Progressive Reduction
Usability is a moving target. A user’s understanding of your application improves over time and your application’s interface should adapt to your user. At the outset, the designer sets a…
The future of UX design
Dan Saffer, like many designers, likes to quote Charles Eames. But unlike many designers, Saffer--Director of Interaction Design at Smart Design--wrote a whole book inspired by one of his favorite…
5 lessons learned from 100,000 usability studies
It happens all the time. People get confused, frustrated, and angry while using websites. They sigh, they groan, and sometimes they even shout. I see it happen with my own…
9 User Experience tips to rule them all
1. Copy is design, too. The way that you describe and label the product is just as important as the visual design + feature set. It’s particularly important in getting…
Frame of Reference
The real issues at the heart of modern interface design. Now that skeuomorphism is a thing, and “flat design” is busy becoming the next flavour of UI styling, I’d like…
What is a Microinteraction?
Microinteractions are contained product moments that revolve around a single use case—they have one main task. Every time you change a setting, sync your data or devices, set an alarm,…
UX & Growth Hacking
If the User Can’t Find It, It Doesn’t Exist A user experience designer wants to help the user meet their needs and accomplish their goals but creating a delightful product…
Building products with soul
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It…
Intention vs Interpretation
Both interaction designers and information architects want to design objects with a singular meaning – a noble, albeit impossible goal. The best we can hope for is to create more…
Why links shouldn’t say “Click Here”
Have you ever wanted your users to click your links, but didn’t know how to get them to act? When some designers run into this problem they’re tempted to use…