The Secret You

What is free will? Who is really in charge of your decisions? Is it you, your conscious self or your unconscious mass? How aware are you of your true self, the true ‘you’ who lays hidden in your consciousness?

In this amazing BBC Horizon episode “The Secret You” from 2009, Professor Marcus du Sautoy takes a deeper look into these questions and tries to show us the evidence of consciousness and its effects on ‘being’.

True, there is no direct link between my blog, on how to gain practical insights into online optimization, and this BBC Documentary (although I will try to make this link later), but the Neuroscience element is simply intriguing and I am confident many of you will find it interesting, too.

The most interesting evidence shown, was from an experiment that proves that we subconsciously make decisions long before we are consciously aware of them. In this specific experiment up to 6 seconds!

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Inspirational UX iPhone Apps

We have run into it at one point or another… the inspiration wall. With a plethora of blogs out there suggesting motives and methods to us on a daily basis it can be hard to lose sight of things.

Inspiration can be hard to come at times. I am always reminded of this fact when I listen to Faithless where Rollo sings ‘You don’t need eyes to see, you need vision‘.

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User Research vs Intuition

User Research and usability testing are (should be) two of the cornerstones of any company’s efforts to improve revenue generation through their online channel.

User Research allows us to create hypothesis that are aimed at improving the website’s user-friendliness, but more common, conversion. Usability testing allows us to test those hypotheses.

The resources needed to research, document, setup and execute usability testing are not dramatic, but they aren’t effortless either.

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Trust Logo Recognition Precedes Presence

Last week I set out to discover how trust logo recognition effects online purchase behavior. It is widely accepted that trust logos can have a positive effect on conversion rates when purchasing online, but is that enough? What about which trust logo? As someone who works in the online industry I consider myself relatively knowledgable of the different supplies of SSL certificates, but what about Joe Consumer?

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UX Bookclub in Delft

This short video was taken during a UX Bookclub meeting in Delft, the Netherlands on June 25th 2009. Since I work as a User Experience Designer in my daily life, I thought that it would be nice to meet some others by attending these meetings and giving us a chance to talk shop.

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