Gamification seems to have been the big thing for a while. Maybe we have heard too much of it. Some would say we have been over sold on gamification, making it the wonder child that will make your websites work and attract and keep customers.
Gamification by Design – by Gabe Zichermann and Chris Cunningham is the recommended discussion seed book for UXPerth this month (April 2012). I don’t often review the books for UXPerth, unless they are amazingly outstanding or something a lot worse.
Of late I have noticed a very disturbing trend. Some designers no longer draw or sketch on paper.
Have we been seduced by the shiny digital world, sure low-res paper prototyping is still popular, but what of sketching.
Not pretty sketching where we aren’t focusing on the heart of the interaction issue, but real sketching where finding the solution is the focus. I’ll discount Inkling sketching as it’s still pen and paper.
We seem to have a collect of designers that just go straight for photoshop, illustrator, Balsamiq or Omnigraffle.
Fostering even a moderate level of UX design in any team or project can at times be an impossible task.
Often there are things that we do that can stifle and sometimes even oppose UX techniques we are trying to support.
In a way, it’s as if we are by accident forcing UX people to leave or just warp back into simple pixel pushing designers or worse photoshop operators.
A part of Lean is Hoshin Kanri (HK). It is a form of policy development or strategic planning.
Like any good strategic planning process it deals with the mapping out of how the business can get to the desired outcome.
Translating the long term vision into manageable objectives and actions.
Hoshin Kanri is based around the idea that we are all domain experts within your own fields, and hence have something to contribute no matter where we stand in the organisation.
For it to work effectivity, senior and middle level management must be prepared to delegate some authority and trust.
Gary Barber
I’m an independent User Experience Consultant.
I design interfaces, build information architectures, HTML prototypes, run workshops on UX design, do user research and conduct usability & accessibility testing and audits.
I can work within your existing team or as an external consultant on a contract or adhoc basis.
You can contact me via my company, radharc or just email me.
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