In its most basic form, journey mapping starts by compiling a series of user goals and actions into a timeline skeleton. Next, the skeleton is fleshed out with user thoughts and emotions in in order to create a narrative. Finally, that narrative is condensed into a visualization used to communicate insights that will inform design processes.
Journey mapping combines two powerful instruments: storytelling and visualization.
Storytelling and visualization are essential facets of journey mapping because they are effective mechanisms for conveying information in a way that is memorable, concise and that creates a shared vision. Fragmented understanding is chronic in organizations where KPIs are...
Another major consideration when designing a touch interface is the accessibility of various UI elements. Think about how challenging it would be to interact with a slider control for users with motor difficulties. Would they be able to select a value even close to what they wanted? How much effort
Research on a wide variety of hypertext systems has shown that users need response times of less than one second when moving from one page to another if they are to navigate freely through an information space. Traditional human factors research into response times also shows the need for
If you follow the design guidelines in this article, users will know how to use your tabs without further exploration or error-prone guessing. This again means that they can devote all their time and brainpower to understanding the content and features that you’re making available under these
The Future of Blockchain: Technology Partnerships with AI, Bots, and IoT
In this case, the blockchain, which is the decentralized ledger behind cryptocurrency and smart contracts, is the superhero. It can seemingly accomplish impossible by providing solutions to long-standing security and efficiency issues. Yet, its powers can be strengthened by combining it with other
Can the blockchain and IoT solve international freight’s issues?
One team has found a novel way to address these inefficiencies and authenticity challenges through the blockchain. In January Dominik Schiener and his team won first prize at the Shanghai Blockchain Hackathon for their project Cargochain. We saw their work recently here in Berlin where they
What B2B Companies Need to Implement Blockchain Solutions
Healthcare organizations are already seeing benefits of enabling a large set of stakeholders to have permissioned access to data on the blockchain. The status quo in medical records is an unwieldy and redundant system where patient data is shared manually among providers, physicians, nurses
UX Research Cheat Sheet
When deciding where to start or what to focus on first, use some of these top UX methods. Some methods may be more appropriate than others, depending on time constraints, system maturity, type of product or service, and the current top concerns. It’s a good idea to use different or alternating
when and how to create customer journey maps
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Why are we willing to sleep in strangers’ beds, or conversely, let strangers into our homes? We do so because Airbnb has established a trusted, secure, and easy to use customer experience. Similar to Rent the Runway, Airbnb is a player in the growing “sharing” economy. The peer-to-peer online
10 Usability Heuristics Applied to Video Games
Confirmation dialogs, like the one in Super Smash Bros. on Wii Switch, prevent users from accidental destruction. This confirmation is particularly important for irreversible actions. Before leaving an in-progress game, Super Smash Bros. prompts users to confirm that they want to leave the game and
Adding an Item to a Shopping Cart: Provide Clear, Persistent Feedback
This is a relatively old usability problem for ecommerce websites — we reported on it in in a previous round of ecommerce user research, and we warned publicly about this design flaw as one of the top-3 bad new ecommerce design trends in 2014. I guess we warned in vain, because the same problem
Store Finders and Locators
Ninety-seven percent is an astoundingly high success rate. Of course, finding an appropriate location address is a simple task compared to using other website services. Consider, for example, the much higher complexity of tasks such as managing your investments, researching car purchases and
When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps
Journey maps should result in truthful narratives, not fairy tales. Start with gathering any existing research, but additional journey-based research is also needed to fill in the gaps that the existing research won’t cover. This is a qualitative-research process. While quantitative data can help
Bringing Array Themes into the WP Engine Family
Sifting through the thousands of themes in existence today is a daunting task, and finding the right one for your website is just part of the challenge. No one wants to trust their portfolio, online magazine, or e-commerce site to just any formulaic theme. Making sure it’s well designed, well
when and how to create customer journey maps
WP Engine Sales and Customer Service Teams Recognized at The Stevie Awards
The Stevie Awards are a set of hundreds of business awards given annually by the American Business Awards organization. They were created in 2002 to recognize the accomplishments and contributions of companies and business people worldwide. Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards are given to
10 Must-Have Features for a WordPress Website in 2018 .
On that same note, add your website to the Google Search Console. This is a free service from Google to help give you an overview of your website’s search ranking, site health and flagged issues. Again, even if you don’t think you need this, it’s is a proactive step for when you will. Adding
Decision Frames: How Cognitive Biases Affect UX Practitioners
Psychology and behavioral-economics principles often help designers create interfaces that steer users in a desired direction. For example, prospect theory and loss aversion teach us that allowing users to try a service before signing up for it will increase the number of registrations. For
Instructional Overlays and Coach Marks for Mobile Apps
Minimizing the amount of instructions focuses the users’ attention on a single, primary action. The less text overall, the more likely it is that users will read it and then actually follow that instruction. This idea of deferring secondary content is not unique to coach marks, but applying it to
Storyboards Help Visualize UX Ideas
Storyboards are often used to describe a fragment of the user journey (and several of them may be needed to capture the different branches in the journey). They are an efficient way to establish context and common ground for all the team members working on a specific problem. In contrast to journey
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
5 Itchy Reasons Why You’re Blowing Your Advertising Budget
When it comes to advertising goods and services online, there’s no room to rest on your laurels. It truly does pay to keep moving, thinking, testing, and creating in the dynamic and ever-evolving world of marketing, and it’s pivotal that budgets are invested wisely. There are five itchy reasons
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
when and how to create customer journey maps
Top 10 Latin American IoT Startups to Watch
Accenture predicts that industrial IoT devices will add US$14T to the global economy by 2030. For industrial operations, monitoring and controlling equipment remotely can be challenging. We Technologies is a Chilean company that makes it easy for users to operate and automate industrial equipment
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps | Effective Use of Style Sheets
Effective Use of Style Sheets
Cascading style sheets (CSS) are an elegantly designed extension to the Web and one of the greatest hopes for recapturing the Web's ideal of separation of presentation and content. The Web is the ultimate cross-platform system, and your content will be presented on such a huge variety of devices
Do Government Agencies and Non-Profits Get ROI From Usability?
It therefore costs $38,000 to identify the 34 usability problems that will be fixed, or $1,118 per problem. The cost of an actual fix might be much more, but in our example, the cost is modest because all that's required is a bullet point rewrite. That is, the new text must be written, approved
Website Response Times
In a recent study for our work on Brand as Experience (now a full-day training course on branding and UX), we asked users what they thought about various websites they had used in the past. So, their responses were based not on immediate use (as in normal usability studies), but on whatever past
