We are all biased… anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves or lying. We are all biased because we are all human… We are the sum of all of our experiences, and those “inputs” influences our opinions and interpretation of…
Category: UX Articles
UX 101, UX Articles
#UX101: Typical UX jobs and roles
While UX is still a fairly “young” discipline compared to other occupations, there are some fairly consistent standards as to roles and responsibilities. Here are some typical (and not so typical) jobs that you will find out there, with some…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
To learn UX/UI design quickly, what are the three most important skills to focus on?
Human psychology. Understanding users – what they need, want, and desire – is the crucial, seminal skill a user experience professional need. It influences everything – design, content, processes, features, you name it. Knowing WHO you are designing for helps…
UX 101, UX Articles
#UX101: Design Foundations
User experience isn’t “a” skill – it’s several of them. UX is a multi-disciplined domain that requires a lot of varied abilities, and the most successful UX professionals are the ones who are good at a lot of things. The…
UX 101, UX Articles
#UX101: “Selling” user research (to management)
User research is a vital part of any design project, because if you don’t know who you are designing for, how can you be sure you’re creating the right solution? They are your real boss, the ones who are the…
UX 101, UX Articles
#UX101: Working with legacy designs
I’ve found that most of the educational materials on user experience design gives the impression that UX design projects will always be a “from scratch, develop a new product or application” effort. In my experience, that’s rarely the case. While…
UX 101, UX Articles
#UX101: Stakeholders and you!
In any design project, you are going to have one or more stakeholders. These are the people who sponsored the project, and/or are the product managers responsible for the product being design, and/or are VPs responsible for a particular division……
My Quora answers, UX Articles
How would you structure learning user experience design?
User Experience is a great discipline to get into, especially right now. Hundreds of companies around the world have started applying UX principles in their processes and products, and many more are starting to “get” that UX, properly applied, adds…
UX 101, UX Articles
#UX101: The software development life-cycle
Why a section on software development process in an introduction to user experience? Because you will need to know and integrate with such processes as part of your job as a UX professional, that’s why. You will need to know…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
What’s inside your UX workshop tool box?
What I try to have in my portable workshop "kit:" Sticky notes. Lots of sticky notes, all different colors and sizes. I always have more than I think we'll need… And sometimes we run out. Estimate how many you'll need,…
UX 101, UX Articles
#UX101: On working with developers and project managers
No man is an island – to be an effective UX professional you need to work and partner with people with different backgrounds, skills, and priorities. If you don’t build solid relationships with the many people responsible for executing the…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
What makes a really good charity website?
I think there are four things that make a good charity website: A clear mission statement. What does the charity do? What is the mission of the charity? A clear statement of the charity's goals right up front tells potential…
UX 101, UX Articles
#UX101: A few words on Content Strategy and Service Design
User experience design is a pretty broad discipline, with many different areas of focus you can align your career to. There’s information architecture, user research, usability testing, requirements modeling, wireframing, prototyping… each with a different focus, approach and outcome. I…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
What are the parameters for user experience audit?
You can’t go wrong by starting out using the 10 Usability Heuristics for User Experience Design, as created by Jakob Nielsen: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/… They are “best practices” for interaction design, and they are (in summary): Visibility of system status Match between…
UX 101, UX Articles
#UX101: The User Centered Design Process
One of the things I get asked a lot by people interested in user experience design is “How do you do what you do?” The sometimes want specifics, but often the question is broad… what is your process? So, let’s…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
What are the “open problems” in UX design?
An "open problem" is a question without a known solution, and the interesting thing about user experience design is that we don't have a lot of open problems or questions, it's that we often have TOO MANY ANSWERS. A couple…