Co.Design
You can take any user interface in the world, and whether it’s gorgeous and intuitive or ugly and clunky, there’s one unifying factor that will right pretty much any wrong: speed. Think about it. The load screen, the spinning beachball, the three-seconds of stutter before your click registers as a click--those are the worst experiences you’ve ever had with any user interface. And they’re all related to core responsiveness.
By Mark Wilson, 16 May 2012
UIE Brain Sparks
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 in the conversion rate (sometimes as little as 0. 9%, which the presenters declared as a “huge increase”).
By Jared Spool, 14 May 2012
Putting people first
Gestural interfaces. Brian Pagán of User Intelligence in Amsterdam argues that touch-free gestures and Natural Language Interaction (NLI) may open up further paths toward a true Natural User Interface (NUI).
“User interfaces for computers have come a long way from vacuum tubes and punch cards, and each advancement brings new possibilities and challenges.
By Experientia, 12 May 2012
Elezea
Interface Design. Jeff Atwood starts his article This Is All Your App Is: a Collection of Tiny Details as a post about cat feeders, but stick with it. It’s gold:
Getting the details right is the difference between something that delights, and something customers tolerate.
Your software, your product, is nothing more than a collection of tiny details.
By Rian, 9 May 2012
Featured
The UX Booth
Information design. Users obtain information on the web in one of two ways: searching or browsing. Browsing – moving through a multi-faceted content structure – is made easier when information architects present users with an intuitive navigation hierarchy. This article discusses two techniques to that end.
There’s a great line in the Postal Service song, This Place is a Prison, that states, “It’s not a party if it happens every night.
By Andy Montgomery, 8 May 2012
UX Magazine
Usability testing. In the early 90’s, Jakob Nielsen declared in-person user research as state of the art. “User testing with real users is the most fundamental usability method and is in some sense irreplaceable, since it provides direct information about how people use computers [.
By Sabina Idler, 8 May 2012
UIE Brain Sparks
Personas. Personas are one of the most controversial tools in the professional UX toolbox. People either swear by them or swear at them. When they work, they are awesome, but when they fail, well, they fail gloriously.
For the past few years, we’ve been researching why so many persona projects have such dismal results.
By Jared Spool, 8 May 2012
UX Magazine
Gestural interfaces. Touch interaction has become practically ubiquitous in developed markets, and that has changed users' expectations and the way UX practitioners think about human–computer interaction (HCI). Now, touch-free gestures and Natural Language Interaction (NLI) are bleeding into the computing mainstream the way touch did years ago. These will again disrupt UX, from the heuristics that guide us, to our design patterns and deliverables.
By Brian Pagán, 7 May 2012
UXmatters
Information Architecture. 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.
7 May 2012
UXmatters
Design techniques. 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.
7 May 2012
Putting people first
Terminology. Peter Merholz, VP of experience design at Inflection (and founder of Adaptive Path), thinks there is no such thing as a UX design profession. User experience is a strategic framework, he says, a mindset for approaching product and service challenges.
“The practice of user experience is most successful when focused on strategy, vision, and planning, not design and execution.
By Experientia, 5 May 2012
UIE Brain Sparks
Requirements. Small is good. We love small products. Why not small processes?
Mobile phones used to be big and bulky. Then we found ways to make them smaller and pack more stuff into them.
By Jared Spool, 3 May 2012
Featured
Co.Design
Usability. Last month, I talked to Amazon customer service about my malfunctioning Kindle, and it was great. Thirty seconds after putting in a service request on Amazon’s website, my phone rang, and the woman on the other end--let’s call her Barbara--greeted me by name and said, "I understand that you have a problem with your Kindle.
By Sean Madden, 2 May 2012
Featured
Measuring Usability:...
Usability testing. When it comes to testing websites there are many unmoderated and moderated solutions. But if you've ever tried to evaluate an app or website on a mobile phone or tablet there are fewer options. Usertesting. com offers a new mobile testing service which recruits users and records their mobile devices while they interact with your app or website.
1 May 2012
UIE Brain Sparks
Usability testing. The other day, I wrote about how choosing the right words in your tasks makes a critical difference to the outcome of your user research. Mike Pauley wrote a comment, asking how to make sure you’ve got the right words:
Great timing on this, as I am dealing with the same issue with a test I’m currently running.
By Jared Spool, 30 April 2012
Featured
LukeW | Digital Prod...
Mobile design. 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.
29 April 2012
Featured
Elezea
Design process. If you’re involved in any kind of software development work, I highly recommend the Harvard Business Review article Six Myths of Product Development (it’s paywalled, but keep reading…). It details 6 common misconceptions of most product development managers:
High utilization of resources will improve performance.
Processing work in large batches improves the economics of the development process.
By Rian, 27 April 2012
Featured
UIE Brain Sparks
Usability testing. Years ago, we were watching people try to find products on IKEA. com. (Not for IKEA, but for our other nefarious purposes. ) We took several stabs at our study because, well, the first ones seemed fishy to us.
By Jared Spool, 27 April 2012
Featured
Putting people first
ROI. John Dilworth and Matt Miller of LDS Church provide an overall framework to communicate the value of UX within businesses, that directly associates the value proposition of UX with key business objectives.
“It is the job of the UX designer to demonstrate the value that UX work brings to a product or service.
By Experientia, 27 April 2012
Co.Design
Cases. When Facebook first reached out to Kate Aronowitz in late 2008, the then-head of LinkedIn’s design team was pretty sure she didn’t want to move over to the social network. She was a new mom. Crazy startup hours were not part of her plan.
A conversation with Facebook VP of product Chris Cox, however, changed her mind.
By E.B. Boyd, 26 April 2012
Smashing Magazine Fe...
Gamification.
The gaming industry is huge, and it can keep its audience consumed for hours, days and even weeks. Some play the same game over and over again — and occasionally, they even get out their 15-year-old Nintendo 64 to play some Zelda.
Now, I am not a game designer. I actually don’t even play games that often.
By Peter Steen Høgenha..., 26 April 2012
Human Factors Intern...
Personas. HFI's monthly e-newsletter on usability research. This month's newsletter shows how all personas are not equal and discusses designing for rounded users and extreme characters.
25 April 2012
Co.Design
Cases. After a mere 6 months on the market, Google released their first major redesign of Google+. If you check your profile now, you should see the latest version. And if your taste is anything like ours, you’ll agree that it feels better in just about every way.
Yes it’s on purpose.
By Mark Wilson, 25 April 2012
Measuring Usability:...
User research. Increasingly companies are adopting the Net Promoter Score as the corporate metric. In many companies, all metrics, including user experience metrics, should roll up to the Net Promoter Score. Here are 10 things to know about the Net Promoter Score if you're concerned about improving the user experience.
24 April 2012
A List Apart
Content. 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.
By Rachel Lovinger, 24 April 2012
A List Apart
Content. 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.
By Rachel Lovinger, 24 April 2012
UXmatters
Terminology. By Frank Guo
Published: April 24, 2012
“UX professionals use the term user experience much more broadly, to cover everything ranging from ease of use to user engagement to visual appeal. User experience better captures all of the psychological and behavioral aspects of users’ interactions with products. ”
Some people mistakenly use the terms user experience and usability almost interchangeably.
24 April 2012
Smashing Magazine Fe...
Design techniques.
We tend to carefully create our HTML and CSS, and meticulously place every pixel to our designs. We plan exactly where our content should be placed on a particular site. Among many other decisions we need to make, we always keep in mind to craft a great experience for all our users. But how do we know what our users really want?
One way is to understand the motivations that drive users in general.
By Indi Young and Brad ..., 23 April 2012
