Comments on: The tip of the User Experience iceberg

By: Marco

Marco — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 01:48:39 +0000

It’s indeed an interesting topic emerging – but by emerging I mean, it’s being discussed. Speaking of UX design, I ask myself: WHY? Shouldn’t it be understood that (expressing it pretty basic) the user is the targeted audience in ANY product or application? Why develop theories about it?
But after a few years in webdesign and -development, I found that in fact there is a demand for that – pity to admit it – and with my background as a web-designer that changed over to the coders I see that most people really think a user has to cope with the software – and not the other way around.
That’s what Microsoft had to learn over the past years…
ahm, I stop here – and have a look at this page from time to time since I just started a job in lovely shaky Christchurch recently

all the best,
Marco

By: Ahmed Shuja

Ahmed Shuja — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 08:56:57 +0000

Hopefully you’re not alone. It was really interesting for us here in Pakistan to discover such a situation in New Zealand. We are a small UX company in Pakistan. We are often frustrated looking at the situation here too. Loads of companies here are popping up using the buzz words of Usability and UX. You speak to them and all they know about the field is what they found on Wikipedia!!! They often don’t even have any formal training in design.

Cheers!
A.

P.S. I like you blog!

By: Bruce Russell

Bruce Russell — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:58:10 +0000

Hi Nick,
I completely sympathise with you over the need to roll out UCD principles across the board. I’m working in the web area because my skills and experience aling with communication products, but this doesn’t mean that the same perspective is not needed in product or off-line service design. Everyone I speak to in this field agrees that the amount of ‘evangelising’ and persuasion involved in getting clients alert to UCD/UX is exhausting. But we need to contain our frustration and keep banging away. I’ve published a short book with Wired Internet Group aimed at educating management about UX, specifically in the web area. More work is needed on this!
Bruce

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:44:27 +0000

Hi Nick. I’ve never seen it as cut-and-dry as that.
Coming into UX from a background in product design and architecture, it’s all the same to me.
I’ve applied a user-centred-design approach to buildings, sporting goods, electronics and plenty of digital interfaces, so it seems it seems a little one-eyed and perhaps a lost opportunity that so many in the web/digital industry work under the handle of ‘user experience designer’ when the UCD approach is applicable to so many other areas in which our clients and their customers could really benefit.

By: Nick Finck

Nick Finck — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:50:15 +0000

I think you’re thinking of customer experience (all customer touchpoints), not user experience (all customer touchpoints within a digital space).

By: Simon Johnson

Simon Johnson — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:10:50 +0000

I don’t think that clients can REALLY understand the full UCD process unless they have participated. Clients often think that usability research is marketing research with a more fashionable name.

There’s that ‘ah-ha’ moment when the penny drops. You see meta-themes leaping out from your data that just weren’t there before, which is magical. The insights are more than the component parts.

The perplexing question is how we convey that a grounded UCD process for ethnographic deep research to iterative interaction design to our clients?

Only then will they realise the value of involving customers at every stage of the process.

By: Mathew Sanders

Mathew Sanders — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:43:42 +0000

You’re not alone!!