On this page you will find articles on the subject of user interface design, usability, marketing and branding. The articles represent some of the different perspectives and starting positions.
Computer applications are not humans, they are "machines", we all know that. Yet, they have a behavior, not always very human-like but it is a behavior. Applications show me things, they tell me things, they make sounds and they react in a certain way when I try to make them do something. ... more
[...]One of the most important areas this will happen is in the generation of revenues, what we now typically think of as “sales.” The trends foreshadowing that shift are already apparent as advertising moves from mass to one-to-one, purchase decisions and actual purchases move from the ... more
Developed along side Microsoft's Windows Vista Ultimate team, UVR allows amateur filmmakers the opportunity to use their PC's to showcase their work by submitting scripts to be judged by peers for their chance to help complete a short film. The campaign will progress in three acts or relays - ultima... more
Unlike some older technologies (notably, Flash and PDF), Web 2.0 ideas are not inherently bad for users. They can be highly effective; we sometimes see examples of usability-enhancing Web 2.0 designs in our studies. But it's more common to find Web 2.0 ideas that either hurt users or simply don't ma... more
The iPhone popularized the idea of multitouch displays and Microsoft brought the concept to a larger screen by releasing Surface, a multitouch table with a with a 'low priced' $10,000 price tag. Building a multitouch table or screen is starting to become a trend as development teams, companies o... more
Just as it is important to choose the proper knife when slicing-n-dicing vegetables, it is critical to prescribe a suitable user interface to support faceted filtering. Faceted filtering allows you to narrow down a large list of objects to a manageable size by applying flexible combinations of attri... more
Ever wonder how on Earth Google went from a technology company to one of the world's most recognizable and successful brands? Was it the whimsical brightly colored logo? How about the ads? Wait, Google really doesn't advertise all that much -- do they? Brand Google was... more
Making your site more usable is really the art of making it easy for visitors to do what you want them to do. Whether that’s coming to grips with what your site is about, commenting, subscribing, contacting you or buying your product, usability gets results. “Usability” can seem li... more
Let's take something as ubiquitous as Google Maps. You could (nowadays) have a widget that printed off your map in the same style as an A-Z for Black Cabbies, in the style of a Beck Tube Map for Graphic Design Geeks and in the style of the Alliance to Restore the Republic for Sci Fi fans. That is... more
[...]Last year, however, the arrival of the Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPhone began to break down the logjam in technological innovation for the way humans interact with computers.
Both devices extend the idea of directly controlling objects on the screen and blending that ability with visually co... more
A Simplified Model of User Experience for Practical Application by Hans-Christian Jetter and Jens Gerken from the Universität Konstanz. NordiCHI 2006, Oslo: The 2nd COST294-MAUSE International Open Workshop "User eXperience - Towards a unified view"., p. 106-111, Okt 2006
A simpl... more
[...] Since 1969, I have been trying to raise interactivity to the level of an art form as opposed to making art work that happened to be interactive.
Although 30 years have passed, interactivity is still beginning. Many of the preliminary ideas I started out with are still unrealized... more
[...] The Internet provides a wonderful platform for consumers to connect with a brand, and an increasing number of marketers’ sites allow consumers to do just that. Instead of recycled brochures, marketers are now building sites that allow consumers to learn, interact with tools and entert... more
[...] Branding is an experience, according to AIGA. Brand experience is defined as “all the interactions people have with a product, service, or organization; the raw material of a brand.” There’s that word: interactions. Even this magazine is a brand.
So where does b... more
Two long lists of interaction design patterns compiled by welie.com and ui-patterns.com focusing on webdevelopment. It is a common practice to use recurring solutions to solve common problems. Such solutions are called design patterns. Collections of design patterns are a great reference p... more
You've got plenty of traffic, but you're not able to persuade visitors to take action. It's a common and aching issue for many online businesses.
Too often, business owners impulsively throw more money into existing marketing campaigns, believing it's merely a numbers game ... more
A brand means much more than its product and service features. Brands are built from nothing less than the sum of a customer's experiences with a product, service or company. Customers' total brand experience will determine whether they will buy anything more from the company and, just as importa... more
Most companies realize that customer experience is critical to their success. Many have done a good job of theoretically defining a branded customer experience for their organization. However, in Accenture's experience, many companies run into trouble putting the branded customer experience into ... more
It’s not new to say that we now live in an age in which survival in business depends on your ability to communicate effectively through the internet.
What is new is the realization that just having any old website isn’t enough. The quality of your site and the n... more
Much has been written in the past decade about the importance of usability and the user experience to customers’ perception of an organization’s brand. Jared Spool’s 1996 article “Branding and Usability” correctly identifies the importance of Web site usability to br... more
What use is a high volume of traffic if nobody wants or buys anything from the producer? If there is a total of 5 customers in the shop and all 5 can be moved to buy something, then that is good. But what use are 10,000 if they just take a quick look in and go back out?
Above all, why d... more
Everywhere around us, the expanding digital universe is rapidly transforming the world of brands, with new digital tools pushing aside yesterday’s symbols, slogans and “timeless” icons. In place of conventional top-down “branding” campaigns we’re seeing breakth... more
Many web sites exist primarily to create or strengthen the brand for a product or service. We're finding that a site's usability can dramatically affect branding. And the graphical aspects of the site — such as logos or evocative pictures — have much less effect on branding than we expec... more
Interactivity has more impact: While the beginning years of modern branding were about products and communication (Olins brand experience model), with the new way of branding, the behaviour and environment elements are addressed more often. Besides indirect messaging, there is also a branding techni... more
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© by Alan Ross, 2008