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Sharing industry-shaping perspective and game-changing thought-leadership.

  • Gettin’ HIGgy With It: Architecting a Flexible iPhone Experience without Ditching Human Interface Guidelines

    Ryan Bell, EffectiveUI
    UX Magazine

    April 23, 2013

    Spend a significant amount of time in the iOS app business, and chances are good that you’ll hear “the HIG” thrown around. Short for Human Interface Guidelines, this Apple document is a wide-ranging attempt to outline best practices for app experience on the platform. While the HIG does discuss general principles, the bulk of it is dedicated to guiding the usage of built-in containers and components – those found in apps like Mail, Contacts, Calendar and Mobile Safari – and as such, it has become shorthand for a “standard” iOS user experience.

  • Mobile Adoption: Choosing the Right Features and Functionality for Users on the Go

    Amanda Gagliardi, EffectiveUI

    March 20, 2013

    Have you ever downloaded a mobile application that sounded like exactly what you were looking for only to discover that the features it contained weren’t at all what you were expecting? How likely are you to use that app again? Choosing the right features and functionality is the most important component of creating an app that will be widely adopted by users, especially when providing a mobile version of an existing experience.

  • Mobile Development: Which Mobile Platform Should You Choose?

    Lucas Jordan, EffectiveUI

    March 20, 2013

    When deciding how content will be delivered to your users on mobile devices, there are three development options to consider.This paper outlines the platforms and their pros and cons.

  • Only Exceptional Digital Experiences Allowed

    Anthony Franco, EffectiveUI
    The SoDA Report (Volume 1, 2013)

    February 28, 2013

    The more devices and channels customers have to interact with brands, the higher their expectations. Companies can’t afford to offer digital experiences that are anything short of exceptional – the costs are too high. So how can we, as consultants and creators of these experiences, become the champions for customers and overcome roadblocks to ensure customer delight?

  • Sharpening Your Competitive Edge with UX Research

    Rebecca Flavin, EffectiveUI
    UX Magazine

    February 1, 2013

    At EffectiveUI, we’ve seen that user research can be a powerful and invaluable tool for aiding strategic business decisions, identifying market opportunities and ultimately driving better organizational results. When we’re talking to customers about a digital experience, we frequently uncover opportunities for their business as a whole to shift its strategic direction. As part of the holistic UX process, user research helps us learn more about customers’ pain points, needs, desires and goals in order to inform digital design or product direction.

  • Moving from Flex to HTML

    Greg Owen, EffectiveUI
    Ryan Bell, EffectiveUI

    December 10, 2012

    What is the best way to transition an existing Flex application to an HTML-based application? The team at EffectiveUI has developed three different migration approaches based on the business needs of our clients. This white paper explains the approaches we’ve developed and successfully used to transition large-scale applications for our clients.

  • Designing with Stakeholders? Accelerating the Design Process through Co-Creation

    Angela Craven, EffectiveUI
    UX Magazine

    November 27, 2012

    As user experience professionals, in our not so distant past, we all remember spending a lot more time evangelizing the business value of design. All of that hard work has come to fruition; we now get to focus more of our energy on understanding customers and providing more sophisticated creative solutions. But are our stakeholders truly engaged in the hard and sustained work it takes to solve creative problems?

  • Exposing the Creative Process: A Lesson from Charles and Ray Eames

    Angela Craven, EffectiveUI
    The SoDA Report (Volume 2, 2012)

    November 12, 2012

    When a company is trying to solve a problem outside of its area of expertise, key stakeholders embark on a quest for the agency that is most capable of delivering an impressive final product. Once hired, it is commonly understood the agency will work behind the scenes to create a solution that meets the users’ and business’ needs. But how often is a client able to see and understand what happens between discovery and final delivery? More importantly, why should a client care?

  • Rapid Prototyping to Validate Interactions and Improve Development Estimates

    Shane Church, EffectiveUI

    October 11, 2012

    In the world of software development, we are often tasked with building prototypes to test out a technical component or a system workflow before building the full complexity of a completed production system. from a developer’s perspective, prototypes usually come as a result of a statement like, “I don’t know how to do that. Let me build a quick prototype to see if it works like I think it does,” but there are many other uses for prototypes as well. Prototypes are also useful to validate designs and interactions and to improve development estimates by reducing the amount of rework caused by flawed assumptions.

  • Eight Principles of Data Visualization

    Ryan Bell, EffectiveUI
    Information Management

    August 17, 2012

    Imagine you are walking out of the office after a long day and your phone buzzes with a new email. Taking a quick glance, you see that it’s from Joe in operations: “Hey, wondering if you could run me a few numbers and put them in a nice chart to show how well our new store layouts are doing along with the latest sale promo we started last week. Need to put it into a presentation for the executive team next Monday. Thanks.”

  • Don’t Have a Meeting, Throw a Workshop

    Beth Koloski, EffectiveUI
    UX Magazine

    August 16, 2012

    The meeting-intensive culture within many organizations today makes it hard to achieve forward progress, especially on user experience enhancements. Often, meetings are filled with too many agenda items, lukewarm brainstorming and tangential cross talk. If you are working in that kind of culture, a one-day workshop can be a great way to break out of the meeting rut.

  • Tablet Versus PC: A Creative Decision

    Ryan Bell, EffectiveUI
    UXmatters

    August 6, 2012

    Since Apple introduced the iPad in early 2010, an Internet debate has been simmering that goes something like this: One side scoffs at the iPad and tablets in general as high-end toys that push users to spend their time doing little more than passively surfing the Web, checking Facebook or email and watching YouTube videos. The other side claims that such devices are just as good as traditional personal computers (PCs) – even better for creative tasks – and that there is nothing to prevent them from writing the next great novel – or its equivalent in any given field – on their iPad.

  • Keeping User Needs Alive Throughout the Software Development Process

    Beth Koloski, EffectiveUI

    August 1, 2012

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  • Top 10 Ways to Improve Digital Experiences

    Kerry Bodine, Forrester Research

    July 31, 2012

    Whenever we ask customer experience professionals how important it is to improve their digital customer experiences, they reply emphatically, “It’s critical!” But still firms struggle to identify what digital experience improvements they need to make – and, once that’s nailed down, how exactly to make them.

  • How to Get Value from Customer Journey Maps

    Jonathan Browne, Forrester Research

    July 27, 2012

    This report describes best practices for using journey maps to drive improvements in customer experience. Customer journey maps are foundational tools that support companies’ efforts to improve customer experience.

  • Interactive Design Agency Overview, 2012

    Jonathan Browne and Vidya L. Drego, Forrester Research

    July 24, 2012

    Selecting the right interactive design vendor is a complex and stressful task. The splinternet – an explosion of digital touchpoints across an array of proprietary platforms – makes that process even more difficult because firms now have to search for the right vendors to design parts of overall experiences that cross websites, native applications, social media and more.

  • Windows 8 and the Art of UX Compromise

    Ryan Bell, EffectiveUI
    VentureBeat

    June 15, 2012

    Microsoft is cleverly promoting Windows 8 with the tagline “no compromises.” The idea is that you get both a desktop/laptop operating system (OS) and a tablet OS in one package and a "best of both worlds" experience on any device.

  • Drive Business Transformation with Digital Customer Experiences

    John R. Rymer and Stephen Powers, Forrester Research

    May 22, 2012

    Digital customer experience has become a key business differentiator, and application development and delivery (AD&D) leaders of front-office, Web, mobile and digital development must step up to support their firm’s initiatives.

  • The Unified Customer Experience Imperative

    Ron Rogowski, Forrester Research

    April 30, 2012

    Today’s digital landscape is distributed across an array of touchpoints and devices. With customers able to interact through multiple channels at any given moment, firms need to ensure that they present a coherent face across all interactions.

  • Intersection of the Physical and Digital Worlds

    Austin Brown, EffectiveUI
    UX Magazine

    April 18, 2012

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  • How B2B Firms Improve Customer and Partner Experience

    Paul Hagen, Forrester Research

    March 14, 2012

    Business-to-business (B2B) firms have largely ignored customer experience – and it shows. Three separate studies that Forrester Research conducted over the past year indicate that B2B customers perceive their experiences to be worse than those delivered by bottom-of-the-barrel consumer industries such as TV service providers and health insurance plans.

  • Mozilla and Yahoo Over-promise on Mobile

    Anthony Franco, EffectiveUI
    VentureBeat

    March 8, 2012

    Mozilla unveiled a plan last week to build a better mobile platform, attempting to leverage its expertise in Web browsers to compete with Android’s and iOS’ giant 77% market share.

  • The Key to a Unified Brand: A Consistent UI

    Peyton Lindley, EffectiveUI
    Fast Company’s Co.Design

    March 5, 2012

    Whether it’s an iPad app or a website, each part of a digital ecosystem should speak a similar language. That entails a fundamental organizational shift.

  • Develop Hybrid Native and Mobile Web Apps

    Shane Church, EffectiveUI
    MSDN Magazine

    March 1, 2012

    You want to build a mobile application but you’re bewildered by the array of available devices and APIs to learn. Which mobile platform should you choose?

  • Market Overview: Mobility Services

    Liz Herbert, Forrester Research

    February 28, 2012

    The emerging mobility services market creates choices for buyers. Leading organizations are scrambling to create mobile experiences for employees, partners and customers – both applications and mobile Web experiences.

  • What the Demise of Flash Means for the User Experience

    SuAnne Hall, EffectiveUI
    UX Booth

    February 14, 2012

    Adobe’s decision to cease development of the mobile Flash platform and increase their investment in HTML5-related efforts created perhaps the final piece of conclusive evidence that HTML5 is the current go-to technology for creating ubiquitous user experiences regardless of device.

  • Embracing the Open Web: Web Technologies You Need to Engage Your Customers and Much More

    Jeffrey S. Hammond, Forrester Research

    January 24, 2012

    Web Technologies You Need to Engage Your Customers and Much More. The open Web is a culture, a community – and a set of preferred technologies for Internet applications.

  • Here Comes the Open Web – Embrace It

    Jeffrey S. Hammond, Forrester Research

    January 24, 2012

    The Web is moving on to a new era of openness, mobility and digital business. The open Web is a platform built on HTTP (the fundamental Web protocol), a new generation of HTML, dynamic languages and wide use of Internet services for everything from video encoding to social graphs to order management and payments.

  • Executive Q&A: iPads and Tablets

    Sarah Rotman Epps, Forrester Research

    January 24, 2012

    In the nine months since Apple’s iPad hit the shelves, Forrester has conducted more than 200 conversations about iPads and tablets with clients through inquiries, one-on-one meetings at Forrester’s Consumer Forum and on-site advisory sessions.

  • Effective User Research and Transforming the Minds of Clients

    Leonard Souza, EffectiveUI
    Smashing Magazine

    December 6, 2011

    Ah, the love of a client. That is indeed what we all seek as professionals, is it not? If we lived in a utopia, then that’s all there would be. Openness. Honesty. Passion. Flowing in both directions, client to service provider and vice versa. We want our clients to be right behind us in our ideas and open to new ones. In order for this to happen, there has to be trust.

  • iOS Wow Factor: UX Design Techniques for iPhone and iPad

    Tim Wood, EffectiveUI

    November 23, 2011

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  • Customer Experience Strategy Best Practices

    Paul Hagen, Forrester Research

    October 25, 2011

    Firms struggle when their customer experience strategy lacks critical details and fails to provide clear direction. The result: inconsistent execution and wasted effort. To orchestrate a consistent on-brand experience, firms need a strategy.

  • The Value of Customer Journey Maps: A UX Designer’s Personal Journey

    Joel Flom, EffectiveUI
    UXmatters

    September 7, 2011

    Until recently, I never saw the value in customer journey maps. In fact, throughout my career, I’ve even struggled with the value of personas and scenarios. Many times, stakeholders would just skim over them after our presentations or use them only to prove we were making progress on a project.

  • Think You’re An Industry Leader? Not So Fast

    Anthony Franco, EffectiveUI
    Fast Company’s Co.Design

    September 1, 2011

    Rather than strategizing against competitors, you should empathize with your customers. Everything else falls into place afterwards.

  • Control: Dialing In the Digital Experience

    Tony Walt, EffectiveUI
    UX Magazine

    August 8, 2011

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  • Nine Secrets to Create Great Web Apps

    Anthony Franco, EffectiveUI
    Target Marketing

    May 18, 2011

    There is a complex relationship between Web applications (apps), utility and marketing. Too many marketers use apps solely as marketing vehicles – resulting in self-indulgent, pointless widgets.

  • Why You Need a Digital Customer Experience Strategy

    Ron Rogowski, Forrester Research

    May 18, 2011

    Companies say that digital touchpoints are critical to their customer experience efforts but don’t have an approach for multi-touchpoint experience, don’t know customers’ expectations, and don’t know how to represent their brands.

  • Reaching the Digital Boomer

    Anthony Franco, EffectiveUI
    Direct Marketing News

    May 1, 2011

    We know a lot of statistics about the baby boom generation. The US Census Bureau says these 79 million Americans make up 26% of the population, and the oldest boomers turn 65 this year. But who are they really, and how do you effectively reach them in a digital world?

  • Chief Customer Officer Playbook: Priorities for the First 90 Days

    Paul Hagen, Forrester Research

    May 21, 2010

    Increasingly, companies appoint a chief customer officer (CCO) to lead the company in orchestrating a differentiated customer experience. But these senior executives must often navigate uncharted waters.

  • Practical Android Projects

    Lucas L. Jordan, EffectiveUI
    Pieter Greyling, Google
    Tony Hillerson, EffectiveUI, technical editor

    February 22, 2011

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  • Small Design Agencies Attract High-Profile Clients

    Vidya L. Drego, Forrester Research

    January 18, 2011

    Increasingly, companies appoint a chief customer officer (CCO) to lead the company in orchestrating a differentiated customer experience. But these senior executives must often navigate uncharted waters.

  • Executive Q&A: Design Personas and Customer Journey Maps

    Jonathan Browne, Forrester Research

    January 10, 2011

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  • Where to Find Help for Web Design Projects, 2010

    Vidya L. Drego, Forrester Research

    December 21, 2010

    Selecting the right Web design vendor can be stressful and complicated. To help kick-start the vendor selection process, Forrester gathered self-reported data from 76 firms that have significant experience in designing and developing Web sites.

  • User Expectations with Mobile Apps

    Rebecca Flavin, EffectiveUI
    Anthony Franco, EffectiveUI
    UX Booth

    December 21, 2010

    User response to mobile applications depends on several factors – aesthetics, usability and brand loyalty, to name a few. However, researchers at EffectiveUI recently underwent a study to see whether or not brand loyalty trumps usability. No surprise here: it doesn’t.

  • Why Jumping on the Mobile Bandwagon Can Hurt Your Brand

    Anthony Franco, EffectiveUI
    iMedia Connection

    December 15, 2010

    When organizations throw down the mobile gauntlet, there is usually a huge rush to get the app out the door. Too often, companies sidestep their own strategic planning and release programs that fail to address consumer needs -- or their own business needs, for that matter.

  • The Pretty Speedy Redesign

    Beth Koloski, EffectiveUI
    UX Magazine

    November 12, 2010

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  • Web 3.0: Distraction, Evolution or Revolution?

    Anthony Franco, EffectiveUI
    Information Management

    November 5, 2010

    As a technologically driven culture, we are always focused on the next shiny new object. We hear about the next must-have gadget months before it’s even released. That goes for not only products, but platforms as well.

  • Assess the Effectiveness of Your Customer Journey Map

    Andrew McInnes, Forrester Research

    October 15, 2010

    When executed well, customer journey maps can help customer experience professionals plan improvement projects and communicate with employees across their organizations. Unfortunately, journey maps often fall short due to missing content, overwhelming detail and poor visual design.

  • Design for Mobile

    Juan Sanchez, EffectiveUI
    UX Magazine

    October 13, 2010

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  • Rich Internet Applications Will Power Online Experiences of the Future

    Ron Rogowski, Forrester Research

    October 13, 2010

    Rich interfaces are frequently used for delivering complex and valuable online experiences. But rich Internet applications (RIAs) have yet to reach their full potential because they are still primarily used as a replacement for existing form-based processes within a page-based metaphor.

  • What is the Right Customer Experience Strategy?

    Paul Hagen, Forrester Research

    September 28, 2010

    Most companies lack a customer experience strategy. As a result, their leaders struggle with decisions about funding and prioritizing projects meant to improve customer experience at the enterprise level.

  • How to Ensure IT Accessibility in Applications and Websites

    Michelle Bagur, EffectiveUI
    eWeek

    September 22, 2010

    Michelle Bagur explains what IT accessibility is, how to ensure IT accessibility, and the business benefits of ensuring that your company’s software and Website are accessible to people of varied abilities.

  • User Experience and the Platform War

    Rebecca Flavin, EffectiveUI
    UX Booth

    August 10, 2010

    If there is one thing constant about the technology industry, it’s the fact that there is always a battle taking place. Whether it’s to dominate a platform or agree on standards, we are always evolving, and often debating over which direction is best.

  • How to Build a Mobile Web Site: Choosing an Approach to Meet Your Objectives Cost-Effectively

    Julie A. Ask, Forrester Research

    July 29, 2010

    Choosing an Approach to Meet Your Objectives Cost-Effectively The browser-based mobile Web experience is more important than ever, with dramatic growth in the usage of the mobile Internet – especially from smartphones – in the past 24 months.

  • HTML 5: Is There Any Truth to the Hype?

    Ron Rogowski, Forrester Research

    May 10, 2010

    Increased interest in HTML 5 has sparked debate over whether player-based technologies will be irrelevant in the future. But while HTML 5 has the potential to improve some user experiences, it comes with its own set of implementation challenges that can outweigh its benefits.

  • GUIMark 2: The Rise of HTML5

    Sean Christmann, EffectiveUI
    CraftyMind

    May 5, 2010

    Two years ago I had an itch that needed scratching. “RIA” was the future of the Web and every major company seemed to have a solution to get us there.

  • Developing for the iPad

    Jonathan Branam, EffectiveUI
    Dr. Dobb’s Journal

    April 16, 2010

    Six weeks before the launch of Apple’s iPad, I approached my company, EffectiveUI,
    about building an application for the iPad that would be useful for our particular business -- designing and developing user interfaces.

  • Tips for Conducting Effective User Interviews

    Jonathan Anderson, John McRee, Robb Wilson and the team at EffectiveUI
    O’Reilly Answers

    April 15, 2010

    You only think you know what a user wants. The only way you’re going to know for sure is to ask the user. Seems obvious, huh? Knowing what to ask and how to ask it can be stumbling blocks to getting to the information you want.

  • iPad Development: It’s Different in an Exciting Sort of Way

    Jonathan Branam, EffectiveUI
    Dr. Dobb’s Journal

    April 6, 2010

    Jonathan Branam is a senior software developer for EffectiveUI,
    a user experience agency that specializes in the custom Web, mobile and desktop applications. Jonathan Branam recently took time out to take to talk with Dr. Dobb’s Jonathan Erickson.

  • Ideate: A Digital Sketchbook

    Juan Sanchez, EffectiveUI
    UX Magazine

    April 6, 2010

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  • Q&Agency: EffectiveUI

    Rebecca Flavin and Peyton Lindley, EffectiveUI
    Forrester Research – Vidya Drego’s Blog

    March 18, 2010

    Although Rebecca Flavin, CEO, and Peyton Lindley, executive director of UX design and technology at EffectiveUI, were both busy at SXSW, they were kind enough to chat with me. Edited excerpts from that conversation follow.

  • What Movie UIs Say About the Future

    Tony Walt, EffectiveUI
    UX Magazine

    March 8, 2010

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  • Developing Client Empathy: How Designers can Balance User and Stakeholder Interests

    John McRee, EffectiveUI

    February 18, 2010

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  • Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software

    Jonathan Anderson, John McRee, Robb Wilson and the team at EffectiveUI
    O’Reilly Answers

    February 10, 2010

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  • JavaFX Special Effects: Taking Java™ RIA to the Extreme with Animation, Multimedia and Game Elements

    Lucas L. Jordan, EffectiveUI

    December 17, 2009

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  • IT Accessibility for Enterprise: Flirting with Risk

    Michelle Bagur, EffectiveUI

    December 4, 2009

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  • Steering the Ship: Making the Business Case for User Experience

    EffectiveUI

    September 22, 2009