User Experience, or User Centered Design, allows you to look at how people work and what they do. The key is to focus on the user needs, to uncover and document opportunities to support people’s workflows and therefore define solutions…
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Photos: National World War Two Museum in New Orleans
I recent had the great pleasure to travel to New Orleans with my wife. While she spent much of her youth living outside the city, I had never been there. While we were only there for a weekend, we made…
UX Articles
UX Trends (I hope to see) in 2017
Here’s the article I wrote for Content Science Review last month, reposted here. In part one, I wrote about the UX Trends (I think) we will see in 2017. In this follow-up, I list trends that I hope we will…
UX Articles
UX Trends to look for in 2017
Here’s the article I wrote for Content Science Review last month, reposted here. Last January, I wrote up my thoughts on UX Trends to look for in the coming year. Looking back, these predictions were pretty accurate, but I was…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
What websites have the best new user onboarding flows?
When it comes to on-boarding new users in a web site or app, there are two ways: the old way, and the right way. The old way was akin to the setup processes that we see when you install a…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
Is design manipulative?
Great, great question. I just designed a kind of “quick start” experience that would sign users up for a series of options in one click. It looked good, tested well… But it would also take advantage of something I call…
My Quora answers, UX 101, UX Articles
Is User Experience (UX) really just where marketing meets development?
The summary answer to your question: no, it’s not. Though I can understand why you would get that impression based on the people you have worked with – people who confuse minimalism with user experience design, or are calling themselves…
Featured Articles, UX 101, UX Articles
Lessons in UX: The baseline is shifting
I had a great meeting with my team this week discussing customer expectations and needs. As part of the discussion the Kano model, which I was only slightly familiar with, came up. Created in the 1980s, the Kano model explores…
Featured Articles, UX Articles
Saying goodbye to the UX echo chamber
I’ve spoken at a number of UX design conferences in the past, though it’s been a while. The past two years my proposals have been consistently rejected, the latest being a rejection of all three of my proposed panels by…
UX Articles
Lessons in UX: “Ego-driven design”
“Look at me. Look at me, look at me, look at me!” – Laurie Anderson One of the major topics of discussion on tech news sites and discussion boards recently has been the launch – one could call it “failed”…
UX 101, UX Articles
Lessons in UX: You are probably wrong
I am a very very strong advocate of usability testing of UI designs (note to self – add an extra ‘very’ into that sentence). It helps you validate that users can understand the interface you are presenting them, it gives…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
How do you articulate and demonstrate the actual business value of your UX designs?
It's tricky, but a key success metric is and always shall be one thing: money. Did the design, when implemented, save the company money (by reducing costs) or make the company money (by increasing sales of an item). I have…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
Is a UX Architect just ‘half’ a Designer?
Interesting questions since my current job is… (checking) a UX Architect for a Fortune 500 company. I'm reminded of a joke from the classic Woody Allen movie Love and Death: Girl: I'm half saint, half whore.Woody: Let's hope it's the…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
Can the film production process teach the agile world how to make software?
I've written articles and presentations around leveraging ideas and techniques from moviemaking in the software development process, and my honest reaction to this question is… No. Moviemaking is definitely a collaborative process, but it is also one that is driven…
My Quora answers, UX Articles
What tools and processes do you use to prepare wireframes and other interaction design documents for iPhone applications?
There are two aspects of the question: one is around tools (“what tool do you/should you use?”) and the secondary question is around process (“how do you go about using your tools?”) I’ll answer the second question first and then…
UX Articles
Lessons in UX: How businesses should use social networks
A colleague and I were discussing social networks and how businesses should work and/engage with them and I realized I’ve never actually written my thoughts on the topic down. Hence, this post. Years ago, I did ethnographic research for AT&T…