UIE Brain Sparks

UIEtips: Prototyping – Picking the Right Tool

User experience professionals know that prototyping should be a key part of the design process. You generate design concepts. You test them. You discover what works and what needs improving. You find opportunities for new ideas. But when it comes to prototyping tools and methods to use, many of us are unsure what to do. There’s lots [...]

A Practitioners Guide to Prototyping

Our March 31 webinar, A Practitioners Guide to Prototyping, is full of great stuff for you: a critical topic, a rock star presenter, loads of actionable takeaways, a free PDF copy of an acclaimed book, a bonus seminar. What more could you want for your team? Prototyping is an iterative process. You discover what works, [...]

SpoolCast: Design Lessons from Facebook’s 350 Million with Julie Zhuo

Julie Zhuo is the principal designer behind the Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect experiences, and has contributed to the last two major site redesigns. She sat down to chat with our Jared Spool.

UIEtips: Social Tagging and the Enterprise – Does Tagging Work at Work?

Tagging has been around for more than 8 years. The technique, also called folksonomy, is simple: users apply their own words or phrases to content they uncover, leaving a trail back for themselves and for future content seekers. Each tag conveys meaning, giving a path to discovering new content that traditional navigation can’t. Since their inception, [...]

The Promise of Folksonomies, Real or hype?

When folksonomies showed up almost 10 years ago, they promised to make information on our sites easier to use. After all, if users apply their own tags to every piece of content, everything will be easier to find, right? Maybe yes, maybe no. Our favorite taxonomy and category expert, Stephanie Lemieux, has spent the last few [...]

SpoolCast: Interesting Moments with Bill Scott

Bill Scott chats with Jared Spool about rich interactions, his new book about them, and his deep history with them at Sabre, Yahoo! and now Netflix. Bill is one of the stellar presenters scheduled for all four cities on the UIE Web App Masters Tour.

UIEtips: Browse vs. Search in Application Navigation

When our applications grow large and complex, how do we help users find the right commands and functions? If we were talking about large data sets, we’d build in a search capability. Would search also work for finding commands? Our good friend, Hagan Rivers, explores that question in this issue of UIEtips. Inspired by our recent [...]

Got Questions? Robert Hoekman & I Might Have Answers

Robert Hoekman, Jr and I are teaming forces once again, to do our best to answer your UX questions. If you’re not familiar with it, Robert and I do a little podcast show we call Userability. You ask us a question. We give you an answer. Occasionally, we give you a good answer. Sometimes, we (and [...]

UIEtips: The Essence of a Successful Persona Project

Personas have been part of the UX toolbox for a while. Yet we’ve always wondered why teams don’t use them more often. A few years back, we set off to answer that question. We discovered a variety of ways to create personas — each valuable in their own right. With our clients, we’ve been using a [...]

SpoolCast: Moving Beyond Static Forms with Luke Wroblewski

The world's foremost authority on web forms is Luke Wroblewski, author of the heralded book, Web Form Design. It's no coincidence that we lean on Luke often to join us at events like our upcoming Web App Masters Tour. Jared Spool sat down with Luke to discuss what's been happening with web forms since his book came out. It winds up there have been some interesting developments recently.

Ad Hoc Personas

Treat your team to a conference-quality seminar right from your own office. Join us for the next UIE Virtual Seminar, The Power of Ad Hoc Personas: Truly Practical Methods to Get Your Organization On the Same Page, with Tamara Adlin, Thursday, February 18. When you kick off a project right, everything is much easier. When that [...]

SpoolCast: Leveraging Search Patterns & Discovery with Peter Morville

In this podcast, Jared Spool sits down with Peter Morville to answer many excellent questions from the recent Leveraging Search and Discovery Patterns virtual seminar. Even if you did not attend, there's a lot of great information in this podcast.

UIEtips: The Apple Store’s Checkout Form Redesign

It’s hard to have a conversation about great design without mentioning Apple. Usually, we’re talking about the design of the iPod, iPhone, or last week’s newly announced iPad. However, those aren’t the only interesting challenges Apple’s talented designers have tackled. They’ve done an amazing job with something that wouldn’t get a lot of attention otherwise: the [...]

SpoolCast: Escaping Navigation Hell with Hagan Rivers

We turn to Hagan Rivers for insight on designing challenging web applications year-after-year because she just keeps coming up with better and better ideas. Recently, Jared sat down to talk with Hagan to discuss her somewhat radical notion, designing web app navigation as its own, separate application.

SpoolCast: Stephen Anderson on Seductive Interactions

How can we design systems that encourage the behaviors we want? In this episode, Jared speaks with Stephen Anderson about using human psychology in web apps to encourage users' behavior.

UIEtips: Web Apps – Where Business Needs & User Needs Collide

Web-based applications are a different beast than other types of software or web sites. Web app designers not only have to take care of the users’ goals, but also ensure that the business needs are taken into account. The business needs can be complex. They come from all over the enterprise, originating from initiatives (like marketing [...]

SpoolCast: Prototyping Seminar Follow-up

A followup conversation with Fred Beecher answering more questions about prototyping tools and techniques, after his popular, recent Virtual Seminar on the topic.

Article: Interview-Based Tasks: Learning from Leonardo DiCaprio

UIEtips 3/7/06: Interview-Based Tasks: Learning from Leonardo DiCaprio

Interview-based tasks are a radical usability testing technique, designed to counter problems that arise when assumptions are made about how users solve their own problems.

SpoolCast: Effective Moderating for Usability Testing Followup

Back in October, we asked usability testing expert Beth Loring to present a UIE Virtual Seminar on how to Effectively Moderate Usability Tests. As is often the case, we got lots of great questions from the live audience, but just couldn’t get to them all. Adam and Beth got together to record this podcast and cover some of the remaining issues.

The Art of Asking the Question

The topic of our next UIE Virtual Seminar is so important, and no one talks about it. On Thursday, January 28, Steve Portigal will deliver his talk: Deep Dive Interviewing Secrets: Making Sure You Don’t Leave Key Information Behind. (Oh, and by the way, our last event sold out, so you’ll want to Register your [...]

On The Road: January 2010

This month, I’m making the rounds in New England, New York, and Old Washington DC. Presentation: Revealing Design Treasures of The Amazon STC NNE – Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 6pm The Northern New England Society for Technical Communicators Chapter Dion Center, Rivier College, Nashua, NH NYC UPA – Tuesday, January 19, 2010, 6pm New York City Usability Professionals Association Chapter Bloomberg L.P., [...]

San Diego Lineup Complete: Hagan Rivers & Luke Wroblewski

With today’s additions to the UIE Web App Masters Tour, we complete our line up for the first stop in San Diego. (When is that, you ask? Why it’s March 23-24. We can’t wait to be there.) Joining the other seven presenters for our two-day deep dive into all things wonderful about Web Apps will be: Hagan [...]

W00t! 2 More Masters: Bill Scott & Ken Kellogg

Good news, everyone. We’ve lined up two more Masters for our UIE Web App Masters Tour. We’re thrilled to announce Bill Scott and Ken Kellogg will be joining us. Bill Scott First, let me say this: Bill is the nicest person on the entire planet. You’ll notice this the moment you talk to him. But that’s not [...]

UIEtips: Spending Quality Time with Your Search Log

The search log, an often over-looked part of our site analytics, can offer a wealth of great information about how people interact with our design. We know, for example, that users often search for a keyword they don’t find on the screen, in essence creating their own link. Inspecting the search log can tell us [...]

Two New Masters: Julie Zhuo & Christian Crumlish

Hot off the presses! We’ve just finalized two more Masters for the UIE Web App Masters Tour, Julie Zhuo and Christian Crumlish. We’re thrilled they can join us. Julie Zhuo The designers at Facebook try hard to make Facebook users happy. It’s a hard-to-please audience, and there’s 350 million of them. As Facebook’s Product Design Manager, [...]

Preparing to Launch – UIE Web App Masters Tour

This is exciting. We’re putting the finishing touches on our upcoming UIE Web App Masters Tour. An event this momentous takes months to make happen. And now, we’re just days away from having every detail lined up. Here’s the facts: We’re going to 4 cities between March and July, 2010: San Diego, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Seattle. We [...]

UIEtips: UIE’s Top Podcasts of 2009

Last week in UIEtips, we revisited some of our favorite articles from 2009. Now we’re turning our attention to our top podcasts of 2009. This past year we produced some outstanding podcasts covering a range of topics with several invited experts. We’ve selected our favorite podcasts that we feel strongly benefits anyone who works in the [...]

What was your “Total Impress”?

While attending the User Friendly Conference in Shanghai, China this year, we stayed at the Hau Ting Hotel. During one of the meals there, they handed us this card to rate their service. Now, the translation issues of Chinglish aside, this card points out problems common with measuring satisfaction. The first has to do with the polarity. [...]

Marriott Courtyard: Lobby Prototyping

Mark Hurst interviewed Brian King, VP & Global Brand Manager for Courtyard by Marriott about the new design of their hotels. It’s a great read, talking about how you revitalize a cash-cow business by creating a great experience. One of Brian’s comments jumped out at me: We took our knowledge and created, in a warehouse in San [...]

Make Search Better for Your Site

Join us January 12 for our next webinar: Leveraging Search & Discovery Patterns For Great Online Experiences, with Peter Morville and Mark Burrell.

UIEtips: Favorite Articles from 2009

We published a lot of great articles during 2009. We featured guest writers, published interviews, and wrote numerous articles on the research we’ve done. At year’s end, it’s common to reflect and revisit what you’ve done. We thought about the articles that had the biggest impact and really got people thinking. Even if some readers didn’t agree [...]

UIEtips: Three Perils with Search Landing Pages

How is a search result like a thoughtful gift? The outcome exceeds the expectation. Ok, that’s kind of a lame riddle, but it’s accurate nonetheless. When we get a wrapped present, we hope the unwrapping will produce something that delights us. The same is true clicking on a search result. We anticipate it will serve our needs [...]

How the Web App Thingy Got Its New Name

Producing a brand new event is exciting. Lots to think about: the speakers, the topics, and the locations. Yet what immediately separates one conference from another is its name. We’ve launched a ton of events in the 21 years we’ve been around. But this time, we were a little stuck for the name. So we put [...]

When Search Meets Web Usability

Your organization spends considerable resources to get people to come to your site. Does your site do what it needs to once they get there? Your users’ experience is a fluid event that frequently starts someplace like Google and, if you’re lucky, ends with them accomplishing their objective at your site. The goal is to make [...]

SpoolCast: Recruiting for Usability Testing Followup

User experience research lives or dies by the appropriateness of the participants in the study. If the participants match the real users, you're set. We held a Virtual Seminar with Dana Chisnell to discuss recruiting for usability testing, and this is the followup podcast to that seminar. In the podcast, Dana answers remaining questions from the seminar.

UIEtips: The Right Trigger Words

“On a web site, the design is represented by two separate yet equally important components. The content users and the links they use. These are their stories.” Doink-Doink. Ok, really it’s just the story of the links. (We’ll talk about the content later, I promise.) About 10 years ago, we started looking at how users decided to [...]

Contest Update: Name our Web App Thingy!

The plans for the our Web App Thingy event are moving along quickly. We’ve already lined up some kick-ass speakers on topics like Web App Navigation, Design Patterns, and building in Seductive Interfaces. We’re scoping out the venues to decide which of the four cities we’re gonna bring the tour to. And we’re getting really [...]

UIEtips: Deciding When Graphics Will Help (and When They Won’t)

We got ourselves into big trouble back in 1996. In our seminal report, Web Site Usability: A Designer’s Guide, we wrote a little sentence that attracted a lot of angry emails from designers everywhere: “Graphic design neither hurts nor helps.” We’d looked at sites that had made a huge investment in adding graphics to their sites [...]

The 2010 UIE Virtual Seminar Schedule

This is your chance to save up to 50% plus lifetime access to the virtual seminars offered during your subscription period. We're wrapping up 2009 and kicking off 2010 with stellar insights from some of the best speakers in the user experience design community. You choose the program that works best for you. Choose a 3-Month Subscription or a 6-Month Subscription. Sign-up Once. Pay Once. Lifetime Access.

Contest: Help Us Name Our Web App Thingy

Over the years, people have called us a lot of names. Here’s your chance to help us with a new one. In 2010, we’re bringing a cool new series of 2-day events to four US cities. We’re still putting it together, so I can’t share too many details. I can reveal this: It’s gonna be about the [...]

Icons & Images on December 3

One of our most popular UIE Virtual Seminar presenters is back, sharing his thoughts with you on visual design. On December 3, Patrick Hofmann drills down into one of his favorite topics, Effective Use of Icons & Images. Icons and images are being used more today than ever before to aid people in finding information. How [...]

UIEtips: Design – Exploring Options and Making Decisions

“It’s expensive.” “We don’t have time.” “This was the only solution we could think of.” Often, when we talk to teams about whether they think they explored enough design alternatives, they tell us they didn’t because of time, resources, or their own lack of imagination. However, good design doesn’t have to be an expensive [...]

UI14 Session Sampler: Leah Buley’s A UX Team of One.

An audio selection from Leah Buley’s A UX Team of One 7.5MB – 14min 15sec If you didn’t attend the User Interface Conference this year, you may have missed the buzz over Leah Buley’s session entitled “How to be a User Experience Team of One”. Attendees loved it. Leah gave them tips and techniques used by top [...]

UIEtips: Gerry McGovern Says “Manage the Tasks”

For years, we’ve known about the importance of completing tasks. Not the items on your to-do list — the users’ tasks. What we found in our research over the last 10 years is that practically every measure of users’ performance correlates strongly with the users completing their task. Users who achieve their objective believe the web [...]

SpoolCast: Innovation Beyond the Buzzword

How can you bring real innovation into your projects? That's what I asked Scott Berkun when we spoke earlier this month. Scott has a lot of great ideas for your team from his years of research into the habits of highly innovative teams. In addition to this interview, Scott will be presenting at our User Interface Conference in November.

UIEtips: Four Essential Skills for Information Architects – An Interview with Donna Spencer

I recently facilitated several usability tests, watching user after user struggle with our client’s web site. Not one user could find the most valuable content on the site. Every user knew exactly what they wanted and all of the information they were looking for was available — they just had no idea how to find [...]

UIEtips: Moderating with Multiple Personalities: 3 Roles for Facilitating Usability Tests

Sometimes, just adding a mental image to something difficult can make it dramatically easier. I discovered this while helping people learn to become better usability test moderators. Moderating a usability test is difficult. There’s a lot going on, and you have to keep it all moving. Years ago, when we were privileged to have Carolyn Snyder [...]

Effectively Moderating Usability Tests, October 21

You’ve just been asked to moderate a usability test. Whether it’s your first or your 199th, do you know how to do it and capture the best results? Will you be able to start it without a lump in your throat, or without being distracted by the thought that your every move is being watched? We’re bringing an expert [...]

SpoolCast: Visual Design for the Non-Designer

What can a non-designer do to harness the power of visual design without calling professional help? Quite a lot, says internationally-regarded visual designer Dan Rubin. We called Dan to talk about what design techniques are accessible to mere mortals. He also gave us a preview of his day-long workshop for non-designers at our User Interface 14 Conference, this November.

SpoolCast: Information Architecture Essentials

Donna Spencer is our long-time, go-to expert on the topic of Information Architecture. We're happy to bring her stateside again for the upcoming User Interface 14 conference. Recently, I spoke with her, all the way from Australia, in advance of her trip to Boston.

UIEtips: Part 3 – Breaking Up Large Documents for the Web

Determining how and when to use a PDF on your web site can be tricky. Originally, a PDF was used as a way to view a document regardless of the viewer’s operating system or software used to create the document. It was a way to make a hard copy of a document more accessible. The [...]

UIEtips: Breaking Up Large Documents for the Web – Part 2

Deciding how much content to put on your web pages can be a difficult task. There’s no standard guideline telling you when to use one long page or break your content into several pages. Often the content itself dictates the page length, but should it? In today’s UIEtips, we continue with part 2 of a [...]

SpoolCast: Prototyping Experiences

Todd Zaki Warfel has just finished two years of research into the tools and processes used in prototyping web sites. His findings will be published in a book due out this fall and we've asked him to give a full-day workshop on the topic at UI14. Todd sat down with us to talk all about prototyping tools and processes, and previews his upcoming workshop at UI14.

UIEtips: Breaking Up Large Documents for the Web – Part 1

When you visit a web site, you go there with a purpose. Perhaps it’s to buy a product, to do some research, to read an interesting article, or view an image. It’s rare to simply browse a web site with no particular intent. How you display your content so visitors can easily find what [...]

SpoolCast: Designing for Facets Followup

A few weeks back we held a UIE Virtual Seminar with Pete Bell and Daniel Tunkelang of Endeca. These guys are the experts we go to when talking about designing for facets. As always, we had a number of excellent questions from the live audience that we couldn’t attend to during the seminar, so I got together with Pete and Daniel to record this podcast and cover a number of those remaining questions.

UIEtips article: Avoiding Demographics When Recruiting Participants

User research is now a critical tool in the toolbox of design teams. However, it only works well if you involve the right participants in the study. Having the participants that match the design’s audience will give the team feedback on what works well and where the design needs rethinking. By learning from the participants, the team can [...]

Usability Testing: Do You Have the Right People In the Room?

In our next UIE Virtual Seminar, Recruiting for Usability Testing on Wednesday, September 30, usability testing expert Dana Chisnell shows you how to maximize your time and money on the right participants to get the right results. User experience research lives or dies by the appropriateness of the participants in the study. UX researchers just don’t [...]

UIEtips: How I Draft an Information Architecture

I like to cook. I enjoy perusing cookbooks and discovering interesting ingredients that I haven’t use. Following a recipe is really just following a process, a proven way that has worked in the past. The folks at Cooks Illustrated created a formal process for testing out a recipe. They specialize in the “what if” scenario by testing out a recipe [...]

Blog and Podcasting Update

Things may be a little out of sync around the blog, especially regarding our podcasts, for the next day or so.

SpoolCast: Managing Sites for Top Tasks

One of the most popular speakers in the history of our User Interface Conference is Gerry McGovern. Certainly most of that popularity is thanks to Gerry's no-nonsense, customer-centric approach to content management strategy. Gerry joins us in this podcast to discuss customer care words and managing top tasks.

What is the Essence of Your Product?

In our next UIE Virtual Seminar, Wednesday, September 9 (09/09/09!), Bill DeRouchey shows you examples of how to tackle this question – What is the essence of your product? Interaction with a product is more than how it’s used or how it behaves. It’s about a connection between two sides. One side is the [...]

Userability #13 – Renaissance Man

This week we have our longest, and certainly one of our most interesting episodes to date. Jared and Robert met Joshua Muskovitz on the IxDA discussion list when Josh posted an innocent-enough question to the list: what do you call someone who sits squarely on the fence between interaction design and implementation? How do I market myself while job hunting when I have been in the industry so long that I have a really broad range of skills?

SpoolCast: Getting to Good Design Faster

Leah Buley brings us her insight to getting to the good design faster in your process and improving the input you receive from your organization. There are some great ideas here that you should listen to.

UIEtips: Information Interplay – Visual Design, Information Architecture, and Content

There’s an on-going debate in the design community: are teams better off with generalists or specialists? Those taking the generalist side argue that a breadth of abilities helps more. On the specialists’ side, they claim it is the depth of specific abilities delivering the benefit. From our research in what makes up the most successful teams, [...]

SpoolCast: The Web as a Conversation

Ginny Redish joins us to discuss why the web should act like a telephone conversation between you and your customers.

UIEtips: Deriving Design Strategy from Market Maturity – Part 2

It’s very easy to fall into the thinking of one-size-fits all when it comes to the process of creating great designs. We want to believe there’s a single silver bullet method to tell us exactly what we need to do and when. But, unfortunately, it just doesn’t exist. One of the most frequent phrases we utter is “it depends” and [...]

UI14 – Making Great Designs Easier and Faster

Creating great design is now more important than ever. In difficult times, we all have to do more with less. We have to be innovative in both the designs we create and the way we create them. This year’s User Interface 14 Conference in Boston, MA, from November 1-3, is just the ticket. The UI14 sneak [...]

SpoolCast: Comps vs. Code Followup

A couple of weeks ago we held a UIE Virtual Seminar with Ethan Marcotte from Happy Cog West, a designer of beautiful websites. As always, we had a number of excellent questions from the live audience that we couldn’t attend to during the seminar, so Adam Churchill got together with Ethan to record this podcast and cover a number of those remaining questions.

UIEtips: Testing in the Wild, Seizing Opportunity

A few years back, Google put up a small internet cafe in the public lounge of Heathrow Airport’s Terminal One. Passengers, awaiting their next flight, could use Google’s laptops to get maps, check flight information, read email, and any other internet-related activity. Partly a mechanism to introduce the public to Google’s broad array of applications [...]

Spoolcast: Search, Scent & the Happiness of Pursuit Followup

Last month we held a UIE Virtual Seminar where I presented my talk, Search, Scent, and the Happiness of Pursuit. As always, we had a number of excellent questions from the live audience that we couldn’t attend to during the seminar, so, with a little help from Adam Churchill, I recorded this podcast and cover a number of those remaining questions.

UIEtips: Part 2 – Front End Concerns When Implementing Faceted Search

Back on August 6, we brought you part 1 of Daniel Tunkelang’s article on Front End Concerns When Implementing Faceted Search. Daniel discussed where and when to present facets and organizing facets and facet values. In today’s UIEtips, we continue with part 2. In this article, Daniel explores specific aspects of faceted search interfaces that raise front-end usability concerns such [...]

August UIE Virtual Seminar: Register for Faceted Search, Get the Book for Free

Announcing our next UIE Virtual Seminar – Faceted Search: Designing Your Content, Navigation, and User Interface with Pete Bell and Daniel Tunkelang. Daniel is offering a free copy of his book Faceted Search with every registration. People come to your site to get the information they need, by exploring, discovering, and making comparisons. You want them to successfully sift [...]

UIEtips article: Front End Concerns When Implementing Faceted Search

Faceted search brings us to the next level for easily finding some types of information. We can find cameras within a price range from specific manufacturers. We can quickly locate flights that leave in the afternoon on the airlines we’re collecting miles with. We can easily discover jobs within driving distance that are for companies that we are enamored [...]

Userability #12 – Hot Link Placement

This week a Tatum Dutile asks how many links should one have on a single page that all point to the same content?

UIEtips article: Getting the Most From Design Deliverables

For today’s designers and developers, the biggest challenges involve how we transition, or hand off, a project at each phase. We know that a conveyor belt system of project management creates issues that can prevent your project from being a successful design. Why get everyone on the same page? Designers will have more control in getting the vision implemented the [...]

Why Designers and Developers Need Couples Therapy – July 30 UIE Virtual Seminar with Ethan Marcotte

We often use a conveyor belt method to manage products. Designers do their work up front, then “hand off” their creation expecting it can be built and won’t change. Then the Developers need to create something they’ve previously had little involvement with. It’s critical that these transition phases be a two-way channel, and not the [...]

Userability #11 – The Most Influential Books in UX

This week a question from one of the world's most well-read cities fittingly enquires about the must-read books in design. Damon Dimmock asks Jared and Robert to recommend their top three books on design.

Wondering What UIE’s Research Says About Designing for Search?

There’s lots to say about Search and how to best design for it. Folks often reach out to our own Jared Spool for his thoughts and sage advice on Search. Want to know what he has to say? Jared will be presenting at our July 9 UIE Virtual Seminar – Search, Scent, and the [...]

UIEtips article: Producing Great Search Results — Harder than It Looks, Part 2

Last week we re-published part 1 of Producing Great Search Results. As I mentioned last week, producing a great search results page takes a ton of hard design work. It’s critical to study the users’ goals and needs, and watch how the user interacts with the results the engine produces. In almost every instance, Search is not the user’s end [...]

Old News about Icons

Joe wrote us: I was just in a pattern review meeting, and the age-old discussion of whether to use icons and labels vs. just icons or just labels came up. Years ago, I recall Jared Spool and UIE posting an article in which their tests showed that icons and labels together were generally better. I can’t [...]

UIEtips article: Producing Great Search Results — Harder than It Looks, Part 1

When you study how designs get made as much as we have, you start to notice something: good design is directly related to effort. Good design takes a lot of work. Bad design, as the bumper sticker says, “it just happens.” You won’t find this to be any more true than in the design of effective [...]

UIEtips: Deriving Design Strategy from Market Maturity, Part 1

Once I understood how the Market Maturity model worked, life became much easier. The theory, which describes how organizations prioritize user experience over time, makes it easy to know what to suggest to team managers. Using the model is easy. First, you ask a few questions to determine where the organization’s products are relative to their market maturity. The theory [...]

Userability #10 – Live from VTM09: Personas and iPhone Apps

A special episode recorded live from Voices That Matter 2009 conference, with two audience questions!

UIEtips Article: Assessing Your Team’s UX Skills

You may have noticed that the last two UIEtips articles concentrated on UX teams. The first article was on Building and Managing a Successful UX Team. The second article was Five Techniques for Getting Buy-In for Usability Testing. Following the rule of three principal, I’m focusing this next article, once again, on the UX team. Today’s article goes back to [...]

UIEtips: Five Techniques for Getting Buy-In for Usability Testing

UIEtips 4/24/07: Five Techniques for Getting Buy-In for Usability Testing UIE's Christine Perfetti discusses the 5 best techniques for convincing management and key stakeholders of the benefits of incorporating usability testing into the formal design process.

Userability #9 – When is it “Usable Enough?”

This week, Will Evans asks Jared and Robert: when do you know your project is "useable-enough"?

UIEtips: Building and Managing a Successful User Experience Team

UIEtips 7/11/06: Building and Managing a Successful User Experience Team

UIE's Christine Perfetti recently interviewed Sarah Bloomer and Susan Wolfe, two premier User Experience experts, to discuss how organizations can make their UX practices a success.

Upgrading Your UX Team, with Sarah Bloomer

Carrying the User Experience flag through your organization can be a daunting task. Whether you’re a UX-Team-of-One or manage a 20-person Experience Design team, our research shows that organizations are varied in their readiness to accept and act upon this idea of User Experience Design. To pull off successful design, regardless of where your organization [...]

Presentation Podcast: Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon

(Audio podcast edition) Revealing Design Treasures from The Amazon: On its surface, Amazon.com just seems like a large e-commerce site, albeit a successful one. Its design isn’t flashy, nor is it much to write home about. But deep within its pages are hidden secrets — secrets that every designer should know about.

SpoolCast: Interaction Design Frameworks Seminar Q&A Follow-up

Robert Hoekman, Jr. recently joined us for a Virtual Seminar on Interaction Design Frameworks, called, Web Anatomy: Interaction Design with Frameworks. The concept is a new one, and Robert and I are exploring and introducing the concept in new book due out shortly. The seminar (which is still available) was well-received, and we asked Robert back to help us answer some audience questions we did not have time to discuss during the seminar.

Userability Podcasts: The Most Entertaining 12 Minutes in UX

Back in February we introduced a new podcast series – the Userability Show. We think they’re some of the most entertaining and educational podcasts available on UX. Since it’s inception, we’ve answered questions ranging from design exploration, career changes from coding to interface design and usability, and the most common UIs that confuse or impede the average user. Robert Hoekman and I [...]

Presentation: Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon

Slideshare presentation: On its surface, Amazon.com just seems like a large e-commerce site, albeit a successful one. Its design isn't flashy, nor is it much to write home about. But deep within its pages are hidden secrets -- secrets that every designer should know about.

UIEtips: Our Top Articles on Experience Design – Part 2

How does your design team’s vision, feedback, and culture affect the experience design you strive to create? How do your team’s great designs get delivered to your development team? How does your organization deal with major design changes? What’s your design decision style? All these questions are addressed in the conclusion of our series on top articles on Experience Design. If [...]

Userability #8 – The Case of Multiple Link Types

This week's episode features a shadowy UI Designer from a secretive organization located somewhere in Texas. He asks, "how should you style links that trigger different types of interactions?"

UIEtips: Our Top Articles on Experience Design – Part 1

Experience design has become a strategic tool for most organizations. Great experiences for customers, vendors, partners, employees, and shareholders create long-lasting bonds and strengthen their engagement with the brand. Recently we’ve re-published two articles focusing on experience design. The first article, The 3 Steps for Creating an Experience Vision, focused on specific steps design teams should take to create an experience vision. [...]

SpoolCast: Follow-up Podcast for New Ways to Think About Your Taxonomy

Seth Earley & Stephanie Lemieux answer questions about their recent UIE Virtual Seminar on Taxonomy.

UIEtips: Components, Patterns, and Frameworks! Oh My!

I think we can all agree the most fun part of any design project is coming up with something nobody has ever thought to do before. These moments of innovation are exhilarating, getting the heart pumping and the adrenaline flowing. However, on most projects, they are few and far between. That’s because, even in the most innovative projects, the portion [...]

So, What Are These IxD Frameworks Robert Hoekman, Jr. is Talking About?

An interaction design framework is a collection of patterns that make up an entire subsystem of your design. In your project, you’ll need to ensure you’ve got all the essential features along with those new, super-cool, hip capabilities that will dazzle your users. By using these interaction design frameworks, you’ll have a ready kit of [...]

UIEtips: Great Designs Should Be Experienced and Not Seen

For years my kids, when assigned the chore of cleaning out the refrigerator, exhibited a consistent idiosyncratic behavior. They’d take a sniff of a far-too-mature item, make a face, then turn to me and insist, “Smell this. It’s gross!” My experience and wisdom had granted me the knowledge to know that I didn’t have to [...]

Userability #7 — The Strain of Relationships

This week's guest Dana asks Jared and Robert, "What can I do to court favor with design teams to let them know that I, as the usability consultant, am not just an enforcer, but I'm on their side and that we can learn from one another?"