One of the many things I am paying close attention to is the demographic group called “Tweens.” These are young people, aged 11 to 14, who grew up in a world where Internet access and mobile devices are ever-present. These aren’t…
UX 101, UX Articles
Lessons in UX: Want to be a user experience designer? Expose yourself to different experiences.
Everything is designed. That basic insight is something I realized many years ago – and, while the idea that someone, somewhere, created the designs of everything around you, wherever you are maybe is an obvious fact, embracing that idea should…
UX Articles
Lessons in UX: Who wins Black Friday? The retailer who provides the best shopping experience
Yes, I was out at 4 AM on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, in order to get some of the “door-buster” sale items retailers were offering to shoppers who hit the stores early. Yes, sometimes I am not terribly…
UX Articles
Lessons in UX: Are addicting experiences good or bad for users?
Farmville. Desktop Tower Defense. World of Warcraft. Twitter. All of the above have one thing in common: for many many users they are incredibly addictive experiences, sucking hours and hours of time away from them day after day. Updates from…
UX 101, UX Articles
Lessons in Mobile UX: “First, do no harm”
Having just completed an extensive ethnographic research project in the mobile space, my head is still chock-full of observations, findings and notes around how people use their mobile devices every day of their lives. But one thought bubbles to the…
UX Articles
Lessons in UX: Should you facilitate usability tests of your own designs?
This is a topic of discussion that comes up in conversations with my peers about every six months or so. Should you test your own designs? Many, perhaps even the majority, say no – designers need to not facilitate usability…
UX Articles
Lessons in UX (from the iPhone): Take care when providing a “feast of riches” to your users
The iPhone has a problem. There’s too much you can do with it. This is a problem, you may be asking? Yes, it is, because there are so many things you can do with the device (thanks to hundreds of…
UX Articles
Lessons in UX: “A failure of empathy”
The great This Week in Google podcast just had a very enlightening conversation about the new Google Sidewiki. This feature, just rolled out last week, allows anyone who has the Google Toolbar to open a sidebar on any site to…
UX Articles
Lessons in UX Design: The future is not what it used to be
Time is broken. Well, it may not be broken, but, from where I stand, it isn’t moving at the same pace it used to. Maybe it’s because I’m about to cross a particularly notable threshold (I leave my 30s in…
UX 101, UX Articles
The immediacy of now: Designing for the reactionary user experience
One of the major design projects I worked on a few months back involved redesigning a financial management web application. As part of that initial work we created a concept that used a calendar as the system’s primary navigation. Users…
UX Articles
Lessons in UX: “Experience rules” are just as important as business rules
In the standard software development lifecycle, one of the first things discussed are the requirements. How does it work? What is its purpose? What functions does the program need to provide? The casual conversation eventually leads to a more formal…
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UX Articles
UX designers, be aware of “experience sensitivity”
I recently completed some ethnographic research around a certain demographic group (intellectual property constraints prevents me from naming said group, however it rhymes with “Men, hi!”). One of the more interesting things I discovered was that for most of the…
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?