I’ve crafted a semester-long course based on my book “UX 101: A Primer on User Experience Design.” This book serves as the backbone of our syllabus, offering both beginners and seasoned designers a structured journey into the world of UX.…
User experience (UX) research is a systematic and structured approach to understanding the needs, desires, and behaviors of end users in order to design products that are useful, usable, and enjoyable to use. UX research involves a range of methods…
User research studies are activities that allow user experience practitioners understand how people think, work and act in a particular domain. By observing end users they can envision potential solutions or refine existing solutions to better align with what people…
Once you have gathered your user data, through either user interviews or usability testing, you need to analyze it. While some may consider this a daunting task, it’s not: it is, however, an activity that requires focus and objectivity. In…
When you are facilitating a usability test, there are many different factors that you should keep in mind. These techniques will help you get the most out of your test and will prevent most awkward uncomfortable moments. Here’s those tips.…
Once you have created an interface, you need to test it, and this is known as usability testing. How do you do that? Well, it’s easier than you may think. First, let’s define what we mean by the term “usability…
All you have learned about user research, information architecture, and interaction design is the foundation for the next step – execution. Taking all you have learned and defined and then designing screens that let users accomplish tasks and get things…
In user experience conversations you will often hear the term “interaction design” bandied about. What does it mean? Here’s the Wikipedia definition: Interaction design, often abbreviated IxD, is “about shaping digital things for people’s use”, alternately defined as “the practice of…
When we previously covered personas, we discussed how personas could be used as the subject of user stories or (more detailed) scenarios. These narratives detail what goals the persona wants to achieve and (in the case of scenarios) the detailed…
When you are structuring the information architecture for the content and functionality you are providing to your users, you need to think of how those users think of the domain. How do they think of the information? What preconceived models…
When I discuss the word persona with people, I get a lot of blank stares and tilted heads. The film buffs I know respond with, “The Bergman film?” and the rest of them just shake their head when I ask…
When you read about user experience and the UX design process, you will inevitably see a lot of discussion about Information Architecture. What is Information Architecture? Simply put, Information Architecture is the art and science or organizing and labeling data…
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…
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…
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…
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……