Articles
- Success with stakeholders in a UX Research Project, QRCA VIEWS Spring 2022 – reprinted in Quirk’s Magazine, Summer 2022
- Liz Sanders on Generative Design Research QRCA VIEWS, Spring 2021
- How to Thrive in Uncharted Times an interview with Margaret Heffernan QRCA VIEWS, Winter 2020
- Jane Frost CEO of the UK’s Market Research Society on How to Raise the Profile of Our Profession QRCA VIEWS, Fall 2020
- Steve Portigal on the Key Skills of a User Experience Researcher QRCA VIEWS, Summer 2020
- Martin Raymond on Finding the Future in the Underbrush of Culture QRCA VIEWS, Winter 2019
- Richard Shotton – What Marketers Need to Know about Human Bias QRCA VIEWS, Fall 2019
- A Conversation with Dan Pink on His Most Recent Book “To Sell is Human”, QRCA VIEWS, Fall 2018
- Joe Coughlin of the MIT AgeLab on Product Development for Older Adults, QRCA VIEWS Winter 2018
- John Maeda on Artificial Intelligence and Research with People, QRCA VIEWS Spring 2018
- Clotaire Rapaille overlays the Culture Code with the US Election in 2016 (part 2), Summer 2017
- Al Ries on How to Position Brands in the 21st Century, QRCA VIEWS Fall 2017
- Using QDA Tools to Manage Customer Journey Map Research, QRCA VIEWS Fall 2016.
- Adding Usability Research to your Qual Practice, QRCA VIEWS Summer 2012
- Seven Things You Don’t Know about Usability Testing, Quirks, February 2013
- Getting Inside Your User’s Head, 9 Interviewing Tips, UX Matters, Winter 2013
Podcasts
- Margaret Heffernan – Thriving in uncharted times
- Liz Sanders – Qualitative tools for formative UX Research
- Richard Shotton – 25 behavioral biases that influence what we buy
- Joe Coughlin – The MIT AgeLab and how one day we will look forward to growing old
- Sarah DaVanzo – How L’Oreal detects future trends in cosmetics
- Martin Raymond – Using qualitative research to detect trends before they become apparent
- Frank Bentley – Designing mobile experiences that strengthen social bonds and give joy to consumers
- Bill Buxton – Shares his thoughts on Sketching User Experiences.
Speaking
- “How to develop your own Enterprise-level UX Research panel”, UXPA Boston, September 2021.
- “Working with stakeholders in a UX Research project”, Flex Your UX – QRCA Summit, September 2021
- “Qualitative Data Analysis Tools for UX Researchers” (with Stuart Robertson), UXPA Boston, June 2018
- “Leveraging Qualitative Data Analysis tools in longitudinal journey map research”, 13th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, University of Illinois, May 2018
- “Research Techniques to map the customer journey for Service Design”, American Marketing Association, May 2016.
Conversations on AI-Driven Voice Technology
Prior to the pandemic the New Jersey Institute of Technology sponsored the annual Voice Summit, which focuses on developments in voice technology. I had the chance to talk with several people who are doing interesting work in Voice AI and who presented at the 2019 conference.
Nathan Treloar, COO and President of Orbita Inc describes how voice technology is being used in healthcare today. June 10, 2020
Orbita is a Boston-based company that creates AI-powered technology that allows healthcare organizations to create conversational bots that improve patient access to information. Nathan talks about Orbita’s technology and the various way it’s being used within the healthcare industry. He provides a common-sense (no hype) assessment of the maturity of voice technology today and where it can be reliably leveraged. Nathan also describes his vision for where voice technology may go in the future. I recorded this podcast for students for my “Design for Usability in Healthcare” class within Northeastern University’s Health Informatics program.
Audrey Arbeeny of AudioBrain talks about sonic branding and the future of audio as an integrating force in technology September 27, 2019
Audrey Arbeeny, founder of AudioBrain, talked with me about the art and science of sonic branding, which involves the strategic and consistent development of a sound experience for a brand. Audrey describes the rigorous methodology her company has created for creating a unique aural composition that combines music, voice and vibration that can be used to brand an organization, a product, an event, a person (basically any entity). AudioBrain’s clients include XBox 360, the London Olympics, Whirlpool, and several medical device manufacturers. They have won several Emmy awards for their work. Audrey talks about the tremendous value of audio in health and wellness and the overall trends that suggest how this medium will become an integrating force within technology in the near future.
Henry O’Connell of Canary Speech describes how his speech and langauge technology detects disease and other human conditions September 3, 2019
Canary Speech is a Provo, Utah-based company that has developed FDA approved technology to detect disease and other human conditions through human speech. Their product uses machine learning to diagnose and track conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s, PTSD and depression. In this episode Canary Speech CEO Henry O’Connell talks with me about his company’s technology, how it works, the science behind it and his vision for the future. He describes how Canary Speech technology uses biomarkers to analyze language at the “sub language” level for early detection and management of devastating diseases. You can learn more about Canary Speech at https://www.canaryspeech.com/.
Michelle Mullenax of the American Red Cross and Emerson Sklar of Applause on developing Alexa Skills for the American Red Cross August 1, 2019
Michelle Mullenax is the Product and UX Lead for Innovation at the American Red Cross and Emerson Sklar is Director of Voice Solutions at Applause. In this first podcast (of two) we talked about the work they featured in their Voice Summit 2019 Presentation “Giving You the Voice to Make a Difference”. We discussed the American Red Cross vision for voice technology, the voice assistant skills they have developed, the processes they use to gather user feedback on the skills they’ve developed and their vision for the future. You can learn more about Michelle on her LinkedIn profile, and about Emerson on his LinkedIn profile.
Alex Potamianos, CTO and Co-founder of Behavioral Signals July 30, 2019
Alex is a well-regarded innovator in the field of speech and natural language processing, interactive voice response systems and behavioral informatics. We met at the Voice Summit 2019 in Newark, NJ. In this fascinating interview Alex describes the science behind Artificial Intelligence his team has developed that interprets human emotion from intonation, cadence, energy and other qualities of spoken language that are unrelated to the actual words a person says. We discuss the range of ways this technology can be applied from helping new therapists learn how to adjust their voice interactions with patients to showing CEOs how to deliver messages more effectively to training salespeople to be more effective on the phone. You can learn more about Behavioral Signals on the Behavioral Signals Web site.
Marios Anapliotis, co-founder of Bouquet.ai July 30, 2019
Marios Anapliotis, co-founder at Bouquet.ai, discusses the capabilities of his company’s flagship product Aristotle. Aristotle is a chatbot driven by artificial intelligence that integrates with hundreds of systems such as Salesforce, Slack, Zendesk, and SAP and allows users to get immediate answers on company KPIs that would formerly take hours of research and analysis. You can learn more about Marios through his LinkedIn profile. and about Aristotle on the Bouquet.ai Web site. Marios and his team also participated in the Voice 2019 Summit.