Apple's new iOS7 is a great step forward full of useful innovations and a great visual refresh, but their work has been marred by the design details that people simply can't look past. Tim Cook unveiling iOS7 to the WWDC audience. (Image from Apple) The other day Apple unveiled a series of updates to their products and operating system to a room full of designers and developers, as well as to those clever enough pull up apple.com on Safari. While the updates to OSX, Mac Pro and Apple Air were met with open arms, the highly anticipated iOS7 wasn't. Some people welcomed the change. However,…
User Interface
-
Most Topular Stories
-
iOS7: They're Doing It Right
ZURB12 Jun 2013 | 3:00 pm -
Service design in the physical space and why it makes sense to design for a minority
Putting people first18 Jun 2013 | 10:23 pmThe physical environment in which a service plays out has a significant influence on the experience of a service. So it’s not uncommon for service design projects to take the physical environment into account. In a recent project focused on the physical environment of the train station, the Dutch service design consultancy 31 Volts, specifically looked at the “extreme users“; that small group of people which cause a rather big impact on the experience of the larger group of “normal users”. So instead of analyzing and optimizing the existing customer journey they took the lateral… -
The future of human-centered design
InfoDesign: Understanding by Design19 Jun 2013 | 6:39 amCopernicus and his heliocentrism are getting a lot of traction these days with outside-in thinking. "HCD has been a breakthrough for our industry - it's repositioned design as a tool to help transform product development by ensuring customer's needs are met and also by helping to uncover people's latent needs (those not surfaced by traditional focus groups for instance). We are taught to think about the world in three lenses as designers: desirability - what people want, feasibility - the capabilities of a firm, and viability - its financial health." (Nathan Waterhouse a.k.a. -
Thumbs-only UI? How people hold phones
Small Surfaces5 Jun 2013 | 4:08 am“The users who we observed touching their phone’s screens or buttons held their phones in three basic ways: one handed – 49%, cradled – 36%, two handed – 15%. In the following sections, I’ll describe and show a diagram of each of these methods of holding a mobile phone, along with providing some more detailed data and general observations about why I believe people hold a mobile phone in a particular way.” Link: How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices? (uxmatters.com, via. See also Microsoft Research Paper for a pre-iPhone study) Small Surfaces… -
re:log: Tracking the Movements of Conference Attendees via WiFi
information aesthetics18 Jun 2013 | 1:44 pmre:log [opendatacity.de] by German data designers OpenDataCity reveals the movements of about 6,700 different electronic devices during re:publica 2013, a prestigious European conference on the topic of Digital Society. A dynamic map of the conference location shows the approximate locations of the devices when they were connected to the local WiFi hotspots. An interactive timeline underneath allows to explore the dynamic changes over time, while a rectangular area can be drawn to more specifically highlight and follow a smaller amount of dots. The visualization was based on tracking the MAC…
-
Signal vs. Noise
-
The Starter League launches Starter School
18 Jun 2013 | 1:43 pmAbout two years ago, The Starter League set out to teach absolute beginners how to code. Since then, they’ve expanded their offerings to include HTML, CSS, and design. To date they’ve graduated over 600 students from all over the world. A true success story on so many levels. One thing they’ve noticed along the way is that their best students return back to take additional classes in different disciplines. They may start learning Rails, but then they want to learn advanced HTML/CSS. And then they want to learn visual design. Further, these students seem to want more than… -
Building Know Your Company
17 Jun 2013 | 1:10 pmToday our first five customers started using Know Your Company, our newest product. We’re hoping to roll out around five new customers every Monday for the foreseeable future. I thought this was a great time to talk a bit about how we’re building Know Your Company. Not the tech, specifically, but the approach. From the start, I wanted to approach the development of Know Your Company as if we were starting a separate company inside 37signals, not just building another product at 37signals. So I went back to 2003. That’s when we originally built Basecamp. Basecamp was… -
VIDEO: Steve Jobs: The Most Important Thing (via…
17 Jun 2013 | 12:23 pmSteve Jobs: The Most Important Thing (via Farnam Street). A simple reminder that each of us has the ability to shape life into whatever we can dream up. -
INSIGHT: The first exception should be the hardest…
14 Jun 2013 | 10:18 amThe first exception should be the hardest one to make. Once you’ve made one, each additional exception gets exponentially easier. Beware that first exception. -
Apple: The organizational Rorschach
13 Jun 2013 | 7:09 amAs we watched Apple unveil iOS7, the 37signals Campfire room quickly turned to awe of what they had achieved. A redesign so shocking and deep bestowed upon a product so popular left many mouths agape. Whether you happened to like the final product wasn’t as relevant as marveling at the vision, drive, and sheer determination to pull it off. Apple has a way of making people feel like that. But what followed next is at least as interesting: We all sought to explain just how they did it. Is it all Ive’s eye? Is it that they explore more ideas than anyone else? Is it never accepting…
-
456 Berea Street
-
How to proportionally scale images that have dimension attributes
13 Jun 2013 | 12:09 pmAllowing images to scale along with their container is an important part of responsive web design (and was so even before the term “responsive web design” existed). It’s really quite easy – all you need to do is give the image a width (or max-width) in percent: img { max-width:100%; } This will prevent any img element from getting wider than its container. If the container is narrower than the image, the image will scale down. But there is a catch.Read full postPosted in CSS.Copyright © Roger Johansson -
Firefox and the magical text-overflow:ellipsis z-index
31 May 2013 | 11:09 amA while ago I received a strange bug report for a site I’d been working on. The report mentioned dots appearing on top of a dropdown menu when it was expanded. I had a look in Safari, could not see any dots, but then tried Firefox. And sure enough, there were sets of three dots in the dropdown menu. It didn’t take long to find the cause, fortunately. Just below the dropdown menu was a list of news items whose text-overflow value was set to ellipsis. The dots in the dropdown menu were the ellipsis characters peeking through, or being rendered on top of, the dropdown’s background. -
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…
-
ZURB
-
Polishing the Lens on Our Screen Capture Service
18 Jun 2013 | 1:30 pmA few years back, we made it possible for users of our products, such as Bounce, to capture website screens with a URL. Since then, we tried several different services over the years, trying to find a solution that worked. Some were OK, but that wasn't good enough. A screen capture has to accurately represent what is actually present, and our current service has become unreliable. So we recently pushed to find something that snagged accurate screenshots. Here's what happens when a URL is entered: screenshot URLs are sent to our server, which then takes a screenshot of the site and sends it… -
iOS7: They're Doing It Right
12 Jun 2013 | 3:00 pmApple's new iOS7 is a great step forward full of useful innovations and a great visual refresh, but their work has been marred by the design details that people simply can't look past. Tim Cook unveiling iOS7 to the WWDC audience. (Image from Apple) The other day Apple unveiled a series of updates to their products and operating system to a room full of designers and developers, as well as to those clever enough pull up apple.com on Safari. While the updates to OSX, Mac Pro and Apple Air were met with open arms, the highly anticipated iOS7 wasn't. Some people welcomed the change. However,… -
ZURB is Looking for a Customer Advocate to Be the Voice of Our Customers
11 Jun 2013 | 10:27 amWe've learned a lot over the years about how we can better connect with people. We've come to realize that we reach people in many different ways. We talk with customers every day, utilizing chat to answer quick questions or hop on a call to dig deeper into a person's problem. Whether it's through email, communities such as Forrst or face-to-face, we like talking to people and finding solutions to their needs. A mosiac of our Twitter fans whom we reach every day. As our Customer Advocate, you'll be the voice of ZURB and, more importantly, the voice of our customers. You'll play a vital part… -
The Numbers Add Up for Our Newest ZURBian
6 Jun 2013 | 5:30 amWe've been doing a lot of arithmetic around ZURB HQ lately. So much that we've lost count of the number of new ZURBians we've brought on board. That's why we added an accountant to the team to help us keep count and help us calculate the last digit of Pi. All kidding aside, we brought her on to make sure our numbers added up. So without further ado, please welcome … Afton Giles, A Redhead for Numbers Afton has lived most of her life in Palo Alto, but she was actually born in Tehran, Iran. She's got a knack for crunching numbers, holding a degree in Finance and spending her career in… -
It's Never Too Late to Learn Design Thinking: Now Accepting Submissions for Our Sixth ZURBwired
3 Jun 2013 | 5:00 pmRemember when our class of 5th graders stopped by the office last week? We can't stop thinking about how much they grokked design thinking, showing us how it's never too early to learn those concepts. It's also never too late to learn those concepts. That's why every year we hold a 24-hour marathon to help out one lucky nonprofit over a design hump. We're happy to announce that we've opened submissions for our sixth ZURBwired, which will take place Aug. 8, 2013. We'll help one nonprofit solve a design problem from start to finish in 24-hours. We'll work side-by-side with the members of the…
-
UX Magazine
-
Tectonics of UX: Drifts, shifts, and changes in the user experience landscape
19 Jun 2013 | 9:59 amJune 19, 2013As UX continues to broaden in scope and appeal, I’d like to look at certain aspects of current UX design practice to identify some emerging themes indicating that a fundamental shift in the UX landscape may be occurring.By considering its diversity, its varying roles, and its growing relevance, my intent is to provoke conversation and reflection on current practice and speculate on some future disciplinary goals beyond the screen.In this article, I’ll put forth a few dimensions of an expanded view of UX practice that ties directly to current themes in design education and… -
Break Point Analysis: Gaining insight into customer satisfaction and reducing over investment
18 Jun 2013 | 9:40 amJune 18, 2013In our previous articles we’ve looked at the experience patients had when visiting the doctors office.We leveraged value stream maps to design a journey that would have maximum value for customers/patients. The goal was to transform business operations to become more efficient, resulting in reduced business costs and improved patient experience.We followed that with an article on cohort analysis to gain insight into how the changes from the value stream map improved the experience. In this article, we’re going to use break point analysis to get a snapshot of customer… -
Determining an Hourly Rate: A (Sometimes) Necessary Evil
17 Jun 2013 | 7:13 amJune 17, 2013In a perfect world, freelance UXers would charge by project rather than working up hourly estimates and invoices.Unfortunately, this approach can’t always work. I sometimes find myself facing strong expectations about how (and what) I will charge, especially when I’m subcontracting with marketing agencies.Setting a rate for new clients isn’t easy, so I thought I’d offer a view of the pricing model I’ve arrived at after many years of freelancing, as many years of wincing at agencies’ crazy schemes, and perhaps one philosophy class too many.I’ve broken my model down… -
Win This Book! Design for Care: Innovating Healthcare Experience
14 Jun 2013 | 9:05 amJune 14, 2013Yesterday we gave you a sample of Peter H. Jones' new book from Rosenfeld Media, Design for Care: Innovating Healthcare Experience.Today, we're launching a contest to give away three digital copies.We're still in the thick of our campaign to get to the bottom of what information architects do, so to enter, all you need to do is answer a question for us:What does an IA do?Just to be clear, even though our campaign is aimed specifically at information architects, for this contest we want to hear from everyone.There are three ways to enter:Via TwitterMake sure you're...read more By… -
Book Excerpt: Design For Care
13 Jun 2013 | 9:48 amJune 13, 2013Design Research for Healthcare ServicesService design potentially represents a significant change and challenge to experience design and technology infrastructure design orientations.A comprehensive presentation of service-oriented design methods would fill its own book.Because the health sector is vast and by necessity conservative, a selection of methods for service innovation is meaningless without establishing a specific context.The integrated service design framework in the table below identifies the contexts in which the participatory scenario design method…
-
information aesthetics
-
re:log: Tracking the Movements of Conference Attendees via WiFi
18 Jun 2013 | 1:44 pmre:log [opendatacity.de] by German data designers OpenDataCity reveals the movements of about 6,700 different electronic devices during re:publica 2013, a prestigious European conference on the topic of Digital Society. A dynamic map of the conference location shows the approximate locations of the devices when they were connected to the local WiFi hotspots. An interactive timeline underneath allows to explore the dynamic changes over time, while a rectangular area can be drawn to more specifically highlight and follow a smaller amount of dots. The visualization was based on tracking the MAC… -
Map Stack: Designing a Map in Easy and Fun Ways
18 Jun 2013 | 1:15 pmMap Stack [stamen.com] by Stamen Design aims to make it radically simpler for lay people to design completely unique, personalized maps. The online visual map design service provides easy access to the color, opacity and brightness of any map background, road, label, or satellite imagery. Users can also create custom-made image overlays and layer effects, or layers that are used as cut-out masks for other layers. Currently, the default styles include minimalistic black/white, watercolor or 3D-like terrain, which can all be freely changed and fine-tuned. -
Points: Smart Robotic Street Sign Rotates towards Direction of Content
7 Jun 2013 | 7:31 amPoints [breakfastny.com] by futuristic product development studio Breakfast is a new kind of street sign that dynamically rotates towards the direction of the real-time content it is showing. The directional street sign consists of 3 separate arms pointing in different directions, each containing a LED display that shows specific text or graphics about a nearby destination. Depending on the actual location of the content it displays, each arm is able to rotate endlessly around 360� degrees. The content varies depending on what passers-by select via a list of buttons, ranging from public… -
NeuroKnitting: Knitting a Personalized Scarf from Brainwave Activity
5 Jun 2013 | 1:01 pmNeuroKnitting [knitic.com] by Varvara Guljajeva, Mar Canet, and Sebastian Mealla consists of a collection of knitted garments that represent the wearer's affective and cognitive states while listening to Bach's Goldberg Variations' aria and its first 7 variations. First the EEG correlates of relaxation, engagement and cognitive load were recorded while people were listening to the musical piece. This information was then used by an open hardware knitting machine Knitic to create a bicolor pattern for knitting several scarves. The knitted garments thus visualize the listener's affective and… -
Eurovision Tracker: the Twitter Buzz and Conversations per Country
5 Jun 2013 | 12:51 pmEurovision Tracker [brandwatch.com] by social analytics company Brandwatch provides a visual overview of the Twitter buzz during the live Eurovision final that took place on 18th May. In this streamgraph visualization, each colored stream represents a conversation about a particular country's performance, such as the artist's appearance, song, "sex factor", stagefactor or dance routine, or about specific emotions, such as love, fear or hate. Some live annotations are marked on the graph and shown in the stream on the right hand side, whereas an interactive timeline at the bottom allows for…
-
UXmatters
-
Tools for Mobile UX Design
17 Jun 2013 | 1:25 amBy Steven Hoober Published: June 17, 2013 “We need many tools and should use the best tool we can for any one design or communication task.” There are several ways to approach the design of interactive systems and an ever larger number of specialized products to help UX professionals do their work. But I think there is a bit of a gap between some well-discussed practices that many of these new tools support and the way many UX professionals actually do their work. Several times a week, someone I know or follow discusses the value of designing in the browser—that is, opening a text… -
Continuous Customer Feedback Programs, Part 1: Getting Started
17 Jun 2013 | 1:23 amBy Marnie Andrews and April L. de Vries Published: June 17, 2013 “Take the classic focus group and turn it into a continuous customer feedback program—a program of recurring sessions that feed your product team the qualitative research it needs.” In this first part of our series of articles about customer feedback programs, we’ll describe how to take the classic focus group and turn it into a continuous customer feedback program—a program of recurring sessions that feed your product team the qualitative research it needs. We’ll draw from our own experience running such programs at… -
Retail UX Strategy Trends
17 Jun 2013 | 1:20 amBy Janet M. Six Published: June 17, 2013 Send your questions to Ask UXmatters and get answers from some of the top professionals in UX. In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss some factors that are currently impacting trends in retail UX strategy. In my monthly column, Ask UXmatters, our panel of UX experts answers our readers’ questions about a variety of user experience matters. To get answers to your own questions about UX strategy, design, user research, or any other topic of interest to UX professionals in an upcoming edition of Ask UXmatters, please send your questions… -
Measuring Customer Experience
17 Jun 2013 | 1:17 amBy Ben Werner Published: June 17, 2013 “Since customer experience (CX) is so important, shouldn’t we all want to know how our digital products, services, and interactions compare to those of our competitors?” In the current era of business, the customer is more important than ever before. Check out analysts’ recent work on the financial performance of companies that get it versus those that don’t. It’s eye opening. Brands like Amazon who innovate their business to provide the highest-quality, easy, personalized interactions to their customers are taking their markets by storm. -
Moving Technical Writing to the Cloud
17 Jun 2013 | 1:14 amBy Debarshi Gupta Biswas Published: June 17, 2013 “Moving technical writing to the cloud has major appeal for compelling reasons, including lower up-front costs, the immediate availability of software tools, easier collaboration among coauthors, seamless content reviews, and varied storage options.” Cloud-based computing is arguably one of the most popular developments in the realm of computing in recent years. It has ushered in a radical shift from the pre-cloud era, when IT’s installation, configuration, and management of applications in an enterprise required a significant amount of…
-
A List Apart: The Full Feed
-
This week's sponsor: Igloo Software
17 Jun 2013 | 10:00 amIgloo is now free with up to ten people, helping you work better with your team and your clients. Get your (responsive!) Igloo, and start sharing blogs, calendars, files, forums, microblogs and wikis today. And as your Igloo grows, it’s only $12/person each month. -
Ughck. Images.
17 Jun 2013 | 8:00 am» Ughck. Images.In a follow-up to his ALA article Mo’ Pixels, Mo’ Problems, Dave Rupert talks about all the progress we've made toward responsive image solutions — by which he means no progress has been made. -
Google Changes Rankings of Smartphone Search Results
13 Jun 2013 | 9:37 am» Google Changes Rankings of Smartphone Search ResultsGoogle has started decreasing the ranking of sites with misconfigured mobile content redirects and errors. Highly recommended for any developer who cares about site rankings in Google (i.e. all of them). -
Why Do We Need Responsive Images? 72% Less Image Weight.
11 Jun 2013 | 8:41 am» Why Do We Need Responsive Images? 72% Less Image Weight.We all need to step up our responsive development game and start thinking more about page weight. The most obvious place to start? Images.℅ @respimg -
Karen McGrane on Content: The Alternative is Nothing
6 Jun 2013 | 4:30 amThe history of technology innovation is the history of disruption. New technologies become available and disrupt the market for more-established, higher-end products. We’re witnessing one of the latest waves of technological disruption, as mobile devices put access to the internet in the hands of people who previously never had that power. Always-available connectivity through PCs and broadband connections has already transformed the lives of people who have it. Mobile internet will do the same for an even larger population worldwide. Despite examples from countless industries where…
-
LukeW | Digital Product Design + Strategy
-
Multi-Device Application Design
18 Jun 2013 | 5:00 pmIn my sixth video for Intel Software on re-imagining desktop application design, I look at how Ultrabook applications fit in to a multi-device world. Today it's not just one device that defines our computing experience, it's multiple devices and how they're used together to get things done. Consider more than half of laptop owners in the United States also own a smartphone. A third of smartphone owners have a tablet and an increasing number of people -more than one in ten- have all three. In Multi-Device Design we'll look at how we can design Ultrabook applications to live this new cross… -
Data Monday: How Many Mobile Apps Do People Download?
16 Jun 2013 | 5:00 pmThe lure of high engagement on mobile devices has many people building and marketing native mobile apps. But how many of these applications actually get downloaded by mobile users each month? In the fall of 2008, there were about 10 apps downloaded for every iPhone/iPod touch. Two years later the rate was more than five times higher. (source) The average iOS device owner downloaded 83 apps in 2011 and 51 in 2010, a 61% increase year over year. (source) At the start of 2011, the average smartphone added 2.5 new apps per month. (source) In contrast, the average iOS user iOS downloaded about 5… -
WWDC 2013: Just the Data
9 Jun 2013 | 5:00 pmAt the June 2013 Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared recent numbers on Apple's sales. Here's just the data from his presentation: Over a million people per day visited Apple stores in 2012. (source) There are 471 Apple stores worldwide. (source) There are over 900,000 apps in the Apple App store. 375k apps have been designed for iPad.(source) 50 billion apps downloaded in less than 5 years. (source) There are 575 million credit card accounts on iTunes. (source) Apple has paid developers over 10 billion dollars, the last 5 billion happened last year. That's three times… -
Data Monday: Who Made the iPhone Killer?
8 Jun 2013 | 5:00 pmSeveral years ago, the tech press was infatuated with finding who would launch an "iPod killer". Ultimately it turned out that Apple did when they released the iPhone. Today the search for an "iPhone killer" has also been extensive but once again, it may be Apple that delivers the final blow. The latest professed "iPhone Killer" was Samsung's Galaxy S4 smartphone. (source) But the iPhone actually grew marketshare following the launch of Samsung's flagship Galaxy S4 phone. (source) And Samsung Galaxy S4 shipments this year are expected to be 20 to 30% lower than its previous forecast. (source)… -
Designing for Thumb Flow
28 May 2013 | 5:00 pmLately I've become increasingly interested in the ergonomics of software design. That is, how human factors influence both the interactions and layout of an interface. In New Layouts for the Multi-Device Web I outlined the impact touch interfaces can have on layout across diverse screen sizes. This time I want to focus on interaction and designing for the flow of a thumb. The Ergonomics of Software Traditional graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are controlled by indirect manipulation through a mouse, keyboard, or joystick. So we design software for GUIs to work with digital representations of…
-
Church of the Customer Blog
-
Word-of-mouth marketing: control is futile
4 Jun 2013 | 9:22 amEven today, marketers are still trying to control the conversation customers have about their brand. Give it up. With social media acting as a word-of-mouth jetstream, it's impossible to make sure people are on "brand message" when they talk about you to friends and family. We can only hope to create products and brands that people want to evangelize and then join in the conversation. I love this cartoon from my friend and "marketoonist" Tom Fishburne. Click here for his post on what happened when the Kentucky Department of Tourism tried to control the message about their brand. Tweet -
The best customer service is invisible
20 May 2013 | 2:47 pmI am huge fan of Nordstrom. They have famed customer service and that is one of the reasons why I shop there. But even I was surprised by this. Last week I was shopping at Nordstrom and bought merchadise at a few departments. The strip on my Nordstrom VISA card had apparently stopped working because each cashier had trouble swiping the card and had to resort to typing in the numbers into the register. I made an offhand comment to one of the cashieres that I would have to call in to the card customer service later and request a new card. Of course that became just one more thing on my to-do… -
#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…
-
InfoDesign: Understanding by Design
-
It's not enough to change the light bulbs: A conversation with Brenda Laurel
19 Jun 2013 | 12:51 pmBrenda presents a holistic view of technology, humans and the planet Earth. "I see us developing technologies and design practices that reduce cognitive distance for people who use them. I hope that we will continue to create alternatives to the trivial pursuits currently favored by the marketplace. (...) Technology is an extrusion of the human spirit." (Julia Moisand Egea ~ Adaptive Path) -
The future of human-centered design
19 Jun 2013 | 6:39 amCopernicus and his heliocentrism are getting a lot of traction these days with outside-in thinking. "HCD has been a breakthrough for our industry - it's repositioned design as a tool to help transform product development by ensuring customer's needs are met and also by helping to uncover people's latent needs (those not surfaced by traditional focus groups for instance). We are taught to think about the world in three lenses as designers: desirability - what people want, feasibility - the capabilities of a firm, and viability - its financial health." (Nathan Waterhouse a.k.a. -
Service design in the physical space and why it makes sense to design for a minority
18 Jun 2013 | 3:24 amEdge cases are a lot of fun. "Instead of using the default route and using bricks and mortar to solve a problem in the physical space, which is what architects are good at, this case shows that service designers offer an alternative approach. An approach that is focused on understanding the behavior of people in the space." (Marc Fonteijn ~ 31Volts) -
In defense of floppy disks: The vocabulary of the interface
18 Jun 2013 | 3:00 amLibrarians and their iconography. A perfect match. "But librarians are a naturally curious and skeptical people and one round of qualitative research would not satisfy them." (Lis Pardi a.k.a. @LisPardi ~ Boxes and Arrows) -
Transforming our conversation of information architecture with structure
17 Jun 2013 | 8:29 amLanguage generates structure, said RSW. "Information architecture has been characterized as both an art and a science. Because there's more evidence of the former than the latter, the academic and research community is justified in hesitating to give the practice of information architecture more attention." (Nathaniel Davis a.k.a. @iatheory ~ ASIS&T Bulletin)
-
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report
-
Response to an anonymous note left on my apartment door, complaining of noise.
17 Jun 2013 | 1:09 pmDear Neighbors: While my ex-wife is in treatment for a serious illness, I am watching her two small young dogs. They get along well with my two cats and soothe my young daughter during her mother’s absence. I am sorry that the dogs sometimes bark when I am at work. They are probably somewhat afraid. The dogs will only be with us for a few more days. God willing, my ex will complete her in-patient treatment early next week. I apologize for the noise during the day, and thank you for your patience and understanding. Your Neighbor, Jeffrey -
Coastermatic’s Tash Wong and Tom Harman on The Big Web Show Episode No. 92
30 May 2013 | 6:13 pmAMERICAN DESIGNER Tash Wong and British designer Tom Harman are the co-founders of Coastermatic and my guests in Episode No. 92 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”). Tash and Tom recently resided in Brooklyn, NY and completed their MFAs in Interaction Design at New York’s School of Visual Arts, where I was one of their admiring teachers; they are now bound for Hawaii, where they will expand their web-based product empire. Coastermatic, their first joint product, converts your Instagram photos into stone coasters, and was conceived during their time at SVA. -
10 Commandments of Web Design (Notes by Luke Wroblewski on a Talk by Yours Truly)
23 May 2013 | 10:06 am“ITERATION isn’t just for visual design. It also helps you uncover insights. A List Apart found people are often commenting and re-tweeting articles before they read them. They learned this by iterating on where the share and comment links exist on the page.”—LukeW | An Event Apart: 10 Commandments of Web Design. -
Don’t Cry For Me, San Diego
19 May 2013 | 11:52 am -
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…
-
Max Design
-
Ideal line length in ems
25 May 2013 | 3:40 amLet’s assume that you have a chunk of body copy and you place it inside a container. Question 1: is there an optimal line length for copy? The optimal line length for your body text is considered to be 50-70 characters per line. Question 2: What type of unit should you use to control the container width? The best unit for setting the width of the container is “em” units as they scale with the font-size. Question 3: How do we convert 50-75 characters into ems? This is the hardest question as the content itself can affect how many characters appear per line. I decided to do an… -
A simple (and very rough) responsive table solution
21 Mar 2013 | 7:58 amThere are a lot of very clever responsive table solutions available now. There are solutions that flip the table on it’s side, convert it to a pie chart, gradually reduce the columns, allow users to determine columns, and even allow partial scrolling across the table. All of them are very clever. However, there are concerns about many of them some of them would be hard to implement in the real world – especially those that rely on the ::before pseudo-element selectors to generate table headers) some of them may not work for all types of table data – like the pie chart… -
Some links for light reading (5/3/13)
4 Mar 2013 | 3:32 pmResponsive Mixing Responsive Design and Mobile Templates Responsive audio out Logical Breakpoints For Your Responsive Design There is no breakpoint Build responsive emails Prototyping Responsive Typography CSS Getting Started with Sass How to Build a Better Button in CSS3 How to shrinkwrap and center elements horizontally Reintroducing Preboot HTML5 HTML5 forms input types Browsers WebKit for Developers Browser Trends March 2013: IE Drops Below 30% Design 10 Brilliant Color Apps for Designers Speed Improve page load times UX Usability testing myths How to Conduct A Content Audit Acessibility… -
Some links for light reading (22/2/13)
21 Feb 2013 | 1:24 pmW3C Specs CSS Animations – W3C Working Draft 19 February 2013 CSS When to Avoid the Descendant Selector CSS: a rapidly changing world Using Flexbox: Mixing Old and New for the Best Browser Support Flexbox syntax for IE 10 Setting Weights And Styles With The font-face Declaration Using White Space For Readability In HTML And CSS Dig deep into CSS linear gradients Responsive There is no breakpoint The In-Between Devising a Strategy for Responsive Design Sassaparilla – Start your next web project faster Don’t start with a page template Browsers Opera gears up at 300 million… -
Some links for light reading (13/2/13)
12 Feb 2013 | 4:07 pmW3C specs CSS Fonts Module Level 3 – W3C Working Draft 12 February 2013 CSS Transitions – W3C Working Draft 12 February 2013 Responsive Responsive grid systems; a solution? REMux: An Experimental Approach to Responsive Web Design Ditching responsive design The real conflict behind <picture> and @srcset Retina Revolution Improving Your Responsive Workflow with Style Guides CSS When to Avoid the Descendant Selector Balancing Text for better readability HTML5 Introducing the New HTML5 <main> Element The progress element Accessibility Accessible HTML5 Media Players and…
-
Putting people first
-
Book: Trust is a Choice
19 Jun 2013 | 3:27 pmTrust is a Choice – Prolegomena of Anthropology of Trust(s) by Stephanie A. Krawinkler 189 pages, 2013 Carl-Auer Verlag (Publisher) [Amazon link] [Extract] Trust is a universal but culture-bound phenomenon and a critical success factor in corporate life. The author provides a compilation of anthropological theoretical threads on trust. She conducted a long-time ethnography of a company and describes what trust is, how it is established and maintained in this particular organization, and addresses the question whether it can be regained when lost. This elaborated case proves that the… -
Service design in the physical space and why it makes sense to design for a minority
18 Jun 2013 | 10:23 pmThe physical environment in which a service plays out has a significant influence on the experience of a service. So it’s not uncommon for service design projects to take the physical environment into account. In a recent project focused on the physical environment of the train station, the Dutch service design consultancy 31 Volts, specifically looked at the “extreme users“; that small group of people which cause a rather big impact on the experience of the larger group of “normal users”. So instead of analyzing and optimizing the existing customer journey they took the lateral… -
New Ericsson report on needs of today’s smartphone and mobile internet users
18 Jun 2013 | 10:15 pmA new Ericsson ConsumerLab report, Unlocking Consumer Value, identifies the needs of today’s smartphone and mobile internet users. “The rapid uptake of smartphones and other connected devices has transformed the mobile broadband landscape – shaping and broadening the way users work, play and communicate. When the uptake of smartphones begins to accelerate in a particular market, it is vital to differentiate between consumers based on what they prioritize in an offering, whether that’s unwavering performance or cost control and data usage. This report outlines Ericsson… -
To get the most out of tablets, use smart curation
13 Jun 2013 | 12:26 amIn a second article in a four-part series on the use of tablets in educational settings, Justin Reich of MindShift examines the topic of curation. “As technologies have developed, the tools and objects of curation have become increasingly accessible. For decades, teachers have arranged collections on bookcases, but now we create playlists of songs, folders of bookmarks, albums of photos, wall posts of life events, and portfolios of academic work. With this abundance of platforms for curation, teachers no longer curate to distribute works, they curate to model curation. [...] In a world… -
Online, we’re all celebrities now. So what next?
12 Jun 2013 | 7:46 am“In reality, we’re all kind of on ‘Big Brother’ — on a reality show,” says Syracuse University’s Anthony Rotolo, a professor who runs the Starship NEXIS lab, focusing on social networking and new technologies. “Whenever I give a talk, whenever you give a talk, there’s going to be someone live-tweeting it. There’s going to be somebody posting a picture on Facebook. We are redefining celebrity in this age, and anybody at any time could be speaking publicly without realizing it.” There’s no putting the genie back in the…
-
Reaction!
-
№5 CULTURE CHANEL: The book
19 Jun 2013 | 5:20 amIrma Boom's special edition book on CHANEL №5 (produced for the №5 CULTURE CHANEL exhibition in Paris) contains no ink. Like the perfume, you don't see the content, but it's there... -
LSD ABC
19 Jun 2013 | 4:32 amA weird and wonderful animated alphabet from Laura Sicouri and Kadavre Exquis: -
Umbrella
19 Jun 2013 | 2:57 amAn interesting experiment from Tell No One (for Nowness): -
VESPALOGY
18 Jun 2013 | 8:21 amNomoon's "graphic [and] groovy retrospective of Vespas from 1943 to 2013": -
We See In Every Direction
18 Jun 2013 | 5:36 amWe See In Every Direction is a "massively multi-player web browser". In other words, it lets groups of people surf the web together in real-time! [via waxy.org]
-
Small Surfaces
-
Mobile Information Architecture: 4 different models
19 Jun 2013 | 4:07 am“Mobile devices have their own set of Information Architecture patterns, too. While the structure of a responsive site may follow more “standard” patterns, native apps, for example, often employ navigational structures that are tab-based. Again, there’s no “right” way to architect a mobile site or application. Instead, let’s take a look at some of the most popular patterns: Hierarchy, Hub & spoke, Nested doll, Tabbed view, Bento box and Filtered view.” Link: Designing for Mobile, Part 1: Information Architecture (uxbooth.com) Small Surfaces… -
Defining a language for touch
12 Jun 2013 | 4:11 amDon Norman and Bahar Wadia give a nice summation of the opportunities and challenges of designing interactions for touch and gesture-based systems. “Yes, getting the technology to work is hard, but the really hard part is getting the human-system interaction right, making it easy for people to use the systems…To overcome the limitations of affordances, Norman introduced the concept of a “signifier,” a perceivable (usually visible) signal of the location and form of the possible input interaction. Signifiers are of critical importance for these new interfaces because… -
Thumbs-only UI? How people hold phones
5 Jun 2013 | 4:08 am“The users who we observed touching their phone’s screens or buttons held their phones in three basic ways: one handed – 49%, cradled – 36%, two handed – 15%. In the following sections, I’ll describe and show a diagram of each of these methods of holding a mobile phone, along with providing some more detailed data and general observations about why I believe people hold a mobile phone in a particular way.” Link: How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices? (uxmatters.com, via. See also Microsoft Research Paper for a pre-iPhone study) Small Surfaces… -
Designing Android UX (some Google advice)
30 May 2013 | 4:35 amAn introduction to UX design basics for Android from Google I/O, sprinkled with insights about design decisions that the Android design team has made about the platform itself. “Want to enchant people, simplify their lives, and make them feel amazing with your app? Learn how Android’s Design Principles can help you create products that resonate with people. Find out about the meaning and research behind the principles. See real-world examples and practices from the Android Design team. Discover techniques for applying the principles in your daily work. No design experience… -
Data graphs will power contextual computing
29 May 2013 | 4:00 am“The adoption of contextual computing–combinations of hardware, software, networks, and services that use deep understanding of the user to create tailored, relevant actions that the user can take–is contingent on the spread of new platforms. Frankly, it depends on the smartphone…we’ve identified four data graphs essential to the rise of contextual computing: social, interest, behavior, and personal…The real potential of contextual computing isn’t about just one of these graphs. It’s about connections that resonate between them and which get…
-
Subtraction.com
-
New Google Maps Tour
19 Jun 2013 | 7:07 amThe redesigned Google Maps comes with a handy virtual tour to acquaint users with what’s changed. That’s hardly revolutionary, but in a very nice bit of user experience engineering, the tour has some extra smarts built in. If, like me, upon first getting access to this new version you immediately start poking around and trying out various searches and only click on the tour option later, the tour’s messaging will cleverly acknowledge that state: Messing about with a new product unguided is a completely natural first use case for just about any product, and my guess is… -
Michael Heilemann Takes Apart iOS 7
18 Jun 2013 | 10:48 amHeilemann, interface director at Squarespace, takes the new design to task in a few short, punchy and very incisive posts. The first one calls Apple on the fact that iOS 7’s lock screen is not just a usability faux pas, but a huge problem in that it is the gateway to the world’s most popular mobile computing experience. The second article cites an example of the OS’s poor attention to detail. And the third talks about the difficulty of understanding whether the OS is signalling a button or a state. Well worth reading. Update: Wait, there’s a fourth article too. -
Payphone Graveyard
18 Jun 2013 | 10:38 amThe photographer David Bledsoe found a graveyard of now obsolete pay phone stands underneath Manhattan’s West Side Hideway. To follow me on Twitter click here. -
Me Discussing iOS 7 on “On the Verge”
17 Jun 2013 | 10:20 amLast week I stopped by The Verge for an appearance on their weekly video podcast “On The Verge.” The topic was, of course, iOS 7, focusing on what was announced last Monday and what’s been made publicly available on Apple’s Web site. Watch the video here. To follow me on Twitter click here. -
NYT: Future of 3D Television Is Murky as ESPN Ends Its 3D Channel
17 Jun 2013 | 6:57 amApparently if the jocks don’t like it, then what everyone else knew to be true is finally validated. I know 3D television and 3D movies are two different things, but I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end for this overrated technological excuse to inflate ticket prices at the box office. Full article here. To follow me on Twitter click here.
-
User Centered
-
Touchy-Feely road crossings
29 May 2013 | 6:41 pmAccording to the BBC article The secret button at pedestrian crossings, many pedestrian crossings have a feature which lets you feel when the light turns green, in the form of a discreet spinning cone on the underside of the control box, so even deaf-blind people can use them! Strange that this feature isn't widely publicised, I wonder if most blind and deaf-blind people know about it or not? -
For laughs
28 Jan 2013 | 12:23 pmThis probably doesn't quite fall under the category of "usability" but it is funny and does have to do with user-interface. It's not the actual purchase interface, so I guess it doesn't really matter but what made it funny from a design perspective was that the blue screen of death error references "watchdog.sys" -- which is probably designed to detect when the system locks up (like a BSOD) and restart it. So if you're watchdog is broken....While it probably doesn't interfere with purchases, it is sort of embarrassing.:lol: -
The Number One Sucky Thing About Computers
2 Jun 2012 | 2:56 pmThere are a lot of things that suck about computers but I think I identified the number one this afternoon as I tried to unhibernate my computer and write a critical email to a business partner. I had the stream of consciousness in my head. The thoughts that I wanted to communicate to him and I just kept hitting a wall with my computer.First, my HP laptop was laggy. Windows seemed to be doing okay but it just couldn't stop choking. Finally, it "unhibernated" (or whatever the ridiculous term might be) and I opened Chrome, logged into Starbucks Wifi, and CRASH. Okay, Chrome… -
Counting in Government
17 Apr 2012 | 10:33 amI thought the gang would kick the same chuckle from this I did: sourceI'm trying to think of a safety advantage of having it this way but not getting anything. Ideas? -
What day does the week start?
18 Jan 2012 | 4:08 pmThis post is meant to serve as a warning to web developers for United States websites.I'm really excited about the new HTML5 Form Elements. Especially the new "date" input type: <input type="date">Unfortunately, the "date picker" (the calendar popup that displays when selecting a date) is just a little too Euro-centric. Opera appears to have implemented the ISO 8601:2004 ($238.00!) standard that the "always reliable" Wikipedia claims is common in Europe**.What does that mean? The week starts on Monday.This site has an example…
-
Veerle's blog
-
Baltimore Beach
13 Jun 2013 | 9:29 amEditorial and spot illustrations for Baltimore Magazine.via Jayde A. Cardinalli -
Dark rider
13 Jun 2013 | 9:17 amGreat rays.via Jacek Ksiazek -
Hooray for Summer
13 Jun 2013 | 9:11 amHooray for Summer x1000!via Lab Partners -
120 Avenue C
13 Jun 2013 | 8:37 amWindows of New York. A weekly illustrative pleasure! Highly recommend weekly visit.via Jose Guizar -
Criminal cars
13 Jun 2013 | 8:20 amI love these brothers and their inspiring fantasy.via Brosmind
-
Usability Counts
-
Building a Product? This is the Team You Need to Build Your MVP.
19 Jun 2013 | 10:00 amYou and your friends have this great idea. Bigger than Instagram! Bigger than Twitter! Bigger than Facebook! Bigger than Google! Okay, maybe not. Still, it’s going to be huge. You’ve raised a little money (if you’re lucky), and you want to build a MVP, known as a minimum viable product. That’s the bare minimum you need to get a product out the door and so you can test your concept against customers. Sounds easy, right? Even for a MVP, it takes a village to build a product. The village has several roles, and selecting the right team early can make or break your idea. Your village will… -
iStockPhoto: Designer Truths Infauxgraphic 2013
14 Jun 2013 | 8:49 amYup. That’s about right. You just finished reading iStockPhoto: Designer Truths Infauxgraphic 2013! Consider leaving a comment!Stuff to check out UX Drinking Game | UX Resume and Career Guide -
My History on Foursquare
13 Jun 2013 | 3:18 pmVery cool. You just finished reading My History on Foursquare! Consider leaving a comment!Stuff to check out UX Drinking Game | UX Resume and Career Guide -
UX Week: UX Team of One
13 Jun 2013 | 8:08 amA great video. Worth watching. You just finished reading UX Week: UX Team of One! Consider leaving a comment!Stuff to check out UX Drinking Game | UX Resume and Career Guide -
Google is Missing Social and Their Culture May Be to Blame
12 Jun 2013 | 11:04 amA couple of years ago, I was interviewed by Venture Beat for an article about Google Plus. I firmly believed that large-scale user adoption for the social network was around the corner. It seemed to have a great feature set, and with their search engine they could drive significant traffic to the social network. It hasn’t really happened. The only people I see on my feed are Chris Pirillo, Robert Scoble, and three Google employees I know. With its relaunch, I don’t know now if Plus is ever going to take off. They can’t seem to bridge the gap between using their data to optimize a tool…
-
UsabilityPost
-
Google Authorship Search Listing Blindness
29 May 2013 | 5:00 pmHere’s an interesting way a simple UI addition can backfire. Google Authorship is a service from Google that lets you link your site to your Google+ profile. The “benefit” of doing so is that you get your Google+ picture displayed next to your listing on the Google search pages, which looks like this: After using Google Authorship on his site, Alex Yumas from JitBit was shocked to discover that their traffic fell by 90%. The site in question still held the first result on Google for the relevant search query, but having a little Google+ avatar picture next to the result text… -
When Infinite Scroll Doesn't Work
6 Jan 2013 | 4:00 pmDan Nguyen has an interesting writeup of Dan McKinley’s talk about why the implementation of infinite scroll at Etsy didn’t work. Essentially what happened was that Etsy had spent time implementing an infinite scroll interface (i.e. a list of results that automatically keeps loading more items as you scroll to the bottom of the list) before first testing their assumptions that more search results at a faster rate would boost user engagement. They found that the new interface just didn’t perform. Although the amount of purchases stayed roughly the same, user engagement has… -
Watching Them Struggle
5 Dec 2012 | 4:00 pmYou’ve probably watched somebody who is not technically savvy trying to operate an interface new to them, likely with little success. Maybe that interface was yours. You’ve spent countless hours cutting that thing down to the basics, refining the copy and making everything crystal clear, and yet, you watch with bewilderment as the user before you struggles and stumbles across the screen, doing everything possible to go in circles around the interface element they actually need, which to you seems blindingly obvious. As I read through Robert Greene’s new book, Mastery, a… -
Redesign Trend in Tech News Sites: Big, Responsive and Content Heavy
4 Dec 2012 | 4:00 pmThere’s a new trend in the redesign of technology news sites, which has emerged with the move towards responsive designs. The new wave of redesigns sees the old blog format being transformed into a full-screen, app-like experience, with multiple columns, fixed position elements and a global navigation bar at the top of the page. So let’s see some examples. Here is The Next Web: Here’s Mashable: And here’s ReadWrite: Here are some of the shared attributes of these designs: Responsive design taking up the whole or most of the screen Wide, simplified navigation bar at the… -
Just Don't Make It Annoying
26 Nov 2012 | 4:00 pmI find that whenever I’m designing a user interface, the one safe rule to follow is simply this: just don’t make it annoying. This might sound banal, but there are often cases where blindly following best practices and design theory slowly pulls you off the right track, so that you end up designing something for the sake of a good design — whatever that is — rather than for actual use. As an analogy, consider the organization of things on your desk. Cleaning it up, organizing things and putting them away might seem like a good idea if you want to achieve a productive…
-
UIE Brain Sparks
-
UIEtips: Designing Microinteractions
19 Jun 2013 | 12:02 pmIn this week’s UIEtips, I talk to author and interaction design guru Dan Saffer about microinteractions. Here’s an excerpt from the article: Jared: What are microinteractions? Dan: Microinteractions are the small pieces of functionality that exist around or sometimes in place of larger features. An example is turning off the ringer on your phone. Nobody is buying your phone because you can turn the ringer off, but it’s still this little important piece of functionality that if it’s not there can cause a lot of problems. Jared: It’s an interesting thing, that ringer–off… -
Dan Saffer – Designing Microinteractions
14 Jun 2013 | 11:23 am[ Transcript Available ] According to Jared Spool, design is best when it’s invisible. Just like air conditioning. People only notice it when it’s not working, or too hot, or too cold. No one ever mentions how great the air conditioning is when it’s working perfectly. Microinteractions work in a similar way. Do you think about the ringer on your phone and the ability to turn it off? Dan Saffer uses this example to kick off his book Microinteractions. Silencing the ringer on your phone is a common feature. If that feature is clunky or hard to find it interferes with needing to silence it… -
UIEtips: What Makes an Experience Seem Innovative?
12 Jun 2013 | 12:52 pmIn this week’s UIEtips, I explain what makes an experience innovative. Here’s an excerpt from the article: Everyone assumed the old way of long lines was how you did it. They built their stores with dedicated space to accommodate the lines during busy periods, such as after the holidays. Apple’s new approach meant their architects didn’t need to build in that space, letting them put it to other uses, such as product displays. Here’s the thing: Apple didn’t invent making an appointment. Yet their approach to using it for customer service seemed completely innovative. Why… -
Jeff Gothelf – Lean UX: Escaping Product Requirement Hell
7 Jun 2013 | 11:39 am[ Transcript Available ] Assumptions tend to be the downfall of many research projects. Making design decisions based on generalizations of what people are likely to do leads to surprises once you finally get your product in front of actual users. The result? Rework and frustration due to an overall lack of communication within the team. Jeff Gothelf suggests starting with an attitude that you’re testing a hypothesis which leads to a more open discussion. The main thing is, hypotheses, just like design, can change. Being flexible and iterative in your design process encourages an… -
UIEtips: Why Lean UX?
5 Jun 2013 | 11:14 amIn this week’s UIEtips, Jeff Gothelf lays out his rationale for why Lean UX is something new and why it’s important now. Here’s an excerpt from the article: When bringing our craft to software in the 1980s and 1990s, designers approached software in the same way we approached the earlier materials we worked with. In industrial design, print design, fashion design, and any field involving physical outputs, the manufacturing step is a critical constraint. When designing for physical materials, designers need to figure out what we’re making before we start production, because…
-
Everyone's Blog Posts - HFI Connect
-
South Africa: An Emerging Market Report by Institute of Customer Experience
18 Jun 2013 | 3:30 pmThe diversity of South Africa is on one hand a treasure that should be preserved and people still do recognize its importance and carry forward their cultural values. On the other hand, the very same diversity is a challenge for policy makers, marketers, advertisers, government and other institutions that want to reach out to greater masses and those who look for scalability. However, the “mobile first” generation is the answer. The mobile revolution has introduced the people in South Africa to the power of social media, enabled them to open and operate bank accounts, helped them level… -
UX Strategy: Let’s Stop Building Usable Wrong Things
13 Jun 2013 | 12:30 pmFree poster of this animation and related white paper on UX strategy -
7 Pitfalls to Avoid in Defining and Measuring UX Success
11 Jun 2013 | 10:30 amFollowing up on the post about Defining and Measuring UX Success, this post talks about some challenges you might face as you get your UX Metrics program up and running. Establishing the processes and measuring the user experience is challenging, but rewarding. Here are a few “pitfalls” we have to keep in mind to avoid stopping our UX Metrics program before it even gets started: 1. Lack of knowledge about what users are doing now. We may not currently be measuring some aspects of the user experience. That’s okay, start now! This process can help the organization think about… -
Social Commerce: Myths and Truths
7 Jun 2013 | 9:30 amThis article shows that understanding your customers and the associated complexities of social media are needed to develop a UX strategy that achieves business success. Read Social Commerce: Myths and Truths from the May/June issue of HFI's UX Design Newsletter. -
Measuring the User Experience - Part 1 – Defining and Measuring UX Success
5 Jun 2013 | 10:10 amIf you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. And a good User Experience (UX) is not magic; it is the result of a good process. UX Metrics are an integral part of having a customer-centric organization. They help us manage the cyclical process of user-centered design: Each of us spends our valuable company resources creating products to delight our customers and keep our business running. We need a way to measure how well the design is working for our end users. If it is working, we need to reinforce that success. If it isn’t working, we need to understand what needs to be fixed.
-
90 Percent of Everything - by Harry Brignull
-
Are you in a teflon-coated UX role?
26 May 2013 | 3:09 amMaybe you’re a UX researcher, passing choice insights into the product development machine. If what comes out the other side doesn’t seem right, you feel free to bitch and moan. “Didn’t they listen to the findings I gave them?” Maybe you’re a UX designer who works at the early stages of the design process, doing the discovery phase, running workshops, producing concepts, sketches and setting the vision. Again, it’s so easy to pass the buck and feel vindicated when the quality at the end of the process is low. Sometimes it feels like you’re a… -
Sneaking responsive in under the radar using an mdot site.
22 May 2013 | 1:02 amLet’s face it, there’s the right way to do design, then there’s the pragmatic way to get things done within your organisation. The two are often not the quite same thing. Let’s say you want to create an elegantly minimal responsive site that focuses on the core UX and privileges the reading experience over ads, cross-links and clutter – but can you achieve it? In some organisations you’ll have to pry the above-the-fold advertising real estate out of the cold, dead hands of the senior execs. As Leisa Reichelt said a few months ago: “Politics and egos are… -
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.
-
Konigi
-
SIX UX: Transition and animation gallery
14 Jun 2013 | 5:26 pmSIX UX is a gallery of transitions and animations shown as 6 second videos. Andreas Popp combined Vine app videos with tumblr to showcase otherwise ephemeral movements found around the web. Low fi and awesome. Check it. -
User Inter Faces: Avatars for mockups
14 Jun 2013 | 1:19 pmUI Faces is a useful little tool by Caleb Ogden for generating a grid of avatars that you can use in your designs. -
Starters Guide to iOS Design
7 Jun 2013 | 9:56 amBen Taylor's Starters Guide to iOS describes an exhaustive range of topics as intro to iOS design. He covers the deliverables you'll be expected to produce, outlines the constraints of the medium, and introduces fundamental iOS and UI design concepts. -
Sketchnote Typeface by Mike Rohde
5 Jun 2013 | 8:49 amMike Rohde's Sketchnote font can be purchased on Delve for desktop and webfont use. Mike created the font for the Sketchnote handbook and writes about its design on his blog. The family has four fonts: Sketchnote Text in Regular, Bold and Italic, plus Sketchnote Square. Sketchnote Text is a friendly, casual script with a bouncy baseline and a warm texture. To emulate natural handwriting, OpenType features automatically switch between multiple versions of each letter or number, with over 240 alternates in each text font. OpenType kerning classes are used with unique kerns made to… -
FontPrep: Web Font Generator for Mac
3 Jun 2013 | 10:25 amFontPrep is a web font generator for the Mac with a simple drag/drop interface for adding your TTF and OTF font files and generating all of the respective font-formats for the web: WOFF, EOT, and SVG. Each converted web-font is bundled with @font-face declarations, and a subsettings feature allows you to select which character sets to include.
-
The UX Booth
-
A Confab Recap
18 Jun 2013 | 6:30 amKristina Halvorson issued a strong call-to-action during her opening keynote at this year’s Confab Minneapolis event, saying: “Part of my job as a content strategist is to get people on board with content strategy. You are a salesperson.” Through the next two days of Confab, speakers provided tools to make this challenging dream a reality. A few weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of interviewing two Confab speakers, Jonathon Khan and Melanie Moran, in preparation for my attendance of Confab Minneapolis. While writing the introduction for that interview, I spent some time… -
A User Experience Business of One
11 Jun 2013 | 6:30 amMy initial foray into UX frustrated me. Although my job title suggested that I made products easier for end-users, I actually spent a lot of time selling user experience to clients, stakeholders, and colleagues. I knew I needed to broaden my focus, but I didn’t know where to start. And that’s when I discovered The Business Model Canvas. The story behind what we today know as the Business Model Canvas is an interesting one. Originally created as a conceptual framework for Alexander Osterwalder’s PhD project, it later became the subject of an entire book called Business Model… -
Design in Service: Crafting the Citizen Experience
4 Jun 2013 | 6:30 amMany agree that a combination of factors – a demand for better user experience, the rise of ubiquitous technologies and more readily accessible datasets – present the conditions necessary for a more enjoyable life as a citizen of our country. But necessity is just the mother of invention; it takes hard work to get there. To narrow the gap between today’s promises and tomorrow’s opportunities, designers are increasingly intent on improving what’s known as the citizen experience. The trends aren’t difficult to see. Co-authors Joseph Pine and James Gilmore… -
The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Universal Design
28 May 2013 | 6:30 amLike countless others, I initially perceived user experience design through the lens of usability: as a “science,” devoid of the subjectivity of “users.” If a door equipped with a push bar actually required me to pull on it in order to open it, I became upset. I considered it a bad experience. And while this does describe a bad experience due to poor usability, my viewpoint was also incredibly myopic. Unusable or inaccessible, what’s the difference? As many within our community have pointed out, the things we might normally think of as well designed are often… -
A Taste of Confab 2013
21 May 2013 | 6:30 am“Content is king.” It’s been the prevailing trend the past few years, but at Confab – a conference of Content Strategists – attendees seek more than just trends; they seek stories. UX Booth editor and resident content strategist Marli Mesibov reached out to some of the strategists speaking at this year’s Minneapolis-based event to learn more about what’s driving their current narratives. When I first walked into Confab in 2012, I felt as though I had finally found home. During their workshops and talks, speakers discussed the “hows” and…
-
UX Passion - UX design agency
-
Post UX Apocalypse
7 Jun 2013 | 4:57 amIt is often said that the end is near and it has never been more so than during the 2012. To us every end of the world is actually a beginning of a new brave world. An opportunity to gather a bunch of our colleagues, partners, some twitter stars and a few surprise guests in one room. You know, face to face, without any screens in between. Strange concept, we know, but we are renowned for innovative thinking. To make this mingle a bit special, we organised it at newly opened modern art house Lauba. Special thanks goes to Mario Poje who captured some of the great moments. Check it out, and then… -
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…
-
Project6 Design: Bay Area UI Design Firm
-
Project6 Design Awarded Best Sports Site of 2013 at DrupalCon
12 Jun 2013 | 1:01 pmleisure_sports_website.jpg Portland, OR – At DrupalCon Portland, Project6 Design was awarded the 2013 Blue Drop Award for Best Sports Website for the Leisure Sports Club Sports website. Blue Drop Awards are a democratic, voter-driven recognition program that celebrates innovation for sites using Drupal. Votes are cast based on the use of Drupal Best Practices, Content, Structure & Navigation, Visual Design, Functionality and Overall Experience.Leisure Sports, an active lifestyle business, designs, develops, owns and manages distinctive, high-end fitness resorts and hotels that offer… -
Responsive Website Design and Development For Construction Management Design Firm
1 Jun 2013 | 4:58 pmproject6_vaughn_main1.png Project6 Design, a San Francisco Bay Area graphic design firm, is excited to announce the launch of a dynamic, responsive website for Vaughn Construction. Based in Houston, TX, Vaughn offers the rare combination of a traditional general contractor plus sophisticated construction management. Their process-driven and results-focused approach allows them to deliver the best quality at the best value.During the brand discovery process, Vaughn stakeholders were drawn to edgier design elements that pushed the envelope for construction industry sites. So Project6 provided… -
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:
-
UX Designer | Web User Interface | Visual Designer - Nomad Chique
-
So Cal UX Camp 2013
5 Jun 2013 | 11:48 amI went to So Cal UX Camp this weekend and had an awesome time. I sat in on some really great lectures and met some super cool people, including some I hadn’t seen in awhile in the user experience community. All in all it was an inspiring event with a lot of extraordinary talent. Here [...] -
Photo Hack Day 4 – my favorite hackathon yet
9 Apr 2013 | 8:21 pmThis past weekend, I had the most amazing time working alongside some seriously talented folks up at Facebook HQ for Photo Hack Day 4. In just 24 hours, over 60 hacks were cooked up from scratch, all on the quest for some killer prizes. Hackers and designers were tasked with coming up with the best [...] -
Likeonomics by Rohit Bhargava
4 Jun 2012 | 5:09 pmI attended LinkedOC to see Rohit Bhargava, SVP, Global Strategy & Planning at Ogilvy Worldwide, present his latest book Likeonomics. I tweeted his presentation and compiled it here. Overall it was a great presentation along with a great Q&A. Thanks for showing us how to be more likable as a business Rohit! Watching Rohit from [...]
-
Symantec Connect - Inside Symantec - Blog Entries
-
Responsive Web Design
28 May 2013 | 12:43 pm...a design that can adapt to the constraints of the browser window or device that renders it… Ethan Marcotte In the beginning, web design just followed traditional print design... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
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! ]]
-
Baymard Institute
-
5 High-Level Mobile Commerce Design Considerations
17 Jun 2013 | 11:28 pmThis is the last in a series of 8 articles on mobile commerce usability that draw on findings from our m-commerce usability report 2013. In the seven prior articles of this series we’ve covered very specific usability findings for mobile commerce sites such as: inline labels (7), hit areas in product lists (6), drop-downs for navigation (4), single input entities (1), label positioning (2), and lists of compatible products (3). Beside the specific improvements these seven findings hopefully also offer a glimpse at the level of detail one needs to consider when designing a mobile… -
Mobile Form Usability: Never Use Inline Labels
3 Jun 2013 | 11:38 pmThis is the 7th in a series of 8 articles on mobile commerce usability that draw on findings from our m-commerce usability report 2013. Labels placed inside the form field (aka “inline labels”) are widespread in mobile apps and sites – almost to the point of being a best (mal)practice. Yet in every usability test we’ve conducted inline labels have suffered from major usability problems. Mobile included. Perhaps the popularity of inline labels on mobile is due to Apple’s extensive use of them, or the great simplistic look they afford, or their space efficiency –… -
Mobile Product Lists Need Very Distinct Hit Areas
20 May 2013 | 11:48 pmThis is the 6th in a series of 8 articles on mobile commerce usability that draw on findings from our m-commerce usability report 2013. When displaying search results and category lists on mobile sites & apps, users often simply have no idea where to tap in order to select a given item / product. Can the entire “element” be tapped? Or is it only the product title? And what about the thumbnail? During the mobile commerce test sessions multiple issues arose as subjects were unsure of where to tap in order to select a given option in a list, what was even “tappable”,… -
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…
-
Wireframes Magazine
-
MicroPersonas – 41% Off
17 Jun 2013 | 6:11 amHey All. Just a quick announcement that I’ve been running a discount on the MicroPersonas icon set that is about to expire today. Instead of $29, it’s $17 for another 15 hours or so. Just wanted to share in here as well. Cheers. :) Update: just realized that MightyDeals has extended the deal by another week. -
InVisionApp: Now With Sketch Commenting
11 Jun 2013 | 6:04 amWhat do you get when you merge a pretty cool web based prototyping tool with some sketching capability? You got it – InVisionApp. These guys from NY have just launched a Sketch Commenting feature in their latest build. This now allows designers to express themselves more easily as words and pictures are more powerful together. They’re already awesome so no need to write anything else … “design on my friends” as they say. :) Sign up for an account and give this tool a try (1 project always free). -
Fries
10 Jun 2013 | 5:55 amFries (github) is a prototyping tool for Android devices. I think it allows you to spit out Android styled UIs just using HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Yes, it apparently plays nice with PhoneGap … Description pulled from Github: Fries is an awesome mobile development framework (yes, not just for prototyping!) for Android apps using just HTML, CSS, and Javascript and was inspired by Ratchet. We all know that you can find loads of iOS development tools out there, so this time let’s give some love to Android. Credits: Jaune Sarmiento -
Skeu It!
23 May 2013 | 5:54 amSkeu It! – and perhaps here is the reason why people went flat with their design styles. :) It’s a parody tumblr collection of some weird looking interfaces with coffee switches, jean pockets and lots of wooden clipboards. The site is now closed off, but definitely proved a point of how ridiculous (or skewed) a UI can get when pushed to the other extreme. Credits: Justin Maxwell (@303) -
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)
-
UsabilityPost
-
Google Authorship Search Listing Blindness
29 May 2013 | 5:00 pmHere’s an interesting way a simple UI addition can backfire. Google Authorship is a service from Google that lets you link your site to your Google+ profile. The “benefit” of doing so is that you get your Google+ picture displayed next to your listing on the Google search pages, which looks like this: After using Google Authorship on his site, Alex Yumas from JitBit was shocked to discover that their traffic fell by 90%. The site in question still held the first result on Google for the relevant search query, but having a little Google+ avatar picture next to the result text… -
When Infinite Scroll Doesn't Work
6 Jan 2013 | 4:00 pmDan Nguyen has an interesting writeup of Dan McKinley’s talk about why the implementation of infinite scroll at Etsy didn’t work. Essentially what happened was that Etsy had spent time implementing an infinite scroll interface (i.e. a list of results that automatically keeps loading more items as you scroll to the bottom of the list) before first testing their assumptions that more search results at a faster rate would boost user engagement. They found that the new interface just didn’t perform. Although the amount of purchases stayed roughly the same, user engagement has… -
Watching Them Struggle
5 Dec 2012 | 4:00 pmYou’ve probably watched somebody who is not technically savvy trying to operate an interface new to them, likely with little success. Maybe that interface was yours. You’ve spent countless hours cutting that thing down to the basics, refining the copy and making everything crystal clear, and yet, you watch with bewilderment as the user before you struggles and stumbles across the screen, doing everything possible to go in circles around the interface element they actually need, which to you seems blindingly obvious. As I read through Robert Greene’s new book, Mastery, a… -
Redesign Trend in Tech News Sites: Big, Responsive and Content Heavy
4 Dec 2012 | 4:00 pmThere’s a new trend in the redesign of technology news sites, which has emerged with the move towards responsive designs. The new wave of redesigns sees the old blog format being transformed into a full-screen, app-like experience, with multiple columns, fixed position elements and a global navigation bar at the top of the page. So let’s see some examples. Here is The Next Web: Here’s Mashable: And here’s ReadWrite: Here are some of the shared attributes of these designs: Responsive design taking up the whole or most of the screen Wide, simplified navigation bar at the… -
Just Don't Make It Annoying
26 Nov 2012 | 4:00 pmI find that whenever I’m designing a user interface, the one safe rule to follow is simply this: just don’t make it annoying. This might sound banal, but there are often cases where blindly following best practices and design theory slowly pulls you off the right track, so that you end up designing something for the sake of a good design — whatever that is — rather than for actual use. As an analogy, consider the organization of things on your desk. Cleaning it up, organizing things and putting them away might seem like a good idea if you want to achieve a productive…
-
Users Know
-
Mobile First? Not So Fast! The Importance of Flow and Context.
19 Jun 2013 | 5:33 pmI recently wrote a post for the O'Reilly Programming Blog called "Mobile First? Not So Fast!Why "flow" and "context" are more important than screen size."Here's an excerpt:Are we done with the Mobile First meme, yet? Can we be? Please?Look, don’t get me wrong. I fundamentally agree with a lot of the thoughts behind the annoying catchphrase “mobile first.” For example, I agree that mobile devices are now the primary (if not only) mode of connecting for many markets. I also think that having some sort of mobile strategy is absolutely required for almost every product.The problem is that… -
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…
-
IDYeah Blog
-
Temporary IDs
11 Jun 2013 | 6:46 amListen Usability of Temporary Email ID (Disposable Email ID) Sometime ago, I was discussing the issue of software piracy with an IT professional. He put forth a very relevant point. Most of the software applications have a trial version which offer almost similar functionality and benefits as the paid version albeit for a temporary period. Hence, one should not download a pirated software as it is illegal and try to take benefits of the trial period. He said, there would be no harm in using trial version repeatedly. Valid point, I said. There are two issues with this, obviously, as the… -
Medium Allows Contextual Comments
3 Jun 2013 | 9:56 pmListen Comments on a Blog Have you ever felt discouraged putting your comments on a blog article, because you would have to point to specific portions of the blog for your comments to make sense? Yes, it’s a lot of work and the comments are unnecessarily fatter because of the context you have to set for the author and other readers. See what Medium has done. This site allows you to “select” or “highlight” a word or phrase or paragraph and add comments specific to the highlighted text. Your comments get attached to that section, and not to the “end of the… -
Customer or Guinea Pig?
2 Jun 2013 | 11:38 pmListen Do You See Your Customer as a Guinea Pig? Mike was nervous. Yet again. It was 395 days since he had started a business. A service startup to help other companies grow their business. “What if I got rejected again?” he wondered, recounting all the negative responses of several prospects for over 13 months now. He barely reached on time for the meeting. He was alone today; the second member of his 2-people startup, Thomas had called in sick. A cup of black tea and few pleasantries later, the spokesperson of the prospect asked: “So, how have you helped other companies… -
The 16×16 Usability
31 May 2013 | 9:52 pmListen Usability of Favicon Favicon seems to be quite ignored from the focus of both brand owners and designers. What can you do in a small area of 16 pixels by 16 pixels? A lot actually! #1 Brand Identity If you’re serious about your brand, you have to go the whole nine yards. Attention to detail. While you don’t leave out your PowerPoint footer, Website footer, Email signature, Business card color – you should very well consider the smallest part of your real estate – the Favicon. Why allow Browsers show your website opened with their own “default”… -
The Mac Monocle: Cartoon
21 May 2013 | 8:02 pmListen The Mac Monocle by Artist: lunchbreath Source: CoreToon
-
UserZoom
-
New Webinar: Formative Usability Testing in Agile – Piloting New Techniques at Autodesk
4 Jun 2013 | 10:54 amJoin Eunice Chang, Sr. Principal User Researcher at Autodesk, and Olivia Williamson, Principal UX Designer at Autodesk, in this webinar to learn about the new techniques of formative usability testing piloted by the AutoCAD UX group in their agile user-centered design process. The webinar is on Tuesday, June 25th at 11am PT. -
New Webinar: Formative Usability Testing in Agile – Piloting New Techniques at Autodesk
4 Jun 2013 | 10:47 amJoin Eunice Chang, Sr. Principal User Researcher at Autodesk, and Olivia Williamson, Principal UX Designer at Autodesk, in this webinar to learn about the new techniques of formative usability testing piloted by the AutoCAD UX group in their agile user-centered design process. The webinar is on Tuesday, June 25th at 11am PT. Register today! -
How Paypal Meets Its UX Research and Design Goals
23 May 2013 | 12:11 pmDuring one of our recent webinars, Deborah Torres, Sr. UX Research and Ops Manager at Paypal, shared how UX research is done at Paypal. With 113.2 million active accounts, every UX related decision has a significant impact. Deborah and her team, like many other UX researchers, face two main challenges: 1) Delivering quality credible results to stakeholders and decision makers; 2) Getting it all done quickly and efficiently. Using data triangulation to tell a complete story and to increase credibility Paypal’s research team uses multiple research methods to provide a complete story about… -
Webinar On-Demand: Mobile UX Research Methods and Tools
12 Apr 2013 | 10:45 amJoin us in this webinar to learn about different research methods and tools for testing mobile websites and apps. As a case study, our featured speaker, Nate Colker, will show a setup and results of a recent mobile benchmark study that we conducted using UserZoom’s brand new Mobile Remote Usability Testing solution. -
Webinar On-Demand: Mobile UX Research Methods and Tools
12 Apr 2013 | 10:28 amJoin us in this webinar to learn about different research methods and tools for testing mobile websites and apps. As a case study, our featured speaker, Nate Colker, will show a setup and results of a recent mobile benchmark study that we conducted using UserZoom’s brand new Mobile Remote Usability Testing solution. Date: April 30th at 11am Pacific.
-
Usability and UX Blog
-
UX Salary infograph
7 Jun 2013 | 7:02 am -
The Implications You Must Take Into Account When Sketching User Experiences
4 Jun 2013 | 3:49 amI’m pleased to welcome Danielle Arad as my guest poster for this article about the implications you must take into account when sketching user experiences. Danielle runs her own blog over at UX Motel and is also on Twitter. Although business process mapping, flow charting, and the related processes might already sound familiar to you, for the success of your user experience design you also have to consider which are the factors that make the entire process work and how one can take advantage of them. Undoubtedly, many UX professionals encounter the process of user… -
5 digital trends happening RIGHT NOW
27 May 2013 | 11:35 am -
Take this 1 minute psych test
25 Mar 2013 | 1:16 pm -
How guys will use Google Glasses (Project Glass)
19 Mar 2013 | 4:17 amI just had to share with you this video on how guys might use Google Glass (or should that be glasses?) in the future. Pretty funny! Maybe we shouldn’t laugh too soon though as it may well become the future! People are distracted enough as it is, it’s just that the glasses may make the distraction harder to detect. At least right now you can see if someone’s using their mobile whilst they’re supposed to be listening to you. I find it amazing the number of people who walk down the street looking down, eyes glued to their handset, using only their peripheral vision to…
