Personas ought to be one of the defining techniques in user-focused design, but they’ve unfortunately become more of a check-off item than a useful tool. So how did we get here?
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Expanding the Approaches to User Experience
Jesse James Garrett’s “The Elements of User Experience” diagram has become rightly famous as a clear and simple model for the sorts of things that user experience professionals do. But as a model of user experience it presents an incomplete picture with some serious omissions—omissions I’ll try address with a more holistic model.
Continue readingThe New R&D: Relevant & Desirable
Somewhere in the process of evangelizing user-centered design, user experience professionals seem to have forgotten the value of vision-driven design, which can be equally important in making sites and software relevant and desirable. We need to integrate both approaches.
Continue readingBuilding the Beast: Talking with Peter Morville
Polar Bear book co-author Peter Morville shares the inside stories about the making of the new edition—from its original scribblings on an airsick bag to the ideas that didn’t make it in—and his thoughts about how the field has changed since their book was first published.
Continue readingLessons to be Learned
Ivy-covered halls are filling up again with eager students of the user experience fields ready to change the world (or at least to study out the recession). But are these programs really teaching them what they need to know?
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