“You’re just an enabler!” Yes. Yes, I am. I am not an enabler that a Doctor Phil would shame on his show, an encourager of destructive behavior. I’m an enabler because I’m a user experience designer: I create software and…
One of the more interesting things I’ve been able to do in my career is establishing a user experience team’s design process. Obviously, there are standard phases and steps all UX processes share – some form of discovery and research,…
We live in a bubble. When I say “We”, I refer to my fellow travelers in user experience design. We read tech articles on new software releases, we look at design sites and study style guides from Apple, Amazon and…
I’ve been doing user experience design for more than a dozen years now, and I’m still learning. Part of why I’m still learning is the technology that users interact and engage with is evolving at a fairly rapid clip, and…
There’s been a lot of discussion over the past year or so about the “Internet of Things”, which basically posits that soon everything will be connected to the cloud and this interconnectivity of hardware will revolutionize our lives. To this…
There are two big topics in technology right now: The Internet of Things and Wearables. While I have some very distinct opinions on the former, I’ll leave that for another day. Today I’d like to discuss the space called “wearables”.…
I was unable to make the deadline to contribute to the “UX Trends” article UX Magazine recently published due to other commitments (curse you, international business travel!), but I am never one to let good content go to waste. So,…
Last month I had the pleasure of speaking at Digital Summit Dallas on UX – specifically on how the philosophies of Bruce Lee can help make anyone become a better user experience professional. Here’s the presentation I gave:
Looking over my traffic logs and wrapping up the year, I decided to compile a Top 10 list of the most-read articles of my site this past year (hey, everyone is doing it). It’s actually a somewhat surprising list: Number…
One of the big topics of conversation in UX circles the past few years has been “Lean UX”, an approach focused on minimizing and reducing design documentation in order to focus more on what is being designed instead of the artifacts. I’m…
If you were paying attention to pop culture news this past weekend you’ll have seen that a whole lot of photos of female celebrities, in various levels of undress, leaked onto the Internet. The photos, illegally taken from the iCloud…
One of the most beneficial activities you can do on a large design project (especially if it’s a web application) is to define a pattern library. This architectural document details the framework that all the UI screens and screen elements…
The three are different, but not as much as you may think. Let’s talk about stories. No, not user stories… stories. We are wired to engage with and tell stories – it is a seminal part of the human species.…
Here’s some of my favorite quotes about user experience design – some are directly about UX, others are about creativity and simplicity. Enjoy. “A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures.” Ben Shneiderman “Good…
After getting a lot of feedback (some good, some bad – all helpful) I have made some revisions to UX 101 and have finished up a second edition of the book. The new edition will soon be available on Amazon…
I’ve worked in the UX discipline for over a decade now, and have been on a number of projects both large and small. One of the skills I’ve picked up in that time is pattern recognition, which helps me create…