For the first episode of Unmotive Show we have the pleasure of speaking with Chris Marciano from Neuron UX which is a UX design firm located in San Francisco. Their offices were originally in Palo Alto. They host a regular UX meetup called Beer and UX where over 1000 UXers have met to share their interests in UX design, listen to keynote speakers and network.

All of the the partners at Neuron are former Architects. This gives them key insights into the implementation of design as a framework. Not only do they design the user interfaces for mobile apps, web apps and hardware interfaces they are know how to integrate these designs into the workflow and make them efficient, tested and true. Their work usually culminates with a document that describes their suggestions for how to best implement their research within the specifications of the project. You can find out more about their work on their website or on their medium page where they publish articles on UX

For every dollar you spend researching functionality during the design phase, it costs $10 dollars to redesign that functionality during development, and it cost $100 dollars or more after release.

Since this is the first episode of Unmotive Show and it is about User Experience design it would be helpful to point out that User Experience design is in our opinion the missing link between Users and the Business models that separate them. This show is meant for casual technology users and also those in the field already. We feel talking about UX is a great way to kick off a discussion about how the web industry is adapting to its popularity and overwhelming success as a platform for people to connect.

Suggested Reading on UX Design

1. The Elements of Business Writing (Gary Blake & Robert W. Bly)
2. salt. (Nayyirah Waheed)
3. Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited (Steve Krug)
4. Sketching User Experiences: The Workbook (Saul Greenberg, Sheelagh Carpendale, Nicolai Marquardt, Bill Buxton)
5. Handbook of Usability Testing (Dana Chisnell and Jeffrey Rubin)

Different UX Design Roles

1. User Researcher = Conducts primary research
2. Information Architect = 1000’ managing the organization of content
3. Interaction Designer = 100’ designing wireframes, state screens
4. Visual Designer = 1’ conceives the UI
5. Front End Developer = Debatable as to whether they are in UX
6. Content Strategist = Ask: where is the content coming from?
7. Product Manager = Think: Is this okay?
8. Copywriter = Writes the text