What is User Experience Design?

I had a need yesterday for a quick definition of user experience and its subsequent value to business. I polled the twittersphere and scoured the web but didn’t find any resource that provided a “quick guide” to UX. Since I had an urgent need, I decided to write my own guide. The guide is a combination of my own ideas and resources (see reference list) I found on the web.

What is a user experience?

A “user experience” encompasses all aspects of the interactions an individual has with a company, its services, and its products.  An exemplary user experience meets current customer needs and anticipates future needs, exceeds customer expectations, sends a clear and strategic message, and delights the customer with innovative solutions.

For example, when Henry Ford built his first car, he was quoted as saying “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” A company’s job is not to give users what they want, but to solve problems. The problems that companies are trying to solve are usually social, and so understanding people and how they interact with each other and their environment forms the key understanding and driving force of the product design and direction.

At the core, user experience advocates for the end-user and makes sure to bring the customer’s perspective into the decision making process. In order to achieve this user-centered approach, user experience designers engage in several activities:

• Observe customers in their natural environment to understand how they are currently interacting with existing systems, as well as get insight into how users view the world (their mental models).

• Build empathy and understanding of the customers within the entire product team

• Work with stakeholders to create unified product vision and a user experience strategy. Both the vision and the strategy aim to balance the user needs with business goals.

• Gather further customer data as needed to make educated design decisions

• Utilize sophisticated design methodologies for ideation and innovation of alternative solution to existing options, and constantly ask, “How will this help the customer kick ass?”

• Involve customers in the design process

• Create a structure and organizational system for information environments

• Ensure that the new solutions are useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, credible, valuable, memorable, and pleasing

• Continually listen to customer feedback and adapt to changing customer needs

• Keep in mind all the touch points of a user experience and ensure seamless integration between all components

What is the value in user experience?

In order to be competitive in the current global market, companies are embracing consumers and realizing the power of design.  A poorly designed product/service often frustrates customers, which ultimately affects the bottom line. A good customer experience correlates to loyalty. Loyalty corresponds to a customer’s willingness to buy another product from the firm, and a reluctance to switch business away from the firm. As any business knows, it is much more cost effective to keep existing customers than acquire new ones. Furthermore, the strong research aspect in user experience helps business understand why customers are behaving a certain way, and design can help influence behavior. Perhaps customers are dropping off during the checkout flow, not coming back to the site, or not renewing their license. User experience helps to find out why and provides solutions to the problem. For example, changing a single button on a site increased a site’s annual revenues by $300 million: http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button

Ultimately, user experience design places a strategic emphasis on the customer, providing value for both the business and the customer. Efficiency is no longer sufficient to be competitive in the current economic climate, a company needs to differentiate through user experience by allowing the customer’s to kick ass, while gaining revenue!

Some cool graphics:

Elements of User Experience Design by Jesse James Garrett: http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf

Facets of user experience:

http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000029.php

What is a user experience?

A “user experience” encompasses all aspects of the interactions an individual has with a company, its services, and its products.  An exemplary user experience meets current customer needs and anticipates future needs, exceeds customer expectations, sends a clear and strategic message, and delights the customer with innovative solutions.

For example, when Henry Ford built his first car, he was quoted as saying “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” A company’s job is not to give users what they want, but to solve problems. The problems that companies are trying to solve are usually social, and so understanding people and how they interact with each other and their environment forms the key understanding and driving force of the product design and direction.

At the core, user experience advocates for the end-user and makes sure to bring the customer’s perspective into the decision making process. In order to achieve this user-centered approach, user experience designers engage in several activities:

• Observe customers in their natural environment to understand how they are currently interacting with existing systems, as well as get insight into how users view the world (their mental models).
• Build empathy and understanding of the customers within the entire product team
• Work with stakeholders to create unified product vision and a user experience strategy. Both the vision and the strategy aim to balance the user needs with business goals.
• Gather further customer data as needed to make educated design decisions
• Utilize sophisticated design methodologies for ideation and innovation of alternative solution to existing options, and constantly ask, “How will this help the customer kick ass?”
• Involve customers in the design process
• Create a structure and organizational system for information environments
• Ensure that the new solutions are useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, credible, valuable, memorable, and pleasing
• Continually listen to customer feedback and adapt to changing customer needs
• Keep in mind all the touch points of a user experience and ensure seamless integration between all components

What is the business value in user experience?

In order to be competitive in the current global market, companies are embracing consumers and realizing the power of design.  A poorly designed product/service often frustrates customers, which ultimately affects the bottom line. A good customer experience correlates to loyalty. Loyalty corresponds to a customer’s willingness to buy another product from the firm, and a reluctance to switch business away from the firm. As any business knows, it is much more cost effective to keep existing customers than acquire new ones. Furthermore, the strong research aspect in user experience helps business understand why customers are behaving a certain way, and design can help influence behavior. Perhaps customers are dropping off during the checkout flow, not coming back to the site, or not renewing their license. User experience helps to find out why and provides solutions to the problem. For example, changing a single button on a site increased a site’s annual revenues by $300 million: http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button

Ultimately, user experience design places a strategic emphasis on the customer, providing value for both the business and the customer. Efficiency is no longer sufficient to be competitive in the current economic climate, a company needs to differentiate through user experience by allowing the customer’s to kick ass, while gaining revenue!

Some cool graphics:

Elements of User Experience Design by Jesse James Garrett: http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf

Facets of user experience: http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000029.php

References

Nielson Norman Group definition of UX
UIE: The Difference between Usability and User Experience
Adaptive Path: Communicate the ROI for Design and Subject to Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World
Kathy Sierra: Subvert from Within: A User Focused Employee Guide

Forrester Research:
Culture and Process Drive Better Customer Experiences
Experience-Based Differentiation
The Business Impact of Customer Experience

Filed under: Thoughts, UX , business value, definition, UX

On Being A Generalist

I have been on the lookout for job opportunities since January. Due to the economic constraints at the moment, many job postings want a UX designer with visual design skills who can develop. Although I can do UX design and development, I am not very well versed in graphic/visual design. I was starting to worry that I am missing an important skill.

At SXSW, I spoke with John Kolko and asked him if visual design was a necessity for UX design. He said that since my designs touch the UI, I should understand the fundamentals. He specifically recommended taking class in composition, typography, color theory, and figure drawing.

All of this has been mulling in my head, and then Jared Spool posted this on the IxDA list: http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=40833 Jared mentioned that ROLES don’t matter, SKILLS do, he also said this:

Our research showed there are core skills [that successful teams possess]: interaction design, information architecture, user research, visual design, information design, fast iteration management, copywriting, and editing.

After thinking everything over, including my own concerns, here is how I feel about being a generalist:

First, I completely agree with Jared, the ROLE and role name do not matter, the SKILLS do. People can call me an IA, UX, IxDA, UI, Web designer, whatever, I still bring the same skills to the table.

Out of the skills that Jared listed, here are the ones that I think specifically pertain to UX:

• user research: because we need to understand the domain and the users of the domain
• information architecture/information design: because we need to be able to thoughtfully and purposefully structure the content based on user and business goals
• interaction design: because interaction makes up the large chunk of the experience
• fast iteration management: because our first ideas are never the best ones, fail quickly and often

The skills that I think are “nice to have” but should NOT be required include:
- visual design
- copy writing and editing
- development (not mentioned in Jared’s list)

The “nice to have” skills that I have listed are in this category because they are professions onto themselves, and I think its unreasonable to believe that a UX designer will be able to master 4 different professions. I believe that if one expects this, then they are going to get a designer who is mediocre at everything. There really is only so much time in the day/life that one can dedicate to new skills, or breadth. Drawing on Jared’s analogy of doctor’s, we would not ask a cardio-thorasic surgeon to deliver a baby, why would we ask a UX designer to craft copy? Yes both a surgeon and an obstetrician are doctors and know the anatomy of a body, much like a UX designer and copywriter know the language, but the mastery of the skill is quite different. If doctor’s have specializations, why can’t UX designers?

This is not to say that people should narrowly specialize, I also agree with Jared on this point, if one is too narrow (only doing usability testing for example), then it could certainly hinder your job prospects because you should be able to apply what you learned from the usability testing to create an improved design, the company does not need to hire another person to do that.

However, visual design, development, and UX design often challenge each other, and it is necessary to have the tension for great designs to emerge. If one person is attempting to do all those jobs at once, they will start compromising on the UX as they begin to think about the code or the grid structure. The compromises start to happen conceptually and the designer becomes constrained.

Now Jared mentioned that the UX designer should have the fundamentals of each of those skills, I am not clear on what Jared means by fundamentals, but I think his definition goes further than my conceptualization – which is knowing enough about the domain to be able to communicate with your colleague. I feel that a UX designer needs to understand the basics of programming, visual design, and copy writing to enable meaningful conversations, debates, compromises and decisions. Understanding how your design is going to be developed has a significant impact on interaction, and one needs to understand those consequences. Similarly, if a visual design hinders usability, the UX designer needs to be able to communicate with the visual designer to come to some kind of agreement that does not break the visual flow. Yet, the UX designer should not necessarily have to create the visual design if the designer falls ill, for example.

Given all that I have said, I know many people have entered the UX field from different domains. I personally came from a computer science/programming background, so don’t mind doing front-end development as well as UX design if things get tight. Others might have come from a visual design background, and so can roll up their sleeves and also do that job. This does not mean that the visual designer needs to be able to code at my level, nor I need to be able to design at theirs. We have our respective skills, and will be able to find work that matches our skill set. This is our version of a cardio-thorasic surgeon vs an obstetrician.

My argument is that a good team should have a well-rounded UX designer (possessing all the required skills, with the nice-to-haves as bonuses), along side separate individuals doing visual design, programming, and copy writing/editing. The UX designer must coordinate with all of these people, but not necessarily be a master at all these skills. I agree with Jared that a good UX team should have ALL of these skills present on the team, I just don’t agree that a single individual should or can posses them.

For myself, I have decided to get better acquainted with the language of visual design, I have asked some friends for resource recommendations, and have put together this amazon wish list.

Also, these lessons were highly recommended: http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/web/50-totally-free-lessons-in-graphic-design-theory/

I know that I will never become an amazing visual designer, but it does not make me any less of a UX designer (who can code none-the-less!).

Filed under: Design, UX , career, skills, UX

UX and Agile

There has recently been a lot of discussion in the UX field about Agile and how we can integrate our work into the process.

Here are some interesting discussions:
Agile & UX on IxDA List
Leah Buley’s post on Burndowns and Flareups in Agile

In my experience working in an Agile environment at THE_GROOP, I feel like Agile can work, but it ultimately depends on your constraints – clients, time, and resources.

What Works:

• Having a Sprint 0 for UX strategy/research before design and development. This is the time for ideation, sketching, and research. This strategy phase is vital to providing the ground work for the rest of the project.
• Writing out the tasks that need to be completed per sprint, and including iteration as one of the tasks. This allows the designer to get both a broad view and detailed view of the project. It is incredibly helpful to lay out all the tasks that need to be done in a concrete way. By going through this activity (however painful and tedious), it forces you to see what you *don’t know* upfront and then plan accordingly. This is also a good time to talk to other stakeholders and figure out how much documentation is necessary. If the developers don’t want an annotated wireframe, then don’t build it into the schedule.
• If you do the Sprint scheduling with other stakeholders like visual designers and developers, it is really easy to coordinate activities, find out where we can all work in parallel, and also surface the dependencies.
• Burning down at the end of each day feels great (for UX as well!) You also quickly learn how long it actually takes you to do things, so that you can estimate better on the next sprint.

What Doesn’t Work:

• Clients often want to see progress each day/week. Once they see initial design ideas, they have a difficult time letting go (no matter how rough the sketch). This makes it VERY difficult to iterate, or “throw away” designs.
• Aside from clients, time constraints often also restrict design iteration. Unlike code, which could potentially be thrown away and written in any number of ways to do the same thing (with most clients non-the- wiser), design is much more “sticky” because it is so visual. Once you start on a path, you are pretty much forced to continue going down that road. It is almost impossible to completely throw out a design that “just didn’t work” and start from scratch. This is especially true since developers and designers are dependent on the UX work to move forward, so once the ball is rolling, its hard to stop.
• There is practically no time for user research/testing after Sprint 0. You basically have to fit it in guerrilla style (after work or during lunch utilizing fellow co-workers), which doesn’t give you great results or confidence

In general, the visibility of UX work makes it very difficult to generate new ideas, conduct proper testing, and iterate on designs. However, it does force the designer to plan ahead, and get to know themselves a bit better. I do believe agile can work for UX, but perhaps a modified version that takes some of the problems into account.

I am still going to be thinking and developing my ideas about this topic as time goes on, but these are my initial impressions. Will be interesting to see how things change over time!

Filed under: Design, UX , agile, UX

Experience Matters: An Airline Example

I just came back from a trip to Atlanta, and I flew Delta because they are the cheapest to that destination given that Atlanta is their hub. I thought it was really apropos when I read this blog post by Peter Merholz today that specifically talked about the airline industry, where he stated that “Customer experience refers to the totality of experience a customer has with a business, across all channels and touchpoints.”

I chose to fly Delta because of cost, but I looked at the routes that Soutwest, JetBlue, and Virgin flew before looking on Delta because I was willing to pay more for the better customer experience. Unfortunately, none of those airlines went to my destination, so I was forced to pay $15 for one bag, $8 for a sandwich, and $2 for headphones for the pleasure of watching a tiny screen in the middle of the aisle which kind of hurt my neck to look at after a while. I was REALLY unhappy about having to pay for my one bag given that I can’t get threw security with a little bag anymore because of all the liquid restrictions. I hate being nickle and dimed, and I don’t believe the price is even justified anymore given that gas prices have dropped significantly. I guess I would sum up by saying that my experience at all the touchpoints as horrible, and I hope that someone over there reads Peters article.

Filed under: Thoughts, UX , airline, experience

Thinking About Sketching and Personas

I recently attended a UX book club in Los Angeles. As part of the worldwide UX book club movement, we read Bill Buxton’s “Sketching User Experiences”. About 20 people showed up for the discussion, which made it really interactive and great. There was certainly discussion about the book itself, with the main insight (for me) coming from the understanding that sketching is like having a conversation, the conversation is the most important part, not the final product. Sketching is a way to think through a problem by utilizing different mental processes, so the final sketch does not matter, rather the insights that you gained from the *act* of sketching does. This makes a lot of sense to my academic side, because discussions were always a big way to surface the questions and inconsistencies I didn’t know existed. I have certainly participated in a lot of class discussions where the act of talking about something truly helped me “get it”, whereas reading the same thing in textbook would never have given me that “ah ha!” moment.

Aside from the sketching takeaway, something that really struck me in our book club conversation revolved around the purpose of personas. I am not sure how we got around to talking about personas (I think I brought it up!), but one seriously insightful individual said the following (I want to call if out for emphasis):

Personas are a way to enable a shared reality with your team

Take a minute to absorb that… Personas are a communication tool for a shared reality. Their purpose is to enable everyone to empathize with your persona and understand them on some level, with the hope that everyone has a similar enough understanding that we are all working towards the same goal.

My biggest beef with personas coming to the meeting was that there was very little buy-in, but how can there be buy-in when I created the personas in a vacuum and then presented them to the team? The team has no stake in the persona, it is just another piece of paper to them. They didn’t invest the time to observe, digest, analyze and write-up the data. They can’t see through the personas eyes as I do, because they have not breathed and lived it like I have. In my experience, the team often takes on look at it and then forgets about it. Which brings me to the question – can a persona adequately communicate a shared reality if the rest of the team was not invovled in its creation?

I am coming to realize that this is not possible, and that the entire team needs to be involved in persona creation (which includes data collection). Then the persona needs to be created as a team (nice whiteboard exercise there!), so that everyone already shares the reality before the formal document is created, and the document is just there as a nice reminder – a solidified form of our shared reality if you will.

Bringing this entire conversation full circle, it seems to me that the *act* of persona creation is the important aspect here, because creating the persona is how one achieves the shared reality with the team, the actual artifact is less significant.

Filed under: UX , personas, sketching, UX

Kathy Sierra: Help Your Users Become Kick Ass

Awesome presentation by Kathy Sierra on how to to truly concentrate on your users, helping them achieve their goals, become passionate, and more intelligent. Wonderful presentation:

http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2008/london/videos/kathy-sierra/

Filed under: Design, UX , kathy sierra, user experience

IA Summit: Participatory Design

Purpose of participatory design: To understand the people using your site and uncover latent needs and desires. Then translate those needs into product.

Setting up the lab

Large TV used for demonstrations (show and tell), don’t have to crowd around small monitor
Cameras set up around the room to get a variety of angles, including ceiling (to get a shot of what people are working on)
Used Austin Powers and Homer Simpson cut outs – sets mood of relaxation and fun
Large table for people to spread out and be creative
Large whiteboard for brainstorming
One-way mirror where the team can watch the sessions
Keep the session relaxed
Food – helps breaks down the social barriers

Recruiting

Use an incentive of $150-200
Communicate about the food options that are going to be available so that person can eat if only snacks are provided (and are not thinking about food the entire time)
6-9 participants
Can have designer or business person co-facilitate (take pictures, answer questions)
Recruit with specific specifications in mind (newbie, expert, mix, ect)

Brainstorming

Example: Design a coffee maker

Workflows and Features: Steps required to make coffee and/or tea
Show and Tell: Used a Similar Coffee Maker? Describe the steps to make it work
Individual Design Exercise: Sketch your ideas coffee maker
Discuss of the Individual Designs
Work as a team of 3 and and sketch new design
Discussion of th Group Design

PICTIVE

Construct designs

Can have magnetic interface elements
Post it notes
Construction paper
Glue stick!!
Have people construct designs
Seed pieces: to cut or not to cut? Cut out pieces, but not too many. Don’t make multiple copies of the same thing (ex: more than one search box – too granular).
8.5×11 for individual

8.5×14 or 11×17 for group sessions

Can give screenshots of other websites such as Amazon, Walmart, Google (without brand) and allow people to cut out elements.

Can also have a second package that is more leading and fancy such as ajax elements and competitors sites. This provides for multiple datapoints. They first work with package 1 then 10 minutes later they get package 2.

Looking for discussion and underlying content, not layout
Differences in individual and group designs
Sequence of the elements that they took out/cut out and used
Provide very specific tasks or personas for the design activity

Don’t take participants design literally! Trying to get at the root of the need.

Running a Session: Tips & Tricks

Move from general to specific to avoid biasing
Introduction (Great Greg, Magnificent Michael, ect)
Jokes
Want to be dressed better than participants (to assert authority)
Make crazy faces at people behind the mirror (acknowledge that they are being watched)
Warm up – use whiteboard to write down activities, existing features, features wanted
People talk about physical features, but we are looking for underlying motivations and roles. Probe participants to get at the “why”
Round Robin – ask people what they think (don’t do this too often)
Can have design review of group design – better if people did not design the same thing to avoid competition

Will end up with lots of data points around the artifact creation!

Analysis

It’s going to take 2 weeks (recommended timeline)

• take time off
• watch the videos again, if you hear something interesting you type it up
• reconstruct the sequence
• come up with a report and plan 4-5 insights
• Looking for worksflows, goals/motivations, interests, expectations, behaviors, mental models, features
  • features are least important, people have a hard time expression features. It is better to understand the underlying needs.
• Create roles (mini personas): motivations, behaviors, expectations, interesting in ..

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Filed under: Conferences, Design, UX , iasummit2008

IA Summit: How To Be A UX Team of One

Leah Buley from adaptive path gave THE BEST talk ever on “How to be a UX Team of One”.

3 strategies for being a UX Team of one

1. Brainstorm, a lot
2. Assemble an ad hoc team
3. Pick the best ideas

Brainstorming

Generate lots of ideas by sketching with just a pen and paper. Have at least 5 sketches before putting down a single pixel on the computer.

You can use several tricks to generate ideas:

Spectrum, 2×2, and Grids (just to name a few). Leah used the example of Evite to talk about the different techniques.

In spectrum brainstorming, you generate designs on a spectrum from first time users to experts.

In a 2×2 (which has both an x and y axis), the horizontal spectrum is still a continuum from first time user and expert and the vertical spectrum flows between automatic invitation creation to manual invitation creation. Create sketches for all of those scenarios.

In a grid, you think about the first time user, the guided user, and the expert. You can also think about the website as being about invitation design, about friends, about tracking, about fun. Then create designs for each combination.

Aside from these techniques, you can also experiment with word associations and come up with designs from the word associations. Additionally, Leah highly recommends having an inspirational library (she uses a Firefox plugin called screengrab). You can take elements from designs that you really like and combine them to create innovative new designs.

Assemble an Ad Hoc Team

Host open design sessions with as many stakeholders as possible to generate ideas. Have an informal design session (with pizza) where everyone creates sketches.

You can run template based workshops to help non-designers create sketches.

You should also decorate your work space with sketches so that your ideas are public and you can get a constant stream of feedback and conversation.

Finally, you can create sketchboards that posts requirements next to sketches to enable conversation.

Pick the best ideas

Brainstorming is all about generating lots of ideas, eventually you need to pick the best ones to get to your final design.

You can pick the best ideas through

1. Business needs (okay)
2. User needs (better)
3. Design principles (best)

Design principles are a small number of specific phrases that describe what you want the product to be; they are your “north star” or guiding light in picking the most optimal design.

So in the case of Evite

increase registration (business need) + help manage communication (user need) = make it addictive (design principle).

The design principle is greater than the sum of business needs and user needs. By “make it addictive” we mean we want to encourage everyone associated with the event to keep coming back to the site. So which ever designs best fit the design principle are the ones that make the cut.

Finally, Leah ended by DECLARING that “I am a UX Team of One!” and asking everyone to join her in the declaration. Plus, we go an awesome pin to wear that proclaims each of us as a UX Team of One.

So I would like to sum up by saying

I am UX Team of One! Hear me roar!

Filed under: Conferences, UX , iasummit2008

IA Summit Liveblog: Tagging Five Emerging Trends

Tagging: Five Emerging Trends by Gene Smith

Gene recently came out with a book on tagging called Tagging: People-Powered Metadata for the Social Web (Voices That Matter)

[Side note: I found out from Gene that he mentioned my WWW07 article somewhere in his book, sweet!]

Trends force us to challenge and change our conceptual model. The traditional model is user-resource-tags. The model was developed by analyzing the first tagging systems like delicious.

Because delicious and Flickr were so well designed, we thought they represented all tagging systems. However, there has been a lot of innovation from other systems.

Five Trends
- More Structure
- Automanual Folksonomies
- Leveraging Communities
- Rethinking Pace Layers
- Sparking Innovating

The trends are not stand-alone, they blend together. They also show that tagging is going off in a new direction.

More Structure

In first wave, people liked the lack of structure in tags. Tags allowed differences to flourish such as people who like “cinema” versus “movies” (quotes from Shirky). Although tagging systems met people’s needs, there was still a desire for structure.

Examples:

wesabe.com – came up with sticky and non-sticky tags. Sticky tags are associated with a specific merchant, while one-time tags are associated with the transaction. This is innovative because wasabe broke up the “resource” part of the tagging triad into parts.

zigtag – introduced semantic tags. Provides definitions for each tag. They mined Wikipedia for definitions, in order to make the tags more meaningful.

Leveraging Communities

LibraryThing allows you to combine two tags and essentially makes them a synonym. The combinations are generated by the users of the system. This eliminates a lot of noise, and creates a user-generated controlled vocabulary.

A negotiation needs to happen within the community about which tags should be combined or broken apart. Interestingly, “humor” and “humour” are not combined, although overlap exists.

Automanual Folksonomies

A combination of automatic and bottom-up structures.

Etsy.com – an ebay fo hand-made items. If you are the designer of etsy, how do you create product categories when you don’t know what people will sell? So Etsy’s solution was to use tags, but define top-level categories which people had to pick.

LibraryThing – tagmash is a search feature where you can combine/subtract tags in your search. Tim Spalding used tagmash to emulate LC subject headings. This allows LibraryThing to see which books fall into specific headings. It also creates a cheap and easy maintenance system.

Rethinking Pace Layers

Pace layers is a concept developed by Steward Brand. He talked about it in “How Buildings Learn”. Peter Morville adopted this for IA.

Some layers such as taxonomies are durable and less flexible than tagging, which is adaptable. However, tags are not only flexible, adaptable, but also durable (quoted Golder and Huberman’s work on the stability of tags over time).

Buzzillions.com – created a system that leverages a product taxonomy, faceted navigation, and user-generated tags. You can use these tags to filter out products (in concert with a product taxonomy). They also turned product reviews into filtering through fragmenting text into tags, creating a faceted classification, and allowing filtering (Fragment, Facet, Tag).

Sparking Innovation

Geotagging in Flickr started with one guy tagging his photos with longitude and latitude. Then flickr build the functionality into the system, so it became automatic.

Final Thoughts

Tags are an essential component of products. This is especially evident when developers innovate with tagging, and make the product better.

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Filed under: Conferences, UX , iasummit2008