More than a decade ago, open floor plans were heralded as the future of workplace design. The drab walls and cubicles that conjured images from the movie Office Space were no longer the norm. By then, companies could look and feel like hip, young startups with open space plans and team members sitting right next to each other.
Envisioning the world of tomorrow is not enough to make it. Our society is heavily reliant on execution, and that means equal parts of form and function. Design makes all the difference in how we perceive the world, how we choose to buy a certain something over something else, but also how technology makes its way into our hearts (and homes). Where form meets function, our world isn’t just more appealing, it’s also more efficient.
In this discourse we will focus on three areas where design enhances our perception of the world, turns computers into companions, and makes us truly feel at home in our homes.
There’s bad marketing, there’s good marketing, and then there’s really great marketing. I’ll let you guess which category this falls into
Ever ask yourself what the ROI of User Experience is? Not many business leaders do, despite UX playing a crucial role in the success of a given product or service.
Experience Dynamics has put together an extensive infographic that attacks the subject from every angle, showing that UX holds a return of investment (ROI) that far exceeds any forecast. For example, did you know that if you get the User Interface right you will have likely eliminated as many as 80% of the unforeseen issues that lay ahead? Or that good UX reduces development time by 33-to50 percent as it helps prioritize dev tasks more easily?
There is a common perception that collaboration is the universal solution to all issues that software companies encounter. A lot of effort is invested in improving collaboration between tech people, starting from tools that can be easily purchased and ending with programs that encourage collaborative behavior. The idea is quite simple: if people collaborate better, the output of the entire team, both its quality and quantity, will be better.
While I do not want to mitigate against collaboration, there are specific cases where it simply doesn’t work. I will exemplify that and suggest some solutions as well.