Developing a good set of fundamentals is key to successful user experience design. But if you work for an organization that doesn’t recognize the importance of design, just possessing the skills isn’t enough. It will prove difficult for you to change the company’s culture if they view UX as this huge, disruptive endeavor. Cennydd believes that you can take a lightweight approach to introducing user experience without people realizing that you’re actually doing it.

You see the value in attending the User Interface 16 Conference. You see how the full-day workshops provide the tools and techniques to create a better user experience. But how do you convince your boss to send you? Why you need to be in Boston, November 7-9. Invest in your skills Spend a little money [...]

From a user experience perspective, it’s clear what you need to do in a waterfall process. You need to gather any research that will affect the requirements, before the requirements are done. You need to test your designs before the designs are signed off. You need to evaluate the functionality as it’s being built. And [...]

You can’t ask people what they want. They can’t tell you. The answer is almost always narrow in focus, concerned with the here and now rather than the future. How do you get them to give you the observations you need to design what they will want? Conducting field research to actually learn about your users can lead to innovative new ideas. Steve knows that going out into the field provides real opportunities to see what the world surrounding your product is like.

“This is a perfect opportunity for us to use that mega menu we wanted to try out.” That’s what I heard a few weeks ago, sitting in a client meeting. The client was dealing with balancing a lot of navigation while keeping their home page free for the important messages they want everyone to see. [...]

A good starting point is crucial. It sets the tone for everything that comes after. All too often, projects are unsuccessful or labor through growing pains because the importance of this starting point was overlooked. When done right, the kickoff to a project will leave the team energized, inspired, and engaged. Kevin discusses that kickoff meetings are the time to identify business strategy as well as company culture. It’s also important to assess any risks associated with the project.

When shooting the movie, the director doesn’t necessarily film the scenes in the order they’ll appear once edited. Instead, the filmmakers shoot the pieces according to other constraints, such as the availability of actors or locations, or accommodating variability in the weather. It’s not unusual for the movie’s final climax to be among the first [...]

Story mapping is a way of organizing Agile user stories that communicate user experience. Agile expert Jeff Patton will show you how this technique helps you put the big picture of UX and the little pictures of Agile in one place. Users will always have an experience with your product. Story mapping will pull your UX focus into the organization’s process and ensure that experience is a great one.

The introduction of CSS3 and HTML5 brought with it a host of new capabilities. With most modern browsers supporting CSS3 and HTML5, implementing them into your designs is becoming easier. Understanding the things that are now possible with these new standards can help you create better designs more efficiently and effectively than ever before. Stephanie and Greg discuss what the introduction of HTML5 and CSS3 means for designers and developers, and what can be accomplished today by putting it into practice.

To improve the designs we’re creating today, we know that teams do best when they have all of the essential information about their users to make informed decisions. In our experience, one of the most powerful ways to gather important insights about users is the field study. By making direct observations, design teams can identify [...]