UX in a minimum viable product
I gave a talk at Refresh Chicago last week, and afterwards a fellow came up to me with a question. He does UI on a team of mostly engineers, and…
Understanding typographic hierarchy
One of the most important techniques for effectively communicating (or “honoring”) content is the use of typographic hierarchy. Typographic hierarchy is a system for organizing type that establishes an order…
The 26 UX Axioms
1. It's all about people, it's not about the object UX design starts and ends with people. It's not everything, but designing for people should be your focus. We need…
Functional beauty and user experience
Beauty is one of the oldest and most powerful concepts in human history—inspiring artists and lighting up cultural movements, philosophical debates, and, in modern times, curious scientific interest. Beauty is…
Great products focus on a motif
What does it take to craft a great product? For those of us who design and build apps, websites and software, a great product means one that delights its users.…
What does it mean to be simple?
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…
Solutions are easy if you know the problem
“Good design is problem solving.” – Jeffrey Veen You could say that actually solving the problem is good design in practice. This rarely boils down to choosing whether or not…
Hidden champions of product design
Products are people too. Products influence people through emotions. We as designers define the experiential, social and other qualities of products every day. We create the shape, heart and soul…
3 mistakes web designers make
I was reviewing an online shoe store the other day. The landing page had this beautiful graphic of all these shoes. Gorgeous looking site. And then I clicked on another…
Who owns your UX Philosophy?
I’ve been in three board meetings in the last month where it was painfully apparent that there wasn’t a person in the company who owned the UX philosophy of the…