AlexAitken.net

blog’s been dormant. Re­cently I’ve found my­self in con­ver­sa­tions on products vs ser­vices. I’ve star­ted dig­ging up some of my B-School work from five years ago. …are some of the reas­ons I’m throw­ing up this case study on the SAAS pi­on­eer­ing of P&H (a former em­ploy­er, since ac­quired by ACI). Not en­tirely rel­ev­ant to the Busi­ness of front end Code and Design, un­less you con­sider that everything is.

For the second year run­ning I’ve spent four late sum­mer days at Ad­apt­ive Path’s UX Week in San Fran­cisco. The 2009 edi­tion saw me di­li­gently post­ing day-by-day notes and ac­counts. This year I simply re­lay quotes and sources while steer­ing clear of at­tri­bu­tion. The con­fer­ence was again killer, the per­spect­ives at the same time re­fresh­ing and af­firm­ing, the chal­lenges plenty and in­creas­ing, the in­spir­a­tion ubi­quit­ous and palp­able. Thank you Mer­holz and co. for an­oth­er un­qual­i­fied suc­cess.

UX Week 2009

Theme

‘Perception and the senses’ was day three’s theme. Attendees were welcomed with an introduction to the concept of Synesthesia, defined as “a sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied to another modality, such as when the hearing of a certain sound induces the visualization of a certain color.”

See the synesthesia movie.

UX Week 2009

Aaron Forth: Mint.com – Why Good User Experience and Design are Essential

• Traditional tension exists between user experience and business objectives.
• “User Experience is where strategy must begin.”
• There exists a history of frustration with personal finance tools.
• The brand establishes an affiliation with a certain type of content, which in mint’s case is delivered through its blog.
• Key Aspects of the mint.com UI:
  • Setup in less than 3 minutes
  • Reduction of work and repetitive tasks wherever possible
  • Designing for ‘wow’ moments