John Knight – Experience is everything! ™

Close reading of Agile principles is instructive in explicating it as a distinctive design approach with implications for understanding how it frames the product of design activity. Read the provisional theory of Agile Design

One of the landmark publications in HCI and UX, Moggridge’s Designing Interactions spans the history of UI and blends it with the compelling stories of key practitioners, inventors and pioneers. I was fortunate to interview Bill on the eve of the book’s publication back in 2007. Read the interview.

Back in 2011 I revisited the design and research projects I worked on during my formative years in UCD (1996-2006). Reflecting on the range of clients I have worked with and the variety of deliverables I have produced, I was struck by the fact that often the most significant product of User-centred design (UCD) is not what you might expect; improving the usability of a product or service but rather a strategic change to the sponsoring organisation itself although some had done both. Read the full article.

One of my career highlights as an UCD practitioner was to interview NNG guru Donald Norman. The interview was published in full in Interfaces Magazine and also appeared in this version on Usability News. It’s fascinating to read Don’s views at this critical stage in the alignment of design research and HCI. Read the article.

Back in 2005 – I predicted the future direction of user research at HCI2005 presaging the emergence of User Experience.

Usability News (6) reported that ‘The UK market, worth £90m in 2004, will grow by a further 25% in 2005, to between £108m to £117m, driven by increased awareness of the benefits of improved website usability and accessibility’. As well as being a more sophisticated profession, clients are better educated in accessibility and usability and demand higher quality services and added value. This is a positive change from the struggles of advocating UCD in an economic downturn. Rather than the dogmatic gurus of the past the profession is now made up of a diverse mix of sophisticated and media-savvy experts. It is easy to be complacent about the future in this climate and to forget the lessons of the dotcom crash of a few years ago. Read in full on Usability News

I started this article with the aim of summarising a UCD project and illustrating some of  the guerrilla HCI methods I have used and recommmend. I have not deviated from this goal, but the article has certainly grown, although this added depth has been useful to me and hopefully you too. It is not often that practitioners get the time and space to reflect on what they do but the exercise of reflection spurred by writing this article has shown how valuable an activity this is.

Postscript – interesting how many of the methods describe preempt Lean and Agile UX approach. Read the full article.

In 2010 the author analysed UX job descriptions from a sample (n = 20) sourced from popular  employment websites in the industry including Usability News. The analysis of these jobs was presented at the first User Experience Competency Framework (UXCF) workshop and the results summarised common elements in UX work including roles, competencies and deliverables. Applying the same descriptive models from last years workshop to a new set (n = 30) of jobs the author proposes some changes due to changed market conditions and calibrates the models to take account of these. In addition,  the author adds a career path model based on both set of research data. Read the full article.

This paper considers engagement in the context of computer art and describes how art and technology are closely linked. A number of examples are given including the connection between photography and artistic approaches to representation. The author categorises computer art into seven types. These consist of computers as production and presentation tools, interactive, networked and algorithmic art, cultural material and finally augmented and virtual media. Each type is described with examples of computer artist’s work. The paper concludes by suggesting that computer art fundamentally changes the relationship between artist and viewer. In computer arts, the ‘viewer’ has the potential to become instrumental in realising the work. Furthermore, with networked technology the exact nature of the aesthetic experience cannot be defined by the artist alone. Read the full paper.

Analytics are becoming an invaluable marketing tool, that alongside social media, enable companies to discover increasing levels of detail about their online audience. Triangulating this data with user research findings adds a further level of insight enabling you to really get to know your customers. Read the full article

John Knight, Head of Insight at ORM and his thoughts on the top five trends for 2013 that may affect your digital strategy; including the exponential growth of mobile, a business focus on intelligence and measurement and the rise of strategic design approaches to deliver great customer experiences in an increasingly connected world.
Read the full article