Design and Data Science: Creating Meaningful Experiences in the Machine Learning Era

With the advance of machine learning and “artificial intelligence” (AI), it has become the responsibility of both designers and data scientists to understand how to shape experiences that improve lives. As Greg Borenstein argues in Power to the People: How One Unknown Group of Researchers Holds the Key to Using AI to Solve Real Human Problems: … Read more

The Partnership Between Designers and Data Scientists

From Experience Design in the Machine Learning Era, Fabien Girardin shares that with a behavioral data-driven experiences, we exploit thick data, the qualitative information that provides insights on people’s lives, big data from the aggregated behavioral data of millions of people and the small data that each individual generates. Traditionally, designers focus on defining the experience of the service, feature or … Read more

The New Relation Between Humans and Machines

“The experiences powered by machine learning are not linear or based on static business and design rules. They evolve according to human behaviors with constantly updating models fed by streams of data. Each product or service becomes almost like a living, breathing thing. Or as people at Google would say: ‘It’s a different kind of … Read more

Experience Design Principles for Machine Learning Solutions

“Nowadays, the design of many digital services does not only rely on data manipulation and information design but also on systems that learn from their users.” – Fabien Girardin, Experience Design in the Machine Learning Era Behavioral data – human interactions (transactions) with systems – is fed as context to algorithms that generates knowledge. An … Read more

Design Sprints with Sean Van Tyne on Portofino Media

I joined host, Armond Merhabian, and co-host, Daniel Spencer, to discuss how Design Sprints can accelerate Product discovery and development. We discussed how Design Sprints take the five stages of Design Thinking and do them in five days. This is not done in the Development phase, but earlier in the Portfolio phase, to determine if … Read more

Joint Application Design

IBM formalized the Joint Application Design process in 1974. In JAD, customers and end-users jointly define and design their solution with the solution provider that is developing and delivering it. It closes the gap in time and cost around understanding requirements early and throughout the application development lifecycle. In the JAD process, sessions are held … Read more

Easy to Use: Icons

Ever visit a website or store or see a sign in a public space that you had no idea what the icon meant? There are a lot of reasons for that. One, of course is the ethnocentric aspect – we know what we know based on our prior experiences. So, if the image of the … Read more

Calm Technology

The terms “calm computing” and “calm technology” were coined in 1995 by PARC Researchers Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown in reaction to the increasing complexities that information technologies were creating. He felt that the promise of computing systems was that they might “simplify complexities, not introduce new ones.” Principles of Calm Technology Technology should require the smallest possible … Read more

System Response Time and Feedback Guidelines

  There is no industry standard for application response time1. How long someone is willing to wait is only relevant in the context of how important the task is to them. For example, how long someone is willing to wait to view their family’s online photo album versus how long they are willing to wait … Read more

Experience Design in an Agile World

A recent Nielsen Norman Group study found that organizations that have adopted an agile development process are more proficient in execution but some have abandon research and design best practices and degrade their customer experience. Unfortunately, the study found, that most organizations following the agile development process didn’t include research on a consistent basis, if … Read more

Data to Delight in the Age of the Customer

We are in the Experience Economy that Pine and Gilmore predicted – a customer-centric marketplace that Forrester calls the Age of the Customer where: “A customer obsessed company focuses its strategy, its energy, and its budget on processes that enhance knowledge of an engagement with customers, and prioritizes these over maintaining traditional competitive barriers.” We … Read more

So what is the Difference between Customer Experience and User Experience?

This is one of the most frequent questions that Jeof and I get. If you have read our book or heard us speak than you know the short answer. For the record, I want to share the longer (and more academic) answer. Don Norman is most credited for coining the term User Experience while at … Read more