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Is Email Dead in the Era of Facebook, Twitter & the iPhone?

Clara Shih, author of "The Facebook Era," examines the question is email dead in the era of Facebook, Twitter and the iPhone? With eight billion minutes being spent on Facebook a day, people are not only logging in, they are engaged and communicating actively there. So what role does email play going forward? Watch this BNET video to learn more:

Also, be sure to take BNET's poll: What’s the Etiquette for Social Media and the Workplace? Give them your insight.

Lessons Learned from Project Managers - "Focus on the User"

BNET talks to project heads from GM, Nokia, Mehtod and Facebook to find out what they consider "lessons learned" from working on high-stakes projects.

What I loved about each response was that the "user" was an influential factor in each take-away.

The perfect enemy is the enemy of the deadline.
"When you’re late, nothing happens ...and you’re not learning anything [from your customers]."
— Bill Wallace, engineering group manager for GM’s Volt battery

Always know whose problem you’re solving.
"Never forget who your customer is. Make that person real — it’s the key to getting the best product and keeping the team motivated... Bring in actual users so they can tell you early on, “I don’t know what this button does.”
— Lisa Waits, Nokia’s director of corporate business development

Make sure you’re talking to the right people.
"The right people weren’t talking together enough [to look at a customer / product challenge holistically]. People often get into silos in their heads..."
— Josh Handy, head of industrial design at Method

Ask yourself, “Is this necessary?”
"We have ideas on how we can help users communicate better, but we’re not always sure how well they will work. We do tons of testing for every little change to the page. One thing I know now, which I wish I had learned earlier in my career, is how to prevent “feature creep.” You have to be able to recognize when you’re inventing a feature that duplicates another or only adds unnecessary complexity."
— Peter Deng, product manager at Facebook

View full article: Lessons from the Worlds Best Project Managers >>

Following Web Design Lifecycle - Wireframes before Visual Design

This is a quick post on a great article addressing why wire frames need to come before the visual design phase. Check out Pathfinder's article, Developing Good Wireframes Ahead of Visual Design. It addresses why preparing wire frames first, before expressing the ideas visually in design comps is critical to the success of your Web project:

Wireframes...

• Focus the [scope and] conversation
• Create a path toward better design
• Allow for choices to be driven by users' needs
• Save time
• Save money

Read more >>

Now for a great time lapse of the process from wire frame to website - an awesome video.

Writing for the Web - Articles, Blogs, Books, Oh My!

To all of our Web content creators out there, here's a list we've compiled to help inspire, guide and instill good writing techniques for effective online communications:

Insightful Articles - Give These a Try

• Optimizing the User Experience
• Usability Basics
• Content Organization
• The Importance of Headings, Titles & Labels
• Writing Web Content
• Writing for the Web/Plain Language

Blogs & Feeds - Read & Subscribe

• How to Write for the Web
  By OJR: Online Journal Review | Online Journalism Wiki | RSS
• Copyblogger
  By Brian Clark

Books - Get Them Off the Shelf

• Developing Online Content - The Principles of Writing and Editing for the Web
  By Irene Hammerich, Claire Harrison
• The Web Content Style Guide
  By Gerry McGovern
• Writing for the Web - Writers' Edition
  By Crawford Kilian
• Call to Action - Secret Formula to Improve Online Results
  By Bryan Eisenberg
• Persuasive Online Copywriting
  By Bryan Eisenberg
• The Elements of User Experience
  By Jesse James Garrett
• Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
  By Steve Krug
• Information Architecture - Blueprints for the Web
  By Christina Wodtke

Also, be sure to visit past posts, Viaspire has written on Writing for the Web.

Familiarity - How Conscious Artifacts Are Critical to the UX

I read this wonderful article in the New York Times last week on "The Familiar Place" and even though I was actively reading the article, all I could think about was how the article was so valuable for User Experience Designers to consider. The idea of "familiarity" is core to good user experience design. It's one of the basic tenets of Steve Krug's book, Don't Make Me Think. Experiencing "familiar" concepts online, helps people navigate more comfortably throughout an online experience whether its their first time or 100th time.

The idea of allowing familiarity in a Web experience to be "an artifact of consciousness" is really key to intuition and ease of use. If it's familiar, the "concept" has been experienced before - and one would hope successfully.

Klinkenborg's article explains that even the unfamiliar can broaden [the users] experience and ability to navigate more comfortably in the process and in the future.

The interesting shared element here in my adaptation of the article and the literal story told by Klinkenborg is that technology also facilitated the path taken.

Looking at designing good UX online inherently relies upon technology to facilitate, simplify and guide a user from one point to the next.

What you can create as far as familiar concepts along the path helps make the experience more familiar and friendlier for future visits.

See what's familiar to you and what works. At the end of the day, you are creating "conscious artifacts" that faciliate good usable design.

Analytics and User Experience Design

ClickZ posted a great article on How Analytics and User Experience Design Can Work Together. Shane Atchison, co-founder of Zaaz, gives some great insight and shares his conversation with Aaron Louie, associate director of user experience at Zaaz about how UXD and analytics work together.

Feeling that the article's headline should read, How Analytics and UXD Must Go Together, it is our experience that "intelligent" user experience design always requires quantifiable analysis of user/usage patterns and behaviors. There's rich insight in analytics for refining the user experience and/or completely revamping or adding something new.

So when this question was posed in the article, I appreciated Louie's response.

Q: Are there any instances where UX would disregard analytics?
A: Hell no!...

Read on>>

Re-designs & Responses

We had a great week conducting user tests on a website re-design and I am always reminded despite decreasing budgets, shrinking timelines and increased project demands that user testing is "mission critical" and clarifies what's truly important to users. If you are inviting them to engage, user testing will quickly reveal what's clear to them, what they want out of the experience, what is working and what doesn't.

So, as we round out the week, I thought it was interesting to see various posts and chatter about some popular re-designs that despite improvements are facing resistance. Certainly, change does create response and the following articles outline some recent experiences that have elicited some dedicated users to become frustrated with shifts in layout, presentation and positioning.

• Yahoo testing livelier, more open home page
• Yahoo to streamline redesigned home page
• How Are Facebook Users Responding to the “Real Time” Home Page Redesign?
• Facebook users hate redesign. Lather, rinse, repeat?

The folks over at OpenHallway just did their first video blog post to show a brief usability test on the Facebook re-design. It's a simple presentation that shows where user's can get tripped up in new layouts if expectations in the framework go unmet.

30 Essential Controls for RIA Design & Development

 

If you work in any capacity related to user experience, interaction design and/or web development, this excellent article written by Theresa Neil, co-author of Designing Web Interfaces is so "rich" in information, visuals and resources related to the 30 most essential controls needed for RIA design and development.

The article beautifully lays out each control and RIA framework(s) associated with each of them. It is such a fantastic guide. I can only imagine what will be included in the book.

The Designing Web Interfaces website and blog is so generous with information and assets, including their section on "Explore the Book" and their companion Flickr site.

I extend my sincere appreciation to two authors who really take the idea of creating a "rich interactions" to the fullest extent.

Check out:

• Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions
• 30 Esential Controls
• 12 Screen Patterns

Morville Outlines UX Deliverables

Peter Morville of Semantic Studios writes a great post on User Experience Deliverables. It's a great overview of what our process is as user experience practitioners and what deliverables may be produced in the creation of user experience strategy and design.

Check out his latest post and download his User Experience Treasure Map, which is simple and clear, particularly for those new to understanding, adopting and advocating for the importance of user experience design.

More Focus on User Experience: Comprehension, Control & Connectedness

Being in the field of User Experience Design (UXD) for over 10 years, I always love to hear from fresh voices explain and illustrate what user experience is all about. Right after I read, 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design, I came across another great post and illustration, entitled The Foci of User Experience. Author, Richard Dalton, created this illustration to map factors important to information architecture within the context of user experience. Check it out >>

Dalton's illustration is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.