Web applications live in a strange world―half application, half website. Making a command look like a command can be tricky. Do you make it a button? Should it be a link? David discusses a number of considerations for creating or updating your application’s visual design

They say you don’t get a second chance to make a great first impression. That holds true for your kickoff of that new project. How can you ensure your team members and stakeholders leave that kickoff meeting excited and inspired? On Monday, we published part 1 of an article by Kevin Hoffman, Kick Ass Kickoff [...]

Online banking is notorious for poorly thought-through interactive experiences. Chase Online is no exception. Their mortgage screen contains this list of menu options, with one of my most favorite menu options ever. As asked in the comments, this is the default presentation when you first view the menu. (Some commented it would make more sense [...]

Effective communication is the basis for keeping your team organized. But how can you be certain that everyone in your organization is on the same page when it comes to business goals, objectives and the user experience perspective? Using personas can set in you that direction and Tamara Adlin specializes in just that.

In my recent article, Understanding the Kano Model—A Tool for Sophisticated Designers, I called out Groupon’s copy as something that has a tendency to delight it’s readers: Groupon generates delight through their clever use of advertising copy for the products they sell. For example, a recent ad for half-price gourmet brownies started with: “Without chocolate, [...]

Joe was excited to get the project off the ground. Finally, his boss was giving him a chance to lead a project. This was going to be his chance to shine. He invited all the key players from various departments. As they started filing into the room he started hearing murmurs of, “Here we go [...]

“Simple trumps complete” – a 5% feature (used by less than 5% of all users) is a distraction for all the other users, and is better removed, unless its really critical (a small number of users do need to cancel service, for example). I have this mental model of particles of attention that a user [...]

Seductive interactions leverage the latest advancements in social science, psychology, and behavioral economics. Stephen Anderson shows us specific examples of sites who’ve designed serendipity, arousal, rewards, and other seductive elements into their applications.

“We learned that it was all about getting the basics right,” the product manager told me, having just come back from a tour of observing multiple customers. “We can invest in all the nifty new features we want, but if we don’t get the product’s basic features to work right, our users don’t care.” This [...]

Knowing exactly how to design web forms is a struggle. Forms are often a critical step in a user’s journey. It’s easy to frustrate them if your forms aren’t well thought out or well crafted. Luckily, Luke Wroblewski is one of the world’s foremost experts on web form design.