UI/UX Articles and Interesting Tidbits of the Week
June//2//2023
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.
Documenting a VR Experience. Very pertinent article from Linkedin and one of their team’s writers, Gianna Prudente, focused on young professionals who are coming into the labor market at a time of particular uncertainty (inflation, layoffs). The article looks at job categories that are on the rise, industries that are attracting the most college graduates, and even areas of the country that seem to be more desirable for young graduates. Worth reading through the data and the interviews with actual candidates who have been canvased for the article. Highlight of the article includes:
“In the face of economic uncertainty, career starters must also find ways to be creative as they look for work. Capital One’s Jessica Octavio needed to adjust her job search strategy when she realized health care startups weren’t hiring when she was looking for work. “Hospitals or health care startups weren’t looking for people,” she says. “I would interview at places and be like, ‘I graduate in May.’ They’re like, ‘It’s January. What are you doing?’” Octavio shifted gears, applying to product management roles in tech and financial services. But with her health care background, she knew it would be a challenging sell. “I was at a weird intersection with lots of lab positions and a couple clinical research positions,” she says.”
2.
Customer Satisfaction Guide. Another great article filled from Nikki Anderson-Stanier, published on the dScout Design Blog. This one is focused on the Customer Satisfaction Guide, and how this measurement is in reality achieved and how it can impact the Product Design journey. The author showcases a questionnaire she usually adopts for a System Usability Scale, and also documents Satisfaction Scales. It’s a thorough and worth reading article. Highlight of the article includes:
“There is no one golden metric for measuring satisfaction. Instead, we should bring together multiple metrics to help identify and pinpoint real problems and potential solutions. There are a few different metrics I now use when measuring customer satisfaction. These metrics have helped create more actionable and pointed insights for my teams and are much more specific than the broad strokes of the NPS. Within these metrics, there are two types of satisfaction we will look at: Performance satisfaction, which has to do with a user’s satisfaction and attitude about a particular task; Perceived satisfaction, which has to do with a user’s satisfaction and attitude about a product in general”
3.
A Brief History of VR and AR. Great article from Brian Heater published on TechCrunch, detailing the history of VR and AR. The article looks at the different trends that surrounded VR in the 1990s, and goes back in time to investigate how some of these terms and technologies originally started. The article includes some of the sketches from original patents for VR goggles from the 1960s, while also explaining the research and advancements NASA did on this topic in the 1970s. Fascinating read. Highlight of the article includes:
“An even more direct ancestor to today’s modern XR (extended reality) dates back to the mid-60s, when a team at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory began their own headset experiments. In 1968, the team produced a system they jokingly deemed “The Sword of Damocles,” owing to a large structural beam that hung over the wearer’s head. One of the system’s key innovations was a magnetic tracking system, designed to monitor head movements to shift the display orientation accordingly. “Our objective in this project has been to surround the user with displayed three-dimensional information,” project lead Ivan Sutherland wrote in a paper describing the system. “Because we use a homogeneous coordinate representation, we can display objects which appear to be close to the user or which appear to be infinitely far away. We can display objects beside the user or behind him which will become visible to him if he turns around.””
