The UXcidental Tourist

curated by Joy Suthigoseeya "Take my hand as we embark on fantastical UX adventures together!"

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Use Your Interface

Is a growing library of transitional interface and interaction design patterns to help you inspire and communicate your UI ideas with people.

Someone posted this link in a meeting the other day. I love finding out about other people sources of inspiration. 

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My jaw dropped when I watched this. I feel like we’re accelerating into the realm of science fiction.

Called CLIP, for Continuous Liquid Interface Production, the technology combines elements of SLA with a photochemical process, and the result is that parts are not so much printed—that is, they're not laid down/cured/sintered one layer at a time—so much as they are grown, out of what seems an impossibly shallow dish of liquid:

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A few weeks ago I did a search for experience mapping and landed on this super duper blog post by Silvana Churruca who calls herself the UX Lady. In it, she explains the basics behind experience mapping. As if that weren’t enough, she also wrote a supplementary how-to detailing how to create your own DIY Experience Map. Both excellent reads if you need a place to start. 

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via David Gray | Founder of XPLANE and co-founder of Boardthing

Squiggle birds is a quick exercise that you can use to get people stretching their visual thinking muscles. It takes about five minutes and quickly, clearly demonstrates how little effort is really required to make meaningful, easy-to-read images. The main point of the demonstration is that our minds are already pattern-making machines, and very little drawing is actually required to convey an idea. The mind will fill in the rest.

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Enabling a Career Shift from User Experience to Service Design

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about making the transition from a purely digital UX role to a service design one, since I often find myself frustrated with briefs that limit my impact to address users' needs. Needs that span across their whole experience (multiple touchpoints and channels, digital and non). Although the term UX seems to be used interchangeably between digital UX and product/service design, I've not been able to find many nuanced discussions about these ever-evolving and overlapping realms.

In the hopes of learning more, I intend to explore these ideas in further posts.

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This guy has written a choose your own adventure on Twitter.

A trip down memory lane.

via Quartz

Twitter user Terence Eden (@edent) created a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story using Twitter. The popular series of children’s stories during the 1980s and 1990s, which let readers make decisions to advance the plot in different directions, allowed interactivity in a printed book. Presented with a series of options, the reader would be directed to another page with more options based on their decisions, and so on, until reaching one of many possible endings.

Really interesting concept if you think about non-linear narratives within context of digital. Early experimental websites used hyperlinks to explore these sort of ideas, and artists like Aaron Koblin has done interesting pieces experimenting with time, narrative, crowdsourcing, and code. I suppose video games are probably the most successful examples of this, but I've often wondered if there aren't more novel and exciting ways we can experiment with narrative and interactivity within the digital space. Perhaps, weave it through various channels and touchpoints spanning mobile, web, tv, and so on?

The fact that this guy has done it with social media makes it interesting. Check out his process for creating it here. 

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Life's too short for crappy UX. 

Someone's made a rap video about UX. Check it. 

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Chris Bank of UXPin, the UX design app, details what it takes to make a stellar portfolio, and highlights 10 solid examples to learn from.

When I first embarked on my UX career only a few years ago, there wasn't much out there in way of inspiration to draw from. Now that field has matured a bit, there's seems to be plenty of UXers competing to stand out. Lucky for us professionals, that means more portfolios to look at. In my experience, I've found that good storytelling skills goes a long way in demonstrating your thinking and thought processes. Having a polished presentation skills onscreen and offscreen doesn't hurt either. Which portfolios sites have you found to be inspiring? 

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Introducing Design Methods

Design Council has provided a nifty guide to the most common methodologies used in the design process. As a great primer/refresher, this is a valuable read for anyone interested in design thinking.

Grouped into three distinct categories, the article outlines the tools a designer may use through the course of a project, though it's not necessarily the case that every single tool will be used for every single project. 

Discover

Creating a project space

Observation

User diaries

Being your users

Brainstorming

Fast visualization

Choosing a sample

Quantitative surveys

Secondary research

Hopes and fears

Define

Assessment criteria

Comparing notes

Drivers and hurdles

Focus groups

Customer journey mapping

Develop

Character profiles

Scenarios

Role playing

Blueprinting

Physical prototyping

image via servicedesigntools.org

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Disengaged Employees: What Are They Really Thinking?

(via tnw)

One reason employees become disengaged is when leadership breaks the psychological contract. This reaction is usually not about something tangible. It is a result of dishonesty, lack of integrity, or a difficult work environment, and it generally comes down to unclear and uncommunicated assumptions and expectations.

Far too often, organisations blame an employee’s lack of engagement and motivation as an individual problem, when in actuality it is a two way street. Whether personal or professional, healthy/productive relationships require effective communication flowing in both directions. As easy and appealing as it is to be dismissive about a team member being an “ill fit”, it is the why, that should be considered. Open communication and asking the right questions early enough in a relationship can help manage expectations between the two parties which in turn can go a long way in salvaging damaged trust. 

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The Car As You Know It Is Dead

(via fastcodesign)

Goodbye, motoring. Hello, mobility. John Edson of Lunar explains why the future of cars is about experience versus ownership.

For businesses to remain competitive, it's becoming imperative that they consider designing around services and building customer relationships through overall experience rather than relying solely on quality and workmanship of their product. With the ushering in of a new digital age, we are starting to see a shift in how technology is altering people's behaviours and how it relates to business end goals. It goes to show that even something as staid and established as the auto industry would do well to pay heed to the winds of change. 

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OMG, OMG, OMG, Yes, Please!

This basically illustrates how i feel about the Oculus Rift and Game of Thrones exhibit that showcased at SXSW this year and I haven't even experienced it firsthand. Imagine the possibilities! Must. Try. Now! 

Josh Ong writes about it on TNW

HBO’s Game of Thrones Oculus Rift exhibit is the most immersive entertainment I’ve ever encountered.

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A few years ago when I made my first foray into the UX market, there were few resources to rely on for a good tips on how to market yourself as a UX designer. But luckily for you, Troy Parke has asked the hard questions and compiled the top 5 things he believes that will set you apart from the rest of the flock. Be sure to visit the UX Mastery blog to get an indepth explanation of each of his points. 

1. Make connections

2. Get real experience

3. Practise Telling your UX Story

4. Fine-tune your Portfolio

5. Practise your Interview Skills

And if that's not enough I'll include a link to how to draft a perfect UX portfolio by Luke Chambers. You're welcome. 

(source: UX Mastery)

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Twitter Founder Reveals Secret Formula for Getting Rich Online

“Here’s the formula if you want to build a billion-dollar internet company,” he said. “Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time…Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.”

After reading this article, I found that it made a lot of sense. I've always thought that common sense will lead you to designing a great product, one that does not involve reinventing the wheel. Some of the most successful products to date have been ones that builds and improves on an existing model. 

(source: Wired)

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Move Over Product Design, UX Is The Future

Rick Wise, CEO of Lippincott, says experience innovation is the next design imperative. 

  Today’s enlightened leaders are achieving success by crafting the entire customer experience—shaping, innovating, branding, and measuring it. They are mastering a new discipline we refer to as “experience innovation” by going beyond the discrete product or service to reimagine the customer journey. 

Love this article extolling UX as the future of design. I've felt this way for a while and do believe that in order for brands to stand out they need to appeal to their customers experience as a whole. Long gone are the days of it being just about the product, nowadays it's about the service that serves the user too. 

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Granted, this may not make much sense unless you've already gone through at least one, if not 2 or even 3 full-cycle UX projects already, but here's an extremely useful article outlining what to keep in mind when planning UX design projects. 

Skill-level: intermediate

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The UX Portfolio: Telling your Story

Great advice on how to present your portfolio. As UX practitioners, I’ve always felt that one of our most important assets is our storytelling abilities. Important because in every project, somewhere along the way you’ll need to be able to explain to stakeholders and co-collaborators your rationale behind why things should be done a certain way. Not only that, but each time you practice telling a story, it preps you towards becoming an expert communicator, an essential skill in any UX designers toolkit. 

(source: Patrick Neeman)