UserTesting: Usability Testing Made Easy Beyond Google Glass: Researcher looks to the future (Phys.org) —A wearable display being developed by UA optical scientist Hong Hua could have capabilities even more advanced than those of the recently unveiled Google Glass, a pair of glasses with smartphone capabilities. University of Arizona associate professor of optical sciences Hong Hua is developing technology that could make a wearable display that is lighter, easier to use and has finer and more varied capabilities than the recently rolled-out Google Glass. Imagine strolling down the street wearing a new pair of glasses – but these are no ordinary shades. A miniscule computer lodged in the frame projects text onto the lenses before your eyes, reflecting the light so that the information appears to be at arm's distance away from you, or a little farther, but only you can read it. You can control the functions of the device by voice, generate a map giving you directions, read text messages and take photographs and video. The device has medical applications, too.
POP - Prototyping on Paper | Mobile App Prototyping Made Easy Future Customer Experience Differentiation Will Require New Operating Models At some point after their companies find-and-fix the low-hanging fruit that create problems for customers, customer experience leaders hit a wall. That wall is the outdated operational models upon which most companies were built. These models were conceived decades ago, based on the existing capabilities and constraints of the day, when the primary vehicle for value was tied up in the product/service itself. Within these operating models, firms have worked to optimize processes like marketing, sales and distribution focused on getting to the transaction. Support has been a cost center, so limited as much as possible. Product lines obstruct customer needs that cross the company. Companies that will succeed in differentiating based on customer experience in the future will have to move beyond simply finding-and-fixing problems within their existing structure, and instead create a new operating model. Use customer outcomes as a guide, rather than products and transactions.
Storyboard That: The World's Best FREE Online Storyboard Creator Experience maps, user journeys and more... | UX Lady Experience Map is an important design tool to understand our product/service interactions from users’ point of view. One experience map is basically a visual representation that illustrate users’ flow (within a product or service) their needs, wants, expectations and the overall experience for a particular goal. Besides Experience Maps, different names are used to refer to similar representations, some of them are: Customer Journey, User Journey and some time Blueprint or Service Ecology, although there are some nuances in the latter two, I prefer to include them in the group of the multidimensional maps. If you search the internet you will see that there are many different examples of experience map, with some common elements between them. The differences and similarities between them can be summarized in three aspects: Graphic visualization of the information. Content and complexity are the two most important factors to consider when choosing between a layout or another.
Outside In: The Power Of Putting Customers At The Center Of Your Business Customer experience is, quite simply, how your customers perceive their interactions with your company. In Forrester’s soon-to-publish book, Outside In, Harley Manning and I show that customer experience is a fundamental business driver and — in an age when customers have access to vast amounts of data about your company and its competitors — it’s also the only sustainable source of competitive advantage. In most industries, customer experience is the greatest untapped source of decreased costs. Fidelity Investments recently spent a modest $20,000 to fix a problem that made it difficult for customers to log into their accounts through the company’s automated phone system. This single fix saves Fidelity $4 million a year by averting calls to customer service. And it’s just one of more than 160 projects that came through Fidelity’s experience improvement system in 2011. Customer experience also drives increased revenue. That takes discipline — six of them, actually. Strategy.
Rapid prototyping the Google X way In How to make products that people love, Marty Cagan had tons of good advice for rapid product discovery, including the importance of finding the fastest, cheapest way to validate ideas. Chief among this toolkit is the rough live data prototype. For teams working primarily with digital products, this type of rapid prototyping in software is easily accomplished. Add a hardware component to your product and suddenly, the assumption is that the problem just got harder and more expensive to solve. But as Google’s Tom Chi demonstrated at Mind The Product 2012, you can achieve much and learn more using everyday materials and a bit of ingenuity. From zero to HUD in two hours flat Chi’s team prototyped a fully working heads-up display on Day 1 of the Google Glass project, constructed from a coat-hanger, a piece of plexi-glass that happened to be lying around, a sheet protector bought from the local convenience store, a little wire harness and a netbook. “Don’t ever guess.
Macala Wright: How Brands Design Customer Experiences Of The Future In today’s digital age, consumers expect more from the business they support and the products they purchase. Consumers not only expect great brand experiences, they believe they’re entitled to them. Experience are now directly tied to aspiration and intention, creativity and technology are merely the enablers. In his new book, What’s The Future of Business, Brian Solis, the principal of The Altimeter Group, takes marketers through matrix of designing and connecting for consumers. The End Is Near. 70% of Fortune 1000 companies will be replaced in the next few years. 40% of the Fortune 500 companies in 2000 were no longer there in 2010. – Edward E. Brian, you state that the future of business comes down to relevance and the ability to understand how technology affects consumers decision making processes. Experience is indeed everything. Simply… The future of customer relationships and business lies in experience architecture. Think 360. We must have something to learn.
What's The Future of Business? Brian Solis - What's the Future of Business? (WTF) From Social Commerce to Syndicated Commerce inShare267 Part 10 in a series introducing my new book, The End of Business as Usual…this series serves as the book’s prequel. Today’s social media best practices will show you the marvels of creative marketing in social networks, the benefits of customer service on Twitter and blogs, innovations in co-created products and services, and insights into how to build a more engaged business. As organizations migrate from rigid to social business models, no line of business, department, function, or small business for that matter, will go untouched or unchanged. So what’s next? 1. The idea of buying with friends is not necessarily new. SpinBack, a social commerce and analytics platform that was recently acquired by BuddyMedia, published a clever infographic that demonstrates the value and possibilities of social commerce. Imagine sending a more sophisticated social consumer to your website or social presence as it exists today? - 90% of all purchases are subject to social influence Tags:
A Wearable Computer More Powerful than Glass, And Even More Awkward Steve Mann, a pioneer in the field of wearable computing, has been touting the benefits of head-mounted computers for decades. Now the University of Toronto professor is also lending his weight and experience to a company hoping to loosen Google Glass’s grip on the nascent market with a different take on computer glasses that merges the real and the virtual. The company, Meta, is building computerized headwear that can overlay interactive 3-D content onto the real world. While the device is bulky, Meta hopes to eventually slim it down into a sleek, light pair of normal-looking glasses that could be used in all kinds of virtual activities, from gaming to product design. Meta’s clunky-looking initial product, called Space Glasses, is meant more as a tool for app developers than as a gadget you’d want to actually wear. Space Glasses are not yet shipping widely, but a Kickstarter campaign seeking $100,000 to support the device’s creation brought in nearly double its goal.