Robot and virtual pets are beginning to replace children's interactions with biologically live pets," said Ruckert. "The larger concern is that technological nature will shift the baseline of what people perceive as the full human experience of nature, and that it will contribute to what we call environmental generational amnesia.

During discovery, we review the baseline analytics to look for potential problem issues. We then collaborate with the analytics team to conduct the goals analysis, connecting high-level user and business goals to measurable user behaviors. During design, we collaborate with the optimization team to identify and generate design variants for A/B and multivariate testing. And then post-launch, we supplement analytics data with user surveys and usability testing, providing the "why" for the "what." Then we repeat steps one through four.

First, people aren't really interested in what we do; they're interested in the results that we deliver. Second, running around and selling things is not as effective as actually applying your design skills to problems that matter. In many ways, business people look at things and size up the problems. They may avoid complex variables - the who, what, where - simply because they are complicated factors.

More than anything, Google prefers to make design decisions based on what performs well. And as a company, Google cares about being fast, so we want our user experience to be fast. That's not just in terms of front-end latency-how long it takes the page to download-it's also about making people use their computers more efficiently. A lot of our design decisions are really driven by cognitive psychology research that shows that, say, people online read black text against a white background much faster than white against black, or that sans serif fonts are more easily read than serif fonts online.

The score itself is what most people are interested in - the difference, expressed in a percentage, between those people who are very likely to recommend your brand and those people and the beauty of it is that it can reflect the different levels of engagement and loyalty that customers feel to different types of brand.

Stefan and I sat down with Martin, a Senior Product Manager on the Search team, to find out the process for improving search and where things may be trending. An interesting discussion with the slickest sticky-note you've seen today

aesthetics, when misused, can severely diminish the quality of experience

Research released recently confirms that taking a 'one size fits all' approach to retailing is no longer relevant in a highly competitive environment where the mass market has been replaced by increased fragmentation amongst consumers. Providing a standardised retail offering to large numbers of people is no longer appropriate for consumers who are increasingly demanding a more tailored and individualised service.

The ways people react to robots is teaching computer and robotics scientists valuable lessons about how to make technology more user-friendly -- and more human.

What lessons can be gleaned from the Madoff case for those who want to be influential but who refuse to tumble to Mr. Madoff's ethical level in the process? Honestly informing prospects, customers, clients, superiors, or coworkers of the views of legitimate authorities and/or the choices of comparable others is a both a potent and ethical route to persuasive success. But, to maximize the effect of these two sources of influence, there is one additional aspect to consider: They will have particularly strong impact under conditions of uncertainty, when people are looking outside rather than inside themselves for answers.

Did you know that the images of faces that capture people's attention can be used to guide people around a website or an ad? I thought it was obvious! However, when I was at ad:tech Sydney 09 last week I mentioned it to people, and they were amazed! I realised it was worth posting about it!

n this interview made during Agile 2008, Alan Cooper, the father of Visual Basic and supporter of interaction design, talks about his contact with the Agile movement and the similarities discovered between Agile programmers and interaction designers.

In this article, we'll take a detailed look at the design, layout and usability of Craigslist and point out some areas where we feel change and improvement are possible. This is only one opinion of what could be done to improve the site. Our goal is to demonstrate the process of evaluating a website in certain areas and determining specific improvements that can be made. Hopefully this will help other designers who are attempting to evaluate websites of their own or of clients.

Of course, a part from taking the pictures the analysis and annotation might have taken some time, but you'll manage doing that within one day. I think his report is a great example that even an unexperienced 'user researcher' can produce a wealth of design information in a limited amount of time, given the fact that he or she is in the right place at the right time.

it was easy (sort of) to "run the studies" enough times to understand the average variation that occurrs in the groups of different sizes. Based on their simulations, Tullis & Woods concluded cardsorting studies with just 20-30 participants are robust and predictive

We surveyed the top 20 most-trafficked wired Web sites - according to Nielsen Online - and we found that half of the sites did not work well on leading mobile phones.

There are three key areas to consider in design and benchmarking when undertaking such a substantial airport redevelopment project. First, we considered our passengers and how we engineered their journey through the airport. Taking into account everything from walking times to way-finding and immigration, our airport design has ensured the optimal journey.'

There are three things that are "rolling" about the list. First, the team adds issues to the list as they see new things come up (or that you didn't notice before, or seemed like a one-off problem). Second, the team adds participant numbers for each of the issues as the test goes along. Third, the team refines the descriptions of the issues as they learn more from each new participant.

The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable. Achieving a harmonious balance of these ten principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is "Googley" - and will satisfy and delight people all over the world.

A few months ago, I hired Conversion Rate Experts to work on my business. I have learned loads from them. So far they have grown our conversion rate by 124%, and have given me great insights into the thought process of consumers hitting this site...reminding me why they buy, and how ineffectively we were conveying the value of all the different components of our offering. 124% is a good start, and we still have a lot of things to improve upon.