CategoryUX

January 6, 2014 — In this second part, Pete Smart will share what travelling 2517 miles taught him. Every day, he had 24 hours to observe a problem, attempt to solve it and then communicate the solution. For more of an introduction to the adventure, “50 Problems in 50 Days, Part 1: Real Empathy for Innovation” gives an overview of the project. Read more…

January 2, 2014 — Working walls are known by countless names. Underlying them all is a single idea: that physically pinning our sources of inspiration and work in progress can help us to rearrange concepts and unlock breakthrough insights. According to Vyas and his colleagues at the University of Twente, designers integrate these surfaces “artfully” and organize information in such a way that it empowers them to visualize and extend their work in progress. Read more…

December 16, 2013 — When a group wants to generate ideas, you assemble, spell out the basic ground rules for brainstorming and then have people yell out ideas one at a time. It’s a method chosen for ideation, but it is fraught with problems. Brainwriting is an easy alternative or a complement to face-to-face brainstorming, and it often yields more ideas in less time than traditional group brainstorming. In this article Chauncey Wilson will talk about this method! Read more…

December 11, 2013 — The psychological dimension that springs from a dialogue between two strategic conceptions that depend on the personality of each chess player has long been a mystery. How do Grandmasters think? The most successful strategies are rooted in our very own nature. And common to most Grandmasters is that they almost never take the easy way out. That creativity, that compulsion to look beyond what comes instinctively is what fuels successful strategies and explains why so few Grandmasters are out there. Read more…

December 3, 2013 — Navigation is merely a means to an end, and this is why users have contrasting expectations about content and navigation. While content is supposed to be unique and exciting, navigating to it is supposed to be as simple as possible. In this article, you will find a guide to efficiently simplifying the navigation experience, by analyzing the type and amount of content as well as choosing and designing the right type of navigation menu! Read more…

November 19, 2013 — The best thing any designer can do is to collect feedback from real users. Recently, Joshua Gross had an opportunity to experience thiswhen iterating on HelloSign. Thanks to testing, the app went from four stars to a solid five stars after a redesign. You’ll look at how the app started, how they ran the tests and how the product ended up with five stars. Read more…

November 11, 2013 — If customers can’t find a product, they can’t buy it. Therefore we invested eight months conducting a large-scale usability research study on the product-finding experience. We set out to explore how users navigate, find and select products on e-commerce websites. Throughout the test sessions, the subjects would abandon websites because they were unable to find the products they were looking for. All of these usability issues have been distilled into 79 concise guidelines in a report titled “Homepage & Category Usability.” In this article, we’ll go over seven of the guidelines. Read more…

October 14, 2013 — Simon Schmid has been fascinated by little things that make a big impact on the web, which is one of the reasons why he started blogging about these details. Some of the recurring topics early on were the strategies that creators use to expand the reach of their websites, the campaign page and launch and landing pages. In this post, you’ll learn what to look out for when creating your own small campaign. Read more…

October 9, 2013 — Things such as group brainstorming, on-the-fly presentations and open workspaces have become the norm in most design agencies. But the stereotypical extrovert is just one of the personalities that make up a successful team. A lot of people who excel at and are passionate about design are actually introverts. So, how can we better balance our teams and elevate extroverts and introverts alike? As introverted UX designers ourselves, we’ve been unsurprisingly passionate about finding answers to this conundrum. Read more…

October 4, 2013 — Axure is so intuitive that many users can be productive without undergoing any formal training. What they might not be aware of is that they probably aren’t using Axure optimally. In this article, David Morgan shares a list of 10 commandments with crucial techniques to save time in the long run. This way of working does not always provide the quickest results in the short term, but it does allow for optimal flexibility further down the line. Read more…