After an appearance at last year’s UX Week, Cameron Gray, Vice President of Engineering at online training experts Mindflash will return to our stage at this year’s MX Conference with a talk about Agile and UX.
As a design process freak, I jumped at the chance to interview Cameron and ask him about the way he is integrating UX in Mindflash’s Agile development methodology.
[Peter Boersma] You (re)joined Mindflash almost 4 years ago, after a 4-year stint at another company, and run the development team. What have you changed to the way that team is managed? What…
The cake model of product strategy is actually two different models for how to evolve and improve the scope of a product over time. I’ve found it’s a very helpful tool for helping teams think through what’s going to be a successful customer experience in the short term and the long term.
Model #1: Dry Cake
The first model shows the “dry cake” approach that many organizations plan out new products and experiences. They start with cake, then maybe add some filling, and then plan to add the icing as the final step. It makes sense from an…
Every product is a design theory embodied. Designers and developers make something based on their theory about what is good and fun and useful and enjoyable, ideally for a particular audience. The theory is tested when people begin to use the product and we discover how closely our assumptions and people’s reality line up.
In the spirit of theory testing, the Nielsen Norman Group recently posted findings from their iPad Usability study where they reported on the usability of 35 iPad apps and reported that the experiment to date is pretty much a failure from a usability perspective:
This isn’t necessarily a new thought, but it’s always worth hearing again. Tom Schlegel, VP of Product Development at Radio Flyer, the makers of that iconic red wagon, spoke about how, after he got there, he pretty much instituted a policy of being okay with failure. He told the story of a remarkable idea, a folding red wagon, that, when executed, because overly complicated - too expensive, pinch points that needed covering, uneven weight distribution, and more. And after having put a lot of money into the product development, they scrapped it.
Brandon started a discussion on an internal mailing list, asking, “The usability lab is now the ________ ?”, and explaining:10 to 15 years ago the usability laboratory was the must-have for vetting and testing your design ideas. But more nimble development processes and new tools seem to have superseded the usability lab. Some of these are:
remote screen sharing and screen recording tools and services
voice of the customer feedback systems, like Get Satisfaction and other SaaS tools
A/B testing and multi-variant testing
remote co-design tools like online card sorting
survey tools for straight-up surveys and concept evaluations
public betas, previews, and…
An interview with Scott Berkun, author and public speaker on
Show Length: 20 minutes
In 1956 a documentary called The Mystery of Picasso was released, showing two hours of Pablo Picasso doing what he did best: making paintings. This film gave the public a first-hand glimpse directly into this infamous artist’s creative process. Public speaker and writer Scott Berkun and I got together for tea to talk about the film and our own experiences around creativity. As both managers of creative teams and creators of work ourselves, we looked at how our processes aligned with Picasso’s…or where we could…
I just finished working on a project where half of my team was in our Austin office and half was here in San Francisco, which meant 2 different time zones. In addition, our client was in yet another city. Since this was my first time working with such a split team, my learning curve around remote communication, meeting facilitation, and maintaining a strong team dynamic was pretty steep. I thought I’d take a moment to compile those learnings and share.
Tackling Time Zones
Adjust daily schedule for both offices: A couple of days per week, work on…
I’m very pleased to announce the relaunch of Changemakers.com, the leading network for open source social innovation. Changemakers is a program of Ashoka, a global non-profit organization supporting the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. Changemakers hosts competitions to find the best solutions to social problems, and allows the community to collaborate on, refine, enrich, and implement those solutions. The Adaptive Path team included Leah Buley, Rae Brune, Dan Harrelson, and Kumi Akiyoshi, with Jody Medich and Gray Kuglen.
[caption id=“attachment_3416” align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Redesigned Home Page”]
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The redesign was a nine-month project involving not only…
Part 1 of this interview.
Part 2 of this interview.
Margret Schmidt is among our speakers at MX 2009, taking place 2-3 March in San Francisco. You can register for MX 2009 using the promotional code BLOG and get 10% off. Prices increase January 31st.
PM: We met at a conference last fall where you were speaking about the design and launch of the new TiVo.com website. I believe you mentioned that the site design had not significantly changed for 5 or so years before this most recent launch (and looking at the Internet Archive confirms this. What had been the organizational barriers to…
Part 1 of this interview.Margret Schmidt is among our speakers at MX 2009, taking place 2-3 March in San Francisco. You can register for MX 2009 using the promotional code BLOG and get 10% off. Prices increase January 31st.
Peter Merholz: In your earlier discussion of the departments involved in product development, Marketing was not mentioned. In many organizations, User Experience is located within the Marketing Department. What is User Experience’s relationship to Marketing? Marketing clearly has an impact on your customers’ experience, whether through advertising or your Web site. How do you achieve a holistic user experience that spans all these…
