Conducting Contextual Enquiry (or Site Visits)
To do good design, you need to understand the relevant parts of your users’ lives. One of the most powerful ways of gathering this information is by talking to those…
Are Users The New Designers?
In 2010, James Bridle discovered that his Apple iPhone was collecting and storing his location data. The experience brought him to the realization that as a user, his actions were…
32 Ways To Measure The Customer Experience
There's a lot to measure in the customer experience. There's also many ways to collect the measurements. While the "right" methods and metrics you select depend on the industry and…
Designing Web Interfaces For Kids
Kids spend a lot of time online, and their cognitive and physical limitations present many challenges to them when they do so. Pair that with poorly designed content and dark…
Collapse in trust is a good thing
For too long people have placed blind trust in organizations and brands, which has only led to manipulation and abuse. Society is now entering a new phase of healthy skepticism.…
UX Central Weekly #4
Thanks for checking out UX Central Weekly number 4. I came across an interesting anecdote from Stephen Dubner in the “When To Rob a Bank…” book I’m still reading this…
Making Companies Competitive by Expanding Design’s Role
It’s miserable to be sitting at an airport gate, hearing that the airline has cancelled the very flight you were hoping to board. You now get to enter a special…
Hiring UX Experts Versus Giving Your Team Their Own UX Skills
Is there a conflict between providing expert services and training for those skills? A colleague wrote: I wanted to ask your advice: I was giving a user experience (UX) presentation…
Simplify Your UX Through Reduction
Creating a simple user experience requires a method. It’s not enough to say that you’ll create a simple design, that you’ll design like Apple, or that you’ll just remove enough…
When a Design Does Not Hold Up in Actual Usage
Sitting where we do within a consulting organization for a software vendor, my team and I often feel like mediators between two warring factions. On one side, we have Design…