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We're passionate about learning and experimenting, and we aren't shy about sharing our knowledge and findings with the UX community. Here, you'll find tools, whitepapers, news, and insights from the Akendi team. Be sure to check back often!

News & Events

Jun 13, 2024Join Jennifer Fraser and Akendi's Scott Plewes to explore quantitave personas. In some UX circles personas have fallen out of favour. This is a byproduct of many personas being poorly written and not being rooted in research and data. Instead of bringing value to conversations about journeys and use scenarios, these personas instead led to stereotyping and the amplification of bias. So, where do we go from here?

Jul 1, 2023 We are pleased to announce that on 1st July Akendi UK Ltd is entering into a new and exciting partnership with Keen Design of The Netherlands. Together we have formed a new company, Keen Design Ltd which will leverage the strengths of both companies to provide User Experience Design services to a wider range of clients in the UK. Akendi UK Ltd will continue to operate within its established markets, offering UX services with domain knowledge in semiconductors, healthcare and telecommunications in the UK and abroad.

Jun 15, 2023 Join Jennifer Fraser and Akendi's Scott Plewes at 9am EST to push the boundaries of Quant and QualUX. We all know the expression “garbage in, garbage out”. But how do you systematically and rigorously avoid the garbage in? While we don't know the universal answer to that, we have identified 3 common areas where QuantUX might be at risk of getting off on the wrong foot, and where a little QualUX, and some systems thinking, could work with QuantUX to avoid the problem:

  1. One of these things is not like the other: Combining distinct sets (and we don't mean from different databases); we mean sets like from your second year probability course (reinforcing the model you have eg: medical data sets based on men being applied to women ie: sports helmets; ADHD)
  2. Sorry, that's not my table: Data generated for one process, used to evaluate a different process (or system)
  3. Uh, over here, you forgot about me!: Ignoring contextual data in building your math or stats model We'll go through these situations with examples, and show you how to avoid these trap, making sure all that math will be worth it!

Apr 28, 2023 Akendi, a global user experience research, design, and strategy team, is proud to announce the opening of our New York City office in celebration of our 15th anniversary. This opening marks an exciting time for Akendi as we expand our presence and continue to deliver exceptional user research, strategy and UX design services to a wide range of clients, including in the AI, fintech and healthcare sectors.

Mar 28, 2023 Join our CSO Scott Plewes who will take a look at how UX propagates within organizations using a viral model (a modified SIR model to be more precise). He'll look at such questions as: Does it simply need more time? Is the transmission rate/function the problem? Is part of the organization effectively “inoculated” against UX? And how, when and where to track progress while getting UX into an organization isn't as simple as solving a set of differential equations, he hopes to show you that doing just that might be a useful step in getting insights into what might work and what might not.

Nov 29, 2022 Join Akendi's Tedde van Gelderen who will participate in an in-person panel discussion organized by TPMA and TorCHI. The partnership between product and design is more important than ever solving rewarding business challenges for users such as data rich problem spaces and complex interactivities. Let's explore how product management and user experience practitioners work best together solving problems with a human centered approach. We'll take a look at experiences within firms and those servicing firms as well as from the different disciplines perspectives. All delivering satisfying impactful experiences.

Jun 8, 2022 Fans of the critically acclaimed Netflix series Squid Games perhaps didn't see the correlation between the challenges and User Experience, but Akendi's Chief Strategy Officer did! You can hear Scott Plewes' unique view with Jennifer Fraser from Macadamian at the Quant UX Con 2022 in Sunnyvale, California. Together they are presenting Crossing the Glass Bridge: What Squid Games can Teach us about Systems Thinking, Data Science & UX. QUXCON22 (June 8-9) is the first unconference dedicated to Quantitative UX Research and will be a hybrid of live and virtual sessions.

Oct 20, 2021 Data Science can be instrumental in understanding where and how products and services can further business and customer goals. But with all the big data out there, how do you know where to look? How to categorize the data? Or what's most likely relevant? Join Scott Plewes, Chief Strategy Officer at Akendi in this talk where he will share how UX practices can help inform data science, and how data science can return the favour.

Sep 28, 2021 Join Akendi's Scott Plewes and Jennifer Fraser from Macadamian in a talk on physics and mathematics that are so connected that sometimes it's not obvious they are completely different disciplines. The history of math and physics has a few Emmy Noethers who made a fundamental connection between the two disciplines. Where is that connection between Data Science/math and Interaction Design? It is inevitable that Data Science, AI and other math heavy approaches find their way more and more into Interaction Design. This transformation is coming. In this talk we will explore ways to connect Data Science and Interaction Design using Systems Thinking. This approach makes them partners instead of feuding neighbours, and has some pragmatic and clear consequences for Interaction Design deliverables and processes.

Sep 7, 2021 Akendi's Leo Poll chairs an online event hosted by Cambridge Wireless on how to effectively apply AI in User Experiences. The event's speakers from @BBC and @University of the Arts London answering questions such as 'What impact do the apparent human qualities have on our expectations?' and ‘What shape or form might the interaction take to improve communication between the AI and the human?’

If you’re interested, you can join as Leo Poll's guest with code SIGCHAMPGUEST

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freebies

When it comes to your customers and users, we want you to be as well-informed and equipped as possible. Here you can download handy reference tools to improve your knowledge of the user research and ux design process.

Journey Mapping Template

Whenever you are thinking of capturing customer journeys, user journeys and end-to-end experience maps, use our template to get going.

Customer and User Persona Template

Capture your initial customer and user personas with this handy template. Then validate with further research.

Service Blueprint Template

To begin a service blueprint can be daunting, let us help you to get started.

Akendi's 7 UX Design Principles Poster

At Akendi, we follow these seven ux principles whenever we create ux designs, conduct heuristic reviews, or analyze the results of a usability test.

Whitepapers

Offering insight and opinion on both foundational and cutting-edge user experience topics, our whitepapers are free to download. Take a deep dive into UX research and usability testing, mobile design, user personas, and more.

You talking to me? The pros and cons of AI conversational search

In this first issue of Future Insights, we explore the positive and negative implications of conversational search, a technology that has transformed how we interact with search engines.

BY DAN IABONI
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UX research & testing techniques

There are many methods for conducting user research, each of which bring distinctive value to the table at different stages in the UX design process. Learn how to find the right technique for the job.

BY FATIMA KANJI
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Making the inaccessible accessible

Examining the current state of mobile accessibility and the implications for users with physical impairments. Is there a "universal solution" to make mobile devices accessible for users of all levels of mobility?

BY JEN HENNINGS
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Four traps UX practitioners should know

There is a wealth of knowledge and research from psychology to economics that will teach UX practitioners how to conduct research, how research will be received, and above all about traps to avoid.

BY MICHELLE BROWN
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7 reasons audio will save mobile user experience design

In the early days of the internet, hardware limitations made it impossible to depend on audio to deliver critical information. Mobile audio has changed the game and just might save your next interface design.

BY PATRICK NOONAN
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End-to-end experience lifecycle strategies

While most organizations are familiar with concepts such as "user experience" and "brand experience", few realize that there are in fact six different types of experience to consider.

BY TEDDE VAN GELDEREN
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Managing user involvement in product development

Before you can successfully incorporate user feedback into the product development cycle, you need to understand why user feedback is often poorly gathered in the first place.

BY TEDDE VAN GELDEREN
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User personas research explained

Learn about personas, which are stand-ins or proxies for unique groups of people who share common goals and needs with respect to the use of a product or service.

BY TEDDE VAN GELDEREN
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Short Videos

Browse through our expert videos on UX strategy, research, testing, and more. These videos will get you up to speed on the latest user experience technology, topics, and trends.

Importance of Experience Design

Tedde van Gelderen, President of Akendi, at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.

Business Requirements

How do you balance business requirements and user/customer requirements?

What is usability

What is Usability? Watch this video for a definition.

Measuring usability

When in the design process do I measure usability?

User personas explained

What are user personas? How do we research and develop them?

Customer Personas

What is the difference between user segments, market segments and customer personas and why does it matter?

How many users?

How many users do you perform usability testing with? How many different user types or user profiles do you test?

Expert vs. User Based?

What about the difference between an expert based usability review and usability testing with end users?

What happens in ux / usability testing?

What happens in a typical usability testing session?

Self reported vs. Observed

Find out the difference between self reported ratings and actual observed behaviour.

Hardware & mobile usability tests?

Can the usability tests performed on software, mobile apps, and web sites also be applied to hardware and physical spaces?

Usability testing in the lab?

What is the difference between usability testing in a controlled lab vs. outside of the lab?

01:54
Guide

Seeing trends in behaviour

How many participants are necessary in usability testing to see trends in behaviour?

Podcasts

Listen to analyses of key UX topics from top Akendi experts. Our podcasts feature in-depth discussions of topical issues impacting the customer and user experience.

UX Cornerstones

Janet Bewell, Senior Experience Architect talks about the cornerstones of UX design with Ian Rutter on 'Business Matters'.

Web Psychology

Tedde van Gelderen, President of Akendi talks about The Psychology of Website Interaction with Marie Wiese on her 'Common Sense Marketer Podcast'.

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