academiUX, Issue 1
We need better signals from real insights in experience design. The inaugural issue.
There's too much noise in regards to content created on the topic of experience design, product design, or human-computer-interaction. I spend more time sifting through feeds, emails, and medium posts than I do learning anything new. It’s a waste of my time and I’m beginning to purge most of the noise as we speak.
I haven’t written an introduction to why I’m starting this venture, but I think it’s pretty self explanatory. Why do I need to see another article on why journey maps are important for building empathy with users? I love that everyone is sharing their knowledge but a lot of it isn’t new. Why are we wasting our time engaging with content that hasn’t changed? But more importantly, why am I wasting my time doing it and how can I help others here?
In some recent efforts to purge all of my subscriptions to just the ones that added value, I was left with 5 sources out of 100+ that I was following. The one thing these sources had in common and why I chose to continue to desire the information that was being produced by them, was research. Good old fashioned research injecting net new knowledge into the field. It made me feel like I was actually learning something in the time I dedicated to engaging with those papers versus skimming over redundant medium articles.
I’m much more particular about what contributes to the fire hose of information coming at me now. In that continuing effort to cut down on irrelevant noise, I’ve decide to help you as well. Yes, you! I know you’ve probably been feeling the same way and here you are. I hope this helps. Let’s commence with academiUX issue 1.
New papers worth reading…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and User Experience (UX) design: A systematic literature review and future research agenda
Authors: Åsne Stige, Efpraxia D. Zamani, Patrick Mikalef, Yuzhen Zhu
DOI: 10.1108/itp-07-2022-0519
Published: August 29, 2023
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What’s it about? This paper presents a systematic literature review on the use of AI in UX design, analyzing 46 research articles and synthesizing the findings based on a user-centered design and development process. It concludes that, by leveraging AI, the UX design process can be enhanced, allowing designers to design better digital artifacts and introducing tools that facilitate the design process. AI can assume tasks that traditionally rely heavily on human creativity and input, enhancing the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the UX design process.
My biggest take-away? One day AI will change the UI of applications based on the behaviors of the users, creating adaptive interfaces that dynamically evolve based on user needs. That’s a crazy idea. We thought responsive design was hard to wrap our heads around at one point, but there is a not too distant future where we can A/B/C/∞ test and make adjustments for every. single. user. That’s going to make interface and interaction design very interesting.
Analyzing and computing humans by means of the brain using Brain-Computer Interfaces - understanding the user – previous evidence, self-relevance and the user’s self-concept as potential superordinate human factors of relevance
Authors: Cornelia Herbert
DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2023.1286895
Published: February 16, 2024
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What’s it about? The title is a mouthful right? This paper pulls together findings on performance of users engaging with computers by way of EEG brain activity.
My biggest take-away? The more meaningful the interaction, the more successful users will perform the tasks. Is there enough brain stimulation (that can be recognized with EEGs) to perform everyday tasks like performing web searches and turning the lights on in your house? Maybe. This one sent me down a rabbit hole though - I’ve always wanted to create my own EEG rig just to have sitting around and this inspired me to add some items to my amazon cart to play around with that idea a bit. It’s not often that I get a chance to hook a user up to an EEG while testing an interface and maybe if I had a device at the ready I’d do it more often…
And a classic in case you missed it…
Investigating a multi-faceted view of user experience
Authors: Ons Al-Shamaileh, Alistair Sutcliffe, University of Manchester
DOI: 10.1145/2414536.2414538
Published: November 2012
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What’s it about? This paper reports the influence of website design, culture, and brand on a user’s experience accessing content, usability, aesthetics, pleasurable interaction, service quality and judgement.
My biggest take-away? The influence of usability on a users’ overall judgment of website quality is relatively minor compared to content, brand and ‘interactivity’ so let’s not give ourselves too big of egos.
For today’s that all I can muster…
I sat down to start putting this together last weekend and it took me longer to read these 3 papers than I expected - possibly because I spent about 6 hours watching videos on BCIs in the midst of this. How often do I imagine I can crank these out? That’s for you to find out, I guess. My hope is to try and get these out every couple of weeks.
If you find something that is super interesting that you think is worth sharing or if you just want to drop an email to say hello, send it over to brad.cooper@jecture.co, and if you want to find me on the internet I’m on the federated web as @hi@uxbrad.com