User Experience

From a design and development standpoint, user experience is the applied practice of making technology accessible. From an end-user's standpoint, user experience determines how well elements such as layout, graphics, feature hierarchy and navigation combine to make a technology usable and painless.

As with any design practice applied to technology, user experience is a blend of both science and art. While drawing on scientific principles from the fields of cognitive psychology and human computer interaction, the creation of a positive user experiences requires both empathy and aesthetic sensibilities.

As technology becomes increasingly complex, so does the application of good user experience practices become more vital. Apple's continued success in the marketplace serves as an example that success need not hinge on superior hardware, but on the ability to imbue complex technologies with positive, personally rewarding user experiences.

User experience is also a major factor in the blogging and social media spheres: as the quantity, variety and interconnectedness of information increases, so does the importance of good user experience design in making said information more easily accessible. As information sharing becomes increasingly commoditized, the user experience of an online service can become its key differentiator.

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Latest blogosphere posts tagged “User Experience”

• Case Study: The Real-Time Web at the New York Times & EnjoysThings

  
  Family Learning Center — Authority: 161
  [IMG: http://www.family-learning-center.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/4adcf_rtwreportcoverfinal.jpg]
  16 hours ago

• What’s New Today in Apple Patent-land: Touchy sound effects

  
  SensoryMetrics — Authority: 123
  Today’s feature Apple patent application is number 20090292993: Graphical User Interface Having Sound Effects For Operating Control Elements and Dragging Objects Abstract Systems and methods for providing an enhanced auditory behavior to a graphical user interface are described. Control elements portrayed by ...
  16 hours ago

• Why SketchFlow is not a mockup software

  
  CodeClimber — Authority: 479
  After almost one year of using Balsamiq I decided to give Blend SketchFlow a try. After using it in one project, I realized it’s not a sketching/mockup tool. And here I’m telling you why. My definition of a sketching/mockup tool I think a sketching/mockup tool should be a replacement for sketching on ...
  17 hours ago

• Je Tue Un Ami.comI’ve seen this web viral website...

  
  6ix Passions — Authority: 138
  Je Tue Un Ami.com I’ve seen this web viral website experience a while ago, but forgot to talk about it here. I’ve seen it back today and I enjoyed killing my colleagues again by Internet. The concept is simple: choose your murderer, upload the picture of your friend, and see him/her being killed by your ...
  1 day ago

• Email will never die!! Long Live Google Wave ;-)

  
  SensoryMetrics — Authority: 123
  Ok, so Wave is either the ultimate replacement for email or just a new tool to use for communication; not that different from instant messaging, Skype or Facebook. Truth is it depends on what you use your email for. If you like writing emails now, you will no doubt continue on using email. On the other hand if ...
  1 day ago

• SeatGeek

  
  One Day, One Job — Authority: 130
  Last spring when sports fans on the North Side of Chicago were still hopeful, Amy and I decided that we wanted to go to a Cubs game. It was the day of the game, and we didn’t have tickets. We checked out StubHub, and saw some pretty good prices, but we decided that waiting would get us even better prices. We waited. ...
  1 day ago

• Heretical Ideas – Stop Using Wireframes

  
  Man with no Blog — Authority: 93
  Over the years I have been trying to implement UX design tools and techniques into my day-to-day production cycle.   This would be very simple if all my projects where large ones with moderate size teams.   However business reality is that this is not often the case.  The projects I tend to work on, as an ...
  1 day ago

• A WiFi wonderland in the sky… and on the ground!

  
  WORDPRESS-TEMPLATES-PLUGINS-RSS — Authority: 138
  A WiFi wonderland in the sky… and on the ground! The holiday season is always about connecting with friends, family… and the web. During the holidays in particular, the web brings us closer to others through the email we send, YouTube videos we share, gifts we buy, holiday music we listen to and charitable ...
  2 days ago

• Emblaze’s First Else unveiled in London, promises to be a game-changer

  
  F-Default — Authority: 542
    Folks, today might be the day when you start to notice how ancient our smartphones have become, even if they only came out in last few months. Blame Else (formerly Emblaze Mobile ) for their confusingly-named First Else, a phone “built from scratch” over the last two years and now powered by Access Linux ...
  2 days ago

• Siri Gets Some Serious Funding

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 137
  According to Venture Wire ( via VentureBeat) "virtual personal assistant" Siri has raised $15.5 million in a second funding round. The first round was $8.5 million. read more
  2 days ago

• Why Swype When You Can Speak?

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 137
  Theres a lot of hype around Swype (sorry, couldnt resist). Swype is a text input methodology that is apparently easier than conventional typing; I havent used it so I cant comment from personal experience. read more
  2 days ago

• Austin UPA - December Happy Hour Mixer

  
  GeekAustin.org — Authority: 127
  Austin UPA (a chapter of the Usability Professionals Association ) has been reinvigorated this past year and has teamed up with AustinUX to host local events for UX (and related) folks.  Our topics are varied - from celebrating World Usability Day ( see pictures ) to collaborating on collaboration ( see the past ...
  3 days ago

• Philips Releases new SpeechMike Air dictation device

  
  Desinformado.com — Authority: 442
  Philips Electronics today announced SpeechMike Air, the first wireless model of the company’s PC dictation device, is now available for purchase. The release of SpeechMike Air expands Philips’ line of digital dictation devices and provides users with the flexibility to dictate wirelessly. The latest product in ...
  3 days ago

• The Engadget Show – 003: Drew Bamford, Joystiq’s Chris Grant, Adamo XPS, and lots of game demos

  
  F-Default — Authority: 542
  This is a big one, folks. The new installment of The Engadget Show is jam-packed with goodness. First up, Josh sits down with HTC’s director of user experience Drew Bamford to discuss Android, Sense, Windows Mobile and a whole lot more. Read more from the original source: The Engadget Show – 003: Drew Bamford, ...
  3 days ago

• Teracent + AdMob: Dynamic Mobile Display Ads

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 137
  About an hour ago Google announced that it was buying a company called Teracent. Teracent provides display advertisers with the ability to create different versions of ads based on a range of creative elements and ad copy. The technology behind the platform appears pretty sophisticated. read more
  3 days ago

• Google Makes Mobile Coupon Push

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 137
  Google has had a big opportunity in local coupons that it has largely neglected perhaps until now. But now Google is making a push into mobile distribution of local coupons for small businesses. read more
  3 days ago

• Qwest and Herff Jones make CIO Top 100

  
  Anthony's Blog — Authority: 104
  Congrats to our team and our good friends at Qwest for making CIO Magazine’s Top 100 IT Projects list of 2009.Excerpt from the online article at both InfoWorld and CIO Magazine:Qwest Communications www.qwest.com/business Web Portal Project lead: Rick Wertheimer, Program Manager; Betsy Keyes, Director of ...
  3 days ago

• Interview with Freelance UI Designer & Developer Tanya Merone

  
  CMD+SHIFT DESIGN BLOG: Seattle Web Designer, Freelancer, Blogger and big time Internet Nerd! — Authority: 123
  Last month, I was listed in a post on Line 25 called 40 Amazing Female Role Models in Web Design — crazy , i know! I was pretty excited to be included on such a list of kick ass ladies, including a couple I’d already interviewed for this blog, including Niki Brown and Krissy Gogel . From this list, I let ...
  3 days ago

• What would Sally do? Personas for retail financial services

  
  dancingmango — Authority: 406
  Personas are ‘pen portraits’ that bring to life users or customers of a system, service or product.  Giving a personality and back story to your customers helps keep your thinking true to their real needs and goals.  Rather than using  ‘user’ or a segment descriptor such as ‘empty nester’, or ‘this is ...
  3 days ago

• So you wanna be a user experience designer — Step 2: Guiding Principles

  
  Pleasure and Pain — Authority: 456
  [This is part of a series titled So You Wanna Be a User Experience Designer . Check out the previous post, Step 1: Resources ] Five months ago I wrote a post titled, “ So you wanna be a user experience designer ,” in which I gathered all of the resources in my UX arsenal: publications and blogs, books, local ...
  3 days ago

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