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,…
Category: UX Articles
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…
UX 101, UX Articles
Best Practices in UI Form Design
I looked back over some of my older writing and realized that I had written about form design in three separate posts. These posts, while similar, contained different ideas and recommendations. Thus, I have decided to combine them here. Keep…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
What are the latest trends in mobile design that a UX team should follow to build a good app?
Flat design. Apps that have skeumorphic elements are old news, the new design “style” is Flat. Not to say that skeumporhism doesn’t have it’s place – you just need to do it right. Drag down to refresh. Lots of apps…
UX 101, UX Articles
#UX101: A (brief) history of user experience
What we now call “user experience design” began a lot longer ago than many people realize. In fact, you can trace UX design WAY, WAY back… all the way to when humans created the first tools. A tool in its…
UX Articles
Recommendations and Best Practices in Mobile Usability Testing
NOTE: Much of this content is based on two earlier blog entries I wrote here a while back in 2009, so I added some additional and more recent details to come up with this revised version… Prescreening users First, prescreen your…
UX 101, UX Articles
#UX101: What is UX, anyway?
I am writing my new book UX 101 the same way that two of my literary idols, Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens, did: in serial, one chapter at a time. I hope to post a new segment every week…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
What would be good interview questions for a user experience design lead?
I always like to throw some "hypotheticals" into an interview for a UX designer, and here's a couple I sometimes use: "You have two choices: Lead a high profile design project with a huge budget that has a low chance…
UX Articles
Some UX 101 articles to tide you over…
I’m currently working on my next book on user experience design, an introductory tome titled UX101. Even though I’m making good progress, it’ll be a while before I can complete to my satisfaction. So, to tide you over, I’ve highlighted…
My Quora answers, UX 101, UX Articles
When creating web and mobile application UIs, what is better: "Flat Design" or "Skeuomorphic Design"?
It depends. Yes, I know, that's a cop-out, but not really… There are benefits and drawbacks to both, and what your are designing and who you are designing for is just as important as the design "style" ("Flat" or "skeuomorphic")…
My Quora answers, UX 101, UX Articles
Should companies with in-house UX teams evaluate their own work or engage external UX consultants to do so?
Bringing in an external consultant to evaluate a team's work is a BAD idea, for several reasons. First off, the consultant can be the best UX professional in the world who makes the most cogent points possible… but he or…