Pocket for iOS will now read your articles to you

Pocket has updated its read-later app on iOS with a new text-to-speech (TTS) feature, so you can have it read your articles out loud to you. To use it, just open up any article in the latest version of Pocket, tap the … button and select Listen (TTS). The feature has been available on Android for almost three years now. It’s rather useful if you’re using it to get through your reading queue while doing chores or when you’re out on your morning walk. ➤ Pocket [iOS | Android] Read next: Breaking News app now has alerts for emerging stories

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Content Marketing Experts Reveal Which Brands are Pushing the Envelope

What inspires today’s leading content marketers? We asked CMWorld 2015 presenters and friends. Their responses run the gamut, from familiar brand names to little-known companies thriving in a niche. Read on to be invigorated.
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The post Content Marketing Experts Reveal Which Brands are Pushing the Envelope appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

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Marketers Are Not Creatives

It’s July, which means aside from the occasional hot spell we marketers are about to be deluged by an ocean of talks, tweets and treatises on the importance of creativity and her bespectacled, more reserved brother, innovation. Blame Cannes. Last week, 13,000 marketers descended on the French Riviera to have the overriding importance of all […]

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The Varying Ways Consumers Engage With Brands

It’s tempting to think of consumers in binary terms in relation to the brands you are responsible for: in, or out; buying, or not buying; loyal, or not loyal. But for many brands, the status of an individual can be more complex. At any given point in time, people can take on other roles in […]

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How Can Brands Rethink Content for the Internet of Things?

As products tap into a more connected world, brands should define an experience for customers before dealing with technology and content

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Designing with Emotion Means Being Brave

July 15, 2015

Emotional connections are two-way streets. Evoking real and meaningful emotion from our customers requires that we, as designers, bring real and meaningful emotion to the table too.

I work for Intuit, where we’re making emotional connections with our customers a top priority. In an earlier article, I talked about the need to establish a deeper emotional connection to create Magical and Meaningful experiences. Understanding what delight feels like and the supporting principles to design for delight is a big step forward, but it’s not enough. Getting Magic and Meaning from our hearts into our customers’ hands means changing the way we work, the way we share ideas, and the way we define success. That type of change...read more
By Amanda O'Grady

             

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An In-Depth Guide To Launching Your Own Podcast

Book Review: Managing Chaos

By Johannes Stock Published: July 6, 2015 “In her book Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design, Lisa Welchman shows us how to tame the digital beast. Her reality-tested approach and holistic view make for a great read….” In her book Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design, Lisa Welchman shows us how to tame the digital beast. Her reality-tested approach and holistic view make for a great read that is worth every minute of your time. The book’s subtitle promises digital governance by design, which will get the attention of curious designers and other digital workers alike. But it will also likely produce some skepticism in her audience. After all, don’t we owe a huge part of our creativity to the boundless freedom and chaos the digital environment provides? But if we can hold back the romantic within us for a moment, we’ll remember various situations in which our energy and creativity were stifled by chaos.

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Back, the Stack, and Authentic Design

By Steven Hoober Published: July 6, 2015 “The way you diagram the task flows for an app or Web site should always communicate something about the organization of the elements it contains….” In a recent Mobile Matters column, “Tools for Mobile UX Design: Task Flows,” I covered how to draw task flows, why you should draw task flows, and the value of the level of system understanding that task flows give to your project team. However, I didn’t cover everything about the architectural decisions that go into creating task flows, so in this column, I’ll dig into some other things relating to task flows that I think are important. Hopefully, you’ve spent some time thinking about how to organize the digital products or services that you design. What is the relationship between elements? When should they be next to each other, on top of each other, or stacked one above the other?

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Analysis Isn’t Cool

By Jim Ross Published: July 6, 2015 “Unfortunately, analysis remains underappreciated and is often overlooked. … Analysis [is] the process that transforms research data into deliverables.” User research is cool. User research deliverables can even be cool. But sadly, to many people, analysis isn’t cool. Clients and project team members get excited by the idea of user research, they like being able to say they did user research, and they like to show off impressive user research deliverables. But the unsung-hero, who does much of the heavy lifting is analysis. Unfortunately, analysis remains underappreciated and is often overlooked. There are plenty of books, articles, and presentations about user-research techniques and deliverables, but they seldom discuss analysis—the process that transforms research data into deliverables. To some, it may even seem that you come out of research with a fully formed understanding of users and their tasks and immediately begin creating personas, diagrams, and presentations.

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In Conversation with Sergio Nouvel

July 2, 2015

Just yesterday I had the chance to talk with Sergio Nouvel, author of the very popular and very convtroversial UX Mag article, "Why Web Design is Dead."

Sergio is was born in Chile and is the Co-Founder and Director of Continuum in Lima, Peru. He comes from a graphic design background and has broadened his scope of what it means to be a designer in the digital age. Here we talk about the limitations of designing for desktop, the rise of mobile, the disappearance of screens, and why web...read more
By Josh Tyson | UX Magazine

             

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5 Elements of Omni-Channel User Experiences

June 30, 2015

Two years ago, Forbes declared the future of digital commerce as omni-channel. If you have a website and a customer service phone line, you are already a multi-channel business. But what is omni-channel, as opposed to cross-channel, and what implications does it have on your UX strategy?

Cross-channel experiences describe customers who use different channels for engagement with a product or service. Omni-channel extends cross-channel engagements so the experience ‘loops’ continuously across channels in-line with the customer’s motivation and habits. With Omni-channel experiences, the customer may use multiple channels at the same time.

The need for omni-channel UX has arisen because connected consumers are now interacting with brands in evermore varied and unpredictable ways,...read more
By Danny Bluestone

             

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Are You Ready to Give Your Customers an Omni-Channel Experience?

July 3, 2015

Whether we admit it or not, today’s customer experience is all about omni-channel. People are reaching out to companies on the phone, via text message, through emails and webforms—you name it, someone’s using it. When customers reach out to customer service, they most often use three or more channels, and most businesses offer multiple service channels to answer customer questions.

But an omni-channel experience isn’t just about having multiple channels: it’s about making sure those channels all work together. The idea behind omni-channel is that it all the service channels are connected...read more
By Elias Parker

             

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