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Hello All

This week we focus a bit on several excellent UX posts from InVision which focus upon Users and importance of Product Testing. Amazon and Google are constantly looking to increase their influence within the Publishing and Education markets. And finally we look at the importance of Font Faces, Game Design, and Astronomy. Phew!

1. How To Get Started With User Testing At Your Company
“UX research is a core component of a successful product design process. It helps you build empathy with your users and understand their behavior and problems. And then it enables you to test out your solutions and confirm hypotheses. One of the key methods for a successful UX research process is user testing.”
https://www.invisionapp.com/blog/how-to-start-user-testing/

2. How To Really Understand Your Users’ Motivations
“As companies look to become more customer-centric, the importance of understanding your users’ motivations is increasing. And it’s our job as designers to gather and synthesize customer input and turn it into actionable design strategy. User interviews are a great way understand your users’ motivations, but some ideas are hard to verbalize. Plus, traditional 1-on-1 interviews lack flexibility and don’t get to the core of human emotions.”
https://www.invisionapp.com/blog/how-to-understand-user-motivations/

3. The Simple Guide To Product Testing
“These guidelines aren’t just for teams already building products. They’re also for anyone who’s just starting to think about new product ideas and ways to validate them.”
https://www.invisionapp.com/blog/product-testing-guide/

4. How To Quickly Create A Powerful Survey
“Surveys are great for quickly collecting large amounts of data about your users. At Envato, our design team creates surveys so we can gain valuable insight about the way people use our product. But preparing a great survey is challenging—writing good questions takes time, and the results can often be disappointing.”
https://www.invisionapp.com/blog/how-to-create-a-survey/

5. User Testing Gone Wild: A Guide To Course Correction
“Most of the time, testing sessions go great and your team collects honest, unfiltered feedback. But sometimes the unexpected happens. No matter how much you prepare for an interview or usability test, you still need to stay on your toes and quell some hiccups along the way. These hiccups can come from you, your team, your materials, your environment, the users, etc. Some are obvious, and some are not so obvious.”
https://www.invisionapp.com/blog/user-testing-guide/

6. Amazon Sets Up Shop in the Heart of the Publishing Industry
“Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, has often struck a defiant tone when asked about the company’s dominance of the book industry. “Amazon is not happening to book selling,” he said in a 2013 interview. “The future is happening to book selling.””
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/business/media/amazon-new-bookstore-manhattan.html

7. How Google Took Over the Classroom
“The tech giant is transforming public education with low-cost laptops and free apps. But schools may be giving Google more than they are getting.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/technology/google-education-chromebooks-schools.html

8. How Fonts Are Fueling the Culture Wars
“Pay attention: Typography isn’t just catchy visuals. It can also be dangerous.”
https://backchannel.com/how-fonts-are-fueling-the-culture-wars-f9d692101fea

9. Google’s AlphaGo AI Defeats the World’s Best Human Go Player
“Google’s AI star, AlphaGo, wins again. It bested Ke Jie, the world’s best Go player, by just half a point — the closest margin possible. After the match, Google’s DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis explained that this was how AlphaGo was programmed: to maximise its winning chances, rather than the winning margin. This latest iteration of the AI player, nicknamed Master, apparently uses 10 times less computational power than its predecessor that beat Lee Sedol, working from a single PC connected to Google’s cloud server.”
https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/23/google-alphago-ai-wins-best-human-player/

10. Star That Spurred Alien Megastructure Theories Dims Again
“Astronomers and alien life enthusiasts alike are buzzing over the sudden dimming of an otherwise unremarkable star 1300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. KIC 8462852 or “Tabby’s star” has dimmed like this several times before, prompting some researchers to suggest that the megastructures of an advanced alien civilization might be blocking its light. And now—based on new data from numerous telescopes—it’s doing it again.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/star-spurred-alien-theories-dims-again

Have a great and safe Memorial Day weekend.

M