Psychologist James J. Gibson originally introduced the term “Affordance” in his 1977 article “The Theory of Affordances” and elaborated on it further in his 1979 book The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Gibson defined affordances as all “action possibilities” latent in the environment, objectively measurable and independent of the individual’s ability to recognize them, but … Read more
I cannot over emphasize the importance of developing prototypes and reviewing them with your target audiences as early and often as possible. Determining, developing and delivering your customer experience is an Outside-in process. Too many companies make the mistake of thinking that they know what is best for their customers. Oftentimes they may think that … Read more
Users are not designers. You can ask them what they want but they can only give you insight into the incremental improvement that they are concerned with their immediate needs. They do not have your aggregated insight that you have across your customers and new technologies. Designers are not users. They may guess what users … Read more
If you are designing experiences for services then you will need service designers. If it is a space or counter experience then it may include training, architecture, interior design, display design, wayfinding and more. If you are designing experience for a product and that product is a device then you may include industrial designers and … Read more
When iteratively designing and evaluating experiences, the order in which you do this is very important. It starts with content – you must have the content to design the information architecture. I remember learning this lesson when, at one company, Marketing was looking for our Art Director to start creating comps for our next generation … Read more
Validate that customers’ needs are met and tasks are easy to do. Putting your solution in context for your customers and users, is a key to validating that the solution meets their needs and is easy to use. You need to work with people who fit the profile of your target customers and conduct design … Read more
You need to decide how much user research, design, and usability testing you can afford. This depends on your competitive market, business objectives, and release cycles. During the early phases of a product development lifecycle, activities include conducting market, customer, and competitive user research. User research may include surveys, focus groups, interviews, and contextual inquiries. … Read more
Once you have validated that your product’s overall workflow meets customer and user needs, do usability testing to evaluate individual tasks to ensure they are easy to complete. Usability evaluation assesses the degree to which users can operate a system and their efficiency and satisfaction when using the system. Such evaluations validate that tasks are … Read more
Developing prototypes and reviewing them with target customers and users is key to designing easy-to-use solutions. You must spend some time validating workflow, navigation, information grouping, information hierarchy, terminology, labels, and interactions to ensure they meet the needs of the market and your users. Your understanding of various customers’ needs, users’ workflows, and content overlaps … Read more
During User Experience (UX) design, develop diagrams of various users’ workflows, noting where they are similar or different. Next, based on your findings, group your customer and user types by similar roles, and create profiles or personas that synthesize users’ skills, patterns, and goals to better understand their needs. Companies in mature markets may not … Read more
The first step in developing solutions that are easy to use is understanding customer and user needs within the context of the market and existing competition. It takes market and user research to: define the problem your product must solve and design an optimal solution understand the strengths and weaknesses of competitors’ solutions in comparison … Read more
User experience encompasses all aspects of users’ interactions with a company, its services, and its products. Prioritizing user advocacy from the beginning of a product design process puts users at the center of the process and ensures their needs are foremost in all UX design decisions. To meet your customers’ real needs and deliver simple, … Read more