UX consciousness in business magazines A month ago Rosenfeld Media took a more detailed look at six major analyst firms (Aberdeen, AMR, Forrester, Gartner, IDC, and Yankee) to determine if they were paying much attention to user experience.

Now they have repeated their method to assess the UX consciousness of mainstream business publications.

So, what was the degree of “UX consciousness” among business publications?

  • The Harvard Business Review is most interested in knowledge management and information management
  • The Economist is quite focused—at the expense of all other UX topics—on branding
  • Business Week seems to have the most balanced coverage, with six terms accounting for at least 5% of the results each (branding, content management, industrial design, information management, knowledge management, and user experience)
  • Fast Company is the leader in industrial design focus and in branding, trailing only The Economist in that category
  • Business 2.0 seems to lead in many areas that have started to gather attention relatively recently: experience design, information design, interaction design, interface design, search analytics, technical communication, usability engineering, and user experience (9.9%). It’s also the most balanced in its coverage, after Business Week.
  • Inc. has a strong information focus: content management and knowledge management are by far its largest categories.
  • Entrepreneur focuses exceptionally on graphic design and ergonomics
  • Strategy + Business hewed most closely to the overall averages, showing stronger focus on branding and weaker on content management.

Full results