I'm in Africa for two extra weeks. But I don't much mind
as I'm getting to see a plan come together. As usual, we have been
helping align the institutionalization of UX and at the same time we
have been helping tactically to do essential UX work. We have limited
the damage of some train wrecks about to happen. And now we have
completed a new, far reaching, and radical digital strategy; and we are
starting to push that toward actual net and mobile desi…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on August 20, 2010 at 5:30pm —
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We got some great questions from viewers of our webcast, "Cloud UX: The Next Generation in Institutionalization" that I'd like to share here:
Is Cloud UX like faceted search facility on an organized & indexed repository?
This would be a partial solution. The problem is that the search against a set of docu…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on May 28, 2010 at 11:00am —
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I met with yet another bank this week, this one in Singapore. They were smart and aggressive. They understood that their future success will be based on the quality of their digital customer experience. After all, they just can't differentiate by taking more customers out on the golf course. The technology is the new face of the bank. But then I described the golden thread and the fact that in most organizations it is broken. That again resulted in sideways glances and laughter. It's a punch lin…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on May 11, 2010 at 11:30am —
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We got great response on our webcast last week, Design for the Big: How User-Centric Innovation and Strategy Can Move UX Up the Value Chain. We had so many good questions from viewers that we couldn't answer them all on the webcast. Here are more:
Would love to know what article was referenced re: "if you have money, buy
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Added by Eric Schaffer on April 27, 2010 at 4:30pm —
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I was recently asked "Is user experience different than usability?"
Our field has been called many things:
- Engineering Psychology
- Personnel Subsystem Design
- Human Factors Engineering
- Ergonomics
- Usability
- User Experience
Sorry. It was not my idea.
The switch from Usability to User Experience flagged a wider viewpoint. We are not just concern
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Added by Eric Schaffer on March 30, 2010 at 5:36pm —
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I've had a few interesting conversations on budget for UX work and UX institutionalization. Probably everyone knows that the spend for UX work should be about 10% of the overall development budget. I think I first published that in about 2001 as I was working out joint UX and delivery processes with Tata Infotech. When you worked it out, the UX component usually ran around 10% of the overall project costs. But, what about institutionalization of UX?
Think about it like the difference be…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on March 18, 2010 at 10:36am —
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It's just great to see how enthusiastic many companies have become about institutionalization of customer-centric design. They certainly get excited. And they often start reeling off projects and programs that they want to start last year or sooner. There is always a set of major design initiatives in progress which will be likely to train-wreck if UX staff are not dispatched instantly. There is a group that needs training. And, we need to get standards or we will continue to build an installed…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on March 10, 2010 at 1:30pm —
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I've written a lot about the importance of executive championship and governance in supporting the institutionalization of a user centric design capability. There is no question that that is a prerequisite. But, a second key to success is a leader who will run the internal usability organization. This leader will be full time working on UX issues. And the quality of this leader is profoundly important. The ideal head of this group will have a deep understanding of the organization, excellent pol…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on February 23, 2010 at 5:30pm —
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Everyone is fighting for a place at the table. There was a time when we had no chance and we would sit off in a corner, twiddling our radio buttons. But those times are changing.
The success of a program of institutionalization of usability does not hinge on brilliant design. You need brilliant design, but it is hardly the critical thing. It does not hinge on methods, and standards, and templates. It does not hinge on staffing or even kno
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Added by Eric Schaffer on February 8, 2010 at 6:00pm —
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I've been waiting for ten years or more. And after all that time of so many of us pushing, and praying, and writing, and teaching, it has finally happened. We should probably have a party. But I for one don't have time.
It's 4am in Dubai airport. I'm headed home to India for a week. Then a month in Bombay, Africa, and then Germany. At each stop there is a new phenomena - clients who have hired us for guidance in the Institutionalization of Usability. About time!
I started work on my book,
In…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on February 1, 2010 at 3:30pm —
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Thank You ALL so much for the brilliant essays. We had many that saw the UX role as designing more efficient and pleasurable things. These were all good. But the winners see it differently. They see the UX job as redesigning the aspirations and lifestyles that have gotten us into this mess. We have a whole new…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on November 12, 2009 at 12:30pm —
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Ok, I’m blushing. We’ve had SO many comments on our new site structure (
www.humanfactors.com). So now, I’ll open up the covers on some of the drivers behind the design.
We work on the most innovative and strategic concepts for our clients. We envision the future of online business models for many of the largest companies in the world. Yet our old site was just SO conventional. It was SO boring. So this release is a ver…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on October 6, 2009 at 10:30am —
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Lets take a look at two charts. The first one shows really good news. About half of the respondents report having a committed usability champion. That shows a shocking change from the recent past. Just five years back it was rare to find a committed champion. Today they are common place. Executives are hearing from books, magazines, and their friends that this is a ‘user experience economy’ and that success is based on ‘customer experience’. When we work with companies to get their executive sui…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on June 29, 2009 at 3:53pm —
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Added by Eric Schaffer on March 12, 2009 at 3:39pm —
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For us the core of persuasion engineering is understanding the customer’s deep drives, blocks, beliefs, and feelings.
The only way we have to get at this is to do in depth interviews, with highly trained staff. It takes at least a month of full time work for me to train a staff member to do these interviews. We have been very successful with using this method to develop actionable analyses. For example, the following PET Analysis was done from research about car pooling. You will see a set of s…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on January 28, 2009 at 4:30pm —
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Jill Asked:
How does this relate to someone currently enrolled in the CUA certification program? The CXA up-sell language makes the CUA certification seem obsolete. I have taken the first CUA course and am enrolled for the Design course that is being offered in a few weeks. Is there any plan to have courses from one program count toward the other? As you say, "usability is no longer enough." How are these two programs (CUA, CXA) so different? I won't be able to afford both certifications, an…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on October 29, 2008 at 5:00am —
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I’ve got a few great questions that ask (often with great passion) if this PET Design is really new. They suggest I am churning up old stuff and claiming it is a new wave of the information age (for purposes of wealth, fame, and perhaps acclaim from my Mother). So let's be clear. PET design is not an all new skill set HFI suddenly invented. John Watson applied psychology to persuasion at JWT in the 1920s! In fact I personally published on the topic on online PET design in 1981. The area of onlin…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on October 25, 2008 at 6:00pm —
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Here are three really exceptional questions that came in during the rebroadcast of the ‘Usability is no Longer Enough’ Webcast. Let’s give them a whirl:
Question: If usability alone is not enough, does it means PET design is needed AFTER the usability is done?
You need BOTH classic usability and PET design. So that way users CAN DO the tasks and will also be persuaded so they WILL do them as well. Now HFI offers SEPARATE processes for Classic UCD and ‘PET design™’. WHY?
There ARE cases…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on October 9, 2008 at 1:00am —
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Today I was teaching the PET design course in New York. As usual it was great to see the usability educated stretching and grabbing the new perspective. But an issue came up that was great. Our parents tell us that there are 'needs' and 'wants'. We learn that the 'wants' are not really that important.
But in the persuasion space, the emotional wants are VERY important indeed. Fulfilling the need for CONTROL has been shown to extend lives for people in nursing homes. So is that emotional need no…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on September 25, 2008 at 9:30pm —
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HFI's PET design offers a new approach to help companies influence and deepen their interactions with online customers through Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust. This methodology is the result of extensive research, pilot programs, and client engagements with Fortune 500 companies over the past several years.
Whether a website is e-commerce, informational, or transactional, its mandate is to establish deeper relationships with customers. Understanding how and why people make online decisions that…
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Added by Eric Schaffer on September 12, 2008 at 11:30am —
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