Why Limit Media

25 User Experience Videos That Are Worth Your Time

We’re all mostly accus­tomed to edu­cat­ing our­selves by read­ing arti­cles. Rare are the oppor­tu­ni­ties to attend con­fer­ences or watch live shows on sub­jects that we’re inter­ested in. That’s why we are pre­sent­ing here phe­nom­e­nal videos and related resources on the topic of user expe­ri­ence (UX) by dif­fer­ent pre­sen­ters at dif­fer­ent events. We have focused on cur­rent con­tent but have included some older videos that are still rel­e­vant. It will take you more than 16 hours to watch all of these videos. So, make some pop­corn, turn off the lights and enjoy.

User Expe­ri­ence Videos

The State of User Expe­ri­ence
Jesse James Garett, founder of Adap­tive Path and author of the book The Ele­ments of User Expe­ri­ence, speaks on what UX and UX design is, what UX looked like before and what are some of the chal­lenges peo­ple are encoun­ter­ing now. He cites engage­ment as the main goal of UX design and, through some fan­tas­tic exam­ples, shows that engage­ment is an uni­ver­sal qual­ity achieved through visu­al­ity, sound, touch, smell, taste, body and mind. One of the most impres­sive moments from the ses­sion is when Jesse com­pares Beethoven to an expe­ri­ence designer, accom­pa­nied by the Ninth Sym­phony. Dura­tion: 40 minutes.

UX Best Prac­tices
In this excel­lent video ses­sion, Nick Finck pries open the most pop­u­lar web­sites today, includ­ing eBay, Ama­zon, Toy­ota, Flickr, Twit­ter and Net­flix, to explain user expe­ri­ence best prac­tices. Nick dis­cusses both the good and bad expe­ri­ences on these web­sites on the basis of visual design, infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture, inter­ac­tion and ease of use. For those unfa­mil­iar with UX, Nick explains the basic con­cept and con­tribut­ing fac­tors. The last 20 min­utes of the ses­sion are reserved for Q&A, and some very inter­est­ing ques­tions and great answers come up. Dura­tion: 1 hour 32 min­utes. There is no video of the ses­sion, only 75 slides with an aud­tio track.

The Three Ways That Good Design Makes You Happy
In this short but fan­tas­tic lec­ture, Don Nor­man, known to many as the author of The Design of Every­day Things, explains visual, behav­ioral and reflec­tive design and the ways in which each of them affects peo­ple. In his witty way, Done shows exam­ples from every­day life. Dura­tion: 13 minutes.

5 Min­utes on Imi­ta­tion in Design
In this bril­liant short talk, Jef­frey Veen explains what is meant by “Good artists copy, great artist steal.” By way of an inter­est­ing short story about World War II and the Amer­i­can army’s con­tact with natives of the Pacific Islands, he also explains “cargo cult” and how it still present today. A truly bril­liant video. Dura­tion: 6 minutes.

UX Team of One
In this half-​​hour ses­sion held at the IA Sum­mit 2008, Leah Buley of Adap­tive Path shows what it means to be a UX team of one by telling her own story and recount­ing a real-​​life exam­ple. Leah explains the con­cept of gen­er­a­tive design, which is the process of cre­at­ing and sketch­ing a lot of dif­fer­ent ideas and then refin­ing them. The slides are amaz­ing because Leah drew them by hand. Dura­tion: 32 minutes.

Expe­ri­ence Is the Prod­uct
Peter Mer­holz explains why it is impor­tant to focus not on tech­nol­ogy or fea­tures but on the prod­uct and the expe­ri­ence you want to cre­ate. The ses­sion is rich in good and bad exam­ples drawn from real life. Dura­tion: 43 minutes.

Behav­ior Is Our Medium
In this fan­tas­tic ses­sion, Robert Fab­ri­cant talks about inter­ac­tion design beyond com­put­ing tech­nol­ogy. His exam­ples include the fam­ily tree and one par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing tree that his daugh­ters drew. His exam­ples from his­tory, espe­cially ancient his­tory, are amaz­ing and put inter­ac­tion design in a broader con­text beyond the com­puter inter­faces we’re so used to. Dura­tion: 61 minutes.

Web Form Design
If you think Web forms suck (because you have to fill them in every day), then you must see this video. This talk by Luke Wrob­lewsky at MIX 09 is based on years of expe­ri­ence in usabil­ity test­ing and study. Luke shows exam­ples from the real world and addresses the major prob­lems with Web form design today. You will see how some of the biggest web­sites have failed and what you can do to pre­vent such fail­ures in your Web forms. Dura­tion: 75 minutes.

User Expe­ri­ence Design for Non-​​Designers
In this short mini-​​breakout ses­sion, Shawn Konopin­sky explains what UX design is at a very abstract level. He shows three dif­fer­ent types of user inter­faces and how UX design applies to all three. He explains basic con­cepts such as con­cept ideation, inter­ac­tion design and visual design and empha­sizes the impor­tance of an “Agile” approach to projects. Dura­tion: 18 minutes.

The Impor­tance of Iden­tity and Vision to UX Design­ers on Agile Projects
If you watched the pre­vi­ous video, you will know why the Agile approach is impor­tant in UX design. This video and the slides go deeper into the Agile approach, rely­ing on research done at Lon­don uni­ver­sity. Johanna Koll­mann explains the research and the results. Dura­tion: 32 minutes.

Learn­ing IxD from Every­day Objects
“Inspi­ra­tion sur­rounds us in every­day objects.” This is how Bill DeR­ouchey begins this bril­liant talk about inter­ac­tion design. We use icons, words or shapes to cre­ate a lan­guage of inter­ac­tions. If we use the wrong lan­guage, the inter­ac­tion becomes con­fus­ing, and this is what Bill shows, using many com­mon objects and devices. One of the most inter­est­ing slides is the one that shows how users “hack the inter­face.” Dura­tion: 45 minutes.

Two videos: Infor­ma­tion and Archi­tec­ture
In these two short videos, Mickey McManus explains related con­cepts: infor­ma­tion and archi­tec­ture, using every­day objects, such as cup of tea, to illus­trate his argu­ment. The videos are part of a short arti­cle in which Mickey draws these con­cepts together to explain what infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture is. Dura­tion: a few minutes.

Wire­frames for the Wicked
Nick Finck, along with Michael Angels and Donna Spencer, goes over wire­fram­ing basics via short easy ques­tions. What are wire­frames? Why use wire­frames? What does the process of wire­fram­ing look like? The three of them also explain the dif­fer­ent types of wire­frames and show exam­ples of their work. Dura­tion: 1 hour 5 minutes.

Design Pro­to­typ­ing: Bring­ing Wire­frames to Life
Dan Har­rel­son explains the pur­pose of pro­to­typ­ing, why it is impor­tant and how it dif­fers from wire­frames and visual comps. With wire­fram­ing, instead of see­ing how a con­cept func­tions or works, we see how it actu­ally feels, which con­tributes to bet­ter usabil­ity test­ing. The video, like all videos from MIX 09, has “dou­ble view”: while look­ing at the large slides, you have a syn­chro­nized inset video of the speaker. Dura­tion: 60 minutes.

Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of Design
Does user-​​centric design really exist? In this funny keynote, Jared Spool asks whether user-​​centric design (UCD) has lost its way and needs to evolve into some­thing else. Iron­i­cally, as stud­ies have shown, many great projects have suc­ceeded with­out UCD. Jared sug­gests three key attrib­utes of great expe­ri­ence design that can replace UCD. Dura­tion: 1 hour 14 minutes.

User-​​Centered Design 101
In this Web sem­i­nar, Frank Spiller demys­ti­fies the par­a­digm of UCD. He explains the dif­fer­ence between usabil­ity and UCD, which has con­fused many. From the per­spec­tive of the devel­op­ment process, he com­pares UCD to the Agile and Water­fall processes. At the end, he shows some UCD suc­cess sto­ries. Dura­tion: 58 minutes.

The Mint​.com Expe­ri­ence
Aaron Forth of Mint​.com speaks of the impor­tance of align­ing your user expe­ri­ence and busi­ness objec­tives. He goes over the chal­lenges of deliv­er­ing such a user expe­ri­ence at Mint, what the com­pany did to attract brand inter­est and how Mint became one of the best personal-​​finance soft­ware tools today. Inter­est­ing fact: Mint dis­con­tin­ued IE6 sup­port because it spent almost 20% of its time design­ing for the browser. Dura­tion: 40 minutes.

Mobile User Expe­ri­ences
Rachel Hin­man start her talk about mobile user expe­ri­ences with a provoca­tive thought: that tech­nol­ogy dis­en­gages us from real life. She says we should rethink our rela­tion­ship to devices and use them in the con­text of con­crete tasks. Dura­tion: 24 minutes.

Tap Is the New Click
“Sev­eral years ago, Minor­ity Report was a sci-​​fi movie, and now we’re already there with [the touch wall].” At the begin­ning of his ses­sion, Dan Saf­fer shows a cou­ple of exam­ples of touch-​​screen tech­nol­ogy that marks the begin­ning of a new era of inter­ac­tion in which ges­ture and touch replace mouse clicks. He explains how to design for these tech­nolo­gies by going over how touch-​​screens dif­fer from tra­di­tional web­sites and devices. Dura­tion: 67 minutes.

10/​GUI
This is a fan­tas­tic exper­i­ment that exam­ines cur­rent mouse-​​driven user inter­faces and their lim­i­ta­tion while offer­ing a com­pletely new way of inter­ac­tion. Although key­board and mouse were really great inno­va­tions in past cen­tury, Clay­ton Miller think we shouldn’t stop there but rather inno­vate fur­ther. Dura­tion: 8 minutes.

The Least You Can Do About Usabil­ity
Steve Krug, known to many as the author of Don’t Make Me Think, here tries to con­vince peo­ple to do their own usabil­ity test­ing. Con­firm­ing Jacob Nielsen’s advice, that devel­op­ers can do it them­selves, Steve iden­ti­fies the min­i­mum require­ments to make usabil­ity test­ing mean­ing­ful. At the end of the ses­sion, Steve per­forms a short usabil­ity test right in front of the audi­ence, which makes this ses­sion truly out­stand­ing. Dura­tion: 60 minutes.

AJAX Usabil­ity
Kelly Nor­ton talks about a very inter­est­ing, and often for­got­ten, sub­ject: AJAX usabil­ity. He cov­ers usabil­ity basics and how to design AJAX appli­ca­tions for humans. Full of real-​​life exam­ples, he offers sev­eral con­crete sug­ges­tions on how to improve usabil­ity in AJAX appli­ca­tions. Dura­tion: 55 minutes.

Jason Fried of 37signals Speak­ing at Busi­ness of Soft­ware 2008
In this short amaz­ing ses­sion, Jason Fried shares his thoughts and expe­ri­ences from 37Signals. Ideas are agile, some even rad­i­cal. This video is inter­est­ing because many of Jason’s thoughts con­trast with wide­spread opin­ion. In the sec­ond half of the ses­sion, Jason uses audi­ence ques­tions to explain his ideas in more detail. Dura­tion: 55 minutes.

Bonus videos

Sketch­ing User Expe­ri­ences
In this keynote from MIX09, the first 25 min­utes are taken up by Bill Bux­ton, known to many as the author of the book Sketch­ing User Expe­ri­ences. In an opti­mistic talk, he explains why now, in these days of cri­sis, is a good time to pay atten­tion to design and what key fac­tors are required to revi­tal­ize the user expe­ri­ence. Dura­tion: 25 minutes.

Inter­view With Don Nor­man on UX Week 2008
In a relaxed atmos­phere at UX Week 2008, Don Nor­man answers inter­est­ing ques­tions and share his thoughts on var­i­ous aspects of design. One of the best bits comes at the begin­ning, when Don speaks of his “cru­sade” to replace the word “users” with “peo­ple.” Will we ever have “Peo­ple Expe­ri­ence”? Do we already have it? Find the answer in this fan­tas­tic inter­view. Dura­tion: 53 minutes.

(al)

© Janko Jovanovic for Smash­ing Mag­a­zine, 2010. | Perma­link | 28 com­ments | Add to del​.icio​.us | Digg this | Stum­ble on Stum­ble­Upon! | Tweet it! | Sub­mit to Red­dit | Forum Smash­ing Mag­a­zine
Post tags: usabil­ity, user expe­ri­ence, ux