Boarding Pass - You're doing it wrong

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Boarding Pass or Billboard?

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How to start a product redesign - a playbook

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A few months back I was working on a large, ground-up redesign for a product I own. I had a little trouble getting started. I realized I needed a playbook to remind me of the basics. I am sharing my playbook for those who are having trouble and procrastinating getting started. Enjoy. Before you start At the highest level, in one paragraph, what is a representative user's goal and the problem you are solving for them?  If you can't answer this succinctly you have many, many features or you don't know your users well enough to continue.  Slow down, answer #1 for each feature set before you go to #2. What's working for them now? What's not? What you need to design for them Verify you are building all the tools they need. Show the process they will use to reach goal - give them a map or trail to follow. Indication of progress toward the user's goal - "You are here" Make sure you build in escape hatches because they find a better way....
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Applying user centric design to your business plan

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Image by Lars Plougmann I got asked by an investor recently how we at Digital H2O do design. I liked the conciseness of my response and thought it was a good example of how to tie user centric design into a business plan. Here goes: Our design philosophy is best described as user centric design. Our goal is to only design and build features our current, or potential customers, find valuable and that substantially help our business continue to grow. We spend significant time listening to our customers’ needs throughout the sales process. We then form hypothesis what customers’ needs are and what they can accomplish in the application. While designing features we show mock-ups and prototypes to customers in order to get feedback and incrementally improve the design. After the product is built and released we continue to test our hypotheses about how customers will use features we have built. We utilize automated event tracking in the app to monitor u...
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Android: What I like about you

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Anybody who has been to our office knows I am an Android fan. My prediction is that the Android platform will end up with a much, much larger install base than iPhone OS. Originally, I felt this way because you can get a Android phone on every carrier for a lower cost than the iPhone - many of them are now free with a contract. This is good enough, but I have a new insight. The Android OS does a great job of directing your attention to highly important information. As such, its easier for new users to pick up and for busy people to use. How can this be? You should argue that the the Android OS so similar to the iPhone OS. You are right. However, it comes down to usability. The majority of people out there won't explore their device to find information. They just want the phone to do the work for them. If it doesn't smack them in the head it might as well not exist. Android has two crucial features that make it a helper more than just a smart phone. First, Android b...
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