- What Does it Mean to be Simple?22 December 2011, 9:00 pm
All designers say simplicity is important, but what does it really mean to make something simple? Most of the time we think it means less, that by removing stuff we achieve simplicity. We think by keeping content above the fold we’re helping people focus, or by using bullets instead of paragraphs more people will read it, or by cutting text in half it becomes more clear. But simple doesn’t mean “less”. A better definition would be “just enough”.
Oops, I may h...
- Is UX the Key to a Long-lasting Business?22 December 2011, 4:40 pm
“But what if the firm was driven, not by the goal of short-term profitability, but by the goal of continuous innovation in service of finding new ways of delighting customers? The new bottom line of this kind of organization becomes whether the customer is delighted. Conventional financial measures such as maximizing shareholder value are subordinated to the new bottom line. Profit is a result, not a goal.”
Writing for Forbes, Steve Denning elucidates the work of Clayton Christen...
- The Ghost of Decisions Past14 December 2011, 5:40 pm
Ghosts: invisible specters often thought to be trapped between worlds, left to torment the living or act as a messenger from the beyond. They invoke fear because we can’t touch them, can’t see them, and we don’t fully understand their existence—much like the mysterious design decisions that often haunt your product.
Constraints drive and shape the design of any product. They are the foundation of a good decision-making framework, allowing multiple people to work in unison wi...
- How to Identify the Best Design Problems8 December 2010, 12:52 pm
One of the core principles of UX is to solve existing problems, or problems that people are already struggling with. While this might not be as glamorous as inventing a brand new thing it is more practical: it makes identifying problems easier and people are much more receptive to your design. If you’re solving a known problem you don’t have to convince anybody that your design is valuable…they already know exactly why they want to use it.
Unfortunately, there are far more pro...
- Why "Clean" Isn't Such a Dirty Word For Designers30 November 2010, 5:46 pm
You have probably heard someone say, “That design is so clean!”
Or perhaps you’ve scanned your RSS feed and seen titles like “1000 Clean and Minimalist Designs”, “Super-clean, Simple, Minimal Website Designs”, or “How to Design Clean, Typographic, Minimalist Sites.”
I normally throw up in my mouth a little when I encounter such phrases. But I have to admit that I catch myself using these words unintentionally (on rare occasion, of course) w...
- Improving UX and CX through Customer Journey Mapping4 May 2012, 1:27 pm
Lately I’ve been asking the same set of questions to UX people. How many weeks in the past year did you feel as though you were doing the right kind of work, on the right kind of project. How often do you feel as though you’re really being properly utilised, that you’re using your skills [...]...
- Cognitive Psychology UX Bootcamp Exercise: Killer Tips for writing a better blog post.10 February 2012, 12:45 pm
I’m writing this post while attending Cognitive Psychology UX Bootcamp. This is an exercise that we’ve been set to do and I’m working with Tara and Jerome of Ribot. This is the incredibly laymans version after half a day of the two day program so don’t take any of this too seriously. If you disagree [...]...
- Why most UX is shite3 February 2012, 4:34 pm
I was invited to speak at the MonkiGras event this week where getting a little sweary and ranty is kind of encouraged (it goes well with the craft beer consumption that is an integral part of the conference mix). This was my contribution. Slides: View more presentations from leisa reichelt. When I checked the agenda [...]...
- What is a UX Developer and are they really a thing?25 January 2012, 10:26 pm
I posted a note on Twitter earlier today about a friend of mine who calls himself (at my suggestion, having worked with him and knowing his skill set and interest) a UX Developer. Several people suggested in response that a UX Developer was not really a thing and that the term was either pigeonholing, unnecessary, [...]...
- Customer Experience v User Experience4 January 2012, 3:26 pm
In the process of writing the book (A Practical Guide to Strategic User Experience, yes, it’s coming, I promise!) I found myself surprisingly flummoxed when it came to writing about Experience Strategy and the role it plays (or should play) in business strategy. I’ve talked about Experience Strategy with clients over the years, written Experience [...]...
- Your app is a collection of tiny details8 May 2012, 7:52 pm
"Getting the details right is the difference between something that delights, and something customers tolerate."
—Jeff Atwood
I didn't read Jeff Atwood's article about cat feeders right away, because it really is 90% about a cat product. It's also a terrific demonstration of what he's saying above. The first version of the product, a cat feeder, served a core need well enough for him to satisfice with its shortcomings because the net return in time savings and improved quality of life, fo...
- Buxton Collection25 April 2012, 5:23 pm
Bill Buxton has been collecting input and interactive devices whose design struck him as interesting, useful, or important. In the process, he has assembled a great collection spanning over 30 years of the history of pen computing, pointing devices, touch technologies, as well as an illustration of the nature of how new technologies emerge.
The collection can be browsed in HTML or via the PivotViewer Silverlight interface. PivotViewer provides a richer experience with faceted filtering, search...
- New sketch gear at JetPens: Maruman sketchbooks27 March 2012, 5:23 pm
People still occasionally ask me if I make the small bound Wireframe Sketchbooks, but I stopped selling them after a few years, and instead just posted instructions for how to make your own. I know that few people have the time or interest to do that, so I've been looking at alternatives for them.
A month ago, Brad from JetPens contacted me to tell me that he started supplying a sketchbook from Maruman that I might like. What I really liked is how closely it resembles the one I made. Some of ...
- Bruce Springsteen on Creativity22 March 2012, 2:16 pm
I'd like to talk about the one thing that's been consistent over the years—the genesis and power of creativity. ... It’s all about how you’re putting what you do together. The elements you’re using don’t matter. Purity of human expression and experience is not confined to guitars, to tubes, to turntables, to microchips. There’s no right way, no pure way of doing it—there’s just doing it.
From Bruce Springsteen's inspiring 2012 SXSW Keynote Speech.
...
- Screenleap Screen Sharing14 March 2012, 7:27 pm
Screenleap is a free service that lets you share your screen from any device with a browser, including tablets and smartphones. No software downloads, installs, or sign ups are required. May come in handy for people doing customer support or testing sessions where participant software installation could be an issue.
...
- New Resource: Principles of User Interface Design8 May 2012, 9:53 am
I’ve just published a new resource that I hope is useful: Principles of User Interface Design. It contains a list of 20 or so design principles that I refer to all the time. This was a good way to get them down into one spot…so I can point people there in the future. You’ll also [...]...
- Designing for the Next Step16 January 2012, 2:33 pm
Note: this is an excerpt from my forthcoming book Make them Care! In a recent post (Why you should bury the sign up button) I told the story of a redesign I did in which people just didn’t want to click the “sign up” button on the home page, no matter how beautiful or sexy [...]...
- Design is not Horsepoop17 December 2011, 12:37 pm
In his impassioned piece Design is Horseshit, YongFook suggests that the increased focus on designers as founders is misguided because design isn’t what makes most startups successful. In my recent post The Golden Age of Design in Startups I was bullish on designers as founders, so I’m here to call bullshit on Yongfook calling bullshit…or [...]...
- More on Burying the Sign Up Button7 December 2011, 4:49 pm
A couple weeks ago I published Why You Should Bury your Sign Up Button and got some really interesting feedback and comments from folks. One of the more interesting bits was a follow-up post by the folks at Zurb who had experienced the exact same phenomenon…when they took away the “sign up” button and instead [...]...
- The Golden Age of Design in Startups5 December 2011, 10:59 am
I just returned from Dave McClure’s excellent Warm Gun Conference, and I haven’t been this excited to be a designer in a while. The entire event was about design, metrics, and products, and even more importantly the people at the conference were many of the who’s who in Bay Area design. From what I saw [...]...
- Responsive Images and Web Standards at the Turning Point15 May 2012, 6:44 pm
Responsible responsive design demands responsive images—images whose dimensions and file size suit the viewport and bandwidth of the receiving device. As HTML provides no standard element to achieve this purpose, serving responsive images has meant using JavaScript trickery, and accepting that your solution will fail for some users.
Then a few months ago, in response to an article here, a W3C Responsive Images Community Group formed—and proposed a simple-to-understand HTML picture element c...
- Application Cache is a Douchebag8 May 2012, 12:00 pm
We’re better connected than we’ve ever been, but we’re not always connected. ApplicationCache lets users interact with their data even when they're offline, but with great power come great gotchas. For instance, files always come from the ApplicationCache, even when the user is online. Oh, and in certain circumstances, a browser won't know that that the online content has changed — causing the user to keep getting old content. And, oh yes, depending on how you cache your resources, non-c...
- Say No to Faux Bold8 May 2012, 11:59 am
Browsers can do terrible things to type. If text is styled as bold or italic and the typeface family does not include a bold or italic font, browsers will compensate by trying to create bold and italic styles themselves. The results are an awkward mimicry of real type design, and can be especially atrocious with web fonts. Adobe’s Alan Stearns shares quick tips and techniques to ensure that your @font-face rules match the weight and styles of the fonts, and that you have a @font-face rule for ...
- Content Modelling: A Master Skill24 April 2012, 1:00 pm
The content model is one of the most important content strategy tools at your disposal. It allows you to represent content in a way that translates the intention, stakeholder needs, and functional requirements from the user experience design into something that can be built by developers implementing a CMS. A good content model helps ensure that your content vision will become a reality. Lovinger explains how to craft a strong content model and use it to foster communication and align efforts be...
- Tinker, Tailor, Content Strategist24 April 2012, 12:59 pm
What does content strategy mastery look like? As in any field, it comes down to having master skills and knowing when to apply them. While there are different styles of content strategy (from an editorial and messaging focus to a technical and structural focus), the master content strategist must work with content from all angles: messaging architecture and messaging platforms; content missions and content management. Above all, she must advocate for multiple constituents, including end users, b...
- Needed: Flash/After Effects Developer29 December 2009, 10:38 am
Symbian^4 is the Symbian platform release that will be feature complete in the middle of 2010. Included within it is a planned UI refresh, to be contributed by Nokia, under the “Direct UI” proposal. Symbian Foundation releases its platform on a twice-annual basis. However, this UI refresh is an unusually substantial shift in the UI. [...]...
- Symbian Theme Creator Needed3 December 2009, 2:24 pm
Symbian Foundation is soliciting proposals to create one or more signature themes for Symbian^3, which will reach feature complete in the beginning of 2010. If you or your company has experience producing Symbian themes, please email me. A theme is a set of visual elements and specially coded instructions for a Symbian phone’s visual design. [...]...
- Open Source and User Experience28 September 2009, 9:32 am
On 26 September 2009 I presented the following slides at Over The Air 2009 in London. The presentation is about how we do user interface design and development work, and otherwise improve the user experience at Symbian Foundation. The audience asked some interesting questions about our contribution process, and expressed a strong interest in a [...]...
- PhoneFusion’s Great Intro Animation19 July 2009, 6:00 pm
PhoneFusion is a visual voicemail solution for Android, among several other innovative products, which they describe as User-Defined Communications. They have the coolest “history of mobile” intro Flash sequence. Play it with the sound on....
- Mobile Widgets Business Issues27 May 2009, 11:12 pm
I gave a talk on Mobile Widgets for Over The Air in London on the 4th of April, 2008. Widgets are small, vector graphic, data-capable, handset-resident, persistent data applications (at least within the widget environment, which can be the idle screen of the phone). Though they typically work as client-server setups, that relationship is not [...]...
- Three Reasons Why Persuasive Design Isn’t Enough to Influence Change :: UXmatters19 September 2010, 2:55 am
Three Reasons Why Persuasive Design Isn’t Enough to Influence Change By Colleen Jones Published: September 6, 2010 “Persuasive design is designing to change people’s behavior, or actions.” Persuasive design is designing to change people’s behavior, or actions. This design movement fascinates me, and I’m jump-up-and-down thrilled to see it get more attention lately. Forbes recently [...]...
- 8 Must-see UX Diagrams | UX Booth19 September 2010, 2:47 am
via uxbooth.com All the classic UX diagrams in one post. Nice. Posted via email from John Whalen’s Posterous...
- Apple Doesn’t Target Markets. It Targets People28 August 2010, 3:32 am
It targets people. It focuses on users. And Apple lets them decide how and where they’ll use its products. This sounds simple, but in my experience very few companies think this way. Most startups write business plans that dredge up IDC data on market size, then define their target market (e.g., “Global 2000 enterprises”). Few [...]...
- Half Of All Facebook Users Play Social Games — It’s 40% Of Total Usage Time28 August 2010, 3:31 am
But the most interesting thing Pleasants noted was that he recently heard (from his own source, apparently) that half of all users on Facebook now play social games. More impressively, 40% of total usage time on the service is spent on these games. That’s meaningful, of course, because “a huge amount the Internet is on [...]...
- Only a Game: Top Ten Videogame Emotions13 June 2010, 10:43 pm
http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/2008/04/top-ten-videoga.html Sent from my iPhone Posted via email from John Whalen’s Posterous...
- 25 Latest Free WordPress Themes11 May 2012, 10:25 am
There are thousands of free WordPress themes on the net, but we bet you’re excited about the latest WordPress themes that are available free of charge, right? And here is ......
- Useful Code Comparing Tools for Web Developers5 May 2012, 3:00 am
Developers of many different languages all share the same growing pains. Buggy source codes will be a nagging problem throughout a developer’s career but a much less-considered issue is in ......
- How Should Firms Frame Their Social Media Strategy?4 May 2012, 7:00 pm
Formulating the social media strategy for any business involves answering quite a few ‘whys’, ‘hows’, ‘whats’ etc. This article explores the intermediate decisions to be taken by a firm in ......
- 25 Inspiring Logos with Innovative Use of Typography4 May 2012, 5:00 pm
A logo design is created on three significant pillars namely symbol, typography and color. While color and symbol are crucial to the development of a brand identity, typography plays a ......
- How Freelancers Can Maintain and Grow their Client Relationships4 May 2012, 3:53 pm
The mistake a lot of freelancers make when trying to expand their business is to focus on the acquisition of new clients. But (you’re probably wondering) isn’t that how you ......
- And the prize for the most idiotic interface goes to…16 March 2012, 1:48 pm
phpMyAdmin. Bonus,...
- Effective computing sneak peak from interaction-design.org12 January 2012, 9:02 am
Here....
- Edit option in Google Forums10 January 2012, 11:18 am
You can edit your post. Actually you cannot, you can delete it thought....
- Take on the new iPhone’s FaceTime8 June 2010, 2:07 pm
News Flash, europeans have front faced cameras on their phones and videocalls (everywhere there is 3G) for years now. And no, they are not using those. I tested vedeocalls twice when they first appeared a few years ago and that was it, never again. It’s simply useless....
- Windows icon selection fail12 April 2010, 8:18 am
I ran into a usability fail that has to exist from windows 3.1. Windows arranges it’s icons/shortcuts/files on desktop column by column. But if you select them with SHIFT (multiple select), it selects them line by line . If you arrange icons by type and you want to delete the pictures, you cannot do that [...]...
- Multi-Device Layout Patterns30 April 2012, 12:54 pm
Multi-Device Layout Patterns is a short compilation of a few common layout patterns by Luke Wroblowski after he has gone through the Media Queries site. The article contains 5 high level layout considerations that could work for when dealing with responsive wireframes. A great inspirational read for those who like to respect flexible screen widths. [...]...
- Job Postings25 April 2012, 3:04 pm
Putting my commercial hat on I’ve just started a Jobs section experiment on this blog. Why not? To start off and populate a few listings, the first five posts will be free. So if you have a job you would wish to advertise, please email me: the company name, job title, link to job description [...]...
- Justinmind Prototyper FREE 1.0 and PRO 4.524 April 2012, 12:51 pm
The other month, Justinmind Prototyper went ahead and split their pricing plans into two, with a paid pro and a free version. As a refresher, this is an advanced prototyping tool allowing for such things as rich interactions, data simulation, variable based and conditional rules (for both Mac OSX & Windows). They have also shared [...]...
- 15 Dribbble UI Sketching Designers23 April 2012, 6:14 pm
There are those who design, and then there are those who design in the open – enter dribbble.com. Although sharing a 300 by 400px image perhaps might work if you want to show off a shiny button style, maybe it isn’t always the best constraint for interaction type of work (flows, multiple screens, scenarios and [...]...
- Interface Origami16 April 2012, 2:05 pm
Juan has been recently playing with paper in order to explore some possibly new interactions. This person is trying to pinch, tear, flip, curl, fold, and peel UI’s in new ways just for kicks without the limitations of pixels. In a way this kind of stuff resembles paper prototyping a bit but probably focuses more [...]...
- Understanding Information Architecture28 February 2012, 12:10 pm
I've said it before and I'll say it again: there has never been a better time to be an information architect. Demand for classic IA remains strong, while cross-channel and ubiquitous beg for attention. It's tremendously exciting but also overwhelming.......
- Information Architecture Stories31 January 2012, 1:42 pm
A wonderful thing began to happen about a year after publication of the polar bear book. A complete stranger would approach me at a conference, introduce themselves, and then tell a story about how our book changed their life by......
- Multi-Channel Communication8 December 2011, 1:52 pm
This year I collaborated with Q LTD to redesign The Kresge Foundation's website (here's the old one). We updated the information architecture and content to better reflect the foundation's priorities, while striving to improve usability, findability, credibility, and other facets......
- Information Architecture Events6 December 2011, 5:41 pm
I'm looking forward to some great IA events next year. In February, there's the first ever World IA Day in 14 cities worldwide (including Ann Arbor). And in March in New Orleans, there's the thirteenth annual IA Summit with an......
- Social Computing9 November 2011, 7:11 pm
As an advisor to the Interaction-Design.org Foundation, I'm pleased to offer a preview of the new encyclopedia entry on the topic of social computing. After exploring the videos and commentary, I recommend reading about the organization's mission and history. It's......
- Constructing Your Personal User Interface on Harvard Business Review15 May 2012, 5:36 pm
The inspiring Whitney Johnson invited me to contribute to her latest post on Harvard Business Review, titled Constructing Your Personal User Interface. Published yesterday, the piece takes five of my principles for designing user experiences and shows how they apply not only to human-computer interaction but to human-human interaction as well. There’s already a great [...]...
- The User Is Not Like Me4 May 2012, 10:29 am
The user is not like me. August 25, 2003. It was the first day of my senior year at Carnegie Mellon University. It was the day I learned the mantra that would shape my career. The user is not like me. Words uttered by Bonnie John, my professor of 05-410 Introduction to HCI Methods (now [...]...
- Doing business as Vicarious Partners30 April 2012, 3:11 pm
It is with tremendous excitement and huge dreams for the future that I am finally ready to announce that I have formally changed the name of my company to Vicarious Partners™. This new name much better reflects my mission to help organizations build deeper connections amongst colleagues and customers in an effort to deliver the [...]...
- We Don’t Know Anything26 April 2012, 4:17 pm
We don’t know. We believe we know. Our experiences, education, instincts and values all add up to our beliefs. They also include assumptions and misperceptions and past truths. We believe something once and then we “know” it forever, because that’s easier than always having to ask. Asking isn’t easy. It takes time. It introduces risk. [...]...
- User Experience is Not Enough21 April 2012, 10:21 pm
Designing the product is all for naught if you don’t first take the time to design the organization. — Whitney Hess (@whitneyhess) April 20, 2012 I’ve been a user experience designer for the entirety of my career. And in the decade I’ve spent doing this work, I have discovered that there is only one universal [...]...
- Signposts for Week Ending May 1818 May 2012, 11:11 pm
Think you know how to use a paper towel? Think again.
It's all about the jaw!
Not all of Britain is preparing for the Olympics. Check out the UK Government's shiny new design principles.
Why line up for a grand opening when you could use Twitter, or maybe taskrabbit.
We have no idea what this means for interaction design, but we're sure someone will write an O'Reilly book on how to design for 'levitated interaction'.
We've...
- MX: Managing Experience 2012 Videos Ready for Your Viewing Pleasure14 May 2012, 5:30 pm
Every March for the past six years, our MX: Managing Experience conference has brought together a growing community of managers, directors, and VPs of experience design teams (and their bosses) to discuss the unique challenges they face.
This year's sold out conference featured speakers from GE, eBay, Intel, Flickr, Salesforce.com, Sony, and Forrester Research, representing an excellent mix of examples of the role experience design is playing in the world's largest companies.&...
- Signposts for the Week Ending May 1111 May 2012, 6:24 pm
The UK has come up with design principles for their government services. Progress is afoot.
DIY kits to build web-connected things.
Neato: responsive wireframes.
A tool to pump out models digitally.
Information is food.
Welcome to the era of design.
Fun cross-platform interaction, the concept. And the real deal.
Can continuous improvement be hazardous to your organization's health?
Cue sad trombone. A sad lesson in ...
- UX Intensive Amsterdam 2012: Service Design Day Snapshot3 May 2012, 6:34 pm
Last Thursday, April 5th, we capped off our four day UX Intensive training with the Service Design day. Jamin Hegemen lead the activity-packed day, introducing principles and methods designed to help organizations orchestrate cohesive cross-channel experiences for products and services. Just a couple of the highlights included developing service blueprints and mapping customer journeys. Much fun was had in the service prototyping portion, as participants used acting as a means of prototyping ser...
- UX Intensive Amsterdam 2012: Interaction Design Day Snapshot26 April 2012, 9:52 pm
After two days of fast-paced learning and making at our UX Intensive in Amsterdam, our attendees jumped into the deep end of Interaction Design. Chris Risdon used every minute of the day to pack in valuable concepts and useful tools that we use at Adaptive Path to quickly identify a large number of ideas and then turn the best ones into successful products and services. Here's a few highlights from the day:
Chris takes a question from an attendee.
Attendees learned how to quickly gen...
- Avoid Ratios For Metrics – Moving Beyond Conversion Rates, Part 118 May 2012, 10:15 pm
Recently, I posted a tweet about conversion rates. Conversion rate’s big crime is it focuses purely on pressing the purchase button, independent of the quality of the experience. — Jared M. Spool (@jmspool) May 13, 2012 Immediately, I received several responses, all of them showing the common misunderstandings that people have about conversion rates. The [...]...
- From Critique, A Language Emerges16 May 2012, 11:18 pm
I’ve been fascinated by critique lately. It’s a fabulous tool to help the entire team – designers and non-designers alike – learn more about what makes great design great. I’ve learned that you can tell that a team is taking advantage of well-done critiques by the new, personalized language they are now sporting. They have [...]...
- UIEtips: Designing with Scenarios – Putting Personas to Work16 May 2012, 8:12 pm
Storytelling is a natural form of expression. We’ve all been telling stories from a very young age. In the design process, personas become the tool we use to tell our users’ stories. And with good personas in place, usage scenarios can become the micro-stories that drive your design decisions. Kim Goodwin tells us that scenarios [...]...
- Do A/B Tests Focus Us On The Wrong Problems?14 May 2012, 4:56 pm
Last week, I attended a conference presentation where a team presented findings from their A/B Testing efforts. It was a cute presentation where they posted the control and test variants, then asked the audience to pick which one “won” the A/B test. They compared the audience answer to the variant that demonstrated the best increase [...]...
- Brian Suda – Designing with Data14 May 2012, 3:00 pm
A data visualization, when done well, can be an incredibly powerful way to communicate information. It ultimately boils down to the choices you make in how to design and present the data. If you make the wrong choice you can run the risk of not accurately displaying the data or struggling to effectively tell its story....
- RESS Multi-Device Design Resources17 May 2012, 12:00 am
Last year I wrote about a promising approach to multi-device Web design that enhanced responsive web design techniques with server-side solutions. Since then the idea, which I dubbed RESS (Responsive Web Design with Server Side Components), has been gaining popularity and a number of developers have written about how they're using it. Hopefully these resources are useful to anyone interested in learning more about RESS.
RESS Overview
My overview of RESS featuring several examples that illustr...
- Data Monday: Mobile Web Shopping14 May 2012, 12:00 am
Though few people dispute the growth of mobile computing, many remain unconvinced about mobile e-commerce. And even more doubt the value of Web-based mobile e-commerce solutions -preferring native mobile applications instead. Looking at recent data, however, shows that both of these assumptions don't seem to be holding up.
79% of US smartphone and tablet owners have used their mobile devices for shopping-related activities. (source)
42% of tablet owners have “used their device to purchase ...
- Data Monday: A Shift in E-reading Devices7 May 2012, 12:00 am
Though more people are reading e-books each year, the devices they use to consume digital books may be changing. Recent estimates for Amazon's Kindle line seem to highlight a shift from budget eReaders to higher end tablets.
One-fifth of American adults (21%) report that they have read an e-book in the past year. This number increased following a gift-giving season that saw a spike in the ownership of both tablet computers and e-book reading devices. (source)
Ownership of e-book readers like th...
- Data Monday: As Tablet Size Decreases...30 April 2012, 12:00 am
Though Apple's 9.7 inch iPad commands over 60% of all tablet sales worldwide, tablets of all sizes are emerging around globe. But as tablets get smaller people's use of the Web drops. Why?
10 inch tablets (like Samsung's Galaxy Tab) average 125 page views in the browser per tablet. (source)
9 inch tablets (like Apple's iPad) average 116 page views in the browser per tablet. (source)
7 inch tablets (like Amazon's Kindle Fire) average 90 page views in the browser per tablet. (source)
5 inch tabl...
- UX Immersion: The Mobile Frontier24 April 2012, 12:00 am
In her The Mobile Frontier presentation at UX Immersion, Rachel Hinman explored future trends in mobile and their implications for designers. Here's my notes from her talk:
Mobile has arrived. As more people experience mobile technology, it’s no longer a niche topic for a subset of designers. It’s everywhere.Mobile currently feels like the Wild West: lots of unexplored terrain and people working through a lot of new challenges.But lots of people are trying to replicate physical objects, de...
- 7 Basic Best Practices for Buttons7 May 2012, 12:06 pm
By Caroline Jarrett
Published: May 7, 2012
“It’s rather easy to find buttons that don’t comply with these basic best practices….”
Here are my basic best practices for buttons:
Make buttons look like buttons.
Put buttons where users can find them.
Make the most important button look like it’s the most important one.
Put buttons in a sensible order.
Label buttons with what they do.
If users don’t want to do something, don’t have a button for ...
- Positive Design Impact7 May 2012, 12:02 pm
By Daniel Szuc and Josephine Wong
Published: May 7, 2012
“The purpose of our first meeting with the prospective client was to get an initial understanding of the product, determine its value, discuss scenarios for how people might use it, … explore who the target customers might be, and determine what differentiates the product against its competitors.”
Recently, a client asked us to help one of their teams that was developing a new product. This is our story about that engagement.
The F...
- Understanding Information Architecture Differently7 May 2012, 11:59 am
By Nathaniel Davis
Published: May 7, 2012
“There is information architecture that resembles UX architecture and design, then there’s information architecture that looks like, well, information architecture.”
If you’re new to the debate about the practice of information architecture, you’ll discover that there are two polarities of thought. As Peter Boersma proposed in his 2004 blog post “Big IA Is Now UX,” there is information architecture that resembles UX architecture and design...
- Expressing UX Concepts Visually7 May 2012, 11:56 am
By Barnabas Nagy
Published: May 7, 2012
“Words are not always sufficient to describe things accurately.”
It is all too easy to create UX deliverables that are not visually pleasing. But UX expertise encompasses Web design, graphic design, and branding, so why should we be satisfied with mediocre design in our deliverables? When we present our personas, sitemaps, user flows, wireframes, and other design deliverables to our clients and stakeholders, it is our duty and responsibility to create...
- Interaction12 Conference Review7 May 2012, 9:23 am
By Riley Graham
Published: May 7, 2012
“I’ll describe the event from my perspective, and hopefully, talk you into attending next year!”
From February 1st through February 4th, Dublin, Ireland, hosted about 800 interaction design fanatics from all around the world. Over four days at Interaction12, there were 15 workshops, 6 keynotes, and more than 80 presentations. In addition, many activities and events took place all over the city. During the conference, I met many wonderful people and...
- All the oxygen trapped in a bubble17 May 2012, 3:42 pm
There are many good reasons to be concerned about whether the internet industry is in another bubble. Once shaky, unproven businesses hit the NASDAQ, the chance that granny is going to lose her pension fund goes up big time. That’s the direct economic consequence that you’ve probably heard already.
What hasn’t been discussed as much are some of the secondary effects that a bubble has on the industry. Like how it gets harder to hire good people as a consequence. Sure, you may have heard ...
- Three quick Rails console tips17 May 2012, 1:59 pm
I was bouncing around the Rails API documentation yesterday, and I noticed a few rails console tricks I haven’t seen before. There’s been plenty of posts about irb and Rails before, but I’m hoping you’ll learn something new here. The following console samples were taken with Basecamp Next on Rails version 3.2.3.
Dive into your app
Running the app method in rails console gives you an integration session instance, so you can use it just like when you’re a normal i...
- We're hiring: Help us significantly improve conversion and retention14 May 2012, 5:18 pm
We’re looking for another teammate. This time we’re looking for someone who is completely focused on improving conversion and retention. You love moving the needle, one small step at a time. This job is all about seeing untapped potential.
Conversion could be financial (get more people to start a trial or complete it – what we consider a “sale”), or outcome-based (inspire people to create more Basecamp projects by showing them creative ways to use Basecamp they n...
- Taking the Pain Out of MySQL Schema Changes14 May 2012, 1:53 pm
A common obstacle we face when releasing new features is making production schema changes in MySQL. Many new features require additional columns or indexes. Running an “ALTER TABLE” in MySQL to add the needed columns and indexes locks the table, hanging the application. We need a better solution.
Option 1: Schema Change in Downtime
This is the simplest option. Put the application into downtime and perform the schema change. It requires us to have the application down for the durat...
- Basecamp in Antarctica10 May 2012, 2:39 pm
We have customers around the world doing extraordinary things with our software, but Ben Saunders is taking it to a whole new level.
Ben and his team are using Basecamp to organize an expedition to the South Pole and back, unsupported and on foot. This is the same journey Captain Robert Scott died trying to achieve 100 years ago, and no one has attempted it since.
Ben has been a professional polar explorer for more than 10 years and is one of only three people to complete a solo jour...
- And the prize for the most idiotic interface goes to…16 March 2012, 1:48 pm
phpMyAdmin. Bonus,...
- Effective computing sneak peak from interaction-design.org12 January 2012, 9:02 am
Here....
- Edit option in Google Forums10 January 2012, 11:18 am
You can edit your post. Actually you cannot, you can delete it thought....
- Take on the new iPhone’s FaceTime8 June 2010, 2:07 pm
News Flash, europeans have front faced cameras on their phones and videocalls (everywhere there is 3G) for years now. And no, they are not using those. I tested vedeocalls twice when they first appeared a few years ago and that was it, never again. It’s simply useless....
- Windows icon selection fail12 April 2010, 8:18 am
I ran into a usability fail that has to exist from windows 3.1. Windows arranges it’s icons/shortcuts/files on desktop column by column. But if you select them with SHIFT (multiple select), it selects them line by line . If you arrange icons by type and you want to delete the pictures, you cannot do that [...]...
- Driving Holism in Cross-channel Projects19 April 2012, 5:39 am
Show Time: 29 minutes 29 seconds
Download mp3 (audio only) Download m4a (with visuals, requires iTunes, Quicktime, or similar)
iTunes
Podcast SummaryToday on Boxes and Arrows, Chris Baum talks with Patrick Quattlebaum, Design Director at Adaptive Path. Patrick has some interesting insights and tools that designers can use to develop experiences across channels. Quattlebaum explores the difference between atomism and holism, and how desig...
- The Past and Future of Boxes and Arrows9 April 2012, 11:29 pm
Show Time: 21 minutes 06 seconds
Download mp3 (audio only) Download m4a (with visuals, requires iTunes, Quicktime, or similar)
iTunes
Podcast SummaryIn this episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down in New Orleans at the 2012 Information Architecture Summit with Christina Wodtke (@cwodtke), the founder of Boxes and Arrows.com. Christina shares a bit of the history and future of the web magazine that has supported both the people and id...
- Das Design Revolution20 March 2012, 5:32 am
Experience design comrades, I speak to you today because I have a vision. A vision where one day the person who really matters is back at the heart of our design processes. Rightfully claiming pride of place at the centre of all decisions regarding our websites, interfaces and systems. I am talking, of course, of the Designer, or more specifically, the Designer’s Portfolio.
For too long have we pandered to the user-centered orthodoxy at the expense of beautiful 1,200px wide images crafte...
- The Story's the Thing8 March 2012, 7:06 pm
_This is an excerpt from “UX Storytellers”:http://uxstorytellers.blogspot.com. If you enjoy it, consider getting the kindle edition of UX Storytellers – Connecting the Dots with all the stories!_
Here’s something I believe in: stories are what make us human. Opposable thumbs? Other animals have those. Ability to use tools? Ditto. Even language is not exclusive to human beings.
From my amateur reading of science, the story behind our stories goes something like this: t...
- Leonardo's Kitchen Nightmare15 February 2012, 8:11 am
“It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”Leonardo Da VinciSome of Leonardo’s projects failed because of their execution. The strange tale of Leonardo’s “Kitchen Nightmare” plays out like a Shakespearean “comedy of errors” where a visionary designer’s experiments all work perfectly to extremely disastrous results.In an article for the Big Design blog, I wrote about the Five Sketching Secrets of Leonardo Da Vinci, where it...
- Runne(a)r phones- if you run, you need one (earphone mounted rotary knob volume control)13 May 2012, 4:09 pm
Summary
This is a product idea I have submitted on Quirky targeted at runners.
Changing the music volume (because of traffic, changing environmental noise) while running is always a hassle. Well, not any more, Runne(a)rphone’s here.
Vote here: http://www.quirky.com/ideations/224692 (if you like it, and tell your friends about it too)
The Problem
This product is a solution [...]...
- Karen McGrane on Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content3 April 2012, 3:57 pm
This is a fantastic presentation on NPR’s COPE concept- create once, publish everywhere. Karen asks the right questions- why are we still letting content authors plan for where their content will live on a web page? Why do we waste time and money creating and recreating content instead of planning for content reuse? [...]...
- The best of Cone Trees for 20119 February 2012, 1:22 pm
2011 has ended and has been a rather good year for me. I know I have not been writing this year, but work has kept me very occupied, and happy.
I left Delhi and moved to Singapore early in the year to join PebbleRoad and have since then had a great time working on a [...]...
- Videos from UX Week 201113 November 2011, 3:17 pm
You can watch most of the videos from UX 2011 which took place in San Francisco from August 23 to 26, 2011. UX Week 2011 was organised by Adaptive Path.
Chris van der Walt & P.J. Onori of HunchWorks on Applying Human-centric Design to Complex Global Problems
Mark Trammell & Jesse James Garrett on Creating Engagement on [...]...
- Rajat Paharia on Influencing User Behaviour through Game Dynamics5 October 2011, 3:02 pm
Rajat talks about how designers can address fundamental human needs and desires (like status, achievement, reward, competition, self-expression) to make experiences both compelling and satisfying.
He talks about how game designers have known for years on how to incentivise and motivate players by addressing these needs through the use of mechanics like points, levels, leaderboards, [...]...
UsabilityPost
- UI Concept: Elastic Toolbars20 March 2012, 12:00 am
Here’s an interesting UI concept that Quentin from TOKI WOKI sent me: fluid corners. Go ahead and view the demo here. I think the name isn’t quite right at communicating the idea behind the concept — something like elastic toolbars would probably describe it better. But whatever you want to call it, it’s a very smart way to help keep important controls visible on windows that get dragged partially offscreen.
It works like this: when a window gets dragged offscreen, the c...
- Design Changes and Power15 March 2012, 12:00 am
In a comment on my last post, Thomas McGee made a good observation about people who complain about design changes in software. He pointed out that those complaining about a change are the ones who know exactly what’s being changed, and how everything works before and after the change. This means that the people criticizing the change are actually not going to be confused by the new interface. So why the negative feedback?
It’s a case of the user’s power being seized by the des...
- The Labelless Button14 March 2012, 12:00 am
Google recently removed the plus label on Chrome’s “new tab” button, which sparked a fair bit of criticism on their product forums. I don’t really like or dislike the change, but I think it’s great that Google is not afraid to experiment, especially with less conservative UI ideas. Here’s what the new labelless button looks like:
Is this the first case of a labelless button in software? You can probably find some buttons on hardware without any labels (e.g....
- Unified Search and Address Bar In Safari16 February 2012, 12:00 am
Apple has just announced Mountain Lion, the next update for the Mac operating system. As I was looking through the screenshots from developers who got to try the preview, I noticed one interesting change in Safari: the address bar is now unified with the search bar, just like Chrome.
This was one feature that made Chrome more usable for me compared to Safari. Firefox also has the ability to use the address bar to search, though it’s not the default state (and yes, IE and Opera have this...
- Styling Button Links With CSS310 January 2012, 12:00 am
A fair while back I wrote a post on pressed button states using CSS, which was a tutorial on how to implement a pressed down button effect on custom styled links. In that post I used images to achieve the visual effect. Now that we have good CSS3 support, that method is really out of date. In this post I’ll show you how to achieve the same effect using CSS3, as well as how I’d go about styling the rest of the button.
Step 1: the button
We’ll assume you have a custom ...
- Xcode UI Improvements3 June 2010, 6:32 pm
Xcode is a fantastic development environment for developing Mac, iPhone, and iPad applications. But it has some areas for improvement. In this post, I’ll explore some improvements to how documentation and autocompletion is integrated into the development workflow and how Xcode could provide specialized interfaces for working with system frameworks.
There are two primary use cases [...]...
- iTunes Visual Redesign21 September 2009, 8:40 pm
iTunes 9 was released a couple weeks ago with a significant number of user interface changes. It’s always interesting to look at the direction that’s taken with the iTunes UI because it’s often used as a testing bed for future iterations of the Mac OS X user interface. I thought it would be fun to [...]...
- Managing UI Complexity10 August 2009, 6:19 pm
Interface complexity is an issue every designer wrestles with when designing a reasonably sophisticated application. A complex interface can reduce user effectiveness, increase the learning curve of the application, and cause users to feel intimidated and overwhelmed.
I’ve spent the past year redesigning a particularly complex application with my primary focus being on reducing complexity. [...]...
- BWToolkit 1.218 June 2009, 9:12 pm
BWToolkit 1.2 is out with three new additions along with other improvements and fixes. The first addition is a gradient box which lets you draw a rectangle with a gradient or solid color. It also has optional border and inset lines. The next addition is a styled text field which lets you apply a gradient [...]...
- BWToolkit 1.1: Codeless Split Views24 February 2009, 6:50 pm
I’m pleased to announce that BWToolkit 1.1 is now available for download with a brand new split view. The new BWSplitView has three main features:
Subview autosizing: In the inspector, the developer can tell the split view which subviews should resize with the window and which should remain at a fixed size. The standard behavior of [...]...
- Remembering Vidal Sassoon – the User-Centred Hairdresser16 May 2012, 11:36 am
I just stumbled upon a tribute to Vidal Sassoon, a British hairdresser who had just passed away. He rose to fame in the 1960s due to his innovative hair styles which were easy to maintain, thus gaining a large following by women everywhere....
- Most Products Are Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey15 May 2012, 2:43 pm
Many products are still technology driven. Even services are technology driven. Many organizations are still engineering driven. It’s a very expensive approach....
- The Secret Sauce of Social14 May 2012, 6:20 pm
This is for anyone who enjoys thinking about what makes social media what it is, how it works, and why....
- Curating Consumption #210 May 2012, 2:28 pm
We're back with another round of some curious, provocative, amusing, and frightening observations that come from our daily experiences as researchers and as consumers....
- Advice on Finding the Best UX Mentor8 May 2012, 2:06 pm
We’ve all been there... in a place where we wish that we had a mentor or someone more experienced to help us become better....
- iABC5 July 2011, 6:40 am
The idea: Look at the history, shape and sound pattern of each letter, sum it up in 140 characters collect beautiful specimen for each letter. It started with a random tweet in December 2010 (“Do you have a favorite font for every letter?”) and turned into an surprising back and forth between a hobby kabbalist [...]...
- iA Writer: On Prices and Features16 June 2011, 10:38 am
It’s been two weeks since the launch of Writer and it went off like a rocket. We sold almost 5,000 copies in two weeks. Of course, version 1.0 had some birth defects (1.01 is out now), but the feedback was overwhelmingly positive—with the exception of a few complaints, mostly about the absence of features and [...]...
- iA Writer for Mac27 May 2011, 8:55 pm
A better tool doesn’t make a better craftsman, but a good tool makes working a pleasure. iA Writer for Mac is a digital writing tool that makes sure that all your thoughts go into the text instead of the program. Here is what makes iA Writer different:
Character: No preferences. It is how it is. It works like it works. Love it or hate it.
Signal vs Noise: Focus mode allows me to think, spell and write at one sentence at a time.
Speed: Writer works without mouse. It automatically formats s...
- Business Class: Freemium for News?4 May 2011, 5:29 am
I had a perspective changing talk on the subject of pay walls with the chief executive of a big publishing company (no, I can't tell you who). He asked me what I think about pay walls. I told him what I always say: The main currency of news sites is attention and not dollars and that I believe that it is his job, as a publisher, to turn that attention into money to keep the attention machine running. He nodded and made the following, astonishing statement....
- A Web Designer on Fukushima26 April 2011, 9:32 am
I'm not a nuclear expert. I am a 40-year-old Swiss Web designer, with a degree in philosophy, living in Tokyo. And I'm a father of a two-year-old boy. I was kind of nonchalant about nuclear energy so far, but not anymore. For obvious reasons. I've read a lot recently; it's hard to understand the discussion. I'm not talking about technicalities. One can learn the basics pretty quickly. I'm more confused about the overall logic of the debate about our future. What I'd like to know: Is more technol...
- The UX Community Needs to Start Paying Attention to Android9 April 2012, 3:14 pm
I’ve been doing a lot of research recently about mobile design patterns and UX best practices for smartphone and tablet devices for both iOS and Android platforms. One thing has stood out more than anything else during this process: no one is talking about Android. Ok, “no one” is clearly an exaggeration. There are a...
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- What is User Experience Strategy, Anyway?22 February 2012, 3:00 pm
If you’ve ever struggled with articulating the output of the UX Strategy phase of a project or initiative, you’re not alone. Almost all UX’ers can agree that defining a User Experience strategy before architecting or designing an experience is critical, but what does “strategy” really mean? What are its components, benefits, and deliverables? Check out...
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- Good designers turn their inspirations into reality11 February 2012, 9:23 pm
“When good designers talk about innovation, they mean ‘the successful exploitation of new ideas.’ They don’t stop with the invention. They turn their inspirations into reality.” – Simon Rucker Read more about characteristics of good designers in Simon’s Harvard Business Review article “How Good Designers Think.” No related posts found.
No related posts found....
- World Usability Day: 74% discount on UX tools10 November 2011, 4:26 am
As a follow-up to the last UX tools bundle offered through UX Heroes, the third annual Optimal Workshop World Usability Day bundle is now available consisting of 8 great tools and subscriptions worth $5,000 for $1,370. However, if you use the link in this post, you can get an additional $150 discount and get the...
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- UX Heroes Visual Prototyping Bundle – Name your price on 3 great prototyping tools15 September 2011, 3:53 pm
UX Heroes has a great offer available on several tools for UX Designers. The UX Heroes Visual Prototyping Bundle offers a deep discount on three visual prototyping tools to help you diagram, wireframe and prototype. You can choose your own price using the slide control at the bottom of the page. This bundle only runs...
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- Log in or sign up with GitHub (but not with Facebook)6 February 2012, 6:41 am
For my latest product, Grove, I wanted to allow users to quickly log in or sign up with an existing account, such as Twitter or Facebook. A while back I collected some data to determine how many people were using Facebook, Twitter, and OpenID to log in to TypePad. It was fairly obvious to me that people liked logging in using existing accounts. My new product, Grove, provides hosted IRC servers for teams. Since IRC appeals mainly to developers, I thought it would be great to allow people to sign...
- Living in the Cloud - My New Year's Resolution from 201131 December 2011, 3:25 pm
On the last possible day to write about my 2011 New Year's resolution, here it is: Live in the cloud. The term "cloud" has most often been used in the context of enterprise computing, but there are lots of cloud services for your personal life as well. In 2011 I attempted to get rid of as many physical things as I could. I took some risks and purposefully sought out new services I could use to further my cloud lifestyle. Here's a rundown of all the cloud services I used to replace all ...
- Convore - group chat for everyone16 February 2011, 6:45 pm
I've got a new company and a new product, Convore. Convore is the somewhat indirect result of my thinking on group chat for the past few years. About two years ago I was using IRC almost every day to communicate at work and with friends. For the 2009 Django Dash, I helped design and build a web-based IRC client called Leafy Chat with Alex Gaynor and Chris Wanstrath. Soon after building the IRC-based Leafy Chat, it started to bother me that IRC was so complicated and nerdy. Even with the Leafy Ch...
- iPhone Pull to Refresh13 December 2010, 5:58 pm
Ever since Tweetie 2, the pull-to-refresh paradigm has been a hot feature for iPhone applications. The idea is that you can pull down on a list of items to refresh them. This saves you from needing some sort of "refresh" or "reload" button. Nice! For the upcoming V2 of the Plancast iPhone app we really wanted to replace the current "reload" toolbar item with the pull-to-refresh style. However, the existing open source pull to refresh examples such as Three20's Pull ...
- Hello StyleSeat!27 July 2010, 11:02 pm
Lately I've been working part-time on StyleSeat, the website for hair stylists and their clients. I've been helping with some Django development and am really excited about the product. The basic idea is that as a stylist, personal trainer, massage therapist, esthetician etc. you can use StyleSeat as your personal homepage. You can list your services and prices as well as show off photos of your work. For Pro users, StyleSeat provides an appointment calendar and helps you keep in touch with your...
- my NPR interview about great speeches17 May 2012, 3:02 pm
Yesterday I was interviewed on NPR about great commencement speeches, and presentations in general. They had me on for the hour and we talked about Steve Job’s Stanford speech, a speech commonly called the worst of all time, as well...
Related posts:
What makes a good commencement speech?
The top 100 speeches of the 20th century
Discovered: The Amazing Dr. Fox Video
Wednesday linkfest
Milwaukee and Chicago CANCELED
...
- What makes a good commencement speech?15 May 2012, 2:30 am
I’m being interviewed on Wed on NPR about commencement speeches. Update: I was interviewed yesterday on NPR about this. You can listen here. Commencement speeches are the ones given at graduations, usually in the summer and often outside, where the attention spans of young...
Related posts:
The top 100 speeches of the 20th century
Wednesday linkfest
Quote of the week
Discovered: The Amazing Dr. Fox Video
Updated: My speech at The Economist (on innovation)
...
- Speaking in Chicago: Monday May 21st 2pm, Creativity14 May 2012, 3:29 pm
I’ll be in Chicago next week to keynote the 2012 STC Summit. Thanks to Brian Fitzpatrick, I’ll also be speaking about Creativity at Google next Monday at 2pm. They’ve even opened the doors to the public – so you are...
Related posts:
Milwaukee and Chicago CANCELED
Speaking in Vancouver BC, Tue 1/22
New essay: Creative thinking hacks
Creative Thinking Hacks: Video
Essay: Writing hacks (hacks on writing), Part 1
...
- Why common sense is not common practice14 May 2012, 2:43 pm
Knowing and doing are not the same thing. This is obvious, but the obviousness of this observation doesn’t guarantee we don’t fall victim to it daily. We think once we know something we will always remember or be able to...
Related posts:
Resumes vs. Recommendations
How to understand the media (Review of The Influencing Machine)
More reviews in for the art of PM
The attack of the design weenie
What’s wrong with TV: a theory
...
- Quote of the week9 May 2012, 2:54 pm
Mark Twain on where ideas come from, in a letter to Helen Keller after she was accused of plagiarism: Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that “plagiarism” farce! As if there was much of...
Related posts:
Quote of the week
Quote of the week
Quote of the week
Quote of the week
Quote of the week
...
- A Must Have Book Collection on UX9 May 2012, 10:58 am
I present to you the cornerstone of my book collection on UX: 16 highly recommended books on User Experience by UX professionals. If you are looking for books about user research, interface design, information architecture or UX strategy, you will find a book to your liking. For who is this book collection on UX? I’ve ... continue readingA Must Have Book Collection on UX is a post by Paul Olyslager on paulolyslager.com.
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- How to Test Psychological Triggers using Data Analytics19 April 2012, 6:37 pm
Why Evaluate Psychological Triggers? Well, the role of a marketer is not an easy one. He has to find out new ways of marketing and keep fine tuning his or her skills in order to make the most out of marketing efforts. Internet is a place where there are new trends rising every day and ... continue readingHow to Test Psychological Triggers using Data Analytics is a post by Claudia Somerfield on paulolyslager.com.
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- Call to Action Buttons Part 4: Message4 April 2012, 7:41 am
I wrote quite a lot about Call to Action buttons already but I was still missing one key element. In this chapter, which could be the last one in our series about CTA’s, I explain what kind of copy (message) in call to action buttons will trigger your readers into action. Don’t forget to check ... continue readingCall to Action Buttons Part 4: Message is a post by Paul Olyslager on paulolyslager.com.
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- How to Improve the Bounce Rate with a Simple A/B Test8 March 2012, 8:40 pm
A couple of days ago I noticed a significant increase of traffic to my article 15 Free Ebooks about User Experience and Interface Design. Needless to say it triggered my curiosity. I quickly opened Google Analytics to look for the source and came up with Reddit.com. I found out that someone was so kind to ... continue readingHow to Improve the Bounce Rate with a Simple A/B Test is a post by Paul Olyslager on paulolyslager.com.
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- How To Improve Website Usability By Improving Content23 February 2012, 9:11 pm
Content plays an important role in building a relationship with your readers and consequently, converting them into a buyer or a client. Along with good content writing, it’s also quite a prerequisite to present content in an interesting and user friendly way. This goes a long way in improving and influencing your website’s usability. Improving ... continue readingHow To Improve Website Usability By Improving Content is a post by Divya Rawat on paulolyslager.com.
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- 28 Admin Panel User Interfaces from Dribbble Artists17 May 2012, 6:09 am
Advertise here with BSAWebsites are made up of many different views and pages. One of the most important views is your administration panel - these are often coupled with custom web applications. The backend system is almost vital to managing users and editing page content.
But you have to get just the right look & feel for things to work out well. In this gallery I have gone through Dribbble and collected the most pristine examples of web dashboards. These are all designed for varying...
- 33 Website Layouts Designed for Video Game Launches14 May 2012, 3:06 pm
Advertise here with BSAThe subject of video game websites is not often a popular idea. But consider how rapidly video games have advanced since the days of Atari and Nintendo. We now have so many publishers between America and Japan it's difficult to keep track.
I put together this gallery as a look into past and present design trends. This collection of video game websites includes new releases along with titles published back in early 2000. Notice how each game brings it's own feelings a...
- Keep Scammers & Bad Clients Out of Your Freelancing Business11 May 2012, 5:31 pm
Advertise here with BSA
You've probably heard about them. Clients who won't pay. Clients who treat freelancers poorly. Clients who pile on more work than the freelancer agreed to.
You may have even had the misfortune of working for one yourself. It's not uncommon for freelance designers to wind up working for a scammer or a bad client.
Some freelance designers view this as an inevitable part of freelancing, but I say that you can keep many scammers and bad clients out of your freelancin...
- 35 Fresh Internet Startups Featuring Brilliant UI Design7 May 2012, 2:05 pm
Advertise here with BSAJust back a decade ago everybody was talking about web 2.0 trends. The Internet was bustling with hundreds of new startup ideas following MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, Twitter, and now even things like Foursquare and Pinterest. The advancing world of tech startups has proven there is no shortage of new ideas.
And when it comes to web design the scenario is very similar. I have put together 35 examples of new startups which feature brilliant layout designs. Some are ...
- How to Track Your Time and Increase Your Web Design Income3 May 2012, 3:36 pm
Advertise here with BSABy Conrad Feagin
Let's say you're getting to the point where you're a whiz at quickly building quality websites. That’s the fun part of web design.
However, if you want to increase your income, you have to look at web design as a business. And, pricing is an important part of that business.
There's no easy answer for how much you should charge for web design projects, but the first factor you have to consider is how long it usually takes you to complete a website...
- How losing control isn’t that bad23 December 2009, 2:39 am
Mister Splashy Pants, a whale named after Greenpeace held a naming competition in 2007 doesn’t seem to be news, but Alexis Ohanian, who is a founder of Reddit tells a great story at TED (in 3 minutes no less!) of how social media created a meme, took Greenpeace by surprise, won the competition, Greenpeace ceded [...]...
- Changing the world through interaction design18 September 2009, 3:23 am
Worldchanging.org has an insightful interview with interaction designer Vinay Venkatraman on the importance of interaction design in tackling sustainability issues because it actually encourages changes in the way be behave. Designing new behaviors and beautiful experiences are the core of interaction design practice. This could manifest itself in products but also in systemic thinking around [...]...
- Twittering for good13 August 2009, 4:31 pm
In his presentation at TED, the founder of Twitter, even Evan Williams acknowledges that he didn’t anticipate the many of the creative uses this simple tool would be used for: What we didn’t anticipate was the many, many other uses that would evolve from this very simple system. One of the things we realized was [...]...
- Interview: Givology.org founder Joyce Meng5 August 2009, 2:10 am
I have more than a passing interest in how internet technologies affect they way that social innovations are made and even more so when it comes to the support of education for the less privileged. So I was very happy to be given the opportunity to talk to the founder of Givology that recently launched [...]...
- 10 Mobile technology for developing countries3 August 2009, 8:17 am
Mobile is a leapfroging technology in developing countries and many now have access to tools via mobile services. These tools enable more that just 1-to-1 communication and support such complex transactions as microfinancing, healthcare and community action. Recently I posted Mobile technologies for social causes in developing countries. Here’s a combined summary with a couple [...]...
- My xChannel talk from Breaking Development4 April 2012, 5:06 pm
Back in September I gave my Cross-Channel Experience talk at the Breaking Development Conference in Nashville. Today they posted the video of my talk (more details). It was interesting giving this talk to a room full of mobile optimized web (MOW) advocates, but in the end I think there was a lot of good information they got from the presentation based on the feedback I have heard.
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- Mo’ IXD22 March 2012, 4:56 pm
Just a few days ago I gave a talk at The School of Visual Concepts here in Seattle. It was for Kevin Wick’s User Experience 1 class, a great class for those just getting started in the field of UX. Here is my slide deck. The presentation focused mostly on mobile interaction design and also emerging technology. Also, if you are starting out in UX, see my post on Starting a Career in User Experience Design
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- The Cross-Channel Experience in Lisbon24 January 2012, 6:46 pm
The nice folks at UXLX in Lisbon, Portugal have published a video of my talk on The Cross-Channel Experience for your viewing pleasure.
Here is the description of the talk:
No matter how many departments your organization has, to your customers, it’s all the same business. They expect a cohesive experience across all touch-points with your company, regardless of whether it’s related to advertising, customer service, social presence, or the actual product or service you provide. The...
- Gifts for User Experience Geeks 201128 November 2011, 4:43 pm
It is time for another installment of Gifts for User Experience Geeks! Just in time for the 2011 holiday season. Be sure to check out the last three years (2008, 2009, and 2010). This list is a collection of items I have come across over the last year that would make the ideal gifts for UX geeks like Information Architects, Usability Specialists, Interaction Designers, and even Web Designers. I also put the call out to several of my colleagues to contribute suggestions and I have included thos...
- The UX of Productivity in the Future28 October 2011, 5:49 am
By now you have seen the video released recently from Microsoft about productivity in the future. It highlights a bunch of interesting uses of technology that largely exists today in some form or another mixed with a bunch of smoke and mirrors for things that may be technically near impossible to implement depending on how you interpret the video. It’s a great exploration in to the art of interaction design as it relates to how we could potentially interact with information and the world a...
- Navigation by following12 March 2012, 3:54 pm
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- Opening an audio cd in Spotify in less than 20 seconds4 February 2012, 4:42 pm
In really rare cases you find yourself with a compact disc in your hand. But when you do, what do you do with it? There’s no drive in my laptop, and I no longer own a cd player, so I thought I’d make a simple extension to my free Kindlescanner iPhone app so that it [...]...
- Gate A428 December 2011, 10:17 pm
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- Talk radio with music27 December 2011, 5:29 pm
I love talk radio, but I would like it even more if it had music in it, and even more if I liked the music. A nice Spotify app would be one that adds music to, let’s say This American Life, or P1 Business med Bjørnestad. I tried it, but for now the Spotify app [...]...
- Packing blanket26 December 2011, 6:55 pm
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- Joining Twitter10 May 2012, 11:02 am
To me, Twitter is more than just a technology company. It's a company that is shaping global culture; but one that also appreciates the ethical implications of its work. In short, it's an irresistible opportunity....
- My life as a unicorn23 March 2012, 2:34 pm
Last year, the UX uniform I’d worn for a decade started to feel like a straightjacket. I wasn’t learning as rapidly as I once did, and my work had plateaued....
- Why I don’t wireframe much23 March 2012, 10:39 am
I was going to write a long post, but I think this diagram suffices....
- Ephemeral ennui6 March 2012, 1:55 pm
I still love what I do. But on days like today, when I’m woozy and tired, it gets too much....
- Low-budget responsive design23 February 2012, 12:55 pm
I can’t remember my exact words – I’m rushing this post out over lunch – but let me give some context, so you can judge for yourself whether it was as dumb as it sounds....
- Kaizen and the invisible redesign15 May 2012, 1:32 pm
noun a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement of working practices, personal efficiency The routine One day, I’m on my usual route to work and I stop at my usual coffee shop to get my usual cup of coffee. But … Continue reading →...
- Mobile Thursdays: Bank of Ireland mobile app review14 May 2012, 8:35 am
Mobile Thursdays is our weekly roundup of the latest (or most interesting) in mobile, curated by our very own Laurence Veale. We publish on a Monday, simply to rival Luke W. This week, we review the new Bank of Ireland … Continue reading →...
- Mobile Thursdays: London’s mobile masterclass8 May 2012, 9:10 am
Mobile Thursdays is our weekly roundup of the latest (or most interesting) in mobile, curated by our very own Laurence Veale. We publish on a Monday, simply to rival Luke W. This week, we’re going to be self indulgent and … Continue reading →...
- Wax on web Analytics: Why there’s no insight without foresight3 May 2012, 9:17 am
Upfront preparation You know the feeling: countless hours spent sorting through your analytics data, only to find that it doesn’t exactly reflect what’s happening on your site. It’s not quite the constant flow of customer insight that you had expected. … Continue reading →...
- We talk mobile strategy24 April 2012, 8:15 am
We gave an interview recently, we being Laurence and Randall. They talked to Jonathan Kahn, of Together London, about mobile strategy, content and their upcoming workshop in London. Here are some highlights from that interview (a remix, if you will): … Continue reading →...
- Disruptive UX: The Dirty Truth16 May 2012, 1:41 pm
UX designers have split personalities… well, at least most of us do. We are this rare mix of designers, psychologists, developers, writers, artists, and more. Lately I find myself leaning into the psychology realm. Learning about people from this stand point is really starting to cultivate my interests. I have begun to think somewhat whacky [...]...
- The Awakening of UX Design2 May 2012, 2:41 pm
Today I want to invite you on a journey in which we UX designers take a step outside of ourselves and look closely at our world. In doing so, we can see that our kind is a splice of two different personalities. We are a cross of those that want to lead the world in [...]...
- The UX Athlete – A New Series on Johnny Holland25 April 2012, 3:07 pm
Recently, Johnny Holland Magazine graciously offered me the opportunity to share my thoughts on UX with their audience. Together we decided to create a series entitled The UX Athlete in which I use many of the lessons that I’ve learned while playing sports to highlight how we can all be better designers. The first post, [...]...
- Startups: The right time for UX18 April 2012, 3:12 pm
Several months ago I had the pleasure of meeting with a founder of a NYC startup in one of my ohours sessions. This happens quite a bit, as NYC has an amazing startup scene with a good majority of these startups looking for UX help. A lot of times startups (due to the nature of [...]...
- Video: How Being a Jock Makes a Better Interaction Designer11 April 2012, 4:05 pm
As I have mentioned before (see I’m Dublin Bound! for more), I had the opportunity to travel to Dublin, Ireland earlier this year to speak at the Interaction 12 conference. It was an amazing experience, and I hope to get the chance to attend next year’s event! For everyone that was able to make the [...]...
- The Trouble with Scientific Figures30 September 2011, 9:41 pm
I’ve been reading issues of the prestigious journal, Science, lately, which I always approach in the same way. First of all, I flip through the first third or so of the pages impatiently. This is the part of the publication that contains the essays, letters, commentary, political events, news, and short science pieces on things [...]...
- eBook User Experience (and why I know so little about it)30 March 2011, 6:24 pm
Tomorrow I’ll be participating in a panel discussion for Digital Book World called Reader Experience and eBooks: What UX Experts can Teach Digital Publishers. (A free webcast!) One of the points I’ll be making is that eBooks are only a part of the digital publishing landscape, even a fairly minor one up until now. On [...]...
- The User Experience of Organic Chemistry – Part 2: NMR Spectroscopy7 March 2011, 8:22 pm
Most of an organic chemist’s physical work appears to the naked eye as an interchangeable set of clear liquids and white powders (that is to say, if they are lucky enough in the lab not to produce brown sludge.) This is because atoms, even entire molecules, are too small to [...]...
- Proofiness and User Research, A Book Review14 January 2011, 7:38 pm
If Charles Seife’s Proofiness has a lasting contribution to offer those in the fields of user experience, design, or even business, it will be in the elegant branding of its own subjectivist epistemology. This, in itself, is no small victory. It involves taking a complex debate on the origin of knowledge and in a single [...]...
- My Reading List in 201030 December 2010, 8:26 pm
Well, this was definitely the most prolific year of book reading in my life – 61 books. Many of these were audio books, which a surprising amount of people challenge me about, as if it is not the same as reading. But as a heavy listener, I have learned to concentrate quite well while being [...]...
- This Is [Not] Writing. A Testament to Social Media29 April 2012, 12:10 pm
This is not writing, to paraphrase Magritte. Lines insert a false time. Full-stop. “It was not made for those who sell oil or sardines” ~ W. Leibniz, ca. 1674, on his calculating machine Am I to take this seriously? Is there a truth time of writing and a false time? When we started looking at…...
- Designing Surveys That Don’t Suck!18 March 2012, 7:54 pm
Introduction to UX Research: Designing Surveys That Don't Suck! View more presentations from Will Evans...
- Design Studio Workshop for Product Innovation11 March 2012, 8:36 pm
Start the spring season with an epic bang! Join us for a half-day immersive workshop meant to teach-by-doing the Design Studio method. Whether your focus is strategy, product management, design, or development, this hands-on, dynamic workshop is for anyone involved in the ideation, design or development of websites, applications, and mobile experience. The early stages…...
- Structuralism is the New Avant-Garde: Vladimir Karalee18 February 2012, 5:18 pm
Considered to be one of the most promising young designers in Berlin and a master of deconstruction according to Zeit, Bulgarian designer Vladimir Karaleev has his own, unconventional approach to designing procedure and to fashion itself. His collection showcases a pure avant-garde style with unusual cuts and refreshing return to structuralism without the now-cliché post-fascist militarism of other…...
- Introduction to UX Research: Conducting Focus Groups31 January 2012, 12:46 am
This is an introduction to the fundamentals of doing customer research with an emphasis on Focus Groups. This is part of the introduction to ux research series. In this talk we walk through the basics of focus groups, types of focus groups, as well as an in-depth explanation of process and pitfalls. Research is usually…...
- Service2 May 2012, 7:17 pm
You may be wondering, dear Graphpaper reader, what has Chris Fahey done with himself in the nearly two years since he posted anything on this rickety old blog?
Well, at Behavior, we built a bunch of great websites and products for some great clients and partners. I did a little bit of conference speaking and [...]...
- The Un-Remote22 June 2010, 12:27 pm
One of the iPad apps that most people think is inevitable is some kind of remote control for home entertainment systems, but I think the conventional wisdom on this isn’t thinking big enough because we just can’t shake the idea of a “remote controller”.
The basic idea is that you’d throw away all your remote controls [...]...
- A Book on a Hook12 June 2010, 12:15 am
The search is over. Many have heroically tried. But a decisive winner has emerged.
Behold! the most elegant and usable conference badge design ever:
This badge is from The Web and Beyond 2010, held in Amsterdam two weeks ago, where I spoke and saw many excellent sessions.
Let me explain the mechanics of this great design:
Lanyard: The lanyard [...]...
- My New Bike7 June 2010, 12:21 am
...
- Reading Lolita On Paper3 June 2010, 5:27 pm
I just finished reading Lolita; it was my first time reading it, but it was not my first Nabokov novel (having already enjoyed Pale Fire and Ada or Ardor). It was a 1955 American hardback edition, the first year Americans got their hands on the book. I don’t understand why anyone buys new classic books [...]...
- Brief Thoughts on the Windows Phone UX Guidelines18 March 2010, 3:02 am
The Windows Phone UX guidelines have just come out, and they make for interesting reading. Read on for a few quick comments on items of note. Also, check out Luke W’s writeup of the Windows Phone UI and Design Language presentation from MIX10. Some of the points raised there (obviously) come through in the UX [...]...
- The second coming of UI object realism3 March 2010, 10:55 pm
I finally got around to reading the iPad Human Interface Guidelines. I am of course impressed by Apple’s dedication to producing interface guidelines for its community of developers and designers that are clear and straightforward. I’m also impressed at the thought Apple has put toward how the iPad experience should be deliberately different than an [...]...
- Comparing Smartphone UIs: The Status Bar5 February 2010, 3:30 am
This is the first installment in a series that will compare how various smartphone UIs approach UI conventions. I hope you find it interesting, although truthfully I’m doing it mostly for myself so I have a handy set of screenshots to access for comparing how a Blackberry does X compared to Symbian, or Android, or [...]...
- Mobile Web to outpace mobile apps?3 February 2010, 8:28 pm
Re-start! Sorry, I’ve let this blog languish as I’ve transitioned to a new job and a new field of technology. Since July, I’ve been working on the user experience team for Fox Mobile Group, where we’re doing some interesting things on, yes, mobile phones. Now I’m ready to start blogging again, and the blog will [...]...
- Brief Thoughts: Activity Stream Scanning Affordances14 April 2009, 6:59 pm
What, you want more yammering on activity streams? My friend, look no further. I got to thinking: what is the scanning behavior for users looking at an activity stream? More specifically, when scanning a stack of activity feed items, what visual cue is the user looking for to indicate that a certain feed merits more [...]...
- Universal Terms of Purchase - A Consumer Version of TOS16 April 2012, 12:51 am
Disclaimer 1) I'm no expert on licensing, open sources licences etc.
Disclaimer 2) I'm not a lawyer and have never been the stunt double for one on TV
Disclaimer 3) This post is on the boundary of User Experience, right at the edge of the experience 'do I buy/use it or not'. So.
Leverage the concept of BSD-style (etc) licensing
All of us who use software, online services, and many other non-technological services are familiar Terms of Service, or similar. A huge length...
- Making a better touchscreen experience by lowering latency14 March 2012, 1:36 pm
via twolivesleft...
- Kinect Hacking a New Musical Interface18 September 2011, 6:14 am
DJ fresh - Louder JAMkinect from Jonathan Hammond on Vimeo.
Found via the great kineme Quartz Composer forum...
- The Rise and Rise of the Indie Mac/iOS Developer Conference22 August 2011, 12:37 am
A good friend of mine is on the team of an upcoming indie-run iOS developer conference called Swipe.
It looks great. And it seems like a worldwide trend:
Melbourne, Australia: Swipe Conference - Sep 5th
Brighton, UK: Update Conference - Sep 5th
Denver, USA: 360iDev - Sep 11th
Edinburg, Scotland: NSScotland - Oct 1
Massachusetts, USA: Voices That Matter - Nov 12
...
- Introducing Prototypes for Mac25 May 2011, 8:23 pm
If you design, code or have ideas for iPhone or iPod touch, you may be interested to hear about a brand new Mac application I worked on: Prototypes. Sexy icon by Wolfgang Bartelme btw :)
Prototypes is a Mac desktop app that Duncan Wilcox built (with some help from me) to allow you to quickly take your existing mockup images (made with Photoshop, Illustrator, a crayon etc!), and link them together to create a navigable mini-site that runs on iPhone.
Some nice writeups already:
No C...
- UX Scavenger Hunt—Pinterest Style7 May 2012, 1:45 pm
One of the most enjoyable aspects of user experience design is the opportunity to observe human behavior and interactions directly within the user’s environment. I like to picture user experience designers on reconnaissance missions, quietly gathering user behavior intel while covertly recording the interactive patterns and dialogs we observe. Melodramatic? Sure. Romantic? Possibly. Intriguing? Most definitely.
Working on these skills is like brain pilates. Observational exercises are ...
- Translating Viget’s History to Facebook Timeline30 April 2012, 11:46 pm
Recently, I took on the task of updating our Viget Facebook account to the new Timeline layout. Now, I don’t just mean clicking the “Get Timeline Now” button, but actually using it to its fullest potential by updating it with various facts, photos, and videos from our company’s history. What I initially expected to be a tedious, content-gathering chore turned out to be quite an informative and even enjoyable little project.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve be...
- Using Regression to Understand Users29 March 2012, 7:35 pm
A challenge that has always plagued the web industry is understanding users. Whether it’s their habits, assumptions, interests, tendencies, or expectations, it all affects how any user will interact with and respond to a website. Since no group of users or customers is the same, it takes more than just a general knowledge of what users want in order to design something effective.
Traditional UX research practices include user interviews, focus groups, and usability testing to answer so...
- What is fb_xd_fragment and how can I make it go away from Google Analytics?13 January 2012, 3:00 pm
Recently I was troubleshooting why ?fb_xd_fragment= was getting appended to the end of a bunch of URLs in Google Analytics. With a little bit of googling, the source of the problem wasn’t tough to find--it happens when a visitor using Internet Explorer clicks a Facebook ‘Like’ button on your page.
Surprisingly, though, all of the highly ranking results in Google give a GA solution that’s flat-out wrong. Here’s why:
In a test we ran, clicking a Like button on /p...
- How Google Turned SEO Upside Down in 201122 December 2011, 7:38 pm
In April of this year, Google began updating their search algorithms with something called "Panda." These effects have been more fully integrated throughout the year. In the world of SEO, this update represents a greater movement towards human accessibility and usability and away from machine oriented language (such as meta tags, keywords, etc.).
Panda utilizes thousands of ratings from human quality raters that provide answers to simple questions on the quality of the websites they visit. These...
- The Visual Language of Dashed Lines6 February 2012, 1:00 pm
The dashed line is exquisitely rich with information. A line formed from a continuous series of dashes is diminished in strength when compared to a solid line, yet in terms of visual language, it is just as powerful. The weakness of the dashed line is it’s strength. Through a combination of our perceptual apparatus and [...]...
- Communicating Critical Visual Information: Hurricane Irene26 August 2011, 5:32 pm
When disseminating critical information during times of crisis or danger, it is crucial to use the best visual communication practices possible. The importance of this concept is evident when comparing how two publishers visually represented key weather information regarding Hurricane Irene in the US. Where’s the potential danger? During an impending weather crisis, residents need [...]...
- The Visual Language Of Schematic Faces26 April 2011, 1:00 pm
Like many people, I’ve always had an aesthetic aversion to the yellow smiley face. Not only did I find it visually unappealing, but due to overuse I thought of the smiley as a trite visual cliché. But that was the old me. Now, the more I explore and decode smiley faces and their related family [...]...
- Joining Twitter10 May 2012, 11:02 am
To me, Twitter is more than just a technology company. It's a company that is shaping global culture; but one that also appreciates the ethical implications of its work. In short, it's an irresistible opportunity....
- My life as a unicorn23 March 2012, 2:34 pm
Last year, the UX uniform I’d worn for a decade started to feel like a straightjacket. I wasn’t learning as rapidly as I once did, and my work had plateaued....
- Why I don’t wireframe much23 March 2012, 10:39 am
I was going to write a long post, but I think this diagram suffices....
- Ephemeral ennui6 March 2012, 1:55 pm
I still love what I do. But on days like today, when I’m woozy and tired, it gets too much....
- Low-budget responsive design23 February 2012, 12:55 pm
I can’t remember my exact words – I’m rushing this post out over lunch – but let me give some context, so you can judge for yourself whether it was as dumb as it sounds....
- UX Passion is a company now!1 July 2011, 9:56 am
We are proud and happy to announce publicly that UX Passion is a company now! UX Passion is full service UX design and usability firm with global reach. We envision, design and deliver greatest user and service experiences. With passion! We are packed with passionate individuals and today we are sharing this exciting news with all of you!...
- Thinking about design process: simple or complex?20 May 2011, 3:48 pm
In its most generic form, design refers to a plan for the construction of an object or a system. As such, it often requires disciplined set of steps, often called design process. It’s initial idea and purpose is to provide well established framework, foundations for design-related work. But often, design process can be too complex and harmful.Design process, yes, but…...
- Design trends: Web design and web development trends in 20112 January 2011, 9:26 pm
Year 2010 is behind us and it’s time to reflect on it for a bit and then to see what 2011 will bring for us with respect to web design and web development. Or, perhaps I should say in design and development in general. Here’s the list of predictions for web (and not just web) design and development trends in 2011....
- Future of Silverlight 5 and HTML 5 – what now?30 October 2010, 1:28 pm
You've all heard the news – Microsoft is „shifting its Silverlight strategy“ and going full forward to embrace HTML 5 as its cross-browser cross-platform solution. Coupled with IE9, it makes lot of sense, But what about Silverlight 5 and Silverlight in general now? Same question can be asked regarding Adobe's Flash. What's the future of RIA platforms?...
- Silverlight book: Silverlight 4 User Interface Cookbook3 September 2010, 12:26 pm
Are looking how to build great user interfaces using the Silverlight 4? Do you need professional UX guidance for that? What about step-by-step instructions with code when you need it? I'm introducing you Silverlight 4 User Interface Cookbook. This is my first book and I’m proud to announce it to you here on UXPassion.com...
- Get your web form questions answered18 April 2012, 5:00 am
Ever had a debate in the office about whether to put labels above or beside fields? Or a shouting match about progress indicators?
Now's your chance to have these questions answered once and for all, as Formulate's Principal, Jessica Enders, presents at WebDU 2012 in Sydney....
- Must read? Must go in question!5 March 2012, 11:00 pm
Forget instructions, tips and help: a real-world example shows how imperative it is to put key information in the question itself....
- Fixing forms is easy…no?12 July 2011, 12:30 am
Learning best practices is a crucial part of being able to design good forms, but it's not all you need. As this article will describe, sometimes the biggest challenges are less tangible and require "softer" skills....
- Well-designed error messages11 January 2011, 12:30 am
In this article, after summarising the principles of well-designed error messages, we walk through a good example from a live website....
- Coles Insurance, Making Links and UXmatters3 November 2010, 12:00 am
Coles Insurance goes live; Formulate presenting at Making Links; and a new piece on UXmatters....
- ClickTale Becomes IBM Certified Partner17 May 2012, 3:35 pm
ClickTale’s going to be at this year’s IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit Madrid, May 22nd-24th! See our very own Director of Business Development, Jonny Steel, jointly presenting with Mike Niemann, Director of Product Management at IBM Coremetrics discuss ClickTale’s partnership with Coremetrics Digital Data Exchange (DDX) Tag Management solution. This integration was just launched enabling [...]...
- Secrets of a Successful UX Career15 May 2012, 4:19 pm
We all want to be head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to our careers. But the real question is – how far above are we at this exact moment? We’ve gone undercover to conduct an anonymous UX Salary survey and gather the facts. How does geographic location, gender, experience level and company [...]...
- Join Us in London at the 2012 Omniture Summit3 May 2012, 4:16 pm
Adobe Omniture Digital Marketing Summit EMEA 2012 Battersea Evolution, Battersea Park May 15-16th Come join us at Europe’s leading digital marketing and advertising event, home to over 1,500 digital marketing, ecommerce and web analytics professionals. This is a great venue to gain insights into industry specific business challenges and money making best practices so you [...]...
- Measuring Usability Quantitatively30 April 2012, 4:26 pm
Guest Post By Enric Quintero, Metriplica.com The usability concept is understood as the measurement of the difference between the ideal interaction and the real one taken by our target audience. At the start of the internet, both types of interactions (ideal and actual) differed greatly. There wasn’t much of a handicap for a user given [...]...
- Hi-Tech Geo Hot Spots Around the World19 April 2012, 4:18 pm
Today, we’re heatmapping for red hot engagement with the hi-tech world. We want to know where exactly do us tech geeks hang out for endless working hours, where do our sparks of genius come alive and benefit modernity for a short while until the next best thing surfaces. These here below are my tech city [...]...
- Considering the cross device experience25 October 2011, 2:41 am
I have been super busy lately working on the beginnings of a Mobile Pattern Library for a client. This work involves a lot of auditing applications. I am looking at both apps designed by the client and others in the landscape for comparison and for developing best practices across the iPhone, iPad, an Android handset [...]...
- More good posts about the Identity issues with Google +5 September 2011, 4:58 am
Here are a few more good articles/posts about this ongoing conversation about Identity and Google +. This is a hot potato and people need to speak out against the policies that Google has set forth. They are discriminatory and do not promote true social engagements. “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power Google+ and [...]...
- Who you are versus who you present yourself to be online29 August 2011, 11:32 pm
Recently Google launched Google Plus and in the process, they have required that people use their real names as their identity. This is causing tremendous issues—suspension of accounts deemed not “real”, suspending accounts because of pseudonyms. In our book, Christian and I talk about identity, about owning your words and owning your reputation. We proposed [...]...
- The Ultimate in Grids26 April 2011, 4:44 am
I have long been a proponent of grid systems in design. After all, I started out as a print designer working on annual reports and other multipage projects. The grid has been harder to apply in reasonable ways online but I still love the order of working with an underlying structure and the challenge of [...]...
- Where I will be in the near future17 March 2011, 12:39 am
A few more events are coming up that I will be involved in: Web 2.0 Expo Keynote talk: Start Using UX as a Weapon March 29th, 4:45 pm, Main Stage I will be a judge, along with an impressive panel of amazing designers and web people for the 2011 Webvisionary Awards at Webvisions this year. [...]...
- Embodied cognition and the problem with collaboration2 March 2012, 4:05 pm
We often implement collaboration and workflow tools to optimize knowledge management and sharing for our customer’s work forces. We often focus on the tools, and this focus typically relies on the capabilities our technologies provide.
But it’s not capabilities that help people get work done. It’s the environment they work in.
Psychology Today published a great post on that introduces the concept of embodied cognition, the idea that our environments change the way we think and ...
- Seven barriers to UX: The Organization doesn't VALUE design20 September 2011, 5:25 am
Part two of my series on the organizational barriers to good user experience is up on the Follow the UX Leader blog.
We’re starting our deep dive with the first barrier: your organization seems like it doesn’t value design. If you’re interested, I’d love to hear you feedback.
“The seven barriers to UX: the organization doesn’t value design.”
...
- Lean UX and Agile interview on Epic Bagel13 September 2011, 6:53 pm
Epic Bagel’s Jon Bolt and I took some time last week to sit down and talk (via Skype) about my experiences with agile, user experience, and lean UX. Jon’s posted audio of the discussion on his blog: Lean UX and Agile with Austin Govella.
Win a copy of Blueprints for the webHe’s also giving away two copies of Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web. Check the post for information on how to enter to win.
(When you’re listening, you can hear me sniffling. It’...
- Barriers to UX series on the Follow the UX Leader blog13 September 2011, 5:36 pm
Lately, it seems like all my posts are more promotional than informational. Please bear with me. I’m trying to get the word out and share my experience and thinking with wider audiences. I’m still writing, but the posts publish at other places.
A case in point:
I’ve been a fan of Jeff Parks’s Follow the UX Leader workshops since he launched them a couple of years ago. Recently, Jeff invited me to contribute to the Follow the UX Leader blog. I’ve started a series...
- Houston UX meet-n-greet next Wed, Sep 148 September 2011, 3:15 am
Houston Experience Design has a UX meetup next Wednesday, September 14 starting at 5:30 pm at the Nouveau Antique Art Bar just outside downtown.
There will be free drinks, and an entire library of Rosenfeld Media books for a giveaway, so it should be a pretty good time.
Here’s a link to the event listing on the group blog:
* http://houstonexperiencedesign.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/wed-sep-14-back-to-school-meet-n-greet/
About Houston Experience Design (H.E.D.)Houston Experience Design is a ...
- My next move is a TUG.3 May 2012, 3:41 pm
I’m very happy to announce I’m joining The Understanding Group as an Information Architect. I’m a big believer in TUG’s mission: using information architecture to make things “be good.” Since I’ve been blathering on and on about the importance of IA for over a decade now, I figured I might as well put my career [...]...
- Embodied Responsiveness1 May 2012, 6:05 pm
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about responsiveness in design, and how we can build systems that work well in so many different contexts, on so many different devices, for so many different scenarios. So many of our map-like ways of predicting and designing for complexity are starting to stretch at the seams. I have [...]...
- Notes on IA from 200220 March 2012, 4:05 am
Tonight, I ran across some files from 2002 (10 yrs ago), some of which were documents from the founding of the IA Institute. At some point I need to figure out what to do with all that. But among these files was a text clipping that looks as if it was probably part of a response [...]...
- Designing Context: About the Book19 February 2012, 7:36 pm
Thanks for checking out the post, however … I’ve moved the information about the book over to its own page. Cheers!...
- The Path to Fail is Paved with Good Intentions8 February 2012, 3:35 pm
I joined Path on December 1st, 2011. I know this because it says so, under my “path” in the application on my iPhone. That same day, I posted this message in the app: “Wondering how Path knew whom to recommend as friends?!?” I’ve used a lot of social software over the years (technically since 1992 [...]...
- Interaction10: Coming Up for Air11 February 2010, 6:24 am
Interaction10 finally happened last weekend. I have barely blogged in a year. This is not a coincidence. A+B=C. It’s hard to even know where to begin. Less than 100 hours ago, I completed the most significant accomplishment of my career (so far), a year-long project that filled all the nights and weekends outside my day [...]...
- Doing a Virtual Seminar for UIE25 August 2009, 4:00 pm
Happy to announce that I’ll be giving a virtual seminar for UIE on the topic of Designing Humanity Into Your Products on September 9. For more info, check out UIE. Please sign up and listen in! And hey, want a discount? Use my discount code BILLDER to save yourself some hard-earned cash. See you there....
- Check Ticket Data25 August 2009, 4:06 am
Experimenting with video… Here’s a mini-diatribe on how simple phrasings in an interaction can confuse the interaction. Or, yet another fun example of pointing out silly technology. In this case, paying for airport parking and turning in your receipt so you can leave the parking area, and questioning what the machine says. Plus, you can [...]...
- From Business to Buttons21 June 2009, 5:23 pm
Earlier I in June, I was fortunate to be speaking at From Business to Buttons 09. It was a great event, hosted at Malmo University in Sweden. We got to see a lot of insightful student presentations as well as some great talks put on by the various speakers, include Garr Reynolds, Scott Berkun, Matt [...]...
- Why I’m Attending Interaction 09, and You Should Too!22 December 2008, 9:13 pm
In February 2009, I’ll be heading up to Vancouver BC to attend Interaction’09, the annual conference organized by IxDA, the Interaction Design Association. I couldn’t be more excited. Why? This is my tribe of people. Some call themselves interaction designers, some call themselves information architects, some have other variations. But really, they’re all intelligent, curious, [...]...
- Everybody’s Got Something: Reflections on Rare Disease Day29 February 2012, 2:31 pm
Today is Rare Disease Day, a day set aside by the National Organization of Rare Diseases and other international groups to raise awareness for this group of conditions. A rare disease is one that affects less than 200,000 Americans. Taken together, however, 10% of Americans have a rare disease. I believe that number is going [...]...
- Silly Amazon Prime Business Rule3 February 2012, 3:25 am
A few weeks ago, my wife got an email from Amazon saying that she could no longer take advantage of Amazon Mom benefits. After a brief exchange with customer service, she learned that because she shares my Amazon Prime account, the Amazon Mom discount on diapers no longer applies. We’re talking about 15% off diapers. [...]...
- Book Review: Meals in Minutes, by Jamie Oliver9 January 2012, 12:50 pm
My wife and I peg my transition to “family chef” at around the time our first son was born. Until then, we’d mostly shared cooking duties, but with her tied up in a strict baby schedule, it made sense for me take over. Cooking soon went from household responsibility to serious hobby. The Secret Ingredient [...]...
- Surviving Design Projects (Dan’s little distraction)1 September 2011, 6:12 pm
The quick version Surviving Design Projects is a collection of ideas about managing conflict in creative environments. For now, it’s a blog that deals with three things: Situations — the circumstances that lead to conflict. Traits — the aspects of designers’ personalities that may contribute to or help them solve conflict. Patterns — techniques for [...]...
- Workshop: A visual approach to planning web sites22 September 2010, 11:41 pm
Join me in October and November for two workshops I’ll be leading the DC area. Each is a half-day on a Friday afternoon (when nothing good ever happens anyway) and we’ll dig into flow charts, site maps, and concept models–diagrams essential for planning web sites. Here’s what we’ll talk about: How to create beautiful and [...]...
- Lead With Content12 June 2011, 6:23 pm
Content was at the heart of my Web design work long before I knew to call what I was doing “content strategy” and “information architecture.” Now as areas of expertise mature, content is that much more valuable in my day-to-day practice. In fact for some UX projects, you just have to let content take the lead....
- Be Ornery17 April 2011, 10:24 pm
I’ve never worked in an environment that I would call user experience friendly. That doesn’t mean I’ve had bad employers or clients. In fact, I’ve been lucky over the years to work at some pretty great places. But if you mapped my resume based on how highly each organization valued user experience expertise, the spectrum [...]...
- Build a Strong UX Foundation28 February 2011, 5:45 am
Quick: Explain why the long E sound in the word treat is spelled “ea”, but for the same sound in the word wheel it’s “ee”. Now explain how one-third is the same as two-sixths. Now explain why a ten-cent coin in the U.S. is smaller than a five-cent coin. But wait, you have to do [...]...
- 21st Century Learning13 February 2011, 4:48 pm
After I ran a panel at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in 2010 (Imagineering a Fully Digitized and Connected Future), I played around with writing a book about life in the 21st Century. The book didn’t pan out, but I liked the interview I did with Bror Saxberg and I wanted to share it [...]...
- Design Solves Problems30 January 2011, 5:00 pm
Design is what it does and what it does is solve problems. Words and the way we use them cheapen our understanding of design. We screw it up in both directions; sometimes we add modifiers to break the granite of design down into so many pebbles, while other times it floats away from us after [...]...
- Top Ten Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People: #9 — If You Want People To Act You Have To Call Them To Action18 May 2012, 8:02 pm
Recently I attended a fund raiser. The speaker got up and gave a pretty good speech (I think he could have used a speech coach!), but at the end he didn’t have a call to action. There were people walking around with jars so you could donate, but no one had actually asked for the......
- Top Ten Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People: #8 — People Are Energized When The Room Is Full16 May 2012, 12:38 pm
There are many subtle and not so subtle ways that people change when they are together. Human behavior is a complex combination of interactions with other people. When people enter a room that is largely empty they will tend to position themselves evenly throughout the room. This means that while they are waiting for the......
- Top 10 Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People: #7 — People Assign Meaning To Your Hand Gestures10 May 2012, 2:38 pm
Everyone “talks” with their hands to some extent. Some people’s hand-talking or gesturing matches their message well. Other people have a tendency to make overly large gestures that can be distracting. Others don’t use their hands much at all. No matter which camp you fall into, it’s important to pay attention to your hand gestures......
- Photography And The User Experience: A Podcast With James Chudley3 May 2012, 12:36 pm
What is the role of photography in the user experience of websites? James Chudley and I explore this topic in a podcast. James is the (co)-author of Smashing UX Design, a new book coming out in June of 2012. You can listen to the podcast by clicking on this link. It’s approximiately 30 minutes in length.......
- Top 10 Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People: #6 — People Need To Feel Safe To Participate30 April 2012, 3:31 pm
The best performance I’ve ever been to (the best music, dance, theatre, speech — any kind of performance) was by Bobby McFerrin. His performances involve music and extensive audience interaction. I saw him in a 1500-seat theatre in a small city in Wisconsin. The theatre was full, and from the start the audience was appreciative......
- IA Heuristics: A Journey from Why to How12 April 2012, 3:55 pm
It is late spring 2011 and I am sitting in Dan Klyn’s kitchen. It smells like blueberry pie and startup rollercoaster tracks. Dan and Bob are three months into their new company, The Understanding Group. It is my first week full time; I am living out of a suitcase on my way to New York [...]...
- Information Architecture Heuristics4 February 2012, 2:59 pm
Here are the slides from my talk at Interaction 12 in Dublin. If this content resonates with you, feel free to download and use my deck to teach these principles to others (and please drop me a tweet to tell me how it went) Also, for those interested: I plan to have the matching poster out by [...]...
- Advice from the Void19 November 2011, 7:31 pm
“Oh, what a void there is in things.” – Aulus Persius Flaccus I get a lot of email and take a lot of coffee these days with eager young people looking to break into the work that I do. They tend to fall into two categories: Should I go to graduate school? Why isn’t my [...]...
- WTF! Wireframe that first!11 May 2011, 9:43 pm
I was recently asked to give a talk to the students of the Miami Ad School who are spending their semester at Draftfcb. My aim with my hour with them was to explain how user experience planning made it into the agency world and why creatives should care....
- Dear dream job, I quit.25 April 2011, 8:40 am
“Are you running away from something or towards something?” Leading a user experience practice in a large agency hasn’t been an easy feat; but as intense as it has gotten at times, it also has never felt like something I have wanted to run away from. In fact, it is quite the opposite. The pride [...]...
- Evantage at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit5 March 2012, 7:39 pm
Next week the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit begins in San Francisco, and once again someone from Evantage will be presenting. And, as it turns out, that someone is me! As a result, the Evantage User Experience team has graciously invited me to do my second guest post on this blog. My summit presentation is a [...]...
- United Airlines and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Experience9 August 2011, 5:21 pm
Last night my mom needed to buy a ticket for my 17-year-old brother to fly from Minneapolis back to San Francisco where they live. I was on the phone with her twice, walking her through the United Airlines website for over 20 minutes each time. This is unacceptable. My mother, who is 55, isn’t very [...]...
- Requirements-Driven Software Development Must Die25 July 2011, 8:55 pm
The process by which most enterprise software is developed is fatally flawed. There are flaws in any software development process, but in the past 13 years I’ve seen one approach produce more bad software and blow more budgets than any other: requirements-driven software development. Thankfully, I’ve also had the opportunity to see the success of [...]...
- A Hole Is to Dig: Google+ Is Cool, But How to Fill It?20 July 2011, 1:27 am
It’s been a few weeks since Google rolled out Google+, its latest attempt at social media, to a significant number of users. If estimates are to be believed, there are now well over 10 million interaction designers using it right now, “just to see where this all goes.” My view of Google+ is admittedly colored [...]...
- Accountable Care Organizations and Patient Engagement14 June 2011, 6:33 pm
How Accountable Care Organizations refer to patient engagement and our experience in the patient engagement realm...
- Book Review: Playful Design by John Ferrara16 May 2012, 2:30 pm
The new book Playful Design by John Ferrara is about to come out and our friend Matthew Niederberger was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at one of the first copies. Here is a very brief summary of what … Continue reading →...
- Optimize Your Conversion With Insights From Behavioural Economics15 May 2012, 11:58 am
This is a guest post by our friend Neal Cole. As Dan Ariely explains in his popular books people are often irrational in their decision making as they are heavily influenced by unconscious biases. Conversion professionals can utilise knowledge of … Continue reading →...
- Lovely Discoveries #1314 May 2012, 2:30 pm
Have a better look at these discoveries on the Lovely Discoveries List #13 on Usabilla Discover. Request an invite if you are interested in building a library of design elements with rating and sharing options. Lovely Discoveries #12Lovely Discoveries #11Lovely … Continue reading →...
- 12 Tricks To Make Your Customers Feel Safe10 May 2012, 2:18 pm
The customer is king. And we want the king to feel comfortable, right? Especially on the Web, where people can leave our site with only a mouse click, it is essential to keep them happy. Happy customers will stay to … Continue reading →...
- Useful, Saleable, Buildable: The Role Of UX In Defining Requirements8 May 2012, 2:30 pm
This is a guest post by our friend Mike Hughes. A mentor of mine is fond of giving the advice “Do what you love to do in the service of those who love what you do.” Whenever I hear UX … Continue reading →...
- ReadyForZero: Venture Funded14 June 2011, 2:00 pm
Our startup, ReadyForZero, just raised $4.5M in Series A funding. This gives us a big opportunity to hire, grow the company, and build more powerful tools to help people get out of debt. It’s not the end of the world; … Continue reading →...
- Why Persuasive Design Should be Your Next Skill Set14 June 2011, 2:11 am
“With a focus on psychology, UX designers can build services that directly help people improve their lives. It’s not new; AA and Weight Watchers were around before the Internet, and they help people through difficult and long-term behavior change. Still, … Continue reading →...
- The Fastest Registration Ever: Friend.ly28 April 2011, 5:53 pm
No wizards. No forms. No Facebook Connect or Twitter Oauth popups. No typing at all. A single click is all you need to sign up for friend.ly. After that, you’re in, with a profile including your picture. You’re connected to … Continue reading →...
- A framework for Great Designers4 April 2011, 7:30 pm
For years now, a nagging thought has kept me up on sleepless nights: Am I a great designer? The answer to this question matters – to me, and to everyone else. First, it’s deeply personal. I don’t think many people … Continue reading →...
- Launching ReadyForZero2 February 2011, 11:38 am
Today, we’re launching ReadyForZero, a startup dedicated to helping people manage their credit card debt. When I decided to join ReadyForZero last November, I was burnt out. Not that life was bad, but my work as a freelancer had left … Continue reading →...