2013

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Optimizing UI icons for faster recognition

Boxes and Arrows

'What makes an icon a valuable addition to the interface, rather than a mere decorative element? Intuitiveness, aesthetic value, memorability, intercultural perception? While an effective icon would combine many of those characteristics, I’d like to focus on one measure–speed of recognition, or how fast a specific icon can be discovered and identified.

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Piloting Into the Future: Solar Impulse

Bill Fischer

'The future has often been built by those who are a bit out ahead of the rest of us; not afraid to dream, and perseverant enough to ensure that their dreams are realized. In the process, we all move forward as well. This is how change occurs, and this has been particularly well-illustrated in the accomplishment of man''s dreams of flying, as seen in the successes of such larger than life characters as: the Wright brothers; Billy Mitchell; Eddie Rickenbacker; Frenchman Louis Blériot (1872-1936,

Change 90
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The connected organization

Xplaner

'A webcast I did on 27 June 2013 to explain connected organization concepts to the U.S. cooperative extension, an American government outreach organization.

Video 58
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Innovating When Opportunity Knocks

Technology Created

“Too often, the opportunity knocks, but by the time you push back the chain, push back the bolt, unhook the two locks and shut off the burglar alarm, it’s too late.” – Rita Coolidge. Being a technologist is all about solutions. OK, it’s about a lot more than that. It’s also about timing, effectiveness, innovation and using the right blend of technology to address the specific problem space.

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Welcome to the Future of Hospitality: Smart Rooms Start Here

Speaker: Jady West, VP of Hospitality & Chris Bennett, Head of Sales & Engineering

The modern hotel room is no longer just a place to stay—it’s an experience to remember. Today’s guests expect seamless connectivity, personalized comfort, and high-tech convenience. From AI-powered smart room controls to keyless entry, in-room entertainment, and app-based services, technology is redefining hospitality from the inside out. In this new session featuring industry pros Jady West and Chris Bennett, we’ll explore how high-speed, high-bandwidth connectivity powers the innovations that

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Insights and War stories: Starbucks, Kraft & Hyatt

Innovation Leader

What do you do when business unit executives complain that your ideas are just too complicated to deploy? Innovators from Starbucks, Kraft, and Hyatt discuss.

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Wings: Remastered and Revisited

CorporateIntel

A few decades back, before I became a software and media executive and long before I returned to writing, I wrote the “screenplay” for a succesful computer game called Wings. That “interactive movie” — as it was marketed — was a World War I flight simulation that followed the lives of the very first fighter pilots, trying to make combat sense of fragile biplanes curiously equipped with machine guns.

More Trending

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The UX Professionals’ Guide to Working with Agile Scrum Teams

Boxes and Arrows

'The adoption of Agile software development approaches are on the rise across our industry, which means UX professionals are more likely than ever to support Agile projects. Many UX professionals seem stymied by the challenge of effectively integrating UX within an Agile development framework –but there are others in our field who have encountered the same problems yet are finding effective solutions.

Agile 111
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In Defense of Floppy Disks: The Vocabulary of the Interface

Boxes and Arrows

'I work on interfaces used by college students to search for academic articles. Librarians buy these databases. Librarians happen to be wonderful clients to build products for because they always let you know what they don’t like. A few years ago, my department started hearing complaints about the “save” icon on our interface. The librarians were concerned that, since college students had never seen floppy disks, they wouldn’t know what the icon meant.

Survey 111
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Let Them Pee: Avoiding the Sign-Up/Sign-In Mobile Antipattern

Boxes and Arrows

This is an excerpt from the upcoming Android Design Patterns: Interaction Design Solutions for Developers (Wiley, 2013) by Greg Nudelman. Anything that slows down customers or gets in their way after they download your app is a bad thing. That includes sign-up/sign-in forms that show up even before potential customers can figure out if the app is actually worth using.

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A Stakeholder Interview Checklist

Boxes and Arrows

This is an excerpt from from Kim Goodwin’s excellent Designing for the Digital Age. It is quite long, so we’ve broken it into several sections. Many thanks to Ms. Goodwin and Wiley for allowing us to share this with our readers. Understanding the Business. The General Stakeholder Interview. The Marketing Stakeholder Interview. The Engineering Stakeholder Interview.

Project 106
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Prospect, Personalize, Profit: The New Way Sales & Marketing Teams Are Aligning with AI

Speaker: Kevin Burke, Founder & Managing Director at Digital One and AI & Automation Consultant

AI and automation are currently transforming the way sales and marketing teams operate. Generative AI crafts personalized outreach at scale, while conversational AI bots are engaging prospects in real time. Robotic process automation streamlines manual workflows by triggering tasks the moment a prospect takes a key action, and advanced AI analytics surface hidden patterns in the pipeline, improve forecasting, and help teams make data-driven decisions with confidence.

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An Open Letter to Project Managers

Boxes and Arrows

'Dear Project Managers, It has been a very enjoyable experience working with everyone over the last couple of months and sharing our ideas on UX design. The various discussions about user interface, product usability, and user engagement have been an enlightening experience for me as well, and it is very positive to see that everyone involved in the product thinks so highly about improving the user experience.

Project 98
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Conceptual Models in a Nutshell

Boxes and Arrows

This article explains what conceptual models are and describes the value of developing a conceptual model of a software application before designing its user interface. Conceptual Model: a Model for Users’ Mental Model. A conceptual model of an application is the model of the application that the designers want users to understand. By using the application, talking with other users, and reading the documentation, users build a model in their minds of how to use the application.

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A Truly Ambitious Product Idea: Making Stuff for People

Boxes and Arrows

'When I was eleven, my parents bought a Mac Plus. It had a tiny monochrome screen, a floppy drive, and 1MB of memory. And it came with something called HyperCard. HyperCard let you make stuff. It had documents called stacks , each a series of cards – similar to PowerPoint today. In addition to graphics and text, you could create buttons and tell them what to do – flip to another card, show or hide an object, and so forth.

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Emotional Design with A.C.T. – Part 2

Boxes and Arrows

'Back in Part 1 , we looked at how the emotions expressed by people and products communicate personality traits over time. We also learned that customers are attracted to things that have an aesthetic personality that’s similar to their own, 1 but they prefer products that take on a complementary role during interaction. 2. In Part 2, we’ll look at how relationships are formed when people interact with products over time, and we’ll explore how people experience the emotion of “love.

Design 95
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A Roadmap For Modernization: How To Break Free From Your Monolith Before July 31, 2026

Speaker: Jason Cottrell and Gireesh Sahukar

Retailers know the clock is ticking–legacy SAP Commerce support ends in 2026. Legacy platforms are becoming a liability burdened by complexity, rigidity, and mounting operational costs. But modernization isn’t just about swapping out systems, it’s about preparing for a future shaped by real-time interactions, AI powered buying assistants, and flexible commerce architecture.

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Context matters

Boxes and Arrows

'What makes a marketing e-mail or newsletter efficient? One can judge, for instance, by the number of users that opened the message or clicked on a specified element representing primary action, such as a product link or button. Those indicators measure user engagement precisely; however, they are limited to the last phase of interaction with e-mail or newsletter.

Study 91
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The Power of Collaboration

Boxes and Arrows

A quote that I stumbled on during grad school stuck with me. From the story of the elder’s box as told by Eber Hampton, it sums up my philosophy of working and teaching: “How many sides do you see?”. “One,” I said. He pulled the box towards his chest and turned it so one corner faced me. “Now how many do you see?”. “Now I see three sides.”. He stepped back and extended the box, one corner towards him and one towards me.

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Information Architecture’s Teenage Dilemma

Boxes and Arrows

'Imagine if you will information architecture as a pimply-faced, malcontent teenager. IA is eager to express and redefine itself. It wants to be an individual yet accepted by its peers. It is simultaneously aggravated and apathetic about its parents, mentors, and role-models. It is a bit of a mess, but a wonderful, beautiful mess with endless opportunity and potential.

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Researching User Experience: A Knowledge Ecology Model

Boxes and Arrows

'When we think of learning environments, we think of books, lectures, databases perhaps. But in my recent research, I discovered that the interactions we have with people in our networks play an even more important role in what we learn and how we turn information into actionable knowledge. All of the people in my study were learning how to be lecturers and how to progress their careers after spending considerable amounts of time as practitioners in a variety of industries such as business and m

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Maximizing Profit and Productivity: The New Era of AI-Powered Accounting

Speaker: Yohan Lobo and Dennis Street

In the accounting world, staying ahead means embracing the tools that allow you to work smarter, not harder. Outdated processes and disconnected systems can hold your organization back, but the right technologies can help you streamline operations, boost productivity, and improve client delivery. Dive into the strategies and innovations transforming accounting practices.

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Soldiers & Hessians, Ronin & Ninja

Boxes and Arrows

'When UX’ers talk, they tend to talk about process, but the ability to deliver an innovative user experience starts before kickoff and lasts after the launch. Repeatable success in UX depends on the right culture. This is particularly important in enterprise scale organizations, with long-lasting relationships. Having worked as a consultant, at an agency and in-house, I’ve observed that the organizational location and economics of the user experience team can make or break them.

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Are You Going Soft?

Boxes and Arrows

When was the last time you read your resume? Go ahead and give it a look. Read your last job description. It’s impressive, right? Chances are, you emphasize your accomplishments, your ability to create stunning deliverables, and your extensive knowledge of the user experience practice. Now, think back to your last project. But, ignore the deliverables and design ideas.

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Evolving a Creative Workplace: Step 1

Boxes and Arrows

'When a company or team experiences rapid growth, it’s exciting. But more often than not, that success comes with a price. Behind the scenes, leadership is faced with the challenge of frantically filling positions to meet the escalating client demand, teams are asked to gel quickly and work around the clock to hit client deadlines, and ultimately the quality of deliverables suffers.

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An Answer to the Pains of Integrating Agile and UX

Boxes and Arrows

'I recently attended UXPA 2013 in D.C. Although I was attending as a sponsor/exhibitor for Indigo Studio, I did manage to break away to go to the “There’s more than one way to skin a cat: Integrating UX into an Agile environment” session. It tied in quite nicely with the book I’m reviewing here. As sometime director of Design at Infragistics, I personally have had first hand experience trying to integrate UX into an existing, established Agile engineering process with large-ish teams.

Agile 80
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Unlock R&D Excellence: AI-Elevated Processes and Innovation Intelligence

R&D teams need smart processes and cutting-edge tools to stay ahead. Questel empowers R&D leaders with advanced solutions that accelerate workflows, improve decision-making, and deliver impactful results. Our AI-powered platform, Qthena, revolutionizes how you interact with scientific documents and patent literature. Analyze drawings, tables, and graphs instantly while generating strong invention disclosures in seconds—not hours.

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Going Beyond “Yes – and…”

Boxes and Arrows

'My first experience in improvisational comedy was in 1989. I was a freshman at Texas A&M University. Some of the students in the theater department decided to get an improv troupe started and somehow talked me into joining them. In the beginning, I was petrified to perform without a script. Looking back now, I can see just how much improv has taught me and how it informs the decisions I make when working with a project team to create a cohesive user experience.

Project 80
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Building the In-house Design Agency

Boxes and Arrows

'The first article discussed the pros and cons of different UX team structures. For companies that depend on user experience for business success, a strong internal team is essential. But how do you get there from here? Having built one UX group from scratch and managed another 230+ person internal UX groups, I’ve learned a few tips, often the hard way, that can help.

Design 79
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Site Speed and Usability

Boxes and Arrows

Did you know usability tests have shown that the maximum number of seconds a user is willing to wait, on average, before abandoning a web page, is 8.6? If that number surprises you, it should. The study took place in 1994. The bar is exponentially higher now for people involved in website user experience design and development when it comes to load speed.

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Clicking Fast and Slow

Boxes and Arrows

'Through social psychology and cognitive science, we now know a great deal about our own frailties in the way that we seek, use, and understand information and data. On the web, user interface design may work to either exacerbate or counteract these biases. This article will give a brief overview of the science then look at possible ways that design and implementation can be employed to support better judgements.

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5 Ways You Can Win Faster with Gen AI in Sales

Incorporating generative AI (gen AI) into your sales process can speed up your wins through improved efficiency, personalized customer interactions, and better informed decision- making. Gen AI is a game changer for busy salespeople and can reduce time-consuming tasks, such as customer research, note-taking, and writing emails, and provide insightful data analysis and recommendations.

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UX One-liners

Boxes and Arrows

'A little background to start: I’ve had the honor of working as a designer-in-residence for General Assembly’s User Experience Design Immersive Pilot Program (UXDI) from June through July. Our team built, launched, and taught a UX course 5-days a week, 8-hours a day, for 8-weeks straight. It was quite the challenging, yet rewarding experience. However, learning from our approach, I found something about the way we bring people into the fold that we can stand to improve.

Design 78
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Drilling Into Lean UX

Boxes and Arrows

'Overall I found Lean UX to be an incredibly insightful and helpful compilation of principles and suggestions for practice/improving process and collaboration as outlined in my review of the book. As I was reading, though, I had some questions come up that I felt weren’t answered–or maybe I missed the answer. Since others may have these same questions, we appreciate Jeff Gothelf agreeing to answer them for Boxes and Arrows.

LEAN 78
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Becoming More Innovative in 2014

Bill Fischer

Organizations don't innovate, people do. Organizations that are admired for being especially innovative don't hire genetically different people than are available to the rest of us, they just make different managerial choices that allow their people to be more innovative. Leadership does this (or, doesn't), and, as a result, innovative [.

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Becoming More Innovative in 2014

Bill Fischer

Organizations don't innovate, people do. Organizations that are admired for being especially innovative don't hire genetically different people than are available to the rest of us, they just make different managerial choices that allow their people to be more innovative. Leadership does this (or, doesn't), and, as a result, innovative [.

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Revolutionize QA: GAPs AI-Driven Accelerators for Smarter, Faster Testing

GAP's AI-Driven QA Accelerators revolutionize software testing by automating repetitive tasks and enhancing test coverage. From generating test cases and Cypress code to AI-powered code reviews and detailed defect reports, our platform streamlines QA processes, saving time and resources. Accelerate API testing with Pytest-based cases and boost accuracy while reducing human error.