User Experience News & Articles

As touchscreens brought a revolution to smartphones, Kinect's motion sensing tech changed the way video games are being played. So, what can the Microsoft gadget do for the Windows PC? For sure, it will be about far more than just games.

While some saw its CES offering as lacking in shiny new stuff and general awesomeness, Microsoft (and its partners) have big things planned for this year. What can we expect from Redmond, and who could benefit or feel threatened? 

Welcome to December, dear readers. The end of the year means it's once again time to reflect on our past predictions and make room for new ones. Read on for expert views on the future of social business, user experience and the ever-popular information management. 

As 2011 draws to a close, no doubt it’s been an exciting period for just about all of us in the enterprise solutions space. Tons of promising new products and solutions have emerged from established and newer players, and enterprises themselves are internally embracing the value and importance of collaboration more than ever. 2012 is looking to be an even busier and more dynamic year in our sector, so it’s a perfect time to slam on the brakes and get back to one basic truth.

Microsoft recently completed its $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype. Many have speculated on topics such as continued support for iOS and Android devices, or the potential for Skype integration to boost lagging sales of Microsoft smartphones. I'm wondering something quite different: Will voice content finally grow up and be counted among the other types of documents produced by Microsoft Office and managed by content management systems (CMS)?

Recent projects have forced me to look critically at how business users interact with their web content management systems, and the significance that the ethereal term “user experience” (which I will use interchangeably with the older term UI or user interface) can have both to their job satisfaction and their productivity. In my opinion, the single most important piece of a web content management solution is the interface used by the editorial team. If the user interface is poor or lacking, your editorial team will not work as quickly, content won’t be as fresh, and traffic to your site will usually drop.

Web and mobile e-commerce sites are noticeably deficient in their efforts to build the kind of product familiarity that customers obtain when they view the product in a store. When customers are in stores, they not only touch and hold products, they use fuzzy logic processes to become more familiar with them.

If you need more proof that customer experience is a game-changer for many industries, a new report called “Bringing Dexterity to Subscriber Complexity: Managing the Challenge of Change and Choice in Communications and Media Markets” shows that 83% of communications operators need to get a better handle on network resources and support challenges presented by a more diverse and demanding customer base and the increase of new devices and service offerings.

According to Jakob Nielsen, iPad user interfaces have improved in the past year. Yet, there is still room for further advancement.

Cloud computing is about services, but more specifically it is about self service. What people want more than anything from self service is speed and simplicity.

Positive web engagement management requires novel yet concise means of attracting the user. Where does video fall within the spectrum of good and bad experiences?

When we think of the user experience, we usually turn our lens towards customers. Yet, a company’s employees routinely interact with dozens of user interfaces and no one ever analyzes their experiences and how they can be optimized. Until now.

Thanks to OpenSpan, a company that specializes in user process management, organizations can identify logjams, bottlenecks and other obstacles that can impede productivity. Recently we spoke with Eric Musser, CEO at OpenSpan, about the benefits of user process management and the ways that it can affect business process management.

Today's keynote for DrupalCon 2011 couldn't have been more appropriate. Usability guru Jared Spool spoke on The Unintuitive Nature of Creating Intuitive Designs. Most web CMSs and related technologies struggle with this issue. If you want to do better, read on.

CoreMedia (news, site) has launched the latest version of their Web Content Management System paying particular attention to the needs of business users as they develop the online customer experience for their organization. Let's have a look at how they do it.

Apparently, January is the season for open source CMS goodies. The first week of the new year brought a major release by one market leader, and the treats aren’t slowing down in week two --the team at Joomla! (news, site) has announced the availability of version 1.6 of their Web CMS platform.