Wells Fargo is thinking about the users

ATMs have been here for a long time now. So it’s nice to see how Wells Fargo has made an effort to innovate and change the traditional interaction of those machines. They have hired a great design agency, Pentagram, and the results are sweet – a great and clear user experience. The banking and financial industry is a complicated market and we usually see how users fail to understand how things work.

By crafting this new experience with the ATMs, at least one bank/user interaction is solved.

You can read the full story of this redesign as written by Holger Struppek.

The experience hierarchy of needs

I really love Challis Hodge’s pyramid of needs. Reminds me of the famous pyramid by Maslow. This comes in a great timing. The web is buzzing about iPhone2.0. Talk about DESIRABLE.

UX is good for your shareholders

Although a couple of months old, I thought it would be interesting to mention the Teehan+Lax’s UX fund experiment. On November 1st 2006, they have invested $50K in UX centered companies like Nike, Progressive, Apple, Netflix, Jetblue and more. They wanted to compare the stock performance of those companies with the general market performance.

The results are stunning. Those stocks gained 33% during a single year and have beaten the general market performance.

Conclusion: UX is good for your shareholders.

See the full results

Deloitte is believing in User Interface

So, the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte has published it’s Technology Predictions report for the year of 2007. There are some fresh point of views in the report, and also some points shouldn’t have made it (they could fit better in the 2005 report…), but from my point of view the most interesting part in the report is concerning user interface.

The second chapter’s title is “Re-Inventing the User Interface”, and I quote:

In 2007, technology companies will have to make concerted efforts to reduce product complexity. Many will focus on redesigning the user interface, using both existing technologies and newer solutions, from haptics to artificial intelligence. Companies able to minimise product complexity may achieve greater success than competitors with superior, but relatively inaccessible, technology.

A consulting firm understanding the power of user interface. Music to my ears…

An interview with Jesse James Garret

While visiting San Francisco, I though it would be great to drop of by Adaptive Path’s offices and interview AP’s president, Jesse James Garret, who is one of the founding fathers of the UX movement.

For those of you who didn’t hear about Jesse till now (I’d be surprised if you didn’t), here is a short summary:

Since 1995, Jesse works in the fields of Information Architecture and User Experience.

In 2000, Jesse founded, together with 6 other professionals, Adaptive Path, which is one the most important User Experience consulting firms which has been working with clients like Nokia, Sony, Oracle, GreenPeace and more.

In 2002, Jesse wrote the seminal book The Elements of User Experience, which up till today is one of the most important books in the field.

And now, to the interview:

Please leave our website now…

So, I was looking to buy tickets for the Blueman Group show in NYC. I rushed to ticketmaster.com and performed 2 searches to find out the best date for me. Trying to perform a 3rd search I get this page:

I thought I was hallucinating. This is definitly one of the worst messages I have ever seen on a commercial website. Not to mention the poor usability of the site which makes everything so complicated, irritating, slow.

On the other hand, it is a sweet reminder that there is so much work left to do in our field.
By the way – blueman is a MUST!! So, if you are around NYC…

Exciting interfaces

I really love it when companies are challenging professionals to provide them with new and ground breaking, breath taking solutions.

This time it is Getty Images who asked five companies to help them out with some new and innovative interfaces to be used for exploring images.

And so: Sumona, Less Rain, TBG, Tomato and Great Works were recruited.

It’s not that easy to get me excited.

This one did:  10 Ways

Sight, Sound and Motion

“Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.“ [Vincent Van Gogh, 1889]

You don’t have to cut yourself an ear to realize that!

The question is:
How to touch users’ emotions in order to create an engaging and compelling user experience on the web?

Better UX = Better Grades?

My love is in her 2nd year of her studies for a B.A. in Chemistry in Tel-Aviv University. Usually she gets really upset before big exams. 

Now, she is having this big exam in 2 days, and I see her happy and content. Trying to understand what causes this change of behavior, I ask her and she tells me she has a great book to study from. “What’s so great about this book?”, I ask. And she surprises me: “It really helps me understand this material”.

Even more curious, I get closer to examine the book. And suddenly it all becomes clear. This is maybe the most friendly, easy, clear and fun book to learn with. Just look at those headers, colors, clear problem boxes, yellow highlights (originally in the book).

So, if it’s easier to study from, it’s easier for the student to succeed in the exam. User Experience matters!

p.s. – Somehow those colors and highlighting reminds me of Basecamp.

Using the power of richness to enhance simplicity

The new framework versions by Laszlo Systems (Open Laszlo 3.2) and Adobe (Flex 2) will facilitate the ability to develop Rich Internet Applications.
We are than, about to experience an even larger amount of Flash and Ajax over web sites/applications. One great example of the use of the Open Laszlo framework is done by Pandora.com, the excellent music “machine” that plays music of your taste.
But, “With great power comes great responsibility…” (Uncle Ben to Peter Parker in Spider-Man) Excessive use of such techniques, can result in complicated user-experiences, causing user frustration.
An interesting thing to note is that the Web2.0 wave took a great stand concerning User-Interfaces and experiences, taking it to extreme simplicity (Flickr, Basecamp, consumating and more…).
I say we should handle those abilities with care. I encourage you to learn those frameworks, but use their abilities in a balanced and smart manner, keeping the experiences simple, using those abilities to enrich it and engage the user, and not to frustrate her.
One example: The Organizr by Flickr (in the image above) is a rich Flash app that simplifies the task of arranging your photos and sets. It is a great example of using the power of richness to enhance simplicity.