As we continue our research into what separates the best design teams from the rest, we see one factor consistently bubbling to the top: an attention to the user’s entire experience. This attention comes in the way the team thinks about their design. Are the elements designed right? Do they account for where the user [...]

In this week’s episode, Brian Christiansen and I discuss the experience of on-site search engines, how to tell if yours is working well, and how to improve it.

 

 On-Site Search [20:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Bruce McCarthy offers this great writeup of our recent Virtual Seminar on Building Robust Personas.
A while back I wrote a piece about personas where I talked it about why it’s a bad idea to base your personas on a single real individual. Using a real person as a substitute persona might seem like a good [...]

This week, we follow up our Virtual Seminar presentation on Building Robust Personas In 30 Days or Less, with answers to more questions that were generated during the session. You needn’t have attended the seminar to learn from this podcast, though.

 

 Usability Tools Podcast: Robust Personas [35:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’m pleased to announce the return of our Web App Summit sell-out program.

We’re holding the Summit in Coronado, CA on March 26 - 28, 2008. We’ve got a great line-up of presenters, including Andrew DeVigal, Steve Duenes, Derek Featherstone, Kim Goodwin, Sean Kane, Jeremy Keith, Steve Mulder, Leisa Reichelt, D. Keith Robinson, Bill Scott, Luke Wroblewski, and Indi Young. Jared Spool will also be presenting UIE’s latest research on web app design.

Register by December 11th and get your own limited-edition Web App Summit 2008 iPod nano.

Yesterday, I gave my Virtual Seminar on Building Robust Personas in 30 Days or Less. If you missed it, you can watch it on demand.
The session went well, but we ran tight on time and I didn’t get to all the great questions. Brian and I were just talking and we’re planning a followup podcast [...]

The always intriguing Christopher Fahey commented on yesterday’s post about Crappy Personas vs. Robust Personas:
Personas provide a fabulous way for people who understand their audience/users to communicate their understanding to people who do not understand that audience in a rapid and meaningful way. They are also a great way for people who have different understandings [...]

Are you an ACM or SIGCHI member? Have you seen me give a presentation? Did you like it? If so, I may need your help.
I’ve been nominated to the Association for Computing Machinery’s Distinguished Speakers Program.
They’ve contacted me and asked for references.
If you think I’d be a good addition to their program, please feel free [...]

There’s been a lot of discussion lately on the Interwebs about how personas are a useless tool. 37Signals’ Jason Fried recently wrote:
We don’t use personas. We use ourselves. I believe personas lead to a false sense of understanding at the deepest, most critical levels.
Every product we build is a product we build for ourselves to [...]

Unbeknown to me, David Armano recorded and posted a small portion of my UI12 Keynote: Magic and Mental Models.
In this segment, I’m talking about how functionality of a customer experience creates delight, sharing examples from Proflowers, Orbitz, and Farecast.

It was a fun presentation and the audience was very responsive. I’ll be giving this presentation again, [...]