Silo-busting, scenario-driven design

Kim Goodwin talked to Jared Spool for the UIE.com podcast back in August 2014. It was a fantastic, inspiring chat with some great thoughts on approaching design problems in large organisations.

Higher education personas

I've been using personas on website and CMS development projects for about 5 years now. It's still a fledgeling technique at the University of Edinburgh, so I thought I'd try and find out if personas were being used by other UK universities.

UX Scotland 2013 - slides, resources & write up

The UX Scotland conference took place 20 & 21 June here in Edinburgh and I was lucky enough to go along. Lots of great resources from the sessions are now online, and I've summarised a few notes I jotted as I listened.

UX Apprentice - a beginner's tutorial

A nice resource from the Basamiq people that takes you through the fundamentals of user experience design quickly and simply.

Customer journey mapping resources for better UX

Leisa Reichelt, a user experience consultant, sells her services and at the same time does a great job of succinctly explaining what a customer journey map is and why it should be important to you.

UX modelling templates & resources

I'm really enjoying a book at the moment - Communicating the User Experience - which takes the reader through a series of techniques, working towards a user centred website or application. Best of all the resources from the book are freely available.

Journey modelling example & how-to

The idea of taking a persona and illustrating a story of their experiences is covered in this article, this process being called journey modelling.

University CMS workshop session

I ran a workshop at last month's IWMW 2012 conference on how we manage the University of Edinburgh's corporate CMS, our challenges and where we're looking to in the future. The initial presentation led into a couple of activities and some great discussion among the 30+ higher education web managers who came along.

Using personas for better websites

An interesting article on personas which takes them in a direction which was new to me. The piece also reflects on a designer's experience of trying the technique out.

Collaborative design presentation User Vision

Last month I went to a great breakfast briefing session hosted by Edinburgh usability company User Vision on collaborative design.

Microsoft's approach to personas

A quite long and detailed piece from the Microsoft Journal for Developers. It's not techie, although the focus is on interface design rather than websites.

7 questions to ask of your personas

David Travis sets seven questions for you to ask of your personas. A great way to review your work and make sure you're on the right track.

Effective scenarios for personas

Persona expert Kim Goodwin talks about scenarios - the stories we place our personas in. To effectively make use of personas, we need to be able to get stakeholders to engage with them. And the best way to do that is to tell stories.

Personas: beware creative writing

Jared Spool discusses the dangers involved in creating personas with little or no user engagement. There comes a point where the persona creation exercise is simply a process of creative writing and therefore virtually useless.

Persona guide & how to use them

Another introductory article on personas; this time from usability company Bunnyfoot. I particularly like this one for the little illustrations that run through their discussion of what personas are and what they're not.

Quantifying the user experience

As soon as I admire a user experience map and feel that it's beyond me, almost the next thing I read is a great article on how to create something very similar. And this seems totally do-able. Consider mapping the user experience to better understand what's going on and see where you can improve things.

Experience map examples

The idea of an experience map is an interesting one and well worth a look. Much more complex and detailed than other diagrams of customer experience I've come across, they're really inspiring even if I think they're a bit beyond me right now. Something to aspire to.

Mapping customer journeys

An interesting approach and tutorial on defining the customer journey from the Cusomer Experience Academy. I'm currently working on a project exploring the prospective postgraduate student experience online, so a lot this resonated with me.

Persona mistakes to avoid

Jared Spool picks on 5 mistakes he's observed in development teams using personas. There's a fair amount of effort involved in putting the user at the centre of your design in this way, so it makes sense not to fall into these traps and waste the effort you've put in.

Scenarios & personas

Kim Goodwin discusses how scenarios help bring your personas to life, and encourage stakeholders to engage with them.