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…)
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…)
Design patterns for mobile are emerging as the platform matures. Theresa Neil’s new book Mobile Design Pattern Gallery provides solutions to common design challenges. Read a sample chapter on Invitations and learn how to immediately engage your customers with your application. We recently had a new mobile project starting and all of our experienced mobile designers were booked. (more…)
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…)
Last week, we highlighted how we have to solve problems at the mobile level if we're truly going to be Mobile First. This is something we've been thinking about for awhile now, especially when it comes to column grids on a mobile device and whether two was better than three. Think about it for a sec. You're reading on your smartphone, but the content is crammed into three columns. (more…)
I was rummaging through my drafts folder and stumbled on this old post walking through the process of designing the “Goals” feature on our old product, before we switched to what Segment.io is now. I think it’s an interesting look into how a mockup progresses in Photoshop, so here it is: (more…)
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…)
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…)
News websites have been with us for about a decade, and editors and designers still struggle with many unanswered questions: Is homepage layout effective? (more…)
Right now, on your site, 7 deadly usability mistakes could be hacking and slashing away at your sales… And you probably don’t even know they are there. Fortunately, there is a lot of research in the UX (user experience) and eye-tracking space, and today you’re going to get these insightful studies served up in laymen’s terms, allowing you to incorporate their findings into your site’s design and interface. (more…)
User experience is most often thought of in the context of public-facing designs, like e-commerce sites and, more recently, mobile apps. Increasingly, however, organizations are becoming aware of the benefits of UX to what they do internally. Most companies have spent the last decade attempting to shed as much cost as possible in order to remain competitive and maximize profits. (more…)
Interaction Design has been practised long before the digital revolution, but under different guises and representing many other facets of today’s design language. Once you understand the underlying principles, you will probably realise that everything that has ever been designed effectively, has had some interaction design techniques applied. (more…)
Every project I've worked on in my 17-year career has had one thing in common. At some point someone says, "It should be simple." But what does "simple" actually mean? People can always tell when something is simple, uncomplicated, elegant, not overworked, or a number of other near-synonyms, but can rarely articulate why something is simple. (more…)
The rapid pace of UX design in the agile world can lead to shortsighted design decisions. Focusing on addressing the immediate needs of particular user stories within the limits of a sprint can lead to neglect of larger design questions, which can come back to haunt UX designers later. (more…)
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