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Driving more valuable customer journeys with emotion mapping – Part 1
In this two part series we take a look at how traditional psychological principles can be used to enhance our user experience decision making and influence user’s decision making on an emotional level. Putting the emotional back into UX Let’s face it, none of us make entirely rational decisions online – especially when it comes to online…
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When UX Gets Naughty
I was recently discussing the nature of dark patterns with some colleagues and it got me thinking about what role we as UX professionals have to play when balancing the needs of the user against the needs of the business. For those that don’t know about dark patterns, a pretty good summary is this: A…
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Designing our interfaces based on hunger
In 2011 there was a study by Jonathan Levav of Columbia Business School looking at parole hearings for inmates of four Israeli prisons, made by eight judges over a ten-month period. The results were very interesting – after a refreshment break, a prisoner’s chances of gaining parole were far higher then towards the end of a morning…
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What 4 things can Sonic the Hedgehog teach us about UX?
Anyone that knows me will know that I have an age defying obsession with Sonic the Hedgehog. I still remember the Christmas my parents got me our Sega Mega Drive (Genesis to our overseas cousins). They pretended that we had no more presents after we had opened the ones under our tree, and then pulled…
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Improve UX – become a developer
UX is always a balancing act between amazing experience solutions and budgetary restraints. So how can a Front End Developer help? User Experience Designers are an interesting bunch. And not in a Steve ‘Interesting’ Davis way. I think you’d struggle to find a field with people that have a greater variety of backgrounds. Back in…
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Using ethical decisions to promote customer engagement
Graze.com, the supplier of healthy snacklets to office workers has an interesting method for making us become philanthropists, simply because the option not to be is almost so pointless as to not be considered. The idea of referral codes isn’t new. Normally you get a discount for you and the referee and indeed that’s no different here.…
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User Experience Hiring Strategy
Many of you will have seen Jason Mesut’s excellent presentation: “Truth and Dare – Out of the echo chamber into the fire” (http://www.slideshare.net/jasonmesut/truth-and-dare-04). In this post we look at how the points he raises can be used as part of a User Experience hiring strategy. What is seems to me Jason is saying, is that…
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The Importance of Affordance
How many times have you pulled on a door because it had a handle that looked like it could be pulled, only to find it’s actually a push door? The feeling of slight embarrassment and or annoyance can’t be denied. This is a perfect example of poor affordance – or the fact that the object…
