Latest articles from Apogee http://www.apogeehk.com Tue, 29 Apr 2008 Tue, 29 Apr 2008 http://www.apogeehk.com/images/logo_apogee.png http://www.apogeehk.com en-us ©Copyright 2008 Apogee Usability in Asia 1440 http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/The_Future_of_Usability_is_Mobile.html About 10 years ago I would have told any new usability specialist to spend time learning about the Internet. I might have even encouraged that person to learn about web site hosting, HTML, and JavaScript. I would have made these recommendations because the web ushered in such a profound change. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/The_Future_of_Usability_is_Mobile.html Fri, 27 June 2008 http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Usability_doesnt_stop_when_you_write_the_content.html Think about the last web site you worked on. You probably did card sorting for the information architecture. You created paper prototypes to try out different page layouts. You ran iterative usability tests to make sure people could use the site. But what about the information on the site? http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Usability_doesnt_stop_when_you_write_the_content.html Mon, 5 May 2008 http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Dont_Make_Me_Work_Hard.html I have been thinking a lot about this recently in our projects now and over the years as it pertains to improving and simplifying designs and it comes down to this: "Dont Make Me Work Hard!" So ... what are some quick examples of products and services that don't make me work hard? http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Dont_Make_Me_Work_Hard.html Tue, 29 Apr 2008 http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/The_Mobile_Design_Matrix.html Recently we worked on the design of a mobile application and to help the Product Team determine the type of activities and tasks people may want to do on their mobile phone using this particular application Apogee created "The Mobile Design Matrix". http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/The_Mobile_Design_Matrix.html Tue, 24 April 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Delighting_Customers.html What does it take to delight customers? Here are a few thoughts you can refer to when working on products to help make them more usable, delightful and profitable for your company. It takes more than just a checklist to make great products, but think of this as something quick you can refer back to when designing for your customers. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Delighting_Customers.html Tue, 8 April 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000272.php User Friendly 2007 was held in Beijing on November 23–25, 2007, and—like the previous conferences in Beijing (2004), Shanghai (2005), and Hangzhou (2006)—was a rousing success. UPA China saw the 2007 event as an opportunity to return to Beijing, giving attendees the opportunity to visit the 2008 Olympics host city as it prepares for its moment in the spotlight. http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000272.php Wed, 26 March 2008 00:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Using_the_Right_Words_to_Shape_the_User_Experience.html Words matter. The words you're reading right now -- on this page -- influence you. They make you think. They cause you to react and respond. They shape your experience, and your life. To understand the true impact of words on the user experience, we need only look at a small slice of psychology. Let's consider how words shape memories.... http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Using_the_Right_Words_to_Shape_the_User_Experience.html Wed, 27 February 2008 15:00:00 GMT http://www.uxpod.com/index.php?post_id=295521 Gerry Gaffney spoke to Daniel Szuc in Hong Kong about the state of usability today. Although we were on the 22nd floor, in the background you can hear the sounds of the Hong Kong traffic. http://www.uxpod.com/index.php?post_id=295521 Thu, 10 January 2008 12:30:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/HowDirectMarketingAndUserExperienceAreTheSame.html I've read several marketing books. In fact, I have an entire library of marketing books. The rooms of my home are full of these books. Now, you might be wondering why a guy interested in usability and user experience (UX) would be so interested in marketing? The answer is very simple: direct marketing. Before I explain that point, let me first tell you a couple of things about marketing. The average person sees marketing as a combination of advertising and sales. But, this is no better than saying that Freud or Pavlov fully explains the whole of Psychology. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/HowDirectMarketingAndUserExperienceAreTheSame.html Fri, 4 January 2008 19:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Design_in_China_takes_a_great_leap_forward.html The 4th annual User Experience conference in China took place in Beijing this year. The number of local speakers in 2007 increased dramatically from the last year's conference. Both the materials covered in the talks and workshops reflected a huge leap forward for the User Experience community in China. It was echoed in the opening speeches, that China's user experience and design industries are key to the country's economic growth. User Experience practitioners have an exciting future and an increasingly strategic role to fill. A key topic to address when we look into our industry's future is how can Chinese and foreign companies use our talents to help them succeed in the global market place. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Design_in_China_takes_a_great_leap_forward.html Wed, 12 December 2007 16:50:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/ChoiceKillsUsability.html One of the easiest ways to improve usability is by focusing on just one thing. When you present something to the user, be sure that it’s just one thing. All too often we try to hard to offer people several options. The reason many people love Google.com is that it offers just one thing: search. A single-minded focus has enormous implications. Users can clearly understand what Google is about and what it does. Even new users to Google are instantly put at ease because of the outlandish simplicity. If your site or your web page is focused on one thing everyone wins. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/ChoiceKillsUsability.html Tue, 20 November 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000234.php When customers arrive at a Web site, they have goals and tasks they want to complete—for example, buying a movie ticket, transferring money, signing up for a service, applying for a loan, asking for help, and so on. An important requirement for a Web site is the ability for customers to serve themselves, so they can generally complete their tasks without needing to contact Customer Support or ask a friend for help. However, understandably, there are times when customers do need help from Customer Support—by either speaking over the phone or using live chat—so they can solve more complex problems or complete tasks they cannot complete on their own. In such cases, customers need email addresses and phone numbers that let them contact Customer Support directly. http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000234.php Mon, 5 November 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/ApogeeInterview-DouglasWang.html There was a much stronger voice in North America and Europe when I started my career in usability. Along with the popularity of outsourcing to Asia and local Asian IT growth around 2003, especially in web technologies, the awareness of usability has been increasing. The Asian voice of usability is starting to be widely heard. I think Chinese business find more and more value in usability, instead of "pure" technology advances. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/ApogeeInterview-DouglasWang.html Mon, 27 August 2007 12:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Personas_Focusing_on_getting_the_design_right_Part2.html In Part I of this article, we discussed what Personas are and how they can inform design to ensure products and services focus on customer needs and goals. We also discussed the importance of using primary data about real users to create personas. A hypothetical case study was given for a company called SecureCam who needed to redesign their service, with the view to using personas to assist with this task. In Part 2, the individual components of a persona are described and an example persona relating to the SecureCam case study is provided. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Personas_Focusing_on_getting_the_design_right_Part2.html Fri, 15 August 2007 14:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles.html It is time to review a company home page design. There are a number of stakeholders involved in home page design, and each of them wants a piece of the home page real estate. Are there questions you can ask before approaching home page design that can move it beyond the influence of specific stakeholders in the company toward a common vision? Are there tips to consider when designing a home page? This article will help you better understand how to approach home page design. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles.html Fri, 10 August 2007 11:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Cognitive_Walkthrough_and_Heuristic_Evaluation_in_the_Contemporary_Design_Process.html The craft of User Experience Design involves many different expertise working together. Some of us work in small teams with generalist backgrounds, others with larger teams of specialists. Regardless of team structure, some age-old usability methods can still help enhance your contemporary Interaction Design work. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Cognitive_Walkthrough_and_Heuristic_Evaluation_in_the_Contemporary_Design_Process.html Mon, 6 August 2007 13:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles.html It's been more than 6 years since I wrote about the Four Horsemen of Usability. Back in June 2001, the four web properties that garnered more than 50% of all the time spent online by U.S. surfers were: AOL / Time Warner, Microsoft, Napster, and Yahoo. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles.html Mon, 16 July 2007 15:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/HowToDeliverBadNewsToCustomers.html The intention of usability testing and user experience (UX) research is to help clients and end users. If you want to help people, you must first understand problems and issues. You have to explain the challenges you discover. After all, you can't fix what you don't know is broken. Your clients cannot take action without information. You can't improve something or make it usable without exploring what isn't working. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/HowToDeliverBadNewsToCustomers.html Tue, 3 July 2007 18:00:00 GMT http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000199.php You are the lead designer-or perhaps even the sole designer on a product team. You have just completed your product design, and it's time to walk through your design approach with the project stakeholders, including management, developers, and users. What do you need to do to prepare for your presentation? This article provides some basic tips to help you better prepare to walk through your product designs with stakeholders http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000199.php Thu, 7 June 2007 11:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/AjaxUserExperienceStrategiesPart3.html As User Experience (UX) professionals, our goal is to help businesses create products that will result in compelling experiences for our users. We achieve this goal by understanding users' needs, the product context and technologies that will empower the product and creating a design solution for the product. Understanding the power of new technologies and future technology trends, limitations and best practices help us to provide the best design solutions. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/AjaxUserExperienceStrategiesPart3.html Thu, 30 May 2007 16:10:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/ApogeeInterview1-RexWong.html Have seen a boom in the usability field in Mainland China over the past 3 years. As a committee member of UPA China's - Hong Kong Branch I have been involved in the User Friendly conferences since 2004 and since that time have seen huge increases in participants year on year. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/ApogeeInterview1-RexWong.html Mon, 10 April 2007 15:10:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Personas_Focusing_on_getting_the_design_right_Part1.html Target audience: Product Managers and User Experience practitioners who have not yet created their own personas before. Imagine this... You work for SecureTech Inc., a company that specialises in providing small business owners with a web camera security service called SecureCam... http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Personas_Focusing_on_getting_the_design_right_Part1.html Mon, 2 April 2007 10:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Registration_Last_chance_for_first_impressions.html Registration is often the first real interaction that a user has with an organisation. Perhaps they've browsed a few pages, or they've seen advertisements, but now they're actually ready to come up and say 'hello' and introduce themselves. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Registration_Last_chance_for_first_impressions.html Thur, 3 Mar 2007 18:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Six_techniques_for_advocating_design_in_your_organization.html This article discusses some techniques to help overcome challenges incorporating design into your product development process. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Six_techniques_for_advocating_design_in_your_organization.html Thur, 1 Mar 2007 18:00:00 GMT http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000159.php The leaders of the China chapter wanted to raise the profile of usability engineering and user-centered design in China and create the biggest usability conference in the region. http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000159.php Mon, 8 Jan 2007 14:00:00 GMT http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/AjaxUserExperienceStrategiesPart2.html http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/AjaxUserExperienceStrategiesPart2.html Mon, 15 Jan 2007 18:37:00 GMT In Part 1 on "The Impact of Ajax on User Experience" we looked at the positive impacts of AJAX on user experience. In this article, Part 2, we will look at the negative impacts. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Do_You_Suffer_from_Familiarity_Blindness.html http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Do_You_Suffer_from_Familiarity_Blindness.html Tue, 12 Dec 2006 18:37:00 GMT If you are too close to something then you might ignore it. Similarly, if you are an expert or you have vast experience, then it is possible that you will disregard key items when communicating with others about that topic. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Tag_Cloud_in_Chinese_websites.html http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/Tag_Cloud_in_Chinese_websites.html Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:30:00 GMT Tag cloud displays tags in a website which emphasize some of the tags by showing them with larger font sizes, and/or in darker colors. Moreover, tags in a tag cloud are usually arranged in alphabetical order. Tag cloud seems to work in the English world as a means of visualization as well as an extra means of navigation - what about in the Chinese world or more specifically, what about in Hong Kong? http://www.uxpod.com/index.php?post_id=148335 http://www.uxpod.com/index.php?post_id=148335 Sun, 5 Nov 2006 17:30:00 GMT This podcast contains four short interviews from User Friendly 2006, the UPA China conference in Hangzhou. http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/AjaxUserExperienceStrategiesPart1.html http://www.apogeehk.com/articles/AjaxUserExperienceStrategiesPart1.html Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:30:00 GMT Ajax has been a hot topic since Jesse James Garrett coined the term and published the essay "Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications" in February, 2005. Numerous Ajax-based web applications and development toolkits have been rushing to the internet in the past year.Web-based applications have become richer and more responsive, not only closing the gap with the desktop but also presenting new and fun ways for user-web interactions. http://www.uxpod.com/index.php?post_id=143982 http://www.uxpod.com/index.php?post_id=143982 Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:30:00 GMT Users of Hong Kong's public transport system will be familiar with the Octopus card, which I consider to be exemplary in terms of the user experience it offers.In this brief episode, I talk about some of the things that make it so easy to use. http://infodesign.com.au/articlespresentations/articles/lie.asp http://infodesign.com.au/articlespresentations/articles/lie.asp Mon, 23 Oct 2006 17:30:00 GMT In the years when companies became enamoured with information technology, it often seemed that the individual had disappeared from view. People became accustomed to adjusting themselves and their actions to fit new technologies. They came to accept 'computer error', which was the customary explanation for many of the problems they encountered when dealing with government agencies, banks, utilities, and other corporations. http://uxpod.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=111250 http://uxpod.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=111250 Mon, 17 July 2006 17:30:00 GMT I spoke to Josephine Wong from Apogee - Usability in Asia about the state of usability in China.Josephine mentions the "User Friendly" conference. That's run by UPA China.