Mental models become necessary when designs fail us. Although it may seem like our conscious self is always in control, much of our behavior is automatic. When we repeat actions frequently in similar situations they come to be invoked independently of conscious thought. These automatic behaviors or habits are an…

Jim Lentz and Mark Marrara Modern technology changes quickly. It doesn’t just advance. It rushes ahead of us. It forces us to constantly adapt to the shape-shifting stuff we make for ourselves. Technophiles find this state of affairs to be exciting and overwhelmingly positive. However, others often find it less…

Some musings about user intention and user experience. There is more to the human-machine relationship than experience design Somewhere around 1990, usage emotionality caught the fancy of usability professionals. It seemed like a good idea at the time. …

Jim Lentz and Mark Marrara Experience design has been around for much longer than many designers realize [1]. One could argue that it began in prehistory when a flint knapper first hafted a stone blade into a wooden handle in order to make it more comfortable to hold. Or maybe…

a critical survey People who design products and services are fond of creating charts that they call “maps”. One kind of map is variously called a journey map, experience map, customer experience map, and customer journey map. You want to cover all bases you could call them customer-experience journey maps…

authors: Mark Marrara and James Lentz Over the past 80 years or so, the rate of technological change increased so rapidly that it became necessary to create entirely new disciplines and approaches to ensure that the design of new devices and systems aligns with human motivations, abilities, and limitations. These…

The inspiration for the title of this publication comes from the title of a book by E.O. Wilson. It may seem odd that a blog about user experience design was inspired by a book by a famous ant scientist. …

authors: James Lentz and Mark Marrara Personas have been a part of the experience designer’s and researcher’s toolkits since Alan Cooper introduced the term more than 20 years ago (Cooper, 1999). They are now pervasively used in design, marketing and product management (Owens, 2017; de Haaff, 2017). …