For many design teams, customer support feedback, server logs, online surveys and possibly A/B testing are the only sources of user based data they may collect to guide their design efforts. It is great if a team is also conducting usability tests to improve their designs. Even if it is just before launch or to […]
Go to this pageTaking the U out of UX
There have been a number of posts around the web about not using the term “user” any longer when talking about designing for experiences. Don Norman, one of the leading consultants and speaker on design thinking wrote a post and gave a talk back in 2008 at an adaptive path conference on not using the […]
Go to this page3 Problems with UX in the Agile Enterprise
Many enterprise organizations are in the process of adopting or are already practicing some form of Agile development. Digital experience architecture and design professionals need to adopt Agile approaches when working with Agile development teams. While it has been the method of choice for start-ups for many years, most enterprise organizations have struggled to go […]
Go to this pageDeveloping a Set of Web & Mobile Heuristics
Web & Mobile sites are not desktop software There are a number of interface guidelines and heuristics to help evaluate user interfaces. One of the most well known are Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics for User Interface Design. These were developed by Nielsen in the mid 90’s and were intended for the evaluation of user interfaces […]
Go to this pageResponsive Retrofitting
When I first designed this site, responsive design was not as big as it is now. My main focus was getting a site dedicated to my interests in UX issues up and running as quickly as possible. After the big push to get it launched, I settled into the satisfaction of indifference that follows such […]
Go to this pageHow Microsoft can succeed with Windows 8
So I got a new Macbook pro with retina display and along with the upgrade to Mountain Lion (I’ll write another article on that experience later), I also upgraded my Parallels virtual machine and Windows system as well. For my current work environment, I was still using Windows XP for the most part and at […]
Go to this pageRecruiting the right participants for research
Often one of the biggest challenges of conducting user research is not writing out proper tasks (although that is challenging as well), or setting up the space and equipment, or even running the actual sessions, it is finding the right participants. Finding the right someone to observe and give useful feedback on your application or […]
Go to this pageAmazon.com does not allow guest checkouts
As I was reviewing the checkout process for a variety of ecommerce sites a few years ago, I found that amazon.com no longer offered the option to checkout without registration. I vaguely remember that they did allow guest checkout at one time, but it had been years since I did my first checkout with them […]
Go to this pageUX myths and misconceptions
There have been quite a few articles on the subject of UX myths. Basically, a UX myth would be an erroneous belief, misunderstanding, or misapplication of a UX method or principle. There is even a site dedicated to the listing of what are considered UX myths conveniently named uxmyths.com. There are a number of very […]
Go to this pageHow many participants do you need for a usability test?
Quite a while back Jacob Nielsen published on his site an article suggesting that 5 users are enough to uncover most of the problems in an interface when user testing. There has actually been quite a lot of research on this subject. Over at the measuringusability.com site by Jeff Sauro you can can read A […]
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