We are, naturally, often asked about what we do, what kind of services do we offer and can we show our work. Due to very strict, confidential and NDA-bound rules and regulations, we are not able to show many visual elements like screens, apps and wireframes, but from time to time we are able to showcase and tell the story of our customers’ success. After all, we are here to celebrate our customers and their successes and to take pride in being a part of that entire story. So, what’s new we’ve added to our portfolio? Maybe you’ve heard about Score Alarm, world’s best mobile…
User Interface
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Most Topular Stories
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Spring 2013 portfolio update
UX Passion - UX design agency13 May 2013 | 7:52 am -
Film UI: Star Trek Into Darkness
Small Surfaces16 May 2013 | 10:29 pmAn interview with the UI designer who created the displays for Star Trek Into Darkness. “In practical UI, you are trying to give the user an elegant way to make choices. With film UI, I am trying to give the viewer the illusion of choice. I am trying to deliberately direct the viewers eye to whatever story point the director wants revealed at the time he wants it revealed. The job becomes more about illustration, especially in post where we can see how the interface is framed within the shot. We paint a small part of a much bigger picture, and our work needs to visually support… -
Top 5 posts at The UX Bookmark in 2012
The UX Bookmark5 Jan 2013 | 2:31 amI wish you, all my readers, a wonderful 2013. These are the five posts which people read the most in 2012. A huge list of Style Guides and UI Guidelines Free User Experience books (Interaction design, HCI, web accessibility & Information Architecture) Download IDEO’s Human Centered Design Toolkit Ergonomics for Interaction Designers Mobile Prototyping Essentials -
Make It So: Five Lessons in Interaction Design from Star Trek
UX Magazine16 May 2013 | 2:53 amWith Star Trek Into Darkness opening in theaters this weekend, it seems like a perfect time to survey some of the technological foreshadowing the franchise has bestowed upon us over the years. There are few better sources for that kind of info than Make It So (Rosenfeld), a book by Nathan Shedroff and Christopher Noessel that describes in great detail the interaction design lessons we can take from science fiction. From brain copying in Metropolis (1927) to voluminous projections in Iron Man 2 (2010), the book provides a wide and detailed account of how the tech in SF inspires the glowing… -
Going Massively Viral on Slideshare – Lessons Learned
Product Design & Marketing Advisor - Etienne Garbugli14 May 2013 | 10:09 pmThis post was originally titled “How I created a presentation viewed by over 250,000 people on Slideshare in just 8 hours”, but as the numbers kept increasing to now well-over 2,500,000 viewers, the title no longer made sense. Creating the…Read more ›Related Posts:Watch your FeetYou are not the expertDon’t count clicksDo business by helping othersFight apathy
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Signal vs. Noise
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LINK: Ryan on Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio
16 May 2013 | 11:55 amRyan on Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio I talked about software design and seeing through the customer’s eyes for 30 minutes on Jobs-To-Be-Done Radio. In my favorite part we thoroughly debunked personas and talked about how situations, not attributes drive behavior. Hosts Bob and Chris are collaborators of Clay Christensen and they strongly influenced my thinking over the past year. It was a blast to chat on the show. -
Don’t have the right gear? Make it.
13 May 2013 | 2:04 pmI’ve been working on some video tests with the iPhone and I needed to mount it on tripod for some steadier shots. Some folks in the office had good things to say about the Glif from Studio Neat, but the only one we had lying around didn’t fit my phone and sat kinda goofy on our tripod plate. So, I did something I wouldn’t have imagined possible a few years ago. I printed a new one. We got a 3D printer in the office a few months ago. So far it’s been used to make little statues, paperclips, even some chain mail. So I went about designing a new baseplate for our tripod. -
LINK: The 37signals Report Card
8 May 2013 | 6:30 amThe 37signals Report Card We’ve long believed in the value of transparency at 37signals. It’s why we write about how we work and why we provide real-time information about our customer happiness and uptime. We like being held to a high standard, and we think there’s no one better to do so than our customers. Today we’re taking another step towards greater transparency with the launch of the 37signals Report Card. This report card, which we’ll update monthly (April 2013 is available now; subscribe to be emailed the report each month), provides a high level… -
VIDEO: “If you wanna meet with me… come…
5 May 2013 | 12:28 pm“If you wanna meet with me… come to the garden… with your shovel… so we can plant some shit.” -Ron Finley -
Wanted: 25 special customers.
2 May 2013 | 8:21 amWe’re working on a entirely new product, and I’m looking to meet some potential customers. We can meet in person, over the phone, or via Skype, etc. The tool is for the small business owner who runs a company of between 25 and 75 people. You used to be smaller, but now you’re bigger. And you experienced some personal growing pains along the way. When you were smaller, you used to know everyone a bit better. When you were smaller you used to be in the loop a bit more. When you were smaller you used to have a better feel for what everyone was thinking and feeling. When you…
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456 Berea Street
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Replacing images when printing
14 May 2013 | 12:07 pmIt isn’t all that uncommon that, after you’ve polished your print stylesheet to make a site look well on paper as well as on screen, you realise that the logo really doesn’t look its best. It may look blurry or pixelated on paper due to having a pixel density intended for screen viewing, of course. But even worse, its edges may look ugly or it may actually be invisible because whatever is behind it when viewed on screen isn’t printed. Applying a background colour to the logo image or its containing element in the print CSS isn’t going to help either since most browsers by default do… -
Using a transparent image as an icon fallback
30 Apr 2013 | 10:36 amSometimes designs contain button styling that is difficult to create with CSS alone. The “official” way of dealing with this is to either use an image button (<input type="image" src="button.png" alt="Ok" />) or put the image in a button element (<button><img src="button.png" alt="Ok" /></button>). However if the graphic you want to show instead of the button is part of a sprite image, or if you want to display a different image when the button is hovered over or receives focus, that won’t work. In these cases it can be tempting to just use a background image and… -
Conditional sibling class names for IE patching
11 Apr 2013 | 12:22 pmTraditionally, web developers have been using either CSS hacks or conditional comments to target different versions of Internet Explorer with CSS fixes. In the last few years more and more people have started using conditional class names, more or less as described by Paul Irish in Conditional Stylesheets vs CSS Hacks? Answer: Neither!. I’ve always favoured separating IE fixes from the main CSS by putting them in one or sometimes two separate files loaded via conditional comments. However, a valid argument against that is that keeping the patches in the same file as the main CSS increases… -
Responsive drop shadows
4 Apr 2013 | 12:15 pmBack in the ancient days of fixed-width web design, adding a drop shadow to an element used to be a matter of exporting an image containing the shadow from Photoshop and placing it as a background image on the element. Job done. However, if you want some flexibility (as many of us have always wanted) it isn’t quite that easy. Sure, if you have a straight drop shadow that can be created with a CSS box-shadow declaration, it will expand and contract as necessary to fit the width of the element it is applied to. But if the design calls for a slightly more complex shadow you need to do a bit… -
Letting users disable responsive layout
25 Mar 2013 | 11:32 amIt’s great that media queries allow us to adapt the layout of our sites to the users’ viewport size, a.k.a. Responsive Web Design. However, some argue that doing so comes with a (slight) risk of confusing some people that don’t expect viewport width to make the layout change as drastically as media queries allow. While I don’t think this affects a large number of people, it’s quite possible that people who do not know what responsive web design is (i.e. the vast majority of people) can be confused by a site looking radically different on their computer that on their tablet or…
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ZURB
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New Pattern Tap Site Lives in ZURB
17 May 2013 | 3:01 pmToday, we launched the new Pattern Tap with code patterns. Since acquiring the site last year, we've been adding new patterns to the library everyday and learning from how people use it. It's exciting to expand on Matthew Smith's vision and introduce code patterns to the library. It's an amazing resource. Introducing Code Patterns The new code patterns will help product designers use Foundation more effectively in their workflow. The code patterns are great for prototyping and building responsive websites. The introduction of code patterns came as an evolution of the success of our templates… -
Stencils for Foundation 4 are Now Here!
14 May 2013 | 3:54 pmSince the release of Foundation 4, we've had people asking us to update the Foundation 3 stencils to the latest version of our framework. Well, we heard you and now we present the new and improved stencil sets, now Foundation 4 ready! When we created the stencil sets for the first time, we knew it would help us produce wireframes and mock-ups faster. This is one of the reasons we decided to update the stencils to the latest version of our framework. We also want to make sure that everyone using Foundation 4 is also able to build faster and better layouts. What's New in This Version of the… -
3 Techniques to Make a Good Footer Great
13 May 2013 | 11:00 amWe recently wrote about what your footer says about your business. You could say footers have been on our minds a lot. We've even asked ourselves, "What makes a good footer, great?" Here's what we've come up with: a good footer must provide valuable information that allows people to navigate the site, engage and re-engage visitors with quality content, and give them a means to seek help. It's easy to design footers as an afterthought. Designers assume that visitors just blow past it anyway — and why shouldn't they? People spend 20% of their attention below the fold. Yet those that scan… -
17 Design Feedback Techniques that Influence Others and Win Meetings
10 May 2013 | 4:16 pmPicture this. The designer on your team has spent the last week whipping up lo-fi wireframes that highlight solutions to the user and business problems you're trying to solve. She's worked through all the interactions. Then she presents to the rest of the team. But she flounders, stumbling over her words. Everyone has a deer-in-the-headlights look on their faces. She's lost them. And it ends with the dreaded four words, "what do you think?" The designer hasn't asked specific questions, highlighted the process or exposed weaknesses, because you didn't coach her through it. If the team comes in… -
Getting Foundation and IE8 to Play Nice
6 May 2013 | 4:00 pmPeople who take our Foundation training course aren’t the only ones who come away with more knowledge than they started. Our students sometimes share their ideas with us — and we want to share one with you today. As you might know, Foundation 4 doesn’t support Internet Explorer 8. With IE8 slipping in usage, we thought it was the right time to let it go. But one person couldn’t. Too much of site’s traffic used IE8 to just let go. After taking our Foundation class, he came up with a jury-rig that combines Foundation 4 with IE8-friendly Foundation 3. The setup The…
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UX Magazine
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Make It So: Five Lessons in Interaction Design from Star Trek
16 May 2013 | 2:53 amWith Star Trek Into Darkness opening in theaters this weekend, it seems like a perfect time to survey some of the technological foreshadowing the franchise has bestowed upon us over the years. There are few better sources for that kind of info than Make It So (Rosenfeld), a book by Nathan Shedroff and Christopher Noessel that describes in great detail the interaction design lessons we can take from science fiction. From brain copying in Metropolis (1927) to voluminous projections in Iron Man 2 (2010), the book provides a wide and detailed account of how the tech in SF inspires the glowing… -
The Greatest Secrets of UX Revealed!
15 May 2013 | 3:50 amI’m a big fan of Penn and Teller, and have been for many years. I saw them live for the first time last month and was blown away by their performance. What I really love about Penn and Teller is that they often “pull back the curtain” and reveal how they do their magic. Other magicians produce an air of mysticism and pretense around their craft, but Penn and Teller will have none of that. They know they are playing tricks, fooling the audience, and by letting everyone in on what they are doing they debunk mysticism while also (hopefully) teaching you something. Their attitude towards… -
Create a Better Responsive User Experience
14 May 2013 | 3:12 amThe mobile market is exploding with unprecedented growth, and marketers are no longer hesitating to embrace responsive web design. As more and more businesses choose to adopt this new approach, it has become crucial for anyone in the web industry to understand the implications of creating a responsive user experience. It's become our responsibility as content strategists, information architects, designers, developers, and digital strategists to do more than just squeeze a website onto the mobile screen of a commuter: we have to plan, design, and build a...read more By Nick Switzer -
A Look at Flat Design and Why It's Significant
13 May 2013 | 2:43 amThere has been a growing tidal wave of flat designs on the web, and recent trend reports have confirmed that they're only increasing in popularity. Of course it's easy to dismiss flat design as yet another fleeting aesthetic trend. But further investigation into this new philosophy reveals that flat design is a lot more than "just for looks." What is Flat Design? Flat design can be seen as the more sophisticated and versatile cousin of minimalism. While flat designs look great when made within the restraints of minimalism, they...read more By Luke Clum -
Creating a Successful Information Experience for Your Users
9 May 2013 | 5:27 amIn a world where people of all ages and backgrounds are spending increasingly more and more of their time navigating through software and web and mobile apps, providing an experience that engages and guides users is crucial for the success of the application. While development teams spend countless hours designing the user experience, planning and coding features, and testing the application, they often overlook the importance of the information appearing within the application. While this information is referred to, in its simplest form, as the user interface text, the integration between…
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information aesthetics
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Words & Votes: The Changing Congressional Opinions on Gun Violence
17 May 2013 | 8:34 amThe political visualization Words & Votes [sandyhookpromise.org], developed by digital agency R/GA for non-profit organization Sandy Hook Promise, provides a comprehensive look into the opinions of congressional representatives on the issue of gun violence. More specifically, the visualization tracks each member of congress as being "neutral", on the side of "Gun Safety," or on the side of "Gun Rights". It then maps the evolution of these opinions over time on a vertical timeline. These individual opinions have been based on two separate types of information: the analysis of the tweets sent… -
How Half a Second of High Frequency Stock Trading Looks Like
13 May 2013 | 1:57 pmThe movie shown below, developed by a real-time trading software developer Nanex, shows the stock trading activity in Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) as it occurred during a particular half a second on May 2, 2013. Each colored box represents one unique exchange. The whote box at the bottom of the screens shows the National Best Bid/Offer, which often drastically changes in a fraction of a second. The moving shapes represent quote changes which are the result of a change to the top of the book at each exchange. The time at the bottom of the screen is Eastern Time HH:MM:SS:mmm, which is slowed down to… -
Mapping the Pavement Quality of Streets in L.A.
9 May 2013 | 1:15 pmL.A. Street QualGrades [latimes.com], developed by the Los Angeles Times Data Desk, maps the pavement quality rating for each of the 68,000 street segments in L.A., the largest municipal system in the US with about 6,500 miles of paved roadway streets. Using a state-of-the-art van equipped with cameras and lasers, the Bureau of Street Services graded each single street segment of L.A.'s vast street network from from A (dark green) to F (dark pink). The grades were based on a 100-point scale called the "pavement condition index". The accompanying news article can be found here. Via Flowing… -
YouTube Trends Map: Explore the Most Popular Videos by Location
9 May 2013 | 12:10 pmThe YouTube Trends Map [youtube.com] is a visualization of the most shared and viewed videos in various regions across the United States over the last 12 to 24 hours. It accompanies the more analytical Trends Dashboard to provide a full overview of the the rising videos and trends on YouTube in terms of actual views or shares, filtered by geographical location, gender or age of the viewers. The demographic information of viewers is solely based on the information reported by registered, logged-in users in their YouTube account profiles. Next to the geographical map, the Trends Map also… -
Bolides: Explore the Eye-Witnessed Meteorites that Collided with Earth
3 May 2013 | 2:20 pmBolides - Visualizing Meteorites [bolid.es] by data visualization designer Carlo Zapponi visualizes all historical occurrences of meteorites that collided with the Earth and were eye-witnessed when falling and hitting the ground. The visualizes is comprised of a linear timeline of which the top denotes the number of meteorites spottings per year, and the bottom shows their mass, estimated in kilograms. The dataset includes 34,513 recordings of found and fell meteorites that have not been classified as doubtful or discredited. A meteorite is classified as 'fell' if it has been observed by…
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UXmatters
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User Research Methods: Has-beens and Stars
6 May 2013 | 1:06 amBy Jim Ross Published: May 6, 2013 “By comparing the user research methods that never really caught on to those that have become popular, we can determine what it is that makes user research techniques valuable to UX professionals.” Remember GOMS analyses? Pluralistic walkthroughs? Have you written any scenarios lately? When was the last time you performed a cognitive walkthrough? Maybe in grad school? Never? Of all the user research methods that have emerged over last few decades, why did some catch on and become renowned, while others are still waiting for their big break or have… -
Sharpening Up Your Soft Skills
6 May 2013 | 1:02 amBy Mia Northrop Published: May 6, 2013 “Soft skills, the interpersonal and behavioral skills that impact how you manage yourself and work with others, can make or break UX professionals….” At some stage in your UX career, the focus of your professional improvement will likely switch from what you can produce as a UX strategist, designer, or researcher to how you produce it. Not only do you need to master hard skills such as how to articulate a UX vision, run a card sort, or wireframe for mobile rather than the desktop, you also need to negotiate with developers, facilitate… -
Information Wayfinding, Part 2: Elements of the Information Environment
6 May 2013 | 12:58 amBy Tyler Tate Published: May 6, 2013 “In this article, I’ll scrutinize the nature of information environments by investigating their most fundamental elements.” In Part 1 of this series, I argued that vestiges of the pre-Web, print era still haunt digital experiences. To create information environments that are truly coherent, we must view them not as books full of pages, but as spaces to navigate and explore—much like finding our way through a city or a museum. This is what I call information wayfinding. In this article, I’ll scrutinize the nature of information environments by… -
Augmented Cognition: A Future for UX?
6 May 2013 | 12:54 amBy Peter Hornsby Published: May 6, 2013 “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”—Nils Bohr “Looking at trends in technology can help us to manage and prepare for uncertainty—or at least give us the illusion of doing so.” In my last column, I looked at how we could make the Iron Man suit a reality, using existing technologies. Some of the Twitter feedback and comments on that column talked about using brainwaves to control the suit, so I thought it would be interesting to see what is being done in that area. Prediction, as Nils Bohr noted, can be a… -
4 Tips for a Great First-Use Experience
6 May 2013 | 12:50 amBy Warren Croce Published: May 6, 2013 “It’s impossible to understate the importance of a great first-use experience of your product or service.” It’s impossible to understate the importance of a great first-use experience of your product or service. No matter how amazing your product’s capabilities are, if using it feels like a struggle the first time users try your product, you’ll have a hard time wooing them back. What Is First Use? Some people interpret first use very literally—meaning the experience starts the first time a person uses a system. While that’s certainly…
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A List Apart: The Full Feed
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This week's sponsor: Typekit
13 May 2013 | 10:00 amTypekit is the easiest way to use real fonts on the web. Add a line of code to your pages and choose from hundreds of web fonts. Simple, bulletproof, standards compliant, accessible, and totally legal. Learn more at http://typekit.com -
Paul Irish on Chrome Moving to Blink
13 May 2013 | 8:43 amI know you’ve been asked this plenty of times already, but: no new vendor prefixes, right? Right? Nope, none! They’re great in theory but turns out they fail in practice, so we’re joining Mozilla and the W3C CSS WG and moving away them. There’s a few parts to this. Firstly, we won’t be migrating the existing -webkit- prefixed properties to a -chrome- or -blink- prefix, that’d just make extra work for everyone. Secondly, we inherited some existing properties that are prefixed. Some, like -webkit-transform, are standards track and we work with the CSS WG to move ahead those… -
W3C to Publish Encrypted Media Extensions Specification
10 May 2013 | 8:25 am» W3C to Publish Encrypted Media Extensions SpecificationThe W3C announced today that it intends to publish the controversial Encrypted Media Extensions extension specification despite highly outspoken resistance, paving the way for native web DRM. -
Research Tips For Designers and Developers
10 May 2013 | 8:19 am» Research Tips For Designers and DevelopersHow is the waterfall web design process like the childhood game of "Telephone," and how can we fix it? Bringing designers and developers into the discovery and research phase is a good start, says Happy Cog creative director Chris Cashdollar, who shares stakeholder interviewing tips in this helpful Cognition post. -
Rachel Andrew on the Business of Web Dev: You Can’t Do Everything
9 May 2013 | 5:30 amIn any given day I can find myself reading up on a new W3C proposal, fixing an issue with our tax return, coding an add-on for our product, writing a conference presentation, building a server, creating a video tutorial, and doing front end development for one of our sites. Without clients dictating my workload I’m in the enviable position of being able to choose where to focus my efforts. However, I can’t physically do everything. I’m one half of a two-person web development business—the team behind the little CMS, Perch. I’m also an author and speaker on subjects that range from…
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LukeW | Digital Product Design + Strategy
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UX Lisbon: Designing for Connected Homes
16 May 2013 | 5:00 pmIn her Designing for Connected Homes talk at UX Lisbon Claire Rowland shared a number of design principles for effective home automation tools. Here's my notes from her talk. Home automation has been around for a long time but never really taken off. You had to be both rich and technologically savvy to use the solutions that were available. What has changed? We now have a metaphor for the remote control of our lives: the smartphone. We have little bits of smartness all around us and the prices of these things are continuing to go down. Make it feel like home. Many software interfaces for the… -
UX Lisbon: A Means to An End
16 May 2013 | 5:00 pmIn his A Means to An End presentation at UX Lisbon Jon Kolko explained how designers make things, the impact they can have with their work, and why they should focus their efforts on issues that matter. Here's my notes from his talk. How Do You Work There are four ingredients in design: craft, material, process, and voice. Craft: usually thought of as refining the ability to make things. But craft is also about detail. Detail reflects engagement: a sense of quality that comes from the craftsman. Material: there’s a sense that the materials we use want to flow a certain way. Simplicity is… -
UX Lisbon: Microinteractions
16 May 2013 | 5:00 pmIn his Microinteractions: Design with Details presentation at UX Lisbon Dan Saffer discussed how small interaction details matter and can be designed effectively. Here's my notes from his talk. The case of patron x: someone's phone was going off during a symphony performance. Micro-interactions are single use cases that do one thing and do it well. They can exist on their own or be part of a larger feature set. The difference between a product you love and one you don't boils down to the micro-interactions. Design isn't just about solving wicked problems. Instead of focusing on really big… -
Google I/O 2013: Just the Data
14 May 2013 | 5:00 pmAt the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, the company shared how Android and some of their other services are growing. Here's just the data from the opening keynote in May 2013. Android hit 100 million activations in 2011, 400m in 2012, and 900 million in 2013. There are about 400m iOS devices in use. (source) Android is now at 2.4m device activations a day. (source) There have been 48 billion app installs from Google Play. 2.5 billion installs in the last month alone. (source) There were over 450M monthly active users for Chrome in the middle of 2012. Chrome added over 300M… -
Device Motion in Application Design
13 May 2013 | 5:00 pmIn my fifth video for Intel Software Partners on re-imagining desktop application design, I provide an overview of device motion and walk through a few ways we can take advantage of this set of capabilities in the desktop apps we create. Device motion is made possible by a combination of always-on sensors (typically an accelerometer, a magnetometer, and a gyroscope) that tell us how a computer is moving through the space around it. The ability of these sensors to provide precise information about the movement of a device opens up new design possibilities for applications. From adjusting the…
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Church of the Customer Blog
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#MonsterLoyalty book tour and other speaking events
7 May 2013 | 10:37 pmHi there! Here's my speaking schedule including book tour events. If you live in one these cities, I looking forward to seeing you!! May 8: Austin - book tour event (private) May 10: Orlando - book tour event (private) May 21: Chicago - WOMMA WOMM-U Conference. Use my discount code WUSpeak50 to get $50 off registration. Jun 2: Orlando - book tour event (private) Jun 12: Milan, Italy - private event Jun 20: Salt Lake City - book tour event (public) sponsored by SoulSalt. Get tickets here. Jun 27: Las Vegas - Confirmit Conference Jul 11: Chicago - book tour event… -
The winners of the Monster Loyalty pre-order giveaway are....
2 May 2013 | 4:24 pmThanks to all who participated in the Monster Loyalty pre-order giveaway by purchasing a book before launch. The winners are: 1st PRIZE: Joey Coleman, Chief Experience Composer at Design Symphony 5 copies of Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanatics 2 Lady Gaga art prints by rock and roll pop artist Kii Arens, signed and numbered 2nd PRIZE: Shep Hyken, New York Times and WSJ best selling author of The Amazement Revolution: Seven Customer Service Strategies to Create an Amazing Customer Experience 5 copies of Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers… -
Monster Loyalty is now available!
2 May 2013 | 8:52 amI am excited to announce that Monster Loyalty is now available! This is a book that I am extremely excited about because it argues that Lady Gaga didn’t become the success she is today based solely on her talent. She did so by engendering immense loyalty from her fans – not just through her music – but through the message she embodies and the community she has built around that message. In four short years, Lady Gaga has built an army of passionate fans that numbers in the tens of millions around the globe. My book explores how she did it, uncovering seven loyalty… -
Monster Loyalty Ball Benefiting Equality Texas 5/1
29 Apr 2013 | 8:49 amIf you live in Austin, Texas, or will be here on May 1, I hope you will join me for the launch party for my new book, Monster Loyalty. The Gaga-themed party is also a benefit with 100% of ticket sales going to Equality Texas which educates and advocates on behalf of LGBT Texans, a non-profit doing amazing work to fight for a cause that I, and Lady Gaga, believe in. We will also have: A Gaga-themed performance from RuPaul's Drag Race Season 4 finalist Phi Phi O'Hara Showcasing your Poker Face at the Gaga Photo Booth Gaga-themed cocktails And more surprises! If you can't make it… -
How to think like a rock star
18 Apr 2013 | 4:00 pmMack Collier is a social media strategist, trainer, and speaker who specializes in helping companies better connect with their customers and cultivate fans for their brands. His brand new book, "Think Like a Rock Star," examines the marketing and social media strategies of actual rock stars like Taylor Swift, Johnny Cash, Jewel, Amanda Palmer and others and shares how any company can learn from them to create emotional connections with customers. Here's a Q&A I did with Mack about the book: Q. What does it mean to '"Think Like a Rock Star?" A. If you look at any number of studies…
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InfoDesign: Understanding by Design
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Apples and oranges: Developing an enterprise taxonomy that works
16 May 2013 | 5:40 amSo much to change in enterprises. How about metadata? "The increasing need to dynamically deliver targeted content that is contextually relevant rests on three things – the technology to deliver it, the appropriate personalization and targeting strategies, and a robust enterprise taxonomy. Developing and managing your taxonomy is not a painless exercise, and it requires the help of an expert and the involvement and buy-in of key stakeholders, but based on our experiences, the benefits far outweigh the effort." (SiteWorx) -
The greatest secrets of UX revealed
15 May 2013 | 1:12 pmA list of so-called secrets, with a description phrase. We want narratives. "I know many UX designers present themselves as unquestionable experts on human beings; as seers whose edicts should be followed to the letter. Come on." (Joseph Dickerson a.k.a. @JosephDickerson ~ UX Magazine) -
Is the iPad mobile?
15 May 2013 | 1:49 amNice example of a rhetorical question. "Listen to your users and always check whether the new features are desirable. As you first release an app, start with your core competency and consider the features that are essential to your primary user path. As you iterate and add more features from your business and product road map, take into account what users are saying. You may find yourself adding or sunsetting features based on how and where people are using your app. Mobile or not, the tablet market is here to stay and, directly or indirectly, users will tell us what features to build… -
The Governance component of content strategy success
14 May 2013 | 9:47 amThe larger the organization, the more important this component becomes. "While all three components (creation, publication, governance) of the content strategy lifecycle are intended to be ongoing, it's the Governance component that often requires the most dedication due to its never ending need for attention. Once content is created and published then it will forever need to be managed, maintained, optimised and compliant which leads to the age old question of 'where to begin?'" (Jessica O'Sullivan ~ Siteimprove) -
Service design for UX designers
13 May 2013 | 1:33 pmExplaining it to UX designers is one thing, to your mother is another. "If you are in an agency or consultancy environment, you might categorise service design as part of user experience and/or experience strategy. If you come from a product environment, service design might vibrate more to what you consider as product management and business design. In a nutshell, service design is delivering a designed experience onto different levels of actors with a more holistic approach in mind. Let me elaborate on that." (Patrick Neeman a.k.a. @usabilitycounts ~ Usability Counts)
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Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report
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Ryan and Tina Essmaker of The Great Discontent
10 May 2013 | 11:58 amRYAN AND TINA Essmaker are my guests for Episode No. 91 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”). Ryan is a designer and the co-founder of The Great Discontent. By day he works with Crush + Lovely as head of products, and manages No Little Plans, The Great Discontent’s parent company. Tina is an illustrator, essayist, photographer, blogger, and the co-founder of The Great Discontent, an online journal of interviews focusing on creativity and risk, and No Little Plans, The Great Discontent’s parent company. By day she manages community for Crush + Lovely and… -
Adobe Love
8 May 2013 | 7:02 amI CAME to AdobeMAX in Los Angeles to give a talk to a room full of designers. Before arriving, I thought of Adobe as a historically important 20th century company that was slowly leaking relevance—a company web designers in the era of responsive design have begun to think of with a combination of fondness and embarrassment, like a beloved but somewhat shameful old uncle. I came to LA with those perceptions, but I leave with the impression of an exciting 21st century company in emergence. Realistic products for a magical age The products I saw were both amazing and realistic. It was amazing… -
The Big Web Show No. 90: Paul Ford on emulators, archives, and the web
3 May 2013 | 10:38 amTHE AMAZING PAUL FORD is my guest in Episode No. 90 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”). In a fast-moving hour, we discuss computer system emulators on the web, designing web archives, the value of context in software and literature, the new tribalism, the fallacy of history, buying records when you are 16, why getting to magic is more important than attaining perfection, the interconnectedness of software design and storytelling, how parenting twins facilitates A/B testing, and loads more. Give it a listen! URLs, URLs, URLs Ftrain.com A Conversation with Paul… -
McGrane: Kill Your CMS
3 May 2013 | 7:58 amTHE ERA of “desktop publishing” is over. Same goes for the era where we privilege the desktop web interface above all others. The tools we create to manage our content are vestiges of the desktop publishing revolution, where we tried to enable as much direct manipulation of content as possible. In a world where we have infinite possible outputs for our content, it’s time to move beyond tools that rely on visual styling to convey semantic meaning. If we want true separation of content from form, it has to start in the CMS.–Karen McGrane, WYSIWTF ∙ An A List Apart Column. -
60 Minutes of Luke
3 May 2013 | 7:56 amIT’S ANOTHER Full-length Friday! In this 60-minute video caught live at AEA Boston, Luke Wroblewski (Mobile First) explores multi-device design from the top down (desktop to mobile) and bottom up (using mobile to expand what’s possible across all devices): An Event Apart News: AEA Video: Luke Wroblewski (author, Mobile First) – Mobile To The Future.
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Bloug
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The Benefits of a Train Wreck
22 Apr 2013 | 8:49 amWant to make an information architect squirm? Just ask this simple question: "Show me an example of good information architecture." Chances are we'll stammer, mumble something about good IA being invisible IA, and slink away. It doesn't have to be that way—if we're willing to turn the question on its head. Forget good IA—let's focus on bad IA. You know, the reason that information architecture got started as a practice in the first place. Let's dig deep into the darkness of just how much life can suck at an absolutely fundamental level when people can't find and understand… -
Putting my money where my mouth is
11 Apr 2013 | 11:16 am(Boy, I don't blog much these days, do I?) For those of you following, the Information Architecture Institute—which I co-founded with Christina Wodtke over ten years ago—is going through more existential angst than usual. The topic of the institute's future and its business model—or lack thereof—came up at the annual IAI town meeting at last week's IA Summit, as it does every year. And every year for the past five or so, I foam at the mouth and launch spittle along with strong words about how the IAI should abandon its ill-guided dependency upon paid membership… -
Homecoming month
7 Oct 2012 | 1:32 pmI've been looking forward to this month for quite a while. I'll be taking two trips—one to Ann Arbor, the other to Moscow—and both involve crossing a fair bit of time as well as space. The trip to Moscow happens this week (yikes: pack! check passport status! locate winter coat!). I'm keynoting the UX Russia conference and teaching a workshop there as well. I'm also planning on eating as many pelmeni as I can possibly stuff down my gullet. My only other time in Russia was ten weeks during the summer of 1985. I officially was there to study Russian at LGU (Leningrad State… -
What have I been up to lately?
14 Sep 2012 | 12:18 pmMostly getting this off the ground. And damn, I'm excited. In many respects, it marries Rosenfeld Media, the publishing house, with what I've been doing as a solo consultant/teacher for most of the past twelve years. I think there's something unique, and potentially disruptive, in that combination. Anyway, we'll see. It's certainly nice to, after two or three years, stop talking this talk and start walking the walk. Wish me luck! Oh, and this just came out a few hours ago. When Nathan and Chris told me about the idea for this book, it made me smile. Still smiling; what a cool concept. And, I… -
Meet me in Toronto, Minneapolis, or... Moscow?
20 Jul 2012 | 9:27 amFall is around the corner, and that means workshops. Rosenfeld Media's UX workshop roadshow will visit NYC October 10-12, Minneapolis November 12-14, and Toronto November 28-30. You'd think I'd be teaching in NYC, given that it's where I live, but I'll be making my way to Moscow that week to keynote UX Russia. I'm pretty excited—haven't been there since I spent the summer of '85 in the USSR—and I imagine things may have changed a bit. But I will be teaching my Adaptable IA workshop in Minneapolis and Toronto. You know, the workshop that helps you avoid pointless, expensive…
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Putting people first
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Big Data knows what your future holds
18 May 2013 | 6:01 amLiving by the Numbers [original title: "Leben nach Zahlen"] is the title of the cover story of the German magazine Der Spiegel, available for free in English translation. “For a modern society, an even more pressing question is whether it wishes to accept everything that becomes possible in a data-driven economy. Do we want to live in a world in which algorithms predict how well a child will do in school, how suitable he or she is for a specific job — or whether that person is at risk of becoming a criminal or developing cancer?” -
Industrial designers in the 21st Century: masters of the experience
18 May 2013 | 1:51 amFernd Van Engelen of Artefact writes about how adding hardware design to a UX practice can create opportunities for a more holistic user experience. “We shared the belief that we could no longer separate what a product looks like physically from the way it behaves and how we interact with it. Where traditionally UI had been confined to a small portion of the real estate on a smart, beautiful object, increasingly the UI was becoming the hero experience of the product while the hardware simply provided a stage for that magic. Neither extreme felt right us and we set out to forge a much… -
Customers remember experiences, not content
18 May 2013 | 1:44 amTo solve the issue with content marketing, we need to start looking at content as part of a broader ecosystem, argues Ben Barone-Nugent, a senior digital writer & content strategist at TBWA, in a Digital Marketing special in The Guardian. “If we define experience as the beginning-to-end engagement with a brand, then content is simply part of the spectrum. [...] Digital content needs to be supported by great user experience (UX), solid digital strategy, attentive channel management and smart technology. To reiterate – it must be part of a system.” -
Chatting in code on walkie-talkies in Pakistan’s tribal areas
18 May 2013 | 1:35 amReboot principal Panthea Lee discusses on The Atlantic how people communicate in one of the most dangerous places on earth. “Barbers, for example, are seen as well-informed about local news because they converse with a wide range of people daily. Despite the mobility constraints in many parts of the region, all men — rich and poor, educated and uneducated — still go to the barbershop. Sultan, a barber in Khyber, thinks of himself as “a computer where people feed and receive information.” Similarly, diaspora populations are increasingly important providers of… -
SAP’s UX strategy
16 May 2013 | 4:08 amSAP customers are increasingly telling the company that user experience (UX) is the differentiator, not features and functions, starts the introduction to SAP’s new UX strategy. “With [its] large product portfolio, any SAP UX strategy cannot be a “boil the ocean” approach; it has to target the areas that will have the biggest impact. So, instead of closing themselves off in a meeting room with like-minded colleagues, SAP user experience and product leads invited customers to tackle the challenge together as one team. Driven by SAP’s Sam Yen, Andreas Hauser, Gerrit Kotze,…
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Reaction!
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Domino's Pizza DVD
17 May 2013 | 8:15 amIn partnership with ten video rental stores in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero (and with the help of Brazil-based agency, Artplan) Domino's Pizza recently created DVDs that release the smell of a pizza (and even look like pizzas!) when "heated up". New titles—such as Argo, Skyfall and The Dark Knight—were stamped with thermal ink and flavoured varnish, both sensitive to the heat generated by DVD players. When users finished watching the movie and ejected the DVD, they saw an image of and could smell fresh-baked pizza. The "heated up" DVDs also carried the message: "Did you enjoy the… -
Smart Beer Bottle
17 May 2013 | 8:10 amWith the help of advertising agency Tribal DDB Amsterdam, Heineken has come up with what they are calling the world's first "smart beer bottle". The new bottle uses micro sensors and wireless networking technology to respond to a variety of different actions. Clinking two bottles together causes them to light up simultaneously, while taking a drink causes LED lights to flicker. The bottle also responds to music and the output of specific audio and data cues—for example, it can detect different kinds of motion like cheering, drinking or sitting idly on the bar counter. Check out the… -
85 Seconds
17 May 2013 | 7:28 amBrazilian advertising agency AlmapBBDO recently created this wonderful short film based on materials from Getty Images' extensive collection, telling the love story of a couple who met as children, became separate after graduation and were reunited as adults. [Via Adverblog] -
World's First Water-Making Billboard
16 May 2013 | 3:52 amThis billboard in rural Peru—a collaboration between outdoor advertising owner ClearChannel Peru, Lima's University of Engineering and Technology, media agency BNP and advertising agency Mayo Publicidad—transforms humidity in the air into filtered water. Since the billboard's arrival in 2012, the billboard has produced an average of 96 litres of water a day, which is used by between 15 and 18 families in Bujama (a village around 100km south of Lima—one of the world's largest desert capitals). [Via Creative Review] -
Wikipedia Edited In Real Time
16 May 2013 | 3:42 amWikipedia is constantly growing as it is written and rewritten by people around the world. To illustrate this, Stephen La Porte and Mahmoud Hashemi have created a real-time map of recent changes, revealing (roughly) where each contributor is located. Only contributions from unregistered users are captured at the moment (which account for approximately 20% of all the edits made on the English-language version of Wikipedia)... It's still fascinating to see the map update nonetheless. [Via BuzzFeed FWD]
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Small Surfaces
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Film UI: Star Trek Into Darkness
16 May 2013 | 10:29 pmAn interview with the UI designer who created the displays for Star Trek Into Darkness. “In practical UI, you are trying to give the user an elegant way to make choices. With film UI, I am trying to give the viewer the illusion of choice. I am trying to deliberately direct the viewers eye to whatever story point the director wants revealed at the time he wants it revealed. The job becomes more about illustration, especially in post where we can see how the interface is framed within the shot. We paint a small part of a much bigger picture, and our work needs to visually support… -
Multi-purpose or single-purpose devices?
13 May 2013 | 11:26 pmArguing for multi-purpose devices, Berkowitz writes: “It’s true that my GPS-enabled camera takes better pictures than my smartphone, and can tell me they were taken in California. But learning to share the pictures with friends takes more effort than it is worth. In the new marketplace, devices people can’t master in five minutes will result in a lot of returned items, which very quickly makes a product unprofitable.” On the opposite side, Saffer writes: “It’s not just professionals who care about quality, either. Yes, the speaker on a phone is good enough… -
How knobs feel
8 May 2013 | 6:17 amAttention to detail. In this case: knobs. “Ferguson Stereophonic – Antique Knob…The Knobs are what I’d expect from a lovingly built Hi-Fi. Axial Skew doesn’t exist. The weight behind the rotation is deliberate and weighty. The on-click feels like I’m providing the power myself! Why can’t people make them like this now? What is stopping manufacturers from this attention to detail?” “Marantz NR1504. The input selector here has notches that for me aren’t notched enough, we know Marantz can do it because of the Pearl-Lite already… -
Firefox OS simulator is out: take it for a spin
2 May 2013 | 7:26 pm“Firefox OS Simulator is a test environment for Firefox OS. Use it to test your apps in a Firefox OS-like environment that looks and feels like a mobile phone. After installing it, go to Web Developer > Firefox OS Simulator to access its features.” Link: Firefox OS Simulator (mozilla.org) Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more Related: Firefox Mobile OS simulator for the desktop Firefox moving towards integrated multi-screen UX Firefox Mobile concept video -
Smartphone innovation: what’s around the corner
24 Apr 2013 | 11:26 pmCNET identifies some of the upcoming changes we might expect in our pocket computers. “Sensitive sensors track the world in real time: …the gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer, and so forth – are starting to get more friends in the neighborhood. Samsung, for instance, slipped pressure, temperature, and humidity sniffers into the Galaxy S4.“ “‘Appcessories’: …highly specialized peripheral software that fulfills very targeted needs, stuff that most people wouldn’t want their everyday phone.” “Rise of gestures and touch-free…
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Subtraction.com
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When Designers Interview Engineers
16 May 2013 | 9:42 amThe reality for most designers is that we are very likely to work at companies whose principal line of business is not design, but something else — media, services, widgets, what have you. This is slightly less true if you’re in the studio or agency world, but certainly if you do interaction or product design, you’re probably working in an environment that’s engineering-focused first, and design-focused second (or third). There’s a tech sector, but there’s no ‘design sector.’ Thankfully, as the design profession has matured designers… -
Mad Mimi Email Marketing Feed Sponsorship
14 May 2013 | 9:00 pmMad Mimi is a design-oriented email newsletter service founded in 2008. Developed to provide a mobile-app-like feel, and with a drag-and-drop email composer, Mad Mimi offers a simple, elegant user experience that helps customers create, send, and track beautiful html email campaigns. Mad Mimi also offers robust APIs, integrations, and add-on features. This makes it a perfect fit for today’s visionaries, artists, and entrepreneurs, including great digital brands like Fancy and StumbleUpon, who use Mad Mimi to communicate with their customers. Best yet, Mad Mimi is free for up to 2,500… -
Tail Wagging in Interface Design
14 May 2013 | 3:30 amA wonderfully argued indictment of skeuomorphism and its inherent falsity, by designer and developer Matt Gemell. It’s well worth a read, though I actually don’t fully agree with it. I’m working up to writing down my thoughts on the widespread distaste for skeuomorphism and the accompanying mania for ‘flat design.’ And when I say ‘working up to it’ I mean ‘trying to find the time.’ Anyway, Read Matt’s piece here. To follow me on Twitter click here. -
PDFpenPro 6 from Smile Feed Sponsorship
7 May 2013 | 9:00 pmPDFpenPro is the advanced version of PDFpen. PDFpenPro does everything that PDFpen does, such as add signatures, edit text and images, perform OCR on scanned documents and export Microsoft Word documents. It also has the ability to create a PDF form, build a table of contents, and convert HTML files to PDF. The new PDFpenPro 6 adds document permission settings. When you share a PDF, you can restrict printing, copying, and editing of your PDFs. You can also use the new automatic form field creation tool to convert a non-interactive form into an interactive PDF form with text fields and… -
Creative Cloud Is Not Suite
7 May 2013 | 10:47 amLate in December of 2010, I paid US$750 (including taxes and shipping) for an upgrade copy of Adobe Creative Suite 5. I’m still using that software on my Mac at home, and find that it covers most all of my needs. If you amortize that cost out over the roughly thirty months that I’ve owned CS5, it comes to about US$25 per month. When I first did this math, I expected that figure to be significantly lower than the cost for Adobe’s Creative Cloud software, which offers the same applications as the Creative Suite but via monthly subscription. Existing CS…
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Veerle's blog
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Magnifying glass for image zoom using Jquery and CSS3
13 May 2013 | 8:19 amMagnifying glass for image zoom using jQuery & CSS3. Be sure to play the code walkthrough. -
RefineSlide
13 May 2013 | 8:10 amRefineSlide, a nice looking responsive slider with transitions & pretty good browser support. -
Shapes of Cities
8 May 2013 | 9:16 amOngoing series of illustrating shapes of cities.via Yoni Alter -
Dine alone
8 May 2013 | 7:53 amIllustration for Oprah Magazine.via Sol Linero -
Leo
8 May 2013 | 7:21 amLeo the lion the star of the poster that you can buy here.via DKNG
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Usability Counts
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David Cole: The Rise of Product Design
16 May 2013 | 11:12 amOne request I made when I started the new job was to include Product Design in the title, because I believe a) you can’t expressly design User Experience, and b) User Experience is everyone’s responsibility. There’s another divergence in UX: in-house versus agency. The goal may be the same (usable product or website), but how you get there varies mainly because how you have to communicate product design. I’ve worked on both sides, and my approach to how I get things done is very, very different. In the agency world, wireframes are deliverables. In the product world,… -
Service Design for UX Designers
13 May 2013 | 11:00 amCathy Wang (@cathycracks) is a designer that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting virtually (hard to pin her down — she’s from Vancouver, lives in Milan, travels a whole lot). She works in the field of Service Design in the real world. As UX Designers, we should pay attention, because this is something that can greatly expand your influence. Read on. Have you tried explaining to people what you do as an User Experience Designer? Now try to imagine what you would have to say if you were a Service Designer. People have often asked me what I mean when I say “I design… -
Mashable: A Facebook Update In Real Life
12 May 2013 | 11:00 amVery, very funny. You just finished reading Mashable: A Facebook Update In Real Life! Consider leaving a comment!Stuff to check out UX Drinking Game | UX Resume and Career Guide -
Silly Saturdays: The User is Drunk
11 May 2013 | 10:39 amYou just finished reading Silly Saturdays: The User is Drunk! Consider leaving a comment!Stuff to check out UX Drinking Game | UX Resume and Career Guide -
GetResponse: Social Sharing Boosts Email Marketing Results By 158%
10 May 2013 | 12:15 pmFrom GetResponse You just finished reading GetResponse: Social Sharing Boosts Email Marketing Results By 158%! Consider leaving a comment!Stuff to check out UX Drinking Game | UX Resume and Career Guide
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Product Design & Marketing Advisor - Etienne Garbugli
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Going Massively Viral on Slideshare – Lessons Learned
14 May 2013 | 10:09 pmThis post was originally titled “How I created a presentation viewed by over 250,000 people on Slideshare in just 8 hours”, but as the numbers kept increasing to now well-over 2,500,000 viewers, the title no longer made sense. Creating the…Read more ›Related Posts:Watch your FeetYou are not the expertDon’t count clicksDo business by helping othersFight apathy -
Présentation Infopresse – Comment générer de meilleures idées
5 Dec 2012 | 11:06 amCe matin, je présentais sur l’importance de la collaboration en créativité pour l’évènement Tendances 2013 et créativité d’Infopresse. Voici le résumé de mon sujet: Les idées porteuses et innovantes constituent le nerf de la guerre dans l’économie du 21e siècle,…Read more ›Related Posts:Going Massively Viral on Slideshare – Lessons Learned21 things you might not know about Product DesignWhat your business should focus onThe first ‘real’ step to public speaking…Communication is not what you think -
7 reasons why I stopped being a fan
26 Nov 2012 | 5:10 amI’ve never been much of a fan. Over the years, I met a few movies stars, musicians, comedians, athletes and, more than my share of successful entrepreneurs. I don’t think I’ve ever been star-struck but, I’ve been intellectually intimidated more than…Read more ›Related Posts:Network with the average JoesFollow the moneyBanks may not be for youLove the process more than you love the resultHow I Managed to Out-Learn the Competition -
Don’t ask for Letters of Intent
11 Nov 2012 | 11:38 amLetters of intent can’t be taken to the bank. Don’t ask for them; they’re not worth much and they make the customer feel good about getting things (the sale) over with (Ken Morse).Related Posts:Don’t sell technicalAsk for references firstSell to the people that are hurtingHustling is your competitive advantageDon’t sell to IT -
Understand the typical sales process
11 Nov 2012 | 11:36 amTo identify stakeholders ask: ”For our own information, what are the usual steps between now and signing a contract with your company?” (Dan Robichaud).Related Posts:When to start a businessDon’t hire the wrong sales peopleAppear cheaper than you areThe value of informationIt’s rarely only about succeeding
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UIE Brain Sparks
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What is innovation in UX design?
17 May 2013 | 10:10 amSo here’s the thing: Innovation isn’t a bad word. Overused? Perhaps. But not bad. How do I know this? Because cheese in bread, cookie dough in ice cream, and Genius Bars inside Apple stores are AMAZING. These are just a few examples of innovation that create great user experiences. They’re creative ways of putting existing things together in new ways that add real value to users’ lives. So that’s what our fabulous lineup of presenters will be focusing on at UI18. They’ll tackle innovation in UX design from a variety of angles. Scott Berkun will talk about what it takes to enable… -
UIEtips: How Content Strategy Can Help
14 May 2013 | 12:36 pmIn this week’s UIEtips, Margot Bloomstein discusses the strategies content producers should take to optimize their writing. Here’s an excerpt from the article: But with the opportunities of publishing come immense challenges. Don’t just write; write well. Don’t just blog once; maintain a schedule. Don’t just launch an app; ensure your content is appropriate for the many contexts and devices through which it may appear. And goodness, don’t just curate content by choosing keywords and automating aggregation; hone your perspective on the topic and continually revisit your… -
Controlling the Pace of UX with Content Strategy – Our 5/30 Virtual Seminar
13 May 2013 | 7:45 amWhat happens when we slow our pace, enjoy the ride, or look around while waiting in line? Well, if there’s content to engage us, our experiences will be richer and more memorable—and our typical frustrations from “waiting” are more likely to vanish, too. That’s the power of good content that guides us, helps us focus, and encourages us to explore: it helps us make better choices and have more positive memories of an experience. Margot Bloomstein knows which companies use content to control and focus users’ attention. In Controlling the Pace of UX with Content Strategy,… -
UIE Book Corner: Margot Bloomstein’s “Content Strategy at Work”
10 May 2013 | 12:31 pm[ Transcript Available ] Here at UIE we’ve amassed quite a library, and we’re adding to it all the time. One of the more recent additions is Margot Bloomstein’s book Content Strategy at Work. Margot is a fixture at conferences like Confab and the IA Summit. She’s also a veteran of our Virtual Seminar program having presented Combining Curation with Your Content Strategy and returning May 30 with Controlling the Pace of UX with Content Strategy. The subtitle of Margot’s book is “Real-World Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Project” and in keeping with that idea, it is chock… -
The Best Interview Question for Hiring UX Designers
9 May 2013 | 11:50 amWhat if you could ask one question during an interview that would tell you everything you need to know about the candidate you’re thinking of hiring? As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a big fan of Lou Adler’s Hire with Your Head recruiting strategy. A big component of how Lou approaches hiring is the interview conversation. While Lou isn’t thinking of hiring designers specifically, it turns out his approach is perfect for the folks who will thrive in your environment and produce great work. The question is a simple one: “What’s the project you worked on that you’re most proud…
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Cone Trees
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Next Gen Touchscreen Interface- Seamless Data Transfer Between Real and Virtual Worlds
1 May 2013 | 7:27 amFujitsu Laboratories has developed a next generation user interface which can accurately detect the users finger and what it is touching, creating an interactive touchscreen-like system, using objects in the real word. They think paper and many other objects could be manipulated by touching them, as with a touchscreen. This system doesn’t use any special hardware, instead it consists of just a device like an ordinary webcam, plus a commercial projector. Its capabilities are achieved by image processing technology. Using this technology, information can be imported from a document as… -
Effective Solution Design Using Design Principles
9 Apr 2013 | 2:19 amI think that design principles are important to bring clarity within the team at a fundamental level. Everything else will build on it. I want you to understand the extreme importance of them. Here is a presentation to let you know more about it. “They are a tool that helps project teams establish a common language, make day to day decisions, and deliver a better, more consistent user experience. An added benefit of design principles is that the process of defining and agreeing on them helps a project team form a shared understanding of the design goals for a product. This presentation… -
My Heart is in The Work- Keynote by Jon Kolko
16 Feb 2013 | 5:48 amDo you know what type of behaviour you or your company want to provoke? And is that aligned with how people actually want to live their lives? Empathy is the key to understanding and changing behavior. -
The most popular stuff from 2012 at ConeTrees
5 Jan 2013 | 3:25 amI wish you, my dear readers, a wonderful 2013. Here is what I wrote about and posted in 2012 which was the most popular with you all. The Difference Between a Heuristic Evaluation and an Expert Review Future Healthcare Concepts When Introducing UCD in an Organinzation, Technical Capability is Only Half the Story Karen McGrane on Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content RIP Bill Boddgride of IDEO (1943-2012) -
Future Healthcare Concepts
8 Nov 2012 | 3:28 amSummary Here are two human-centered healthcare concepts I have come up with and imagine will be true in the future where technology and service design are applied to not only make the health care experience invisible (concept 1) but fun and way beyond simply retaining the human element (concept 2). Concept 1: The Phone of the Future- Your Guardian Health Angel Looking into the future, I see you’re phone as your personal health angel. When it comes to taking care of your health, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to think about anything. The phone will take care of…
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Everyone's Blog Posts - HFI Connect
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Getting Others Excited About Wireframes
13 May 2013 | 8:28 amHopefully we all know the benefits of wireframing? Time saving, finding possible usability issues early, preventing rework and saving precious development dollars. I’m going to take it a bit further and talk about going a little deeper into a wireframe detail-wise to get “buy-in” on an excitement level based on aesthetics. Wireframes are FAST, cheap and if the designer knows what they’re doing can not only work towards an emotional connection for the intended audience, but can also make a connection with decision makers. By taking a little extra time in the process of designing, a… -
CUA of the Month, May 2013 - Jennifer Gracey
1 May 2013 | 10:00 amJennifer Gracey, Senior Business Consultant/ Senior Certified Usability Analyst Sogeti UX Power in the Heartland by Jim Garrett Our Certified Usability Analyst of the month for May, Jennifer Gracey, comes from the international consulting firm, Sogeti. Jennifer is based in the Des Moines, Iowa office and is in the unique situation that within her company she is part of a coordinated, international network of HFI Certified Usability Analysts. Sogeti is one of the world's leading providers of IT consulting services. As a member of the Capgemini Group, one of the world's largest consulting… -
Can Do, Will Do, Still Do - Seven Principles of Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust
1 May 2013 | 9:30 amPersuasion, Emotion and Trust take designing beyond usability to building deeper relationships with customers. They enable brands to understand what triggers customers to respond and make purchase decisions. India is witnessing an e-commerce boom. Undoubtedly, adapting to several platforms, whether it is the web, Android, iOS or other mobile platforms, has resulted in increased sales. But the question remains whether the usability of web and mobile channels are going to be enough to win the battle for elevated customer attention, acquisition, interaction, and loyalty? The answer is definitely… -
The Future of Retail- A deep dive into instore innovations
1 May 2013 | 9:00 amWe’re surely into the online era now but when we talk about the future of retail, we cannot margin out brick and mortar stores altogether! There are multiple reasons for stores beyond the online medium to exist. Various studies and observations indicate this: - “Offline is the dominant retail form – for nearly two-thirds of consumers, brick-and-mortar retail outlets are the most important places to shop.” – From a study of 40,000 people in Germany. - Two-thirds of Australians reporting that they prefer “brick and mortar” retail stores. … -
Cross-Cultural Considerations for User Interface Design by Nehal Shah, CUA, CXA
29 Apr 2013 | 11:00 amA couple of weeks ago, while doing some cross-cultural research on websites, I stumbled onto several McDonald's’ websites in different countries. It was particularly striking that each of the sites was radically different, not just in terms of text and translation, but from the kind of images used, typography selected, color palettes designed, layouts chosen, to even the favicons! As I looked at more examples from different countries, it appeared that the European websites were more similar visually when compared to the set of Asian websites. While I debated whether it was a good design…
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90 Percent of Everything - by Harry Brignull
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The drunkard’s search
13 May 2013 | 2:36 am“There is the story of a drunkard, searching under a lamp for his house key, which he dropped some distance away. Asked why he didn’t look where he dropped it, he replied ‘It’s lighter here!’. Much effort [...] in behavioural science itself, is vitiated, in my opinion, by the principle of the drunkard’s search” – Abraham Kaplan (1964) It may be an old story, but it’s something we’re all doing somewhere in our work. The real challenge is finding out where and dealing with it. For example – Tinkering with the details on a single… -
Powwowapp: for scheduling research
2 May 2013 | 11:56 pmThis is neat. Powwowapp is free little app to help you schedule research appointments. If you work in a UX agency then you’re probably used to paying about £70-£100 a head finders fee for some recruiter to trawl their database and make a few calls. It’s worth it if you’ve got a tough screener spec, but the rest of the time you’ve got to wonder if your cash is being well spent. With Powwowapp you hook it up to your Google calendar, create your empty slots and you’re given a public facing URL for you to share. People can then pick a slot, book themselves in and… -
Assumptive Personas
28 Apr 2013 | 1:52 amIt seems that assumptive personas are getting fashionable again, thanks to Lean UX’s Proto-Personas and Gamestorming’s Empathy Maps. Getting stakeholders to think about their users is a good thing, but it’s dangerous when you start treating them as facts rather than hypotheses. Maybe it’s time to trot out that old argument again. -
Moving on.
21 Mar 2013 | 3:23 amYesterday I quit my job at Clearleft to become an independent UX consultant. I’m going to miss this place. What I’ve loved about Clearleft is that it’s just so different to any other agency I’ve worked at. There’s no company process – everyone’s encouraged to experiment and try different techniques to suit the client’s needs. There’s hardly any internal meetings. I’ve never once had a conversation about my billing efficiency. The focus is on quality, and profitability is almost seen as a by-product. You’re encouraged to share… -
Is User-Centered Design Broken – or is It Just Us?
5 Feb 2013 | 2:15 amCennydd Bowles recently argued on A List Apart that User-Centred Design “may be limiting our field”. I don’t agree, and I didn’t agree with Jared Spool when he said the same thing at IA Summit 2008. Funnily enough, I agree with many of Cennydd’s and Jared’s individual points, but I disagree with the overall thesis that UCD is past its best. It feels kind of flame-baity to me. Back in the days when Devs used to argue about Agile all the time, Ron Jeffries wrote this this allegory about development processes and baseball. It was a joke about how a group of…
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Konigi
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Design inspired by nature
17 May 2013 | 2:02 pmVia @leonbarnard -
PowWow
13 May 2013 | 10:23 amPowWow is a free simple service for scheduling user research using your Google Calendar. The fine folks at Pointless Corp (aka Viget) created this as a side project for handling scheduling of user interviews and testing, but could be used for any kind of event. There are other apps like this that remove the fuss of coordinating schedules via email. PowWow does it simply, and provides a polished and pleasing experience. You pick the times that work best for you and send out a calendar with available appointments and any additional information to potential participants. Participants can select… -
Link Drop, Apr 2013
6 May 2013 | 12:09 pmNo to NoUI – Timo Arnall Flat UI Free - PSD&HTML User Interface Kit - Designmodo 10 Apps to Help You Tame Your Monitor at Night | Mac.AppStorm I don't tend to use my computer at night, preferring the iPad, but apparently using a computer screen can have an effect on getting to sleep using the default brightness and color settings you have now. Chrome Web Store - OneTab Better ways to sweep tabs under the rug and pull them back out. Inconsolata An excellent monospace font for coding and terminal apps. Design Process In The Responsive Age | Smashing UX Design Designing For The Empty… -
Sticky Jots
18 Apr 2013 | 4:58 pmSticky Jots is a set of storytelling sticky note paper and paper prototyping kits for designing mobile and tablet interfaces. The product is designed by Rae Milne and Pamela Jue, two grad students in the SVA Interaction Design program. Pam writes about the thinking behind Sticky Jots. The idea came from our constant prototyping and ideation process in almost every project this semester. While it’s great to do, it’s still frustrating how time consuming it can be. We started thinking more of how we can we integrate a better experience with our process so that it could be more collaborative… -
Conferences and Events
15 Apr 2013 | 10:35 amUX Design Development All The 99U New York, NY ACM SIGCHI Conference Adaptive Path UX Intensive Workshop Ampersand Brighton, UK; New York, NY Beyond Tellerand Düsseldorf, Germany Big Design Conference Dallas, TX Brooklyn Beta Brooklyn, NY Build Belfast, Northern Ireland Business of Software Boston, MA Circles Grapevine, TX ConvergeSE Columbia, SC ConveyUX Seattle, WA Cooper Workshops San Francisco, CA dConstruct Brighton, UK Euro IA Summit An Event Apart eyeo Minneapolis, MN ffwd.pro Zagreb, Croatia fluxible Kitchener, Ontario From the Front Bologna, IT Future of Web Design Gel New York, NY…
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The UX Booth
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April Resource Roundup: Food for Thought
14 May 2013 | 6:30 amWhile they might provide food for thought on the weekends, a new perspective before the workday, and/or even a way to unwind before bed, many design resources are far from revolutionary. Yet we hold out hope, as some of the best help change our (team’s) perspective. Nine such resources came to our attention this past month. Design research, content strategy, gamification, oh my! Here’s the goods to make us good (err, well, better): Design research Design research is a necessary part of every user-centered design project, so more resources to that end never hurt: Patterns. Pattern… -
Intention vs. Interpretation: What Matters?
7 May 2013 | 6:30 amBoth interaction designers and information architects want to design objects with a singular meaning. It’s a noble, albeit impossible goal. The best we can hope for is to create more consistently meaningful experiences. To do that, designers must better understand the interplay between designer intention and user interpretation: the ways that we can influence – but not dictate – user interpretation. Consider the design of a voice-based interface. Because users can say what they mean in any number of ways, there are many situations for which designers cannot account –… -
Finger Tips: 3 Quick Ways to Retrofit a Site for Touchscreen Use
30 Apr 2013 | 6:30 amThe future is now. Market-analysis firm IDC predicts that sales of tablet computers will exceed their desktop counterparts this year, which means that those of us not designing with touchscreens in mind are falling behind. Fortunately, it’s not too late. By addressing some key areas of our site, the team at Cars.com has improved the mobile experience of our site in a short amount of time during our ongoing redesign. It’s no secret that responsive design helps us develop a single site to serve smartphones, tablets, and desktop displays equally well. But the thinking that goes into a good… -
10 UX Books Due out in 2013
16 Apr 2013 | 6:30 amThe selection of UX guides and books has grown exponentially in the past few years. Rosenfeld Media and A Book Apart are just two of a number of publishers with a UX-focused audience. The expanding supply is exceeded only by the demand for more data, more depth, and more detail. I explored the 10 best UX books of 2010 and, three years later, the time has come to follow up. There are a bunch of great books due out this year, covering myriad topics from the psychology of persuasion, to experience strategy, to lean UX, to microinteractions. Although we may not all get around to reading all of… -
A Reading List Courtesy of This Year’s IA Summit
9 Apr 2013 | 6:30 amWow. Although this year’s IA Summit was my first, it certainly won’t be my last! Each and every presentation I attended was filled with a wealth of takeaways, from practical advice to food for thought. In absence of a full recap post, I’d like to share five books added my Amazon wishlist during the event. For context’s sake, here are the sessions I attended that informed my reading list: “The World Is The Screen: Elements of Information Environments” by Andrew Hinton “Sitting in the Director’s Chair: How the Role We Play Drives the Vision of the…
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Mantia
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it’s a small world
5 May 2013 | 10:55 pm -
Rebel Alliance
21 Apr 2013 | 8:45 am -
Empire
21 Apr 2013 | 8:44 am -
EPCOT
11 Apr 2013 | 11:33 pm -
ASAP
19 Feb 2013 | 8:25 pm“As soon as possible” is a fascinating phrase. It’s a client favorite. Allow me to dissect this phrase into the two obvious parts: “As soon” suggests when you need it, and “as possible” pertains to when I’m able to do it. If you were to ask me to do something “as soon as possible,” I would get to it when I have completed everything else I intended to in the foreseeable future (which could take a fair amount of time). What people often mean is “immediately” or “urgently,” although they don’t say it. If…
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UX Passion - UX design agency
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Spring 2013 portfolio update
13 May 2013 | 7:52 amWe are, naturally, often asked about what we do, what kind of services do we offer and can we show our work. Due to very strict, confidential and NDA-bound rules and regulations, we are not able to show many visual elements like screens, apps and wireframes, but from time to time we are able to showcase and tell the story of our customers’ success. After all, we are here to celebrate our customers and their successes and to take pride in being a part of that entire story. So, what’s new we’ve added to our portfolio? Maybe you’ve heard about Score Alarm, world’s best mobile… -
SXSW 2013 – one month later…
24 Apr 2013 | 5:25 amTo some people SXSW is like a religious experience, but I stumbled upon it completely unaware of the global hype, just by looking for a conference that has everything in one place, from user experience design, new and emerging technologies all the way to futurism, seasoned with quality entertainment and a great crowd. That means well over 60.000 registered attendees. Conference, if I dare call it that, is divided by several themes and covers all things interactive, music, film/video plus a trade show featuring number of up and coming startups as well as established brands. It is an overkill… -
Implementation, Mental and Representation Models in User Experience
22 Jan 2013 | 6:11 amSo, to put it simply, all we need to do is to find what will make the product easy to use and implement it. That’s where models are useful. Models are more or less abstract representations of how things work. They are our best shots at trying to understand often complex behaviours and processes. They are our tools to help us understand them. Bad User eXperience In user experience design, interaction design and in human-computer interaction in general, three model types are especially important: Implementation models, Mental models, and Representational models. Implementation models An… -
1112 – An Exhibition of Croatian Design
5 Nov 2012 | 2:22 amThis exhibition of Croatian design is the only event on this scale so far in Croatia. It covers (almost) all areas of design, and over the last 13 years it has achieved high regard among design professionals as well as the general public. The aim of this exhibition is to affirm design as a market and a socially relevant profession. At the exhibition you can see design works by professional designers as well as student work. The Exhibition of Croatian Design 1112 – Source: dizajn.hr From my personal point of view, I believe that in Croatia there are many other designers who could have… -
Bring Mockups to Life with Real Content!
16 Oct 2012 | 9:33 amLately here at UX Passion, we have been working on our new product, SidekickrTV, among other things. Part of our team is focused on getting the best possible Sidekickr solution to your TVs. Those people who are following us on social media probably already noticed that during the last few weeks we’ve been to the WebFest conference in Montenegro and Geeks on a Plane’s event in Zagreb, Croatia. There we pitched our SidekickrTV idea and received some great feedback from potential customers, partners and investors. I will not speak about SidekickrTV any more in this post, so if you are…
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User Vision
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Streamline your user experience by combining Omni-channel and Conversion Optimisation
8 May 2013 | 6:11 amIn today’s multi device world, it is highly likely that during one given experience, say purchasing a new book for example, that we will move across multiple platforms undertaking that one goal before finally purchasing. 86% of people surveyed in -
Have Sky scored an own goal with their new app design?
1 May 2013 | 5:32 amThe Sky Sports News iOS app has undergone another transformation. Given the process of design evolution and feature integration it appears that as an organisation they are listening to their end users and affecting change accordingly. Do the changes -
Inspiration from the International eGoverment Forum
24 Apr 2012 | 5:55 amLast week I spoke about how user experience, user-centred design and participative design methods can be applied as part of successful eGovernment programme at the International eGovernment Forum which took place in Manama, Bahrain. My talk focused -
Design your app to score big with sports fans
28 Feb 2012 | 7:53 amScenario: A golf fanatic without Sky Sports wants to check the second round results from the WGC Accenture World Matchplay event. Conveying sports scores, in particular golf, seems to have become something of a lottery recently. Last week was the -
RNIB takes legal action on accessibility
15 Feb 2012 | 3:46 amWe have all been great advocates for accessible web design for a number of reasons - from the ethical, moral and inclusive, to the commercial and legal. However the latter has always been seen as more of a grey area. Whilst it is a legal require
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Cre8pc, by Kim Krause Berg, Usability & User Interface Analyst, Internet Marketing Ninjas
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No. I Will NOT Respond to Your Disavow Link Paranoia. Bug Off!
10 May 2013 | 10:22 amGoogle has created a circus of sad-faced SEO clowns jumping through hoops trying to get rid of “bad” links to their web sites. This is why I never ever chose to be a slave to search engines and chose the human side of the web experience over the algorithm changing lead-line approach where every site owner is pulled along under the threat of low rank, poor PR scores and penalization. The first disavow link removal request I got was a “mistake”. They messed with the wrong woman. This one has me stumped. You have the following links on your website that points to a page… -
Andy Beal Interviews Kim Krause Berg, Usability Analyst for Internet Marketing Ninjas
6 Apr 2013 | 3:19 pmThe new series, The Beal Deal, features interviews by Andy Beal that are run on Saturday’s for a relaxing read. Today’s post features my interview. Andy has known me for most of my career. We’ve “grown up” in this biz together. In fact, Andy was one of the handful of people in the search marketing industry who understood the benefit of offering usability and user experience practices along with online marketing services. Twelve years ago, I could count on about seven SEO’s to support my holistic approach to client work. The interview covers my… -
UserTesting.com Adds Kim Krause Berg to Forms Treasure Trove
5 Apr 2013 | 4:27 pmForms on websites are one of the usability conversions topics I write about and one of my favorite areas to test because they always have issues. From understandability to readability to ease of use, online forms are famously frustrating to use and easy to spam. Designers will love this new resource from my friends at UserTesting.com And yes, they even added one of my how-to pieces for forms design. The Form Usability Treasure Trove: 42 Top Resources Web Site Usability For Improving Online Forms Beat Your Competition – Ask for User Interface Conversions Testing I also write for… -
Conversions and Gurus Rant
5 Apr 2013 | 10:35 amIt’s time for me to back away from the Internet again. The things that some SEO’s say and do are as obnoxious as the situation was during the birth of the public Internet. Give us a break! Gurus If you are to believe the claims, there are at least 2 billion SEO self-proclaimed “guru” SEO’s on the planet. This means that 2 billion SEO’s know everything there is to know about search engine marketing, past – present – future. They’ll make you rich, powerful, famous and do all that for cheap and by using every possible spam technique… -
Web Site Usability Rant
4 Apr 2013 | 7:01 pmSooner or later the one last hope for a successful web site design is slashed by managers who, frankly, have no freaking idea what they’re doing. People don’t use web sites. Bots do! And with visions of search engine bots dancing in their heads, they ride into budget meetings like Knights fighting for Camelot, swearing allegiance to shareholders and the mighty King CEO. Because, you see, throwing money on PPC campaigns is sorta like sprinkling fairy dust across the land and expecting riches, the loyalty of the peasant web site users and a brand with such achievements and…
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Cone Trees
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Next Gen Touchscreen Interface- Seamless Data Transfer Between Real and Virtual Worlds
1 May 2013 | 7:27 amFujitsu Laboratories has developed a next generation user interface which can accurately detect the users finger and what it is touching, creating an interactive touchscreen-like system, using objects in the real word. They think paper and many other objects could be manipulated by touching them, as with a touchscreen. This system doesn’t use any special hardware, instead it consists of just a device like an ordinary webcam, plus a commercial projector. Its capabilities are achieved by image processing technology. Using this technology, information can be imported from a document as… -
Effective Solution Design Using Design Principles
9 Apr 2013 | 2:19 amI think that design principles are important to bring clarity within the team at a fundamental level. Everything else will build on it. I want you to understand the extreme importance of them. Here is a presentation to let you know more about it. “They are a tool that helps project teams establish a common language, make day to day decisions, and deliver a better, more consistent user experience. An added benefit of design principles is that the process of defining and agreeing on them helps a project team form a shared understanding of the design goals for a product. This presentation… -
My Heart is in The Work- Keynote by Jon Kolko
16 Feb 2013 | 5:48 amDo you know what type of behaviour you or your company want to provoke? And is that aligned with how people actually want to live their lives? Empathy is the key to understanding and changing behavior. -
The most popular stuff from 2012 at ConeTrees
5 Jan 2013 | 3:25 amI wish you, my dear readers, a wonderful 2013. Here is what I wrote about and posted in 2012 which was the most popular with you all. The Difference Between a Heuristic Evaluation and an Expert Review Future Healthcare Concepts When Introducing UCD in an Organinzation, Technical Capability is Only Half the Story Karen McGrane on Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content RIP Bill Boddgride of IDEO (1943-2012) -
Future Healthcare Concepts
8 Nov 2012 | 3:28 amSummary Here are two human-centered healthcare concepts I have come up with and imagine will be true in the future where technology and service design are applied to not only make the health care experience invisible (concept 1) but fun and way beyond simply retaining the human element (concept 2). Concept 1: The Phone of the Future- Your Guardian Health Angel Looking into the future, I see you’re phone as your personal health angel. When it comes to taking care of your health, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to think about anything. The phone will take care of…
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Project6 Design: Bay Area UI Design Firm
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Project6 Design Wins Five Awards for Corporate Identity, Brochure, and Website Design
9 May 2013 | 10:26 ampdf_logo_colour2.gif Project6 Design, a San Francisco Bay Area design and branding firm, has been awarded five Communicator Awards for outstanding corporate identity, website, and brochure design over the past year. Their strong branding principles and clean, clear designs helped four organizations (AUL Corp, Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), Musicians Institute and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD)) successfully revitalize their brands and connect more deeply with their constituents. … -
Sustainable Lighting Systems Company Website Design and Development
2 Apr 2013 | 3:42 pmbay-area-design-firm.png This week, San Francisco Bay Area branding and graphic design company Project6 Design celebrated the launch of the redesigned LumaStream website, showcasing LumaStream’s game-changing, low-voltage LED lighting platform.LumaStream develops and manufactures breakthrough products for digital power conversion, control, and distribution, providing the lighting industry’s most sustainable Intelligent LED Lighting Systems for commercial, residential, hospitality and exterior lighting applications.Project6 designed the website to feature LumaStream’s outstanding product… -
Responsive Website Design and Development for AUL
15 Mar 2013 | 3:35 pmscreen_shot_2013-03-15_at_3.02.44_pm.png Project6 Design launched the website for AUL - America's premier service contract administrator based in Napa Valley, CA. AUL provides a wide range of vehicle service contract options. So you can cover as much as you need for as long as you need. A wide variety of choice is just one reason AUL is the number one service contract provider in America. Project6 redesigned the website and built it in the Sitefinity content management system. This extends our branding, print, collateral, and tradeshow booth designs. Subpage design: -
Responsive Website Design and Branding For Pharmaceutical Biotech Company
17 Dec 2012 | 4:02 pmbay-area-design-firm-paxvax-iphone.png San Francisco Bay Area branding and graphic design company, Project6 Design, is proud to announce the unveiling of a new brand and website for innovative biotech vaccine company PaxVax. Project6 created a new logo and brand identity to differentiate them in the competitive industry. They then implemented the updated branding in their website design and development for the organization.The new design highlights the diseases that PaxVax fights with its innovative technology, and a rollover map that features hotspots around the world where the company’s… -
Project6 Design Announces Redesign of Bay Area Nonprofit Legal Center Website
30 Nov 2012 | 1:09 pmAward-winning San Francisco Bay Area web design company Project6 Design is proud to launch the website redesign for Disability Rights Advocates. The site was built using the Drupal content management system, and is fully compliant with Section 508 web accessibility standards. Disability Rights Advocates is a nonprofit legal center whose mission is to ensure dignity, equality, and opportunity for people with all types of disabilities throughout the United States and worldwide. The new Disability Rights Advocates website features a clean design and navigation, the ability to search cases by…
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Symantec Connect - Inside Symantec - Blog Entries
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Designs Trending Towards Flat In The Future
30 Apr 2013 | 2:55 pmThere has been a lot of discussion recently around Apple's reported push towards flatter designs. Others, such as Microsoft are already said to be bucking this trend with it's Window's... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
Launch of New SMB Website
26 Apr 2013 | 2:31 pmSmall and Medium Businesses (SMBs) are rapidly and dynamically evolving into technological and informational savvy businesses. The technology and free flow of information creates tremendous... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
How We See Color
18 Apr 2013 | 4:42 pmAll the colors together make black – yes. All the colors together make white – yes. How can they both be true? First we need to understand what color is. We see a color when light... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
Redesign Of Symantec’s Mobile Website
27 Mar 2013 | 2:05 pmWe recently launched a redesign of our Symantec.com mobile website. With the redesign, users can now enjoy a more consistent look and feel on the mobile site as on the desktop version of... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
Part III: Design Considerations for Mobile - Images
11 Mar 2013 | 9:31 amOne question that constantly comes up in conversations about mobile web design is how to deal with images. There are several considerations when including images into a mobile web design; resolution,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
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Baymard Institute
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How Should Your Mobile and Desktop Sites Differ?
6 May 2013 | 10:43 pmThis is the 5th in a series of 8 articles on mobile commerce usability that draw on findings from our m-commerce usability report 2013. When defining, designing and structuring your mobile commerce site; should you slim down content and features, or try to stuff it all in the mobile version as well? During our mobile commerce usability study the test subjects encountered m-commerce sites adopting widely different approaches. It turned out that some approaches had dire outcomes. Here’s a glimpse into the complex dilemma of what content and features to share across the mobile and desktop… -
Mobile: Never Use Native Drop-Downs for Navigation
22 Apr 2013 | 11:49 pmThis is the 4th in a series of 8 articles on mobile commerce usability that draw on findings from our m-commerce usability report 2013. Many responsive mobile sites are using native drop-downs (as in: a select tag) for main navigation and many plugins have been developed for this specific purpose, yet our usability research shows that this is a poor strategy. On the tested m-commerce sites that used native drop-downs for navigation, the test subjects showed decreased control and overview of the menu items. During testing, nearly all subjects scrolled up and down category lists before… -
Mobile Product Pages: Always Offer a List of Compatible Products
1 Apr 2013 | 11:47 pmThis is the 3rd in a series of 8 articles on mobile commerce usability that draw on findings from our m-commerce usability report 2013. When testing 18 of the largest mobile commerce sites compatibility-dependent products in particular proved to be difficult to find for the test subjects. A “compatibility-dependent product” is any product that is dependent on being compatible with another product that the store also sells or the customer already owns, e.g., an adaptor for a laptop or a case for a digital camera. These are typically high-profit accessory products and it therefore… -
Mobile Form Usability: Place Labels Above the Field
19 Mar 2013 | 7:29 amThis is the 2nd in a series of 8 articles on mobile commerce usability that draw on findings from our m-commerce usability report 2013. On mobile, should the field label go to the left of or above the field? After completing a large-scale usability study of 18 m-commerce sites, which included test subjects completing more than a thousand mobile checkout form fields, the answer is: above, with one exception. The Issues with Left-Aligned Field Labels on Mobile The main issue with left-aligned field labels relates to the smartphone display size and aspect ratio. Quite simply, if a left-aligned… -
M-Commerce Usability: Exploring the Mobile Shopping Experience 2013
11 Mar 2013 | 11:32 pmEverybody is talking about mobile. Some e-commerce sites are venturing into it. The potential for m-commerce is enormous: ComScore predict the number of mobile users online will surpass desktop users online in 2014, while eMarkter reported an industry wide 81% growth rate in mobile sales from 2011 to 2012 ($25 billion) and forecasts it to account for 24% of all online commerce by 2016. This is why we decided to invest the better part of a year at Baymard Institute to conduct a large-scale usability study focusing specifically on m-commerce. We set out to explore the entire mobile shopping…
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Wireframes Magazine
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SIX UX
13 May 2013 | 6:15 amSixUX.com is a collection of six second long Vine snippets of all sorts of transitions and animations (yup recorded by hand). Some inspiring short videos if you’re into moving pixel patterns. :) Overall I think transitions can be great if used wisely. Often they can lower the cognitive strain by helping people to understand what happens between two distinct UI states. Anyhow, if you’re browser starts choking from so much video running all at once, there is also a tumblr blog as well. Nice work Andreas! Credits: Andreas (@ThisisSIXUX) -
Calling Bull$#!%: On Flat Design
1 May 2013 | 6:02 amAs the flat design trend has been recently surfacing in popularity it made enemies with a few good old friends of mine, some of which include: shadows, gradients, and textures. Taken literally, under the flimsy banner of honesty, flat design has ventured out against interfaces which resemble anything three dimensional or portray depth on a two dimensional screen. I’m calling bullshit on this for a number of reasons. Please Don’t Steal My Design Elements Back to basics from the time when I was still a graphic design student, I remember there were some fundamental design elements given to… -
Blackberry 10 Templates for Keynote and PowerPoint
17 Apr 2013 | 5:58 amBlackberry 10 Templates has recently gone live as a sibling product to Windows 8 Templates by Jordan Gurrieri. As the name suggests, the templates contain some high quality customizable vector components themed in the new BlackBerry 10 UI style. The template is loaded with: a home screen, 80 royalty free icons, menus, forms, grids, activity bars, progress indicators, media player controls, sliders, drop downs, and the new BlackBerry 10 keyboard … you get the picture. Why choose the BlackBerry 10 Templates? Jordan writes: Quality and Attention to Detail. BlackBerry 10 Templates was built… -
GoodUI.org
10 Apr 2013 | 5:57 amGood User Interface is my latest project with the intention of collecting and sharing UI design ideas in the form of a newsletter. It is also a running list of tactical tips for making a UI easier to use as well as increasing conversion rates. The project will reflect that a good UI is nice to both the business side as well as the people using it. As an experimental piece to the GoodUI project, I’ve also setup a Quora tag in case it stirs up any question-answer style discussions (started debating Prompts vs. Undos a few weeks back already). As always, any feedback is more than welcome. -
InVision 2.0 – Present. Engage. Collaborate. Iterate.
3 Apr 2013 | 5:53 amInVision 2.0 is now out. Clark and his team have been hard at work redesigning and redeveloping the next iteration of this awesome web based prototyping tool. At the time of writing, this smooth thing has 77k active projects going on strong and some good reasons for picking up on its popularity recently. Very Strong Team Focus With 4.4 million comments left since its beginning, InVision takes design collaboration pretty seriously. This is definitely seen in version 2.0 and the team really understands that no one designs in a vacuum. Take the new project pulse view for example. This project…
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Users Know
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You Can't Make Good Decisions with Bad Data
24 Apr 2013 | 11:51 amI think a critical lesson of the Lean Startup movement is that you have to learn quickly. The “quickly” part of that lesson can lead to a culture of “good enough.” Your features should be good enough to attract some early adopters. Your design should be good enough to be usable. Your code should be good enough to make your product functional. While this might drive a lot of perfectionists nuts, I’m all for it. Good enough means that you can spend your time perfecting and polishing only the parts of your product that people care about, and that means a much better eventual experience… -
The Best Best Practice
22 Apr 2013 | 4:35 pmI get asked for a lot of what I call "generic" advice, which I'm not really very good at giving. People will ask questions like, "Should I make a prototype?" or "Should I build a landing page?" or "Should I do more customer development?"If you've asked this in email, you've probably gotten an unreadable 5,000 word manifesto that is essentially a brain dump of everything I can think of on the topic. If you've asked me in person you've almost certainly had to listen to me blather until your eyes glazed over.Wherever you've asked, I've probably started the response with the words, "Well, it… -
10 Reasons Founders Should Learn to Design
18 Apr 2013 | 1:13 pmI know, I know. Founders and entrepreneurs are already being told that they need to learn how to code, hire, raise money, and get customers.Screw that. What founders and entrepreneurs should really do is learn how to build a great, usable, useful product. And that means learning the fundamentals of research and design.Don't believe me? Here are 10 reasons you should learn to be your own UX designer (or at least learn enough about UX design to fake it).You can't build a great product if you don't know what problem it solves for which people. UX design and research helps you figure that out.The… -
Design Hacks - The Talk
19 Mar 2013 | 9:49 amI write a lot about user research - generally tips and tricks for people who don't have much experience with it. The reason for this should be obvious. Understanding your user, by any means necessary, is always the first step in creating a compelling product.Seriously, you can't build a product without understanding the problem you're solving and the people for whom you're solving it. Various forms of research are the best way of understanding people who aren't you. It's really as simple as that.But I've also seen another common problem. A whole lot of folks have learned how to go out and… -
Don't Make Your Users Feel Like Idiots
25 Feb 2013 | 5:12 pmI’m a smart person. I’ve been using the Internet since the early 1990s. I know how to program. I only feel the need to point this out, because I’m about to share with you a story in which I come across as a complete, blithering idiot, and I’m feeling a little defensive about it. I got an email from an event that I won’t name, but I’m guessing a few of you are getting emails of your own. If you didn’t make the same mistake, then bask in the glory of being better at computers than I am. If you did make the same mistake, welcome to the club. You’re not alone. The email I received…
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The UX Bookmark
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Five Critical Quantitative UX Concepts
1 May 2013 | 7:14 amAs UX continues to mature it’s becoming harder to avoid using statistics to quantify design improvements… Here are five of the more critical but challenging concepts. We didn’t just pick some arbitrary geeky stuff to stump math geeks (or get you an interview at Google). These are fundamental concepts that take practice and patience but are worth the effort to understand. Using statistics on small sample sizes: You do not need a sample size in the hundreds or thousands or even above 30 to use statistics. We regularly compute statistics on small sample sizes (less than 15) and… -
The Data Journalism Handbook
31 Mar 2013 | 3:11 amThe data journalism handbook is a free, open source reference book for anyone interested in the emerging field of data journalism. It was born at a 48 hour workshop at MozFest 2011 in London. It subsequently spilled over into an international, collaborative effort involving dozens of data journalism’s leading advocates and best practitioners - including from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, the Chicago Tribune, Deutsche Welle, the Guardian, the Financial Times, Helsingin Sanomat, La Nacion, the New York Times, ProPublica, the Washington Post, the Texas Tribune, Verdens… -
The Psychology of Sharing
16 Feb 2013 | 5:39 amThere has been an abundance of research on social media, but to date, no one has asked in a comprehensive way: why do people share? The Psychology of Sharing reveals groundbreaking research that fills this knowledge gap. This study uncovers: Primary motivations for six sharing personas Essential steps for marketers aiming to get their content shared Impact of sharing on Information Management Cycle of sharing Enduring role of e-mail in the age of social media The Psychology of Sharing -
Top 5 posts at The UX Bookmark in 2012
5 Jan 2013 | 2:31 amI wish you, all my readers, a wonderful 2013. These are the five posts which people read the most in 2012. A huge list of Style Guides and UI Guidelines Free User Experience books (Interaction design, HCI, web accessibility & Information Architecture) Download IDEO’s Human Centered Design Toolkit Ergonomics for Interaction Designers Mobile Prototyping Essentials -
Download the Collective Action Toolkit by frog- Design Thinking in Simple Language
18 Nov 2012 | 11:10 pmThe Collective Action Toolkit (CAT) is a package of resources and activities that enable groups of people anywhere to organize, build trust, and collaboratively create solutions for problems impacting their community. The toolkit provides a dynamic framework that integrates knowledge and action to solve challenges. Designed to harness the benefits of group action and the power of open sharing, the activities draw on each participant’s strengths and perspectives as the group works to accomplish a common goal. The toolkit emerged from frog’s collaboration with Nike Foundation/Girl Effect on…
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IDYeah Blog
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9 Tweets on UX: #008
16 May 2013 | 7:13 pmListen 8th session of UX Tweets… @jmspool | If you’re into #UX and you live in #Boston and you’re not going to this: uxpaboston2013.eventbrite.com You’re seriously nuts. @UXPhil | “Your” vs “My” in user interfaces – User Experience Stack Exchange bit.ly/13td27J #ux @humanfactors | 7 steps of persuasion design #UX #persuasion ow.ly/kP8yH @MeasuringU | Don’t let the employee pay grade determine which icon is best – use these 7 methods instead #UX goo.gl/0Y41x @redcrew | “You have to get things just right, or it… -
The EMail Game
14 May 2013 | 8:04 pmListen Gamification of Email First let’s look at what Gamification is. I recently completed an online course on Gamification offered by The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania conducted by Prof. Kevin Werbach. Briefly, Gamification is a systematic application of game elements in a non-gaming context. The basic idea is to make important tasks and activities of business or other routine, more fun. The assumption is clear – that everyone loves to play games. I intend to cover some specific topics on Gamification later on. For this feature, I want to introduce something that I… -
More Tips from UX Designers to UX Designers
14 May 2013 | 2:15 amListen More Tips from UX Designers to UX Designers I am positive that you must have gained something worthwhile from the contents of my previous article: 5 Pieces of Advice from UX Professionals to UX Professionals, which spoke about valuable user experience advice straight from the desks of UX Professionals. The current piece is an extension of my views on “How to sell yourself and sell UX.” Many companies having a UX problem will look towards hiring your expertise and experience. As a designer fixing that particular UX problem, you may find it necessary to ask the company to… -
Mind Maps
12 May 2013 | 11:03 pmListen Mind Map – What are we communicating? I have witnessed plenty of Mind maps over the past few years, since I was introduced to the concept. Each time I had to consume one, it almost always gave way to my imagining a 3rd world alien creature. The producers of course took pride in the creation peppered with information (think of a humble pizza with so many toppings that you can hardly see or taste singularly!). A few simple questions often revealed that the creators only knew how to use the Mind mapping tool. They didn’t solve the problem of lack of clarity; in fact they… -
Making the First Visit to an Online Service a Success
2 May 2013 | 4:39 amListen Making the First Visit to an Online Service a Success Many businesses are having hard time WOW-ing their users on their first visit. However, with the right user experience tips and tools, this shouldn’t be a chore any more. What site owners really have to do is to take a deep dive into their users’ brain, and see what triggers their attention and what does not. In this article we are going to detail a few of the UX techniques that capture users’ attention right from the first time and which keeps them intrigued to find out more; but first, let’s take a look at the…
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uxnuggets's blog
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5 Tips for Improving Hardcore Gaming on Mobile Devices
10 May 2013 | 1:41 pmThursday, May 9, 2013cclow Tags: Gaming Systems,Mobile Devices With mobile technology taking over many aspects of our lives, a shift to mobile is also occurring in the video game industry. While consoles have traditionally been king, mobile devices are quickly becoming the go-to platform for gamers. Mobile games have many benefits (from price to convenience), but have typically been reserved for the casual gamer. Hardcore gamers (i.e., people who routinely play complex games for extended periods of time), on the other hand, tend to prefer consoles due to their graphical power and… -
Driver Distraction Testing: When UX Meets Safety
18 Apr 2013 | 12:11 pmThursday, April 18, 2013 Tags: In-Vehicle Navigation, Entertainment,Automotive Testing in-car infotainment systems forces us to rethink the way we evaluate new features. Not only should new features be easy to learn and use, they also need to be safe to use while driving. But how can we test a feature for its impact on safety? When considering the user experience (UX) of a product, we usually evaluate qualities like usability, learnability, efficiency and similar attributes. With cars however, the primary quality we are focused on is whether a new feature can be safely operated whilst… -
Chicago's Bean: What Art Teaches Us About the User Experience
12 Apr 2013 | 12:24 pmFriday, April 12, 2013edanielson When it comes to improving the user experience, sometimes we needn’t look any further than our own backyards. Through an ethnographic lens, we can see features that promote a positive user experience by deconstructing our attraction to a piece of artwork. For example, take Cloud Gate – the Chicago tourist attraction affectionately known as “The Bean.” While having the opportunity to conduct ethnographic research on this sculpture, I was struck by its interactive qualities. A positive attribute, the Bean’s reflective surface encourages engagement by… -
The Current State of Meaningful Use Stage 2: What’s In Store for EHR Vendors?
21 Mar 2013 | 9:38 amThursday, March 21, 2013rschumacher Tags: EHR/HIT Systems In August 2012, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) unveiled new certification and meaningful use requirements for electronic health records (EHRs). According to these requirements, vendors’ submissions must include (a) evidence of user-centered design and (b) a user test results. While previous certification guidance focused on the functionality of EHRs, new rules require vendors to focus on usability and employ user-centered design methods during development that derive from a… -
Cooking Up the Perfect Mobile Recipe App
22 Feb 2013 | 7:13 amFriday, February 22, 2013barthion Tags: Mobile Applications,Communications/Mobile We all have to eat; preferably every day. For better or worse, I often find myself turning to recipes to spice up my options and learn something new. While I do admit to being a bit of a cookbook hoarder, out of necessity I’m regularly planning meals while on the go, with little or no access to my treasure trove of recipes. Thankfully, mobile technology has stepped in while my cookbooks sit out of reach on the shelf. Recipe apps have become go-to sources for last-minute meal planning and, while they are…
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user experience design, ux and usability blog - keepitusable
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Manchester Council launches successful site following research by Keep It Usable
17 May 2013 | 7:28 amManchester Council recently launched a radically different, user-centred website following research with local residents by Manchester UX agency Keep It Usable. The result? An overwhelming success. Releasing a new council website can be tricky – it’s hard to please everyone and people don’t always have a good opinion of their local council. Get it wrong [...] -
Content Strategy: Exclusive interview with Sara Wachter-Boettcher
3 Apr 2013 | 3:59 amThis month, we’re focussing on the importance of Content Strategy. This coincides nicely with the launch of a new book titled ‘Content Everywhere’ by Sara Wacheter-Boettcher who is also the editor of A List Apart. We interviewed Sara to talk to you about her new book and explain exactly what content strategy is, how it [...] -
10 psychology techniques to drive behaviour
25 Mar 2013 | 5:29 amIf you want to increase your engagement metrics, increase page views, increase the amount of enquiries and much more then follow these simple techniques. 1. Know your audience If you don’t know who your audience is then you won’t know what makes them tick. You can’t persuade people if you don’t know much about them. Knowing [...] -
Guest Interview: Whirlpool’s UX Manager
7 Feb 2013 | 7:31 amFebruary’s Keep It Usable guest interview is with our friend Brandon Satanek. Brandon is the UX Manager of Whirlpool Corporation, a company we’re huge fans of (especially their beautiful KitchenAid products). Welcome to Keep It Usable Brandon! Foremost, let me say that I appreciate the opportunity to tell you more about our work [...] -
Persuasion within design: Use it or lose it
31 Jan 2013 | 4:04 amHere at Keep It Usable, we’ve been studying and applying persuasion and psychology within our designs for many years, but recently it’s gained much more awareness and businesses are beginning to wake up to the huge impact it can have on sales. Traditionally, marketers, web managers, business owners were mainly reliant on marketing strategies and [...]
