Five User Experience Trends

by Joshua Porter  |   February 9th, 2010  |  shortlink: http://bokardo.com/p/1614

Since my blog has been broken a lot recently I missed this excellent overview of Five User Experience trends by Gene Smith.

I can’t help but agree with all of them:

  1. Services as Software – Gene is one of the first people in the UX industry to admit that good enough, fast and cheap tools like usertesting.com will have a real impact. While most people still feel the need to argue “User testing is important”…the market is moving past that. “How fast can you measure?” is as important as “Did we find everything?”
  2. User Experience Analytics – Gene references a post I wrote called What Metric are you designing to improve today? and I think he’s absolutely right (obviously). This is where I’m focusing for the next year or more as I believe metrics-driven design is the future. I’ll be talking about this at UXLondon and am working hard on this at Performable.
  3. Content Strategy – My friend Kristina Halvorson saw this coming…here is an excellent post in which she explains how content strategy is more than a bunch of tactics.
  4. Return of the Mobile Web – Gene suggests that building apps using web standards is the eventual future of the mobile web, not getting locked into platforms like iPhone and Android. I would add to this by saying I actually think Apple would partially agree here…they are pushing HTML5 like gangbusters so that this can be a reality.
  5. A Real Experience Economy – Are people moving away from a world of things to one that values experience more? I think Gene’s right on with this one.

Read the rest here: Five User Experience Trends I’ll be Watching in 2010.

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Comments

1.  Harry Brignull 11:07am, Tue 9th, 2010

Have you actually tried usertesting.com or are you just citing it as a possible example? (demo video here)

2.  Dave Lumerman 3:39pm, Tue 9th, 2010

Boagworld #198 had a good podcast on remote user testing, the pros and cons.

3.  blythe 3:48pm, Tue 9th, 2010

I couldn’t agree more that “metrics-driven design is the future”. As a designer, it is great to design things that look pretty, but it is more important to design things that work and make sense, and overall lead to better sales. Lately we’ve been using A/B testing to improve traffic flow into the store & cart on an ecommerce site. Do you think that the market is moving beyond A/B testing? I’ve never visited, usertesting.com, but It is something I’ll certainly check out! Thanks. Check this blog out if you are interested more in what we are doing with A/B testing!

http://www.microarts.com/culture/branding-insights/2009/12/introduction-to-ab-testing.php/?s=bl

4.  Bob Dobalina 9:01pm, Tue 9th, 2010

I’d also be looking at tools like Loop11. Quantitative usability feedback is becoming more valuable and possible with tools like these.

5.  John G. 2:52am, Fri 19th, 2010

I think people are moving away from a material things to good experiences, but at the same time there are so many material things that promise to deliver incredible experience that we are inclined to believe that for the best experience, one must spend money on things.