Blog

       As the year starts coming to a close, we can't help but already begin to get excited for what next year has to offer. The start of a new year is always an exciting time because of all the new opportunities, and experiences that it has the potential to hold. However, 2019 is extra exciting for us Key Limer’s and that is because we get to celebrate the TEN year anniversary of Key Lime Interactive! That’s a whole decade of projects, clients, teamwork, laughs, challenges, learning, and growth. In 2009, Key Lime Interactive was born with the mission to bring clarity, insight and innovation to those who seek new ways to enhance the user experience. And for ten years, we have worked to accomplish that mission.

       In order to celebrate, we figured what a better way than to do borrow Mathew Berry’s idea and do our own "ten lists of ten." From awkward research stories to myths about UX research, we will be releasing our own lists of ten each of the ten weeks leading up to our tenth birthday.  

      As we have discussed before, big data is the study of data sets that are so large that traditional data-processing software cannot analyze it all. Big data, although requiring a different kind of data-processing system, big data allows researchers and analysts to utilize data that was not being previously been taken advantage of, and allows them to generate new insights. Since big data sets contain so much information that may have previously gone unnoticed, it can help to inform strategic business moves, feature areas of improvement and also be used to help predict future trends.

     We are living in a state of constant and rapid change. Technology seems to be advancing by the minute, with newer devices, gadgets and apps flooding our marketplace daily. As technology continues to progress, businesses and companies must also be able to respond to the ever changing marketplace. In a marketplace where there is a multitude of products, there is more and more attention being placed on user’s needs as a way to help a product stand out against its competitors. As a result, there is currently an increasing demand of design work and UX research. It is being seen that as companies continue to grow, they are beginning to add user experience focus to their organizations as a means of improving their business.  

     Personas are personable, actionable, and detailed descriptions of 3-5 archetypes of the people who use your product, service, or brand and are also critical to the long-term success of your business. The objective of personas in product design is to establish a common reference point by which to anchor both tactical and strategic product decisions in user-centric design. Robust personas paint vivid pictures of who each archetype is, what their lifestyle is like, what they care most about, and what their attitude is like in product-relevant scenarios.

     The UX Game Summit by Epic Games, first launched in 2016 as the very first gaming summit with a focus on UX. It is important to put players first in the design process of gaming in order to ensure better player engagement and more time played. The UX Game Summit helps bring together professionals that are passionate about the current state of UX in our industry and ways to continually improve and innovate the user experience. This year, Key Lime Interactive, was one of the speakers at the 2018 UX Game Summit. Here is a recap of our presentation and some of the takeaways from the conference by our UX rockstar, ShaoYu Chen.

       Here at KLI, we publish a bi-annual Home and Renters Insurance Mobile Competitive Index Report that reviews eight of the largest home and renters insurance companies in the US and their online and mobile app capabilities. Some of the capabilities and features that are assessed are features such as secure login process, ability to get a quote or locate an agent. The goal of our third-party syndicated report is to help provide consumer-driven data that can help insurance companies improve their user experience. It also helps to summarize how the insurance companies differentiate and help provide valuable forms of competitive intelligence for companies to help them stay ahead and on top of the current market.

   Most people have become aware of the fact that everything they do online and on their phones leaves a cyber breadcrumb trail, where your internet searches and activities are logged. That is because all of these interactions that people engage in with technology every single day generate data points, thus creating a cyber breadcrumb trail that can be analyzed as a unit of data. As technology continues to play ever more important roles in our daily lives, it only makes sense that the amount of data that is being created will continue to increase. The sheer quantity of data that exists out there is getting bigger, and as follow, big data metrics and analytics are becoming more and more important.

       It seems obvious that when designing a product or app, you should have a clear understanding of who you are designing for. Who is the product or app made for and how will that individual use it? It might seem easier or more cost-effective to just try to make a “one-size-fits-all” type of product, however, that is not addressing user specific needs and wants. As more and more products flood the marketplace, users are looking to find product and content that is specific to them and their needs. In order to make designs successful for users, it is important to understand the people who are going to be the users.

     Competitive Intelligence (CI) is something that is often thought of as a great concept but is not always implemented as a business tool, even though it should be. CI is a useful and critical a business tool that helps business to stay competitive within their fields. Let's start with what it is; Competitive Intelligence is the process and action of collecting, identifying, analyzing information about products, customers, and competitors within a specific industry.

      Last week we discussed the difference between current-state and future-state journey maps.  To recap, current-state journey maps focus on capturing an already existing users journey and addressing the various pain points that may arise throughout that journey. A future-state journey map focuses on creating a new type of journey for the user, rather than adjusting an old one. Where current-state journey maps are fact-based and data-driven, future-state journey maps are based on imagination and innovation. You can think of the left brain and right brain analogy- current-state journey mapping is on the calculated left, whereas future-state journey mapping falls on the creative right side. But how exactly does one carry out a future-state journey map?