some notes on ux
TRANSCRIPT
some notes on UXby Rui Lopes
demystification. inspiration. guidance.
demystification
UX is not
a boogeyman
UX is not
a panacea
UX is not
just for coolness
UX is not
abstract
UX is not
sacred
UX is not
(just) usability
UX is
listening
UX is
knowing
UX is
reflecting and understanding
UX is
pleasure
UX is
trust
UX is
a long term relationship
UX is
a process
inspiration
source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_instapaper_was_created.php
I would find things during the workday that I wanted to read, but I was at work - so I really couldn't. I would skim articles [or] I would open a tab and never go back to it, until my browser crashed and then I forgot about it.
And then similarly, I had to commute on the train everyday for about an hour or two. When I was on the train, I had my iPhone and I could browse the internet - but only before it went underground. There were a load of things I had to read.
– Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper
source: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2486-bootstrapped-profitable-proud-github
It started more out of necessity than anything else: we both loved git but there was no acceptable way to share code with others. Tom thought I’d be interested in helping fix the problem, and I was.
Shipping early and often lets you see how people are actually using your site and allows you to react accordingly.
– Chris Wanstrath, co-founder of github
source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/08/dropbox
I love Dropbox. The appeal is its utter simplicity – it's essentially invisible, doing the task that isn't hard but none of us care to remember to do, namely, backing up our files.
I had a hard-drive meltdown this summer, and even though I broke into a cold sweat, I really hadn't lost anything because I had been working on those files within Dropbox. The hard drive and my whole computer, for that matter, was just a piece of metal and plastic that I replaced. Disaster averted.
– Susan Orlean, staff at New Yorker
My daughter came home from college on thursday night and showed me all of her friend's Tumblrs. All the cool kids have them at her school now.
A Tumblr is self expression. Jessica's looks different than Emily's, mine and the Gotham Gal's. That's powerful. And that is what I think is driving Tumblr's popularity. Self expression matters.
– Fred Wilson, aka A VC
source: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/self-expression-matters.html
source: http://farukat.es/journal/2010/10/482-addictive-allure-of-instagram
Through its mix of efficiency, charm and community, Instagram quickly creates an emotional connection amongst its users, while at the same time offering a great amount of functionality.
Instagram [...] brought me back to the place wherein I enjoy sharing my photos [...]. I’m followed by far more strangers on Instagram than I am on Flickr already, but everything about it feels intimate and personal.
– Fred Wilson, aka A VC
versus
Between the worse data aggregation method and the much higher amount of work Wesabe made you do, it was far easier to have a good experience on Mint, and that good experience came far more quickly.
– Marc Hedlund, founder of wesabe
source: http://blog.precipice.org/why-wesabe-lost-to-mint
source: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/07/code-its-trivial.html
If you then tell a developer to replicate StackOverflow, what goes into his head are the above two SQL tables and enough HTML to display them without formatting, and that really is completely doable in a weekend.
If you really want your code to be successful, you'll stop coding long enough to do all that other, even more trivial stuff around the code that's necessary to make it successful.
– Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow
But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked.
– Urs Hölzle, Senior VP Google
We're dedicated to giving you better access to the information you currently have in Google's Wave servers. We aim to provide multiple ways to let you export and migrate that information [...]
– Pat Coleman, Google Wave Team
source: http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/11/exporting-your-waves.html
Twitter is over capacity.
– Fail Whale, HTTP 404 on Twitter.com
source: http://damnyouautocorrect.com/1479/todays-plans/
guidance
idea listen prototype
ideas
your own pain points
ideas
ideas
sleep, shower, get distracted
listen
learn to listen!
listen
talk to people
listen
facilitate
listen
pain points will be expressed
listen
free text
listen
user support
listen
A/B testing
listen
analytics
prototype
paper & pen!
prototype
powerpoint et al.
prototype
HTML
one more thing
copy
thank you.