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”

• FourSquare Morphing into Mobile Loyalty Program for SMBs

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 136
  TechCrunch points to a promotion on the FourSquare site that gives the "mayor" of a particular organic food restaurant in North Carolina, Blynk Organic , a free meal. One becomes mayor by being the most frequent visitor to "check in" at a venue. Heres a full list of businesses offering what amount to mobile ...
  6 hours ago

• Report: ChaCha Heading toward Profitability

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 136
  ChaCha it appears is back from the brink. Weve heard negative rumors about the companys financial condition for a long time. Now Mike Arrington (a former ChaCha basher, now kinder and gentler toward the company) has spoken to CEO Scott Jones and disclosed the following: read more
  8 hours ago

• Blogger makes Twitter’s A-list. What to do with 250,000 new followers?

  
  Gadget Reviews — Authority: 160
  Anil Dash is a popular technology blogger who worked at blog software maker Six Apart before becoming director of Expert Labs, a technology think tank. He proudly counted more than 18,000 followers on Twitter.Then, in October, Dash’s Twitter account, @anildash, was added to Twitter’s Suggested User List, ...
  1 day ago

• Nuance Buys SpinVox for $66 million in Cash (Plus Stock)

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 136
  Nuance has acquired SpinVox to "accelarate its voice to text business." According to the release the transaction was worth $102 million with a third of that coming in Nuance common stock. From the release : read more
  1 day ago

• Vlingo Top Search Terms/Categories of 2009

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 136
  Vlingo released what it calls the top 10 voice-powered mobile Web searches of 2009: YouTube Facebook MySpace Weather Movie Times Twitter Yellow Pages MapQuest craigslist White Pages On first glance, this list is considerably different than Nielsens top mobile sites of 2009: read more
  1 day ago

• Use Gmail on a Mac? Get Notify. Now.

  
  Digital Likeness — Authority: 407
  I first saw a tweet about Notify right before Christmas. With two gmail accounts I use frequently and a third I like to check daily, I was looking for a program that could let me monitor multiple accounts without needing to log in and out of each separately. I downloaded the trial, and I liked the ability to ...
  1 day ago

• How To Visualize PLM Excels using Microsoft Pivot?

  
  Daily PLM Think Tank Blog — Authority: 125
  If you haven’t had chance to see Microsoft Live Lab Pivot project , please do. I found this approach as somewhat very interesting. The idea of data visualization is not new. However, the key question is how to make it simple? My view is that “collections” of data are a very strong and simple presentation ...
  1 day ago

• Introducing Covenant Eyes Careers

  
  Breaking Free — Authority: 428
  At Covenant Eyes we are constantly looking for people who are passionate about integrity to join our team. To that end, we have decided to create a small section on the blog specifically for providing information about what kinds of positions we want to fill. Right now we are looking for someone to help our ...
  1 day ago

• Pricing & Plan Details for Nexus One

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 136
  Gizmodo has what look like screenshots of PowerPoint slides from a Google presentation about the forthcoming Nexus One, to be announced (in all probability) on January 5 at a special Google press event. According to the Gizmodo report , which relies on a "tipster," the phone will sell unlocked for $530 and with a ...
  1 day ago

• Wither Kindle: Thinking about Tablet 2.0

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 136
  Although I love the idea of all the tablets and eReaders coming out, their success is still something of a surprise to me. Why? Because, unlike a smartphone, its a fundamentally "frivolous" purchase for all but a handful of voracious readers who dont want to lug a bag of books with them on planes.  read more
  2 days ago

• AnyClip UX: Short Term Gig, But a Load of Fun

  
  innonate — Authority: 106
  Over at AnyClip, were planning for our 2010 launch and merging the technology weve been developing with some incredibly fun and innovative ideas for our product. The biggest shortcoming in our process, we believe, is that we lack a coherent User Experience process to filter and mold these concepts to -- and for that, ...
  2 days ago

• PowerPoint 2007: Set language for all text

  
  CyberText Newsletter — Authority: 127
  I can’t believe that PowerPoint 2007 (which I like much more than PowerPoint 2003) doesn’t have a ’set language’ setting for all text in a PowerPoint slide deck! How did I find out that it doesn’t? I downloaded a slide template from the Microsoft Online site that happened to be set to French Canadian. I ...
  2 days ago

• Diving deep into user behavior with Google Analytics, Event Tracking, and jQuery

  
  Brian Cray's Blog — Authority: 458
  In a default Google Analytics setup, the information you have about your users’ navigation behaviors and preferences is limited to which pages they viewed and where they came from. But what does that really tell you about how your users behave inside your web pages? Not much, and that’s where all the juicy ...
  2 days ago

• Tracking App Store Growth, Downloads

  
  Internet2Go - An Opus Research Advisory Service - — Authority: 136
  Mobile analytics provider Flurry offers some insights and comparisons from Xmas day app downloads. The big story from this data is how downloads for the iPod Touch exceeded the iPhone by 172%. There are now more than 60 million iPhone OS devices in the market, roughly 40% of which are iPod Touch devices. The ...
  2 days ago

• UX London 2010

  
  IT EVENT — Authority: 136
  May 19, 2010 to May 21, 2010 Cumberland Hotel London, UK Learning of inspiration for designers of user experience. UX London is a unique three-day talks that combines deep inspiration with workshops given by some of the biggest names in the industry. Whether you’re starting your career or a seasoned ...
  2 days ago

• Installing PECL uploadprogress Extension for Drupal

  
  tutorials, tips, tricks and IT resources — Authority: 129
  The PECL uploadprogress modules allows a user to see a upload progress bar.This is a great UI that makes uploading intuative and hence good user experience.To intall uploadprogress module, from the command line# pecl install uploadprogressIf you get make command not found error, this means you need to install the ...
  2 days ago

• Finnish EHRs Clumsy, Mission Hostile, Consume Doctors Precious Time

  
  Health Care Renewal — Authority: 500
  It seems common wisdom in the U.S. that the "Europeans are way ahead of us" in computerized medicine. Perhaps the common wisdom is not so wise. This from Finland: HELSINGIN SANOMAT INTERNATIONAL EDITION - HOME Clumsy computer systems consume doctors’ time When Arto Virtanen, a doctor at a public health ...
  3 days ago

• Don’t say no when you really mean yes

  
  Jason Robb — Authority: 99
  When speaking to your customers, accommodate to their language. Don’t unnecessarily force your vocabulary on them. And don’t tell them no when you really mean yes. Redbox is great. I rent movies from them a few times a month. I love the simplicity of the service: show up, pick a movie, swipe your card, and ...
  3 days ago

• Don’t abandon users, always be testing

  
  Nick DeNardis — Authority: 91
  A few weeks ago at the CaseV conference I was trying to get wifi in the Chicago Sheraton and unfortunately it was not free, they charge by the day. I fired up my laptop fully prepared to pay the $13.63 for a day’s worth of internet when I was presented with the form above. A few things struck me as odd. The ...
  3 days ago

• Monday Reading: Start Your Week Off Right

  
  NeboBlog: Interactive Marketing, Design & Ramblings. Brought to you by NeboWeb — Authority: 117
  Programming why programmers aren’t paid according to their productivity. Design The decade in design by Good Magazine Usability According to Jakob Nielsen, usability is like cooking. Anyone can do it. Psychology What Makes Us Happy? The Atlantic’s most viewed online article ever. ...
  3 days ago

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