Having empathy is a willingness to learn, unflawed by judgement and accusation. In design, it is a  complete acceptance and understanding of your end-user. It is a self-less approach that requires conscious effort and practice to completely put yourself in another person’s shoe and create a product that he or she will find useful and user-friendly.

Often my empathic first look almost always leads to a number of interesting ideas to explore for clients and personal friends. At times I am accused of already having figure things out…the truth is NOT! You’ve simply given me a wealth of material to work with by sharing whatever is on your mind about an idea, product, career, etc. Empathy gives me the insight to discover marketable nuggets in others capabilities, skills and ideas. The rest is about making a life choice based on comfort levels and then taking action. Having an empathic look at life and those around you is a great way to learn and discover a world and point of view apart from your own. It is the source of my relentless energy.

Here’s an insightful article from Wired on empathy about Steve Jobs and his family’s decision-making around a dishwasher back in 2005.

Do you have an empathetic mind? How has it helped your personal life, career and those around you?  Next time you find an opportunity, do it with grok.

So who is visiting you website or using your application? How much do you know about them and are you meeting their needs. The more you know about your users the better you can cater to their needs. If you don’t care about your users it’s going to show. Who needs that? What’s the point in building an application or website people use only once and never use again. One tool for better understanding your users is to create a persona. Personas can be used for a new website or application or when re-designing an existing site or application.

So what is a persona? Well it’s just a made up person that you breathe life into.

Personas are documents that describe typical users. They can be useful to your project team, stakeholders, and clients. With appropriate research and descriptions, personas can paint a very clear picture of who is using the site or application, and potentially even how they are using it – A Project Guide to UX Design

A persona is a made-up person you will write to. A real person may have several different goals in mind, but a persona is built around a single goal or main objective. Every time you spot a different goal, you create a new persona…Once you have a persona’s goal clearly defined, dress the character up. Assign a name, an age, an employer, a daily routine, and a car, but not just any car – a particular car with a dent on the front right bumper. The specificity is important because it helps you believe in your own creation. Hot Text – Web Writing That Works

The use of personas is a technique popularized by Alan Cooper in his 1999 book The Inmates are Running the Asylum

There are five methods for gathering the information to create personas.

• Contextual Interviews
• Individual Interviews
• Online Surveys
• Focus Groups
• Usability Testing

For the average person with a small budget I would recommend using online surveys. They are easy to develop and conduct. Ideally using more than one research method will yield more information to write your personas. You can create your surveys using Google Docs or Survey Monkey.

The time invested up front to conduct user research will save time and money in the end. So if you can afford it spend the money on more than one user research method.

You should write at least three personas…yes three… not one or two…three. Some people write more than that so you’re getting off easy. Your persona should at a minimum have the following information:

• Photo
• Name
• Age
• Location
• Occupation
• Biography

You can also add the following information as well if relevant:

• Education
• Online activities
• Offline activities
• Salary
• Comfort with technology
• The list can go on and on…add whatever else you think might be important to make the persona as real as possible

Usability.gov, published by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, has some examples of personas . The site also has examples of other documents for web design and usability guidelines.

Personas are a good way to get everyone working on a project out of their own heads and thinking about the people who will benefit from what they are working on. So stick them up on the wall after you create them and read them often so that you remember that “you are not your audience”.

Shelley-Ann West, Guest Blogger

For starters, the smartphone is contradicting a trend we currently see in the traditional desktop space. Whereas cloud computing and other technologies are shifting content from specialized applications into browser-centralized spaces, smartphones are being packaged with dozens of applications, and access to thousands more through the application marketplace (Apple’s App Store, for example, just topped 15,000 applications).

And so for this very reason, more and more advertisers view the mobile application as the new website. Today, mobile ad solutions and networks are gaining ground on their traditional online counterparts. By providing a high quality Software Development Kit (SDK) to application developers, companies like AdMob, Smaato, even Nokia, are enabling developers to monetize their applications with display advertising and sponsorship opportunities. From the advertisers’ perspective, there is more than enough volume to justify a buy, and since these advertising features are centrally built, the networks are able to provide rich ad experiences via SDK.

Another “big deal” factor: Consider the recent partnership between Adobe (maker of Flash) and chip-maker ARM (which powers about 90 percent of mobile phones worldwide). While it’s true that more and more phones can browse the Web, it’s also true that many mobile phones have only a limited ability to show much of the Web’s content. Video and Flash-heavy websites simply don’t work well, if at all, on many phones due to the software and hardware incompatibility. But this recent collaboration marks a commitment to bring more of the Web to mobile devices.

All of this of course, has an effect on how businesses and developers approach the mobile Web. With so many people from around the world accessing the web via mobile devices, smart companies and developers will need to:

1.  Understand that brands and access to critical information is always on. Brands today are expected to provide faster and more customizable experiences, more engaging content, and more opportunities for consumers to share ideas and opinions. And a lot of this is happening through mobile devices and applications.

2.  Extend website access to include mobile browsers. It’s no longer enough to test sites on Firefox, IE and Safari. Developers will need to develop and test their sites for mobile devices to see how they look and function there as well.

3.  Develop mobile versions of their websites. In addition to testing sites for mobile-compatibility, developers will need to start considering developing specifically for mobile devices.

4.  Focus on mobile applications. Mobile-compatible sites are good; mobile applications are better (just ask Apple).

5.  Consider sending mobile email and SMS. In addition to “traditional” HTML email campaigns, companies need to look at more effective ways to reach and engage their audiences. Like its websites, companies and developers should be testing HTML emails for mobile compatibility, while considering SMS and mobile-specific landing pages as a complement to these campaigns.

With the maturation and penetration of smartphones, businesses, developers and content providers can no longer afford to ignore users of their websites who happen to surf in on a mobile device. Luckily, it’s now possible to achieve a feature-rich, interactive, and visually impactful mobile presence that serves your brand, extends your community of users onto a new platform, helps make inroads into new user groups and demographics, and above all, positions you well in a rich media environment that is no longer a thing of the future but has, in fact, already arrived.

Eric Pilkington, Guest Blogger

When the Creative and Product Development Director, Jeff Bauer of Forbes.com approached me with the project in late December 2007 I had to think 10x. We recently reconnected after a 30-day hiatus from an intense summer courtship. I questioned the idea of working with someone I dearly admire and share an intimate closeness with. On the other hand I wanted the bragging rights to a Forbes.com project while showcasing our capability to deliver top-notch quality in a rapid development environment. It was the holidays who in the right mind wants to work on this project? We enjoy the challenge. Towards the end of that phone conversation with the CD/PD and my boyfriend at Forbes.com, I said “you must be desperate to ask me to work on this project.” [Laughter ensued from both ends of the line]

I’ve delivered work for Forbes.com in the past while freelancing for a boutique agency, Murphy & Co. during my first six-months in New York City. I am aware that Forbes.com enjoys arm wrestling their vendors to a whimper in exchange for the prestige of saying “I’ve worked with Forbes.com.” You’ll be happy to know that we didn’t arm wrestle over this project and there was no whimpering involved. My team and I jumped in on the opportunity. I am glad we were chosen to work on the Forbes.com America’s Sinful Cities assignment. It offered viral press and opportunity to showcase Mavin Digital’s creativity in digital storytelling, technology, programming and our solution-centric approach.

When a third-party partner recognizes the value of your idea, your product and your service it makes a big difference in your project experience and the finished creation.

Over a year later, the assignment continues to receive a significant amount of traffic. It continues to draw people. We continue to be relevant. One thing I would improve are the social media capabilities which am sure without the time constraints at that time Forbes.com would have wanted reader interaction features. It would be interesting to visualize how these rankings changed over time considering the current economic conditions and new administration. Do you agree with the rankings and methodology used? Did the visual help make the article more interesting and entertaining?

Flowingdata, April 10, 2008

Suspect Device The Blog, March 28, 2008

Newstin, March 28, 2008

Yelp San Francisco, March 18, 2008

Neatorama, February 29, 2008

Democratic Underground, February 28, 2008

Yelp San Jose, CA, February 27, 2008

Albert Mohler, February 22, 2008

Free Public Focus, February 20, 2008

Belize Web, February 16, 2008

City Data, No date on posts and reader comments