Until recently, I used to bank with Washington Mutual. One of the things that made WaMu unique was their “Occasio” retail style branch design. Those of you who may have seen Don Norman’s conversation with Peter at UXWeek 2008 might recall that WaMu came up with the design after extensive research, field work and ethnography. They spent considerable time and money studying how people do banking and even created some trial banks to help them study customers. The layout, which included a concierge desk, children’s area as well as “teller towers” was friendly, easy to engage with and emphasized…

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Would you take a moment to support me in the Pay Yourself First savings blog-off? I still need 8000+ more votes by March 31. It only takes a click (on the homepage, click my icon to vote): http://www.pyfchallenge.com

In my last post, I wrote about some common human tendencies that keep us from doing what we want to do (like save money) and lead us to do what we don’t want to do (like overspend or overeat).

As one of the minority INTPs in the world, I’m actually more likely to be “ridiculously rational” than “predictably irrational.”...

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Would you take a moment to support me in the Pay Yourself First savings blog-off? I still need 8000+ more votes by March 31. It only takes a click (on the homepage, click my icon to vote): http://www.pyfchallenge.com

If I’ve been quiet on the AP blog lately, it’s because I’ve been busy blogging about ways to save money as a finalist in FNBO Direct’s Savings Competition. Since money is also hot topic around Adaptive Path (be sure to read about Julia’s upcoming “It’s Your Money” event!), and we seem to be working with…

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I’ve been dismayed how little discussion there seems to be in experience design blogs and mailing lists about how our industry and community can best respond to the financial crisis. It feels to me like we just want to put our heads in the sand and pretend everything is just fine, nothing to see here, please carry on. As such, I was happy to see Michael’s recent post about managing through a recession, as it provided necessary context for thinking about our role as the crisis transpires.

Adaptive Path was born in the debris of the dot.bust,...

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Last November, I spoke at Chile’s first information architecture conference. The audio recordings and presentations decks have been posted.

I was asked to speak in the “banking” track, and this gave me an opportunity to develop some new material derived from case studies. I really enjoyed rolling up my sleeves and getting down to brass tacks. My talk, “Beyond Transactions: Experience Strategies for Financial Services,” (presentation deck, Audio Recording) recounts stories from 2 projects I’ve worked on at Adaptive Path, and the five lessons learned:

Talk to your customers

Coordinate across channels

Make the abstract concrete

You’re establishing…

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