Archiv für die Kategorie English

Change Management

26. Juni 11 //

If we just do our job with user research, information architecture, wireframes and stuff, chances are high to build a useless website with lots of bad content. In his talk at UXcamp Europe, Stefan focusses on the business side of large-scale UX projects. His talk offers food for thought on why we need to align stakeholders, how to do it, and how to sell change management methods.

Thanks to all UXcamp attendees who attended the session, and special thanks to those who participated in the discussion!

Attendees who spoke up gave consent for publication of this recording. Apologies for the sub-standard audio quality in the first few minutes (mobile phone interference).

Links for this episode:

Slides: Keynote, PDF with animations, PDF without animations
Wikipedia: 5 whys
»Stop having projects« – A similar approach is Lou Rosenfeld’s Redesign must die (my take on it: you should have a solid basis first)

My reading recommendations:

John P. Kotter: A Sense of Urgency
Dan Heath, Chip Heath: Switch – How to change things when change is hard
Kerstin Stolzenberg, Krischan Heberle: Change Management
next practice – Erfolgreiches Management von Instabilität (also worth watching: Im Gespräch mit Prof. Peter Kruse and Peter Kruse at re:publica 2010)

Reading recommendations by attendees:

G. Richard Shell, Mario Moussa: The Art of Woo (»winning others over«)
Dave Gray et al: Gamestorming
Roger Fisher, Alan Sharp: Getting it done – Hwo to lead when you’re not in charge

Listen:

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The Future of UX

19. Juni 11 //

+++ Recorded at UXcamp Europe +++

Are we going to evolve into tie-wearing consultants? Do UX pros matter at all a few years down the road? And how do Africa and refrigerators fit in? Together with the awesome folks at UXcamp Europe, we discussed the future of our profession.

Thanks to all UXcamp attendees for a marvelous weekend, and special thanks to the Orga team – we had fun!

Links for this episode (in order of mention):

Links regarding UXcamp Europe:

Listen:

Storytelling (Recorded by accident)

6. März 11 //

After recording a regular episode, Tom and Holger got into a heated discussion about storytelling – and the recorder was still running.

They discuss the matter mostly in the context of advertising. The gist of Holgers argument is that a good ad has to show the pain. Tom on the other hand says: It’s not necessary to show the pain if one can identify with the people and the situation in the ad – “I have to recognize my problems being solved.”

A supplemental comment by Tom:

Well, unscripted conversations aren’t always terribly well structured in their arguments ;). At 17:10 I refer to a psychology experiment (Dutton and Aron, 1974) that I’m not sure I ever manage to correctly relate to the discussion. It’s a damn interesting study, none-the-less, so here are two links to its Wikipedia description: Misattribution of arousal and Two factor theory of emotion. It turns out that the mapping between physiological states and specific emotions is more complicated than imagined in this work and it’s an on-going area of research. I think it elevates the quality of our discussion as a profession, however, when we can reference such work – and this, to my mind, is yet another reason to fight for much more open access to areas of the so-called ‘deep Web’.

Both Tom and Holger have some interessting points to make, but be warned: We earned that explicit rating in iTunes for a reason – this episode contains more four-letter words than all previous episodes combined!

Links for this episode:

Der Gilb (German page about long gone pop culture items, with a brief audio snippet featuring the Gilb)
That George Clooney movie: Up in the air
Apple ads which show the pain and a solution:
Apple ads with pain only, and no (clear stated) solution:
Apple ads without any pain:

Listen:

How to write the perfect pop song

22. Juli 10 //

According to our secret holiday schedule, it’s time for another episode! At UXcamp Holger talked about song-writing, creativity, shitty first drafts, and teaching stuff. The title is »How to write the perfect pop song« – and yes, indeed, this has a lot to do with User Experience!

A video recording of Holger’s talk is available on Vimeo, thanks to Marian Steinbach (uxzentrisch.de).

Links for this episode – and go watch those videos on YouTube!!

Holger’s example for song-writing is Feel by Robbie Williams.
The B section in a thirty-two-bar form is called middle eight and common in Tin Pan Alley songs.
You’ll find lots of Pachelbel rants on YouTube – named after Johann Pachelbel – e.g. this one by Rob Paravonian or this one by the Axis of Awesome.
Randy Pausch used two head fakes in his Last Lecture called Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. You also might want to watch Time Management by him.
The term »Shitty First Draft« was coined by Anne Lamott in her book Bird by Bird.
We also mentioned the TED conference (great talks online!)…
…and the Service Design Conference. Holger will give his talk again at the conference (13th + 14th October 2010 in Berlin).
The song Holger played after the questions & answers was »A Decade In The Making« and is available on MySpace.

Listen:

If you enjoyed listening we would appreciate if you’d spread the word!

Zombie Personas

21. Juni 10 //

This is by far the nerdiest episode we ever did, so fasten your seat belts. In his session at UXcamp, Tom said: "Personas – love ‘em or hate ‘em – you can’t not use ‘em. Either you have zombies, or you have living ones." In this recording of his session he talks about different kinds of zombies like Mirror Personas, Undead Personas, Unicorn Personas or Stupid User Personas. He gives advice on how to avoid these fellas and how to make good use of living personas during a project. As a bonus, Tom explains why 37signals doesn’t need personas at all.

Links for this episode:

Slides of Tom’s Zombie Persona talk
Another presentation by Tom icludes more info about the Target Persona Exercise and Story Cards
The book "About Face 2" by Alan Cooper (current edition is "About Face 3")
The book "The Inmates are running the Asylum", also by Alan Cooper
The New York Times article about the use of personas by the Ford Motor Company: "Before Creating the Car, Ford Designs the Driver"
37signals, makers of Basecamp and Backpack

Listen: