Fogg’s Seven Strategies to Influence Behavior in Experience Design

According to Dr. BJ Fogg, founder of the Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford University and the Fogg Behavioral Model, persuasive technology uses seven strategies to influence behavior: Reduction – Simplify the task the user is trying to do. Tunneling – A step-by-step sequence of activities that guides 
the user through the behavior. Tailoring – Provide feedback … Read more

Experience Design, Machine Learning and the Platinum Rule

The Golden Rule or law of reciprocity is the principle of treating others as one would wish to be treated. It is a maxim of altruism seen in many religions and cultures. Simply stated, “One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.” As a child, I learned it as “Do onto others as you would want them to do … Read more

User Experience Insights Drive Better AI

In the Harvard Business Review article, AI Won’t Change Companies Without Great UX, Michael Schrage asked the question, “As artificial intelligence algorithms infiltrate the enterprise, organizational learning matters as much as machine learning. How should smart management teams maximize the economic value of smarter systems?”: “Strategically speaking, a brilliant data-driven algorithm typically matters less than … Read more

Data Science Meets Design Thinking

In the O’Reilly article, Design thinking and data science: Solving problems with data necessitates a diversity of thought, Dean Malmgren from Datascope and Jon Wettersten from IDEO shares: “Problem solving not only requires a high-level conceptual understanding of the challenge, but also a deep understanding of the nuances of a challenge… Solving problems with data necessitates a … Read more

UserZoom Sponsors UX Boot Camps

While helping BD Medical Technology redesign their intranet, I got the distinct honor and pleasure of working with the Nielsen Norman Group. NN/g conducted card sorts and tree studies with UserZoom. This also led to me doing a NN/g Design Thinking and Agile online seminar. UserZoom has been one of the primary sponsor of UX … Read more

Group Personas

In some cases, you may only need to define a limited set of primary and secondary personas. It may be important to make the distinction between your buyer, user and influencer personas. But as you think through your scenarios, if you find groups of personas interacting with the environment or with other personas, you may … Read more

Design Thinking: Divergence and Convergence Cycles

  In the creative process, you start with an idea. You explore aspects of that idea – go wide – and diverge into many directions to better understand and define your problem. You follow many paths – some lead to dead-ends, some stray too far off from your vision and some lead to the same … Read more

Design Thinking: A Brief History

You could say the basic principles of Design Thinking have always been around. It was these basic principles that early humans built tools and drew on cave walls. It required observation, experimentation and prototyping. Learning from each iteration and evolving the design and our evolution as a species. Just as is does today. In his … Read more

My Favorite Toy and Design Thinking

My favorite toy as a child was a broken single reflex camera. It served as everything from my Star Trek tricorder to a spaceship for my little toy men. My parents would have never guessed it. I wouldn’t have guessed it either. But if my parents had observed my play and asked me a few … 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

Agile UX Remote Usability Testing

Usability evaluations assess the degree to which your website, application, product or service can be used by your customers, the efficiency of your solution and the overall delightfulness you deliver. These evaluations are to validate that the tasks are easy to complete. It is a test of the ease of use of your offering not … 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