Audience Experience

Obama urges people to keep trying to get Healthcare coverage, (even offline!) because the UX problems of the Healthcare.gov have been the biggest headline so far!  When the top level Commander In Chief has to address the issue of Bad UX, you know it's time to pay attention. And as the best reporter of our day, Andy Borowitz has written about the Government Shut Down as furthering the agenda of those who make your life annoying .   He also explores the issue of people who may have waited their entire lives to get healthcare, but get frustrated when faced with a slow website. Public rumblings have been going on since everything went live.  But, even prior, there was a report on WSJ about a certain lack of testing.  See below for the tip of the iceberg, as of 9/26/13: Many of the community groups that will sign up New Yorkers up for health insurance beginning Tuesday are uneasy they haven't tested the online portal that governs the system. "That's the one th...

How nature adapts to human design. A merciful human removed the dagger.  The tree would've absorbed it. Like the Baby Graves inside trees on the Indonesian Island of Tana Toraja.

Ever since Fung Wah and Lucky Star Buses have been shut down in Spring of 2013, I have been heartbroken. For $15, or thereabouts, one could travel from Chinatown to Chinatown (NYC>Boston, NYC>Philly, NYC>Washington D.C., NYC> Baltimore and back!)  all along the East Coast. But the government stepped in with their funny regulations and shut them down.  Here's some Spring coverage & history from NBC . Some August update from Bloomberg , the government wants to make sure the operators are "sincere" in their commitment to safety.  Hmm. If you go online and find  http://www.luckystarbus.com/   you'll find a Ghost Site.  An interface that looks like you could still order a ticket, but there is a funny message if you scroll down: "Per the order of USDOT, Lucky Star Bus has temporary ceased operations. All affected e-ticket customers will be receiving a refund automatically. Thanks!" Oddly enough, if you hit the "Espanol" versi...

I was an extra on the shoot in downtown Manhattan. Right near Zucotti Park. Sagmeister is known for his design firm and his amazing TED talks on his artistry & design creations. When fear arises, try to overcome it. Stephen Sagmeister

Target Corporation has long been known for its highly "targeted" marketing research and highly successful techniques.  As cited in this New York Times Article, " How Companies Learn Your Secrets ", they can predict if a woman is going to have a baby by the shift in her purchasing habits.  Even before her (or THE) father knows. It is done through a series of purchasing trends and analyses of numbers, to develop an algorithm that The System can implement to offer future coupons and incentives which will increase customer loyalty. I am here to argue that the same intense focus can be used to prevent bad UX, not only within a computer interface, but also within the context of the larger relationship of a customer and a business. I have received a few emails recently, generated automatically and from a do-not-reply email.  The last message frustrated me to the point where I considered writing back.  For a split second.  Once upon a time, if you got a letter and ...

If you are trying to explain the concept of "Affordances", you can do no better than to encourage people to play the game "The Room" on the iPad. As this article in UX Magazine reveals, the game is all about providing visual cue to the player as to how certain elements work. To take it a step further, the article explores how the game was created iteratively.  Even if every knob, texture and irregularity were perfectly designed, the user must also engage with the interface (separate thing!) successfully. What the article does not cover is the larger benefits of doing anything repeatedly, with different users/audience members, etc.  Personally, I saw this process in theater as a Production Stage Manager. You can talk about an idea as much as you want.  The WORK doesn't happen until you DO IT!  Figure out what is wrong and what is right.  Get it "up on its feet", and especially in front of an audience.  Check in with the audience and see what the...

This is a bit of a response to an article in UX Mag , defining UX (yet again), as if they were coming from the all knowing voice of . . . Laura Dern??  "5 UX Lessons from Laura Dern" I am all about controversy, or taking unusual approaches, or using your favorite nerd-hobby to argue for  your professional approach. But, I would argue that there should be something called Relevance. The above article is well written, with lots of excellent references and good arguments. But it misses something crucial.  How is she (really?) associated with users again?  Has she chosen her roles based on a fundamental need to defend the user or to counter all the absurdity in the business world?  No, it seems not. It seems as if this writer has taken note of some good moments and complied, (gasp) something as revolutionary as a 5 element list. Don't get me wrong, she's an excellent actress.  Maybe even brilliant, as some of my friends who have seen the series "Enlighte...