming up with ideas for improving the company’s customer experiences, but the head of operations could not think of a single new customer service idea to explore. And the development leader failed to identify any new ideas for store layout or building features. And the merchandising vice president had difficulty understanding why “product” was one of the categories we were discussing. (hbr.org)

LEAN versus Customer Experience Management (Thorleif Astrup Hallund)

The greatest customer focused companies have come a long way since the time of classic LEAN approach to create customer value – luckily for us customers. “The original core idea behind LEAN is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Simply put, LEAN means creating more value for customers with fewer resources. A LEAN organization understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it. The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creation process that has zero waste” – quote LEAN Enterprise Institute. (linkedin.com)