How to work with User Experience methods

I have now been working in the field of User Experience for approximately 10 years, and the holy grail has always been some kind of coherent methodology which makes it easy to understand the many different methods and tools withing the field. And not least some kind of process which explains when to use what, and why it should be used in different situations.
Well - it looks like we are finally there. Or at least we have taken a major step in that direction here in Hello with the UXBASIS model.
We have been working on the project for more than a year along with our different client assignments. The UXBASIS model is thus not an academic exercise, but a methodology grounded in day-to-day work with clients and Hello's own projects.
The UXBASIS model will have three manifestations:
1. A web page which can be accessed here: http://uxbasis.hellogroup.com/
2. A deck of cards which can be "played" in a meeting with clients and account people
3. A poster to hang on the wall in any UX department
The web page is now ready in a beta version. We are still weeding out the last spelling errors and small mistakes, so comments are still welcome here.
The cards and the poster will go into print when we are out of the beta phase and then we will start selling and shipping posters and cards at a cost price, which will have to be determined.

Check out the UXBASIS website, and rememeber to share it with friends and colleagues in the UX field.

The Twitter Brain - Hello Ignite Episode II

"Twitter is basically like small snippets of text working like neurons - getting fired back and forth, interacting with each other. Basically creating a new kind of global awareness"

Hello Ignite

We have launched a new knowledge sharing concept in Hello Group. It's very simple: Every Monday morning a Hello employee gives a five minutes presentation about any subject, which is related to digital communication and marketing - or basically whatever is on the mind of the presenter that morning. The concept is inspired by O'reilly's Ignite concept, so each presentation consists of 20 slides that auto refreshes after 15 seconds. Stressful - yes! But also very effective, because a presentation never lasts more than exactly five minutes.
In the name of web 2.0 and social media, we are of course sharing all of this incredible knowledge with the rest of the world. I will be publishing the presentations here on this blog, but they can also be found on Youtube, Facebook and Slideshare.

Our first Ignite presentation was given by our in-house rocket scientist (and I mean that literally - he build the freakin' Tomahawk missile...) Ashley Raiteri, who is talking about icons and visual representations in software and web development.

Haiku Gonzo Journalism - the art of the social media update

I just had a conversation with my friend Signe Wenneberg about what characterizes an interesting Facebook update/tweet as opposed to the utterly irrelevant, boring and useless update.

We all know the situation, of course. You are scanning through your friend updates – be it on Facebook, Twitter or any other social network. Some updates make you laugh, others make you think, others again make you act, and finally some make you think: “Why the f… did you have to waste 1,7 second of my life posting this irrelevant, ego centered, stupid garbage!”.

People who do not understand the dynamics of social media, of course, think that all the content of Facebook and the like is irrelevant, ego centered, stupid garbage. But the fact is that Facebook, Twitter and other “profile-based” social media actually serve as perfect social filters for information. Personally, I get most of my information about cultural events and a large part of professional news from the status updates and tweets of my “friends” on social networks. By spending approximately 30 minutes on Facebook every day I get a convenient overview of what is happening in my professional area, and what kind of cultural events I should absolutely not miss in my geographical vicinity.

And I get all of this information, because I have friends who write interesting updates – in other words very short little sentences, which have the author as the starting point, but communicate a piece of information which is potentially relevant for other people.

In other words, the interesting social media update could be described as a kind of Haiku Gonzo Journalism. And seen in that perspective we have all become – or are becoming – Haiku Gonzo Journalists.

So what is a Haiku Gonzo Journalism?

Well basically it is all about being able to tell an interesting and relevant story by using yourself as the starting point – very often using humor or quirky statements to accentuate your point or attract the attention of your reader. This is of course extremely difficult, and what makes it even more difficult is that you need to operate in the playing field of 140 characters plus the ability to add links or embed further information or media.

Just as in traditional journalism, there is unfortunately quite far between the really clever Haiku Gonzo Journalists in the social media space. We are all still untrained in the art of Haiku Gonzo Journalism, but I think that as people get more used to Social Media communication they will both become more skilled Haiku Gonzo Journalists, and they will learn how to filter away the people who do not understand the subtleties of communicating in the social media space.

Next Web Amsterdam

The previous two years I have been blogging from my favorite Internet conference - The Next Web in Amsterdam. This year I was unfortunately unable to go, but luckily two of my colleagues went instead. You can follow the updates from the conference on James Kelways blog - which will be updated with new posts as James gets his notes from the conference sorted out.

James' blog: User Pathways

Extreme desert marathon

We are running this project with Novo Nordisk, where we are building a news website for Søren Lilleøre who is running a six day extreme Marathon in the Morrocan Desert at the end of this month. It's a pretty extreme endeavor and it doesn't become less extreme by the fact that Søren is a type 1 diabetic who has to carry his own insulin and injection devices in the sweltering desert heat. Check out the website, which we (Hello) build in a couple of days and which will be unfolding with a bunch of interesting stories and videos about Søren in the next month or so...

Check out runningwithdiabetes.com

Hello looking for Wordpress/mash-up wiz kids

I am heading up a super exciting social media news project, which is starting this Monday and running for a little more than a month. We are basically putting together an ad-hoc team consisting of a journalist, a Wordpress/mash-up specialist, some assistants and a person with audio/visual skills.

Right now we are looking for the Wordpress/mash-up specialist and the assistants. The Wordpress guy should be familiar with Wordpress and how to move content into and out of Wordpress (youtube, flickr etc. etc.). The assistants do not need technical skills but should know the ins and outs of the social web. The assistants could be employed either as project interns or as student helpers for the period.

The project starts Monday and ends in the middle of April, which means that we are extremely pressed for time. So if you are interested or know of someone who could be, please contact me on +45 4040 9492 or email: peter [dot] svarre [at] hellogroup.com.