Playback Recorded Video: (Transcript below) Watch Now
The following is a transcript of a live interview with Persona book authors John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin, conducted by Frank Spillers in October 2006.
This seminar is available with the slides and audio presentation here (requires brief registration, privacy protected).
Transcript of Personas LIVE!:
Next week is World Usability Day, a day when the usability community gets out to raise awareness and visibility about the field and goals of usability engineering and user centered design.
"World Usability Day 2006 promotes the value of usability engineering
and user-centered design and the belief that every user has the
responsibility to ask for things that work better". (from the WUD site)
Here are a couple of items related to World Usability Day that we are doing at Experience Dynamics, a leading usability and user centered design consultancy.
Two years ago, after returning from the Design and Emotion conference, I shared an extensive post on Emotion Design, a topic that has a lot of potential to open up new conversations about user experience and usability. This week, the fifth conference, Design and Emotion 2006 takes place in Göteborg, Sweden. Since I wanted to attend the conference this year but couldn't, here is a practical definition of design and emotion that I hope you will enjoy.
1. The recognition that a sterile focus on function is not enough anymore in usability (emotion needs to be addressed as well). Here's more on Graphic Design vs. Usability...
The Importance of User Experience
Here's a poster that reflects some thoughts about user experience...all of the bottom row items (outcomes of positive user experiences) in the poster are based on empirical research. Let's review some of that research, a brief glimpse at the science behind what the poster is communicating...
About the poster project and translations into many languages below all these quotes (bottom of the post)...
Elements that contribute to a positive user experience: (the bottom row of the poster)
Loyalty > Trust > Perceived Credibility > Profitability > Intent to Return > Intent to Purchase > User Satisfaction > Word of Mouth
Summary: User advocacy is one of the central activities of UX. User advocacy means recognizing that users are different to the people who create software and services and that because of this gap, user needs and desires need to be acknowledged and included in the design process. Anyone involved in UX work needs to be a good user advocate and see things from a user's point of view, or fight for their needs where appropriate.
User advocacy is a learned skill. Our natural default is to think of what we know, and assume others are behind us or have not put in the time to learn what we know. If you design with that assumption, you are probably guilty of ego-centered design.