Postcard Patterns: An Agile UI Pattern Creation Process
Traditionally, creating and maintaining a pattern library has been a daunting task requiring extensive resources and, sometimes, dedicated full-time employees. At Salesforce.com our first attempt at producing a comprehensive library was bogged down by a waterfall-based creation and review process that yielded only two patterns in a six-month period. (more…)
Brand as Context in Interaction Design
I’m sure I was swearing allegiance to one brand over another as soon as I began to develop the capacity for critical thought. Reebok vs. Nike, Coke vs. Pepsi, SEGA vs. Nintendo, Apple vs. Microsoft—these warring companies were more than just brands to me, they were almost systems of belief. (more…)
Brands as Patterns
Brands as Patterns We all know that brands are increasingly accessed digitally, but a less considered consequence is that the interface through which a brand is accessed has become a primary identity element. This requires that a brand’s “identity” should not only be defined statically or dynamically, but also iteratively through successive release and behaviorally through interactions. Through this iterative interaction, the brand becomes a constantly shifting relationship between the company and its customers. (more…)
Defining User Experience as Brand Experience
I have found that the best way to think of user experience is as the core of a brand: the reactor or the nucleus. Without good user experience your brand means nothing. But what is a brand? Its most basic definition is the sum of the experiences that a person has with a company or organization. You may be wondering what branding has to do with you the interface designer. (more…)
What UI really is (and how UX confuses matters)
People mix the terms UI and UX together. UX is tricky because it doesn’t refer to any one thing. Interface design, visual styling, code performance, uptime, and feature set all contribute to the user’s “experience.” Books on UX further complicate matters by including research methods and development methodologies. All of this makes the field confusing for people who want to understand the fundamentals. (more…)
Complete Beginner’s Guide to Interaction Design
This article serves as a good jumping off point for people interested in learning more about Interaction Design. To that point, we’ll briefly cover the history, guiding principles, noteworthy contributors, tools, etc. related to this fascinating discipline. Even if you’re an interaction designer yourself, give the article a read and share your thoughts in the comments below. (more…)
The Five Worst UX Mistakes Websites Make
The user experience of websites has improved by leaps and bounds over the years, but I still run into sites that make me ask, “What were they thinking?!”. From a design perspective, it’s easy to get caught up in internal squabbles (“No, no, THIS is the content that has to be front and center”) or distracted by tools or methods (“I say we use lean UX on this project”). (more…)
Nathan Curtis – Prototyping with HTML and CSS
Prototyping is an effective way to communicate design ideas. Static PDFs, PSDs, and wireframes can help get your point across but aren’t dynamic. Usually, any necessary changes are logged away as to-dos. They’re then taken back, fixed, and presented again. (more…)
Onboarding: Designing Welcoming First Experiences
A prime example of great onboarding One of the best and most often-cited examples of an onboarding process is on Tumblr.com. Tumblr proudly calls itself the easiest way to blog and goes to great lengths to prove its point. The sign-up process itself is dead simple—just a single form to provide an email address, password, and desired URL. (more…)
Don’t let user experience design methods die
This is where I disagree. I started my career in the product world. I worked at big companies, startups, and now an agency. I’ve used (and have observed others using) these “terrible” UX methods very successfully. Ryan is extremely lucky to work at a company like 37signals where personas, user journeys, and wireframes are not needed. (more…)
Visceral Apps and You
For the past few years, I’ve been watching the buzz around various products and trying to figure out just what it was that made them so tantalizing. Obviously, great UI and beautiful graphics are important. The use of white space, typography and functionality are all critical. Great apps also have great attention to detail. It’s important to really nail each of these things (more…)
What UX Methods To Use And When To Use Them
There are a number of popular methods used in improving the user experience at all phases of research and design. The following are some of the more popular methods we use and when we use them. We will focus on most of these methods in detail at the UX Bootcamp in Denver. (more…)
Contextualization is the Key to Delivering Powerful, Personalized Digital Experiences
It’s no secret that firms want to deliver the right experience to the right user at the right time on the right device. But increased options and heightened customer expectations caused by the splinternet—the fragmented world of web, social, video, and mobile touchpoints and devices—has made delivering relevant digital experiences more important (and challenging) than ever before. (more…)
Using Mind Maps for UX Design: Part 1 – Sketch Mapping
Sketch maps are mind maps of, well, sketches. They are diagrams that organize ideas in a tree-based structure where sketches are used as the way to illustrate those concepts. Others have used similar approaches under different terms (sketchboarding, storyboarding, or simply just mind mapping that happens to include sketches). (more…)