Yes, the physical “attractiveness” can influence the responses of test participants. If you appear well dressed, it may make the participant feel they have to be more formal and some may look to you as an authority figure, and either…
When it comes to feasability, you have to look at three things: location, labor, and the type of lair you are trying to build. Location is the most important factor, because if it is in a remote area the construction…
I will caveat my guidance in this area by stating that there are “soft skills” that all good user experience designers have: problem solving, empathy, communication skills, and collaboration. If a person starts out with a deficiency in one or…
I think you should always include and consider general best practices in user experience design when designing for mobile, as they are foundational. Know your user, test your designs, refine based on user testing… all these should be applied when…
Personalization is when the system you are using tailors itself to you and your behavior. A good example of this is Amazon "noticing" what you are buying and changing their front page to feature similar items. Customization is when the…
As a UX professional who travels a lot, I love this question. It's like playing a video game in God Mode: you are in complete control, for better or worse. Let's try for the better, shall we? A key principle…
One of the first things I would do is get a better understanding of is usage. What is the information that is being entered going to be used for? A good sense of what is important and what is not…
Here's three tips on usability from my interview on the subject with TechJournal: http://www.techjournal.org: First, create the simplest version of user interface required to accomplish the task you are designing. Take out everything that isn’t necessary to accomplish the task.…
There are several benefits to user experience design, and I'll list some of them. Before I begin, a quick note: user experience design to me encompasses EVERYTHING, from UI design to customer support processes to retail store design and packaging.…
The best response I have to this question is "it depends." Depends on the organizational culture, the amount of design rationale you have to back up your design decisions, the personalities at play in both sides of the conversation, and…
These are high-level, but I think still specific enough to be actionable. These are principles to apply to a design project, and good UX design is reflected in these principles. Know your users. Have a firm and clear "target" in mind…
I’ve gone to the Disney parks a lot. And when I say “a lot” I mean “over 20 times.” I’ve hit the parks on both coasts, and hope to someday visit the parks outside the US. When comes to least…
LinkedIn, like Google and Facebook, benefits from the more it "knows" about you. As I and others have frequently mentioned, you are not the user of such services… You are the product that the service "sells." In LinkedIn's case, the…
Timing is everything. When Minority Report came out, it was in the early days of the User Experience design field, a time when decision-makers at companies started paying attention to design. As it was the first movie that featured a…
There are two ways to look at this question: From a business perspective, and from a creative perspective. From a business perspective, you have to start by looking at the recent history of the franchise and the current marketplace. Star Trek…
The main difference between the original Battlestar Galactica series and the remake is in tone. The remake was much darker than the original, and much more "realistic" about how characters would react to the destruction of the 12 Colonies and…