Our talented staff creates content for national publications like UX Matters and Intranets Magazine. We are constantly striving to provide the public with sound usability advice and innovative design ideas to cement our standing as thought leaders in our industry.

<em>Understanding Research Methods<br /> <br /> </em>Michael Hawley, Chief Design Officer<br /> In a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review that focused on branding, David Edelman articulates how consumers&rsquo; engagement with brands is evolving with the proliferation of social media and other digital channels. In the article &ldquo;Branding in the Digital Age: You&rsquo;re Spending Your Money in All the Wrong Places,&rdquo; he proposes a model for consumer and brand engagement titled the &ldquo;Customer Decision Journey.&rdquo; Edelman&rsquo;s Customer Decision Journey model recognizes that consumers&rsquo; experiences increasingly include online components, where their experience of considering and evaluating choices is constantly shifting and their engagement with a brand continues after making a purchase through social media channels.

Consumer Decisions in a Social World

Author: Michael Hawley
Industry:

Understanding Research Methods

Michael Hawley, Chief Design Officer
In a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review that focused on branding, David Edelman articulates how consumers’ engagement with brands is evo ...

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<em>Article Published on uxmatters.com<br /> </em><br /> Chief Design Officer, Michael Hawley<br /> <br /> In your work as a UX professional, do you ever find that you need to convince people that the team should follow a user-centered design process? Do you need to convince stakeholders they should do user research? To be successful as a UX professional, you need to know how to be persuasive.

5 Ways to Be Persuasive in Your UX Work

Author: Michael Hawley
Industry:

Article Published on uxmatters.com

Chief Design Officer, Michael Hawley

In your work as a UX professional, do you ever find that you need to convince people that the team should follow a user-centered design pro ...

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<em>Article Published on uxmag.com</em><br /> <br /> Experience Director, Megan Grocki <br /> <br /> Mention service design to your UX colleagues and you may find yourself unwittingly engaged in a game of Buzzword Bingo. Whether you call it &ldquo;service design,&rdquo; &ldquo;holistic design,&rdquo; &ldquo;multi-channel experience design&rdquo; or...<br /> <br />

Service Design: Setting The Stage For The Consummate Experience

Author: Megan Grocki
Industry:

Article Published on uxmag.com

Experience Director, Megan Grocki

Mention service design to your UX colleagues and you may find yourself unwittingly engaged in a game of Buzzword Bingo. Whether you call it &ldqu ...

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<em>Shopping is Social<br /> </em><br /> Dustin DiTommaso, Experience Design Director<br /> Relying on friends, family and other consumers to gather and share purchase information is fundamental to shopping behavior. This behavior loop is so ingrained in our daily routines that we barely notice its presence. When we need to purchase something we are unfamiliar with, we consult our friends and family for advice. When we&rsquo;ve made a personally meaningful purchase we writhe with the want to tell others about it.

Defining A Social Commerce Strategy

Author: Dustin DiTommaso
Industry:

Shopping is Social

Dustin DiTommaso, Experience Design Director
Relying on friends, family and other consumers to gather and share purchase information is fundamental to shopping behavior. This behavior loop is so ingra ...

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<p><em>Seven Things to Remember</em><br /> <br /> Michael Hawley, SVP, Director of Experience</p> <p>Interviewing is an artful skill that is at the core of a wide variety of research methods in user-centered design, including stakeholder interviews, contextual inquiry, usability testing, and focus groups. Consequently, a researcher&rsquo;s skill in conducting interviews has a direct impact on the quality and accuracy of research findings and subsequent decisions about design...</p>

Preparing for User Research Interviews

Author: Michael Hawley
Industry:

Seven Things to Remember

Michael Hawley, SVP, Director of Experience

Interviewing is an artful skill that is at the core of a wide variety of research methods in user-centered design, including stakeholder interview ...

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<em>Article Published on uxmag.com</em><br /> <br /> Experience Director, Megan Grocki <br /> <br /> We're consumers in a media-driven world. And, as such, we've grown used to product placement, telemarketing, &quot;advertorials,&quot; and celebrity endorsements. We like football, but we love Super Bowl ads. And we know there's no shame in choking up over a credit card commercial. But treat us like just another &quot;consumer segment,&quot; and...<br />

A Designer and a Marketer Walk Into a Bar...

Author: Megan Grocki
Industry:

Article Published on uxmag.com

Experience Director, Megan Grocki

We're consumers in a media-driven world. And, as such, we've grown used to product placement, telemarketing, "advertorials," and cel ...

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<p><em>Contemplating all possible touch points to optimize your audience&rsquo;s interactions.</em></p> <p>Amy Cueva, Founder, Chief Experience Officer</p> <p> Every day, you keep or lose customers because of what may seem like insignificant experiences they have with your company. Consider the numerous touch points and channels that represent opportunities to interact with your brand. What type of experience will your customers have today? Will their loyalty be cemented because of a helpful customer service call, or will a frustrating online experience drive them into the arms of a competitor... </p>

Considering the Customer Experience in Design

Author: Amy Cueva
Industry:

Contemplating all possible touch points to optimize your audience’s interactions.

Amy Cueva, Founder, Chief Experience Officer

Every day, you keep or lose customers because of what may seem like insignificant exper ...

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<p><em>Prioritizing web projects is more important then ever.</em><br /> <br /> Michael Hawley, SVP, Director of Experience</p> <p>As a company with an existing web offering, there are likely a large number of potential changes or feature additions that you could add to your site. In fact, the number of projects you could undertake may seem overwhelming. The challenge you face is not brainstorming new opportunities, but rather prioritizing all of the different options you have for upgrading or redesigning your site given your resources...</p>

Prioritizing Web Projects

Author: Michael Hawley
Industry:

Prioritizing web projects is more important then ever.

Michael Hawley, SVP, Director of Experience

As a company with an existing web offering, there are likely a large number of potential changes or feature addition ...

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<p><em>Perceiving Opportunities for Differentiation</em><br /> <br /> Michael Hawley, SVP, Director of Experience</p> <p>A common activity at the outset of many design projects is a competitive review. As a designer, when you encounter a design problem, it&rsquo;s a natural instinct to try to understand what others are doing to solve the same or similar problems. However, like other design-related activities, if you start a competitive review without a clear purpose and strategy for the activity, doing the review may not be productive.One risk...</p>

A Visual Approach to Competitive Reviews

Author: Michael Hawley
Industry:

Perceiving Opportunities for Differentiation

Michael Hawley, SVP, Director of Experience

A common activity at the outset of many design projects is a competitive review. As a designer, when you encounter a design pr ...

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<p><em>Article Published on UXMatters.com</em><br /> <br /> Michael Hawley, SVP, Director of Experience</p> <p>There is a trend among some in the UX community to take the U out of UX and refer to our discipline simply as experience design. One reason for this change in terminology is that it lets us talk about a specific target audience in terms that resonate with business stakeholders more than the...</p>

Design Research Methods for Experience Design

Author: Michael Hawley
Industry:

Article Published on UXMatters.com

Michael Hawley, SVP, Director of Experience

There is a trend among some in the UX community to take the U out of UX and refer to our discipline simply as experience design. One rea ...

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<p><em>Card sorting is a tool to reorganize information-rich websites.</em><br /> <br /> Mike Hawley, SVP, Director of User Experience<br /> <br /> If your company designed an information rich website such as an intranet or content portal a few years ago, chances are the site could now be bursting at the seams. The types of information or messages that get put on the site have likely changed and increased in number. Also, the deployment of content management systems may have opened up content creation to a wide team of providers...</p>

Card Sorting

Author: Michael Hawley
Industry:

Card sorting is a tool to reorganize information-rich websites.

Mike Hawley, SVP, Director of User Experience

If your company designed an information rich website such as an intranet or content portal a few y ...

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<p><em>Taken from January 2009 issue of Intranets Magazine.</em><br /> <br /> Amy Cueva, Founder and Chief Experience Officer<br /> Michael Hawley, SVP and User Experience Director<br /> <br /> According to Etienne Wenger, one of the leading thinkers in the space, &quot;Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.&quot; ...</p>

Developing Communities of Practice

Author: Amy Cueva, Michael Hawley
Industry:

Taken from January 2009 issue of Intranets Magazine.

Amy Cueva, Founder and Chief Experience Officer
Michael Hawley, SVP and User Experience Director

According to Etienne Wenger, one of the leading thi ...

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<em>Transforming the Patient-Provider Realtionship<br /> </em><br /> Amy Cueva, Founder, Chief Experience Officer<em><br /> </em><br /> Mobile technologies are slowly gaining traction in the healthcare space, and our research indicates that for an increasing number of healthcare providers, smartphones and tablet computers are fast becoming standard equipment in every &ldquo;medical kit&rdquo;...<br />

Portable and Powerful

Author: Amy Cueva
Industry:

Transforming the Patient-Provider Realtionship

Amy Cueva, Founder, Chief Experience Officer

Mobile technologies are slowly gaining traction in the healthcare space, and our research indicates that for a ...

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<em><br /> A Case Study Published on UXMatters.com</em><br /> <br /> Author: Mike Hawley, SVP, Director of User Experience<br /> <br /> In the design process we follow at my company, Mad*Pow Media Solutions, once we have defined the conceptual direction and content strategy for a given design and refined our design approach through user research and iterative usability testing, we start applying visual design. Generally, we take a key screen whose structure and functionality we have finalized&mdash;for example, a layout for a home page...

Rapid Desirability Testing

Author: Michael Hawley
Industry:


A Case Study Published on UXMatters.com

Author: Mike Hawley, SVP, Director of User Experience

In the design process we follow at my company, Mad*Pow Media Solutions, once we have defined the conceptual d ...

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<p><em>Extending card sorting techniques to inform the design of website hierarchies.</em><br /> <br /> Author: Mike Hawley, SVP, Director of User Experience<br /> <br /> When developing hierarchies for information rich websites, designers and usability researchers often turn to card sorting for help making design decisions. Card sorting offers a systematic and statistically significant process for answering questions about hierarchy design. However, those of us who have run card sorts know there is an art to conducting successful card sort studies, and there are many variables that can affect the usefulness of results...</p>

Extending Card Sorting

Author: Michael Hawley
Industry:

Extending card sorting techniques to inform the design of website hierarchies.

Author: Mike Hawley, SVP, Director of User Experience

When developing hierarchies for information rich websites, designers and us ...

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<p><em>A Research Interview Technique for Uncovering Core Values</em><br /> <br /> Michael Hawley, SVP, Director of Experience</p> <p>A number of my previous Research That Works columns on UXmatters have focused on semi-structured user research techniques. My interest in these techniques stems from my desire to get the most out of my time<br /> with research participants and to leverage foundational work from other disciplines to gain unique insights for user experience design. With this in mind, a colleague of mine recommended...</p>

Laddering: Interview Technique

Author: Michael Hawley
Industry:

A Research Interview Technique for Uncovering Core Values

Michael Hawley, SVP, Director of Experience

A number of my previous Research That Works columns on UXmatters have focused on semi-structured user research te ...

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<p><em>Eliciting user experience comparisons in the customer&rsquo;s voice.</em><br /> <br /> Michael Hawley, SVP, Director of Experience</p> <p>If you do user research, chances are good that you conduct a fair number of user interviews. Our training tells us to minimize bias by asking open-ended questions and choosing our words mcarefully. But consistently asking unbiased<br /> questions is always a challenge, especially when you&rsquo;re following a participant down a line of questioning that is important and you haven&rsquo;t prepared your questions ahead of time...</p>

The Repertory Grid

Author: Michael Hawley
Industry:

Eliciting user experience comparisons in the customer’s voice.

Michael Hawley, SVP, Director of Experience

If you do user research, chances are good that you conduct a fair number of user interviews. Our train ...

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Insights
  • Consumer Decisions in a Social World
    In a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review that focused on branding, David Edelman articulates how consumers’ engagement with brands is evolving with the proliferation of social media and other digital channels.
  • 5 Ways to Be Persuasive in Your UX Work
    In your work as a UX professional, do you ever find that you need to convince people that the team should follow a user-centered design process? Do you need to convince stakeholders they should do user research? To be successful as a UX professional, you need to know how to be persuasive.
  • Service Design: Setting The Stage For The Consummate Experience
    Mention service design to your UX colleagues and you may find yourself unwittingly engaged in a game of Buzzword Bingo. Whether you call it “service design,” “holistic design,” “multi-channel experience design” or...
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