Industry News

Numerous studies have found that every dollar spent on UX brings in between $2 and $100 dollars in return. Forrester revealed that ‘implementing a focus on customers’ experience increases their willingness to pay by 14.4 %, reduces their reluctance to switch brands by 15.8 %, and boosts their likelihood to recommend your product by 16.6 %’.

–Chloe Green, The business of user experience: how good UX directly impacts on company performance.

I am now seeing reports around the web that Google AMP, the web page speed initiative backed by Google, is now live in the Google mobile search results. It was expected to go live any time now but AdAge reported that it would be tomorrow. I guess it is going live today...

Horace Dediu has a characteristically astute analysis of Apple’s business model in Priorities in a time of plenty. The parts I’m particularly interested in is where he discusses how Apple prioritizes their product roadmap:

Conventionally, product development is filtered through a sieve of metrics, market sizing and impact on top/bottom income lines. These “financial” measures of success are considered prudent and optimized for return on equity (also known as the maximization of...

Cliff Kuang wrote an excellent article on Microsoft’s push for more inclusive design. From Microsoft’s Radical Bet On A New Type Of Design Thinking:

Dubbed inclusive design, it begins with studying overlooked communities, ranging from dyslexics to the deaf. By learning about how they adapt to their world, the hope is that you can actually build better new products for everyone else.

What’s more, by finding more analogues between tribes of people outside the mainstream and...

Google has been testing four AdWords ads since 2006 and recently stepped up those tests in late 2015. Now, according to Search Engine Land...

A week ago we reported that Google will not offer SEO certification period. But now we see Google has messaging that they do offer certified Google partners that offer SEO.

Aaron Wall spotted it and posted the details on Twitter...

The question “How do people currently solve a problem?” is critical, because deeply understanding a problem can go a long way toward solving it with a product, feature, or service. Falling in love with a problem happens through observing it happen in a relevant context, where the problem is occurring to people in your target audience.

—Tomer Sharon, Validating Product Ideas

Maria Konnikova digs into the research on How People Learn to Become Resilient:

[Developmental psychologist Emmy Werner] found that several elements predicted resilience. Some elements had to do with luck: a resilient child might have a strong bond with a supportive caregiver, parent, teacher, or other mentor-like figure. But another, quite large set of elements was psychological, and had to do with how the children responded to the environment. From a young age, resilient children...

Yesterday I posted somewhat of a sarcastic post on Google teasing us with more Search Analytics data again...

Kate Bowler’s Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me is the best thing I’ve read this year so far. It’s funny, sharp, and deeply moving. Kate recently got cancer, some time after writing an academic book on the prosperity theology phenomenon in many American churches. Prosperity theology—the idea that “good” faith in God can make you rich and keep you healthy—is an immensely damaging philosophy, and Kate addresses this with poise and clarity.

I hesitate to quote anything from the essay...