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	<title>UIE Brain Sparks</title>
	<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks</link>
	<description>UIE\'s latest insights on the world of design</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:02:29 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<language>en</language>
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	<item>
		<title>Rachel Hinman &#8211; Creating Great Mobile User Experiences</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Mobile is greatly influencing the user experience community. It’s challenging traditional approaches to design, but also bringing with it a host of new opportunities. Being a user experience practitioner in this changing environment is a bit scary. Yet coupling existing skill sets with the constraints of designing in the mobile space makes for an exciting world full of possibility.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/02/10/rachel-hinman-creating-great-mobile-user-experiences/</link>
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		<title>Josh Clark &#8211; Buttons Are a Hack A Virtual Seminar Follow-up</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Touchscreen devices give you the ability to directly manipulate content. This allows designers to create interfaces where the content itself is the control. This lessens the need for buttons and can reduce the level of complexity within your design. The problem is making the user aware of the availability of gestures in your design. Gestures, especially multi-touch gestures, are powerful control mechanisms but useless if the users aren't aware of them.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/02/09/josh-clark-buttons-are-a-hack/</link>
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		<title>10 Tips for Designing Effective Surveys &#8211; A 2/28 Next Step Virtual Seminar</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Sure, you already know that data-driven decision-making can be a great thing. And a survey can be a great way of getting hold of a lot of data. But if you&#8217;ve ever had to complete a frustrating survey asking seemingly mindless questions, and we all have, then the idea of having to design one yourself [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/02/08/10-tips-for-designing-effective-surveys-a-228-next-step-virtual-seminar/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Discovering Web App Structure &#8211; A Discussion with Hagan Rivers</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s easy for web applications to get overly complicated. Ideally, complex applications help their users solve complex problems, making their lives simpler. Unfortunately this isn&#8217;t always the case. Vague commands, useless dashboards, and confusing navigation create headaches for users by otherwise well-meaning applications. Often this can be a product of the structure of the application [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/02/07/uietips-rivers-interview/</link>
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		<title>Designing Dashboards: The Do&#8217;s, Don&#8217;ts, and D&#8217;ohs! &#8211; Our 2/23 Virtual Seminar</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Dashboards are a great idea. The problem is, many are useless. In this seminar, Hagan Rivers will show you which elements to include, how to structure them, and what to slash out of your existing dashboard that needs some UX TLC. She’ll show you a bunch of dashboards. And she’ll give you tips for helping [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/02/07/designing-dashboards-the-do%e2%80%99s-don%e2%80%99ts-and-d%e2%80%99ohs-our-223-virtual-seminar/</link>
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		<title>Lou Rosenfeld &#8211; 8 Better Practices for Great Information Architecture A Virtual Seminar Follow-up</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The goal of any site is for the right audience to find the right information. But beyond your actual content there are many things that can cause findability issues. These tend to be unanswered questions about your primary audience and whether or not you’re satisfying the need of that audience. Good information architecture can help guide your design decisions so that your users can effectively engage with your content.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/02/03/lou-rosenfeld-8-better-practices-for-great-information-architecture-a-virtual-seminar-follow-up/</link>
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		<title>UX Immersion: We started with 100, but now it&#8217;s 80</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Seats for the premiere Agile development and mobile design conference are going fast We started out with 100 spots, but already we&#8217;re down to 80 for the UX Immersion 2012 Conference in Portland, OR April 23-25. You can register at the lowest rate of $1,349 to secure one of the remaining 80 spots. After these [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/02/03/ux-immersion-we-started-with-100-but-now-its-80/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: UX &amp; Mobile Design &#8211; 2012&#8242;s Challenges and Opportunities</title>
		<description><![CDATA[New can be very scary. It’s easy to get comfortable with what we know, only to have everything turned topsy-turvy when we encounter major changes. The world of mobile design is new, and therefore, scary for many. The comforts of designing for the desktop disappear when we have to deal with these portable, tiny devices. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/31/uietips-ux-mobile-design-opps/</link>
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		<title>Presenting the UX Immersion 2012 Conference</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Peer into Your Future You&#8217;re about to see a project we&#8217;ve been working on for several months. A brand new conference bringing the newest, most critical thinking around two separate and important topics: mobile design and Agile development. These experts will dive deep and get to the nitty-gritty details that will make you a stronger [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/27/the-ux-immersion-conference-site-is-live/</link>
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		<title>Noah Iliinsky &#8211; The Power of Data Visualizations</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A common trap in designing data visualizations is focusing on all the different ways to represent the data, rather than the questions that the data should answer. The presentation of a data set is pointless if it’s not useful, usable, or if people can’t understand it. With so much data to choose from how do you keep the goal of the visualization in mind? How are you sure you’re telling the right story?]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/27/noah-iliinsky-the-power-of-data-visualizations/</link>
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		<title>Why Agile and Mobile Design Is the Focus at UX Immersion</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In the last two years, the UX world has seen some drastic changes. Our designs, and the processes to get to them, are undergoing a transformation that forces UX designers to rethink what they do. Users’ behaviors change based on how they view digital content. The desktop computer is no longer the norm for reading [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/24/why-agile-and-mobile-design-is-the-focus-at-ux-immersion/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Why Visualization</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s definitely an advantage to having your users understand data and messages through a picture versus reading a series of sentences. Information visualization, when done right, can have a greater impact. In many ways, data visualization will take a message and make it more succinct. A good visualization can simplify the most complicated data, and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/23/uietips-why-visualization/</link>
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		<title>Jeff Gothelf &#8211; Lean UX: Getting Out of the Deliverables Business A Virtual Seminar Follow-up</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The goal of Lean UX is to take the focus of user-centered design off of documentation and put it squarely on the experience. The way to do this is to view any design idea as a hypothesis. With a focus on the experience, you can validate or invalidate this hypothesis much quicker. The sooner you reach this validation, the sooner you can focus on designing and building the correct solution.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/20/jeff-gothelf-lean-ux-getting-out-of-the-deliverables-business/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Attaining a Collaborative Shared Understanding</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Sometimes, it&#8217;s easy to brand what we do as the &#8220;science of the obvious.&#8221; Here we are, doing all this research, and come up with something that is painfully obvious. The latest of the obviously obvious findings we&#8217;ve come up with? That teams who don&#8217;t have a shared understanding of their design rarely succeed at [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/18/uietips-collaborate-shared-understanding/</link>
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		<title>Get the Latest Updates on UX Immersion Conference &#8211; Agile/Mobile</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In less than 2 weeks, we&#8217;ll launch our web site and registration for our new event &#8211; UX Immersion Conference 2012 &#8211; Mobile/Agile. This brand new three-day event goes deep to answer your questions around 2 important themes: mobile design and the agile process. Join us in Portland, Oregon April 23-25. Immerse yourself in 2 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/18/updates-on-ux-immersion-conference-agilemobile/</link>
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		<title>Adding the &#8220;How To&#8221; to Data Visualizations</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Visualizations are an increasingly popular way designers use to convey complex, data-driven ideas. But with so much data to choose, how do you decide which story is the most appropriate one to tell? And how do you then tell it? On February 2, find out from Noah Iliinsky. In his UIE Virtual Seminar, Telling the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/16/adding-the-how-to-to-data-vizualizations/</link>
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		<title>Designing with Agile, a Next Step Virtual Seminar</title>
		<description><![CDATA[UX design in Agile can be a frustrating experience when teams are more focused on delivery over the quality of the experience. But the thinking underlying major Agile methods such as XP or Scrum can be applied to UX design, too. On Tuesday, January 24, Anders Ramsay is going to show you how in our [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/16/designing-with-agile-a-next-step-virtual-seminar/</link>
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		<title>Should You Be Hands or Brains?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[[This is part 2 of a two-part post. For this article to make sense, you probably want to read part 1. This article was originally published on JohnnyHolland.org.] In the last installment, we talked about the distinction between Hands contractors and Brains consultants. Hands are brought in by the team as an extra resource to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/14/should-you-be-hands-or-brains/</link>
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		<title>All in a Name: Fun Times with a Weighted Matrix</title>
		<description><![CDATA[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. Back December 2011, we asked your help in naming our brand new conference. There weren’t a lot of details other than it’s a 3-day consisting of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/12/all-in-a-name%e2%80%94fun-times-with-a-weighted-matrix/</link>
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		<title>Putting An End To An Opinion War</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Opinion wars kill design projects. An opinion war happens when two or more people hold strongly held opinions that are in opposition of each other. Opinion wars can get messy. They can stop a team in its tracks. And the worst thing about them is they can&#8217;t be won. There is never a winner in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/11/putting-an-end-to-an-opinion-war/</link>
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		<title>Anders Ramsay &#8211; Applying Agile Values to UX</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Agile development process is accused often of being too focused on delivery over the user experience. But that’s not to say that Agile is the bane of UX. Anders Ramsay believes it’s important to distinguish between Agile methods and Agile values. Many, such as fast prototyping and shared understanding are also valuable in the user experience world.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/11/anders-ramsay-applying-agile-values-to-ux/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Mobile Design &#8211; Content and the Great Web-based vs. Native Debate</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;Thinking mobile&#8221; goes beyond scaling down an existing app to fit a smaller screen or making decisions about what content to include. The ability of an app to delight its users is largely dependent on the context in which it is being used. People are using their devices seemingly everywhere to do almost everything these [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/10/uietips-content-mobileapps/</link>
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		<title>The Models We Use</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Bet you didn&#8217;t know this: Cars in rush-hour traffic exhibit the same basic behaviors as a spring. As the cars get closer to each other, they slow down. After coming to near stop, the cars start to get farther apart and speed up. The cycle repeats, just like a spring expanding and contracting. Physicists figured [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/09/the-models-we-use/</link>
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		<title>Design Teams: Co-location Trumps Remote</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We&#8217;ve been studying this for some time now and the reality is harsh: A co-located design team will have an easier time of producing great designs than a remote team. That doesn&#8217;t mean co-located teams will always succeed – they don&#8217;t. It doesn&#8217;t mean that remote teams will always fail – they don’t either. In [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/06/design-teams-co-location-trumps-remote/</link>
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		<title>Josh Clark &#8211; Discoverability in Designing for Touch</title>
		<description><![CDATA[While the traditional “mouse and cursor” interfaces are still in use, many of us are becoming familiar with touch-based interactions. The power and capabilities of mobile and tablet devices is growing. Often, these devices are the more convenient alternative for users to access your content. But beyond accessing your information, how are they interacting with your design?]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/05/josh-clark-discoverability-in-designing-for-touch/</link>
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		<title>Richard Rutter &#8211; JQuery for UX Designers</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A designer can never have too many tools and methods for creating their designs. Many times conveying interactions in a static wireframe is difficult. So designers have turned to HTML and CSS to create wireframes and prototypes to provide a richer interaction. JQuery can also be thrown into the mix to further this process along.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/05/richard-rutter-jquery-for-ux-designers/</link>
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		<title>Get Your Copy of UI16 OnDemand</title>
		<description><![CDATA[UI16 OnDemand brings you the best of the premier UX conference, complete with 12 hours of video, audio, and every presentation slide from 10 experts. You&#8217;ll hear the latest insights on: Web forms and user input from Luke Wroblewski Application maps from Hagan Rivers Kickoff meetings from Kevin Hoffman UX leadership from Kim Goodwin Design [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/05/ui16-ondemand-is-now-available/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Developing a Designer&#8217;s Sense of Touch</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Players of the Nintendo DS game known as Legend of Zelda &#8211; Phantom Hourglass may come across a difficult puzzle involving a lit candle. To complete the puzzle, they need to tell the game to extinguish the candle, however, there&#8217;s no tool in the game for putting out the flame. They&#8217;ll be stuck until they [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/04/uietips-sense_of_touch/</link>
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		<title>How Important Is Natural Talent To Becoming A Great Designer?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Natural talent isn&#8217;t hard to spot. We see it when someone walks up and accomplishes something with ease, something that we ourselves struggle with. Look at any young and accomplished musician or artist. Or at those twenty-something sports stars. They are obviously talented. Yet, how much of a role does their talent really play in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/03/how-important-is-natural-talent-to-becoming-a-great-designer/</link>
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		<title>The Hands vs. the Brains</title>
		<description><![CDATA[[This article originally appeared at Johnny Holland.] What’s the difference between contracting and consulting? One major difference comes down to whether the job is handwork or brainwork. Whether you’re an “innie” or an “outie,” this is applicable. Innies are UX professionals who work inside an organization. Even though they are part of the company, they [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/30/the-hands-vs-the-brains/</link>
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		<title>Wanted: Amazing Business Intern</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We’re looking for an amazing Business Intern for a paid, 4-month internship. Fast Forward Four Months&#8230; We’d like to thank you for doing a fantastic job as our 2012 Winter Business Intern. You started with a thorough analysis of the purchasing patterns in our UIE Virtual Seminar series. This led to some amazing insights on [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/29/wanted-amazing-business-intern/</link>
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		<title>Wanted: Amazing Web Developer Intern</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We’re looking for an amazing Web Developer Intern for a paid, 4-month internship. Fast Forward Four Months&#8230; We’d like to thank you for doing a fantastic job as our 2012 Winter Web Developer Intern. You&#8217;ve driven the launch of a new web site for our latest conference. You worked your magical HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript/JQuery [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/28/wanted-amazing-web-developer-intern/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: The 5 Most Popular Articles and Blog Posts of 2011</title>
		<description><![CDATA[During 2011, we published 33 articles and 174 blog posts and podcasts. We featured guest writers, published interviews, and wrote numerous articles about research we&#8217;ve done. There&#8217;s value in listening and reading everything we produced in 2011. But we know time is a factor. So in the last UIEtips for 2011, we decided to share [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/28/uietips-5-top-writings-2011/</link>
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		<title>Why People Adopt Or Wait For New Technology</title>
		<description><![CDATA[On the Quora, Alexia Tsotsis asked an interesting question: What are the key differences between &#8220;Normals&#8221; (normal mainstream users) and tech early adopters? Here&#8217;s the answer I posted: I&#8217;ve been thinking about this question for a while now. Something was bothering me and I think I&#8217;ve figure it out. Instead of thinking about &#8216;early adopters&#8217; [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/21/why-people-adopt-or-wait-for-new-technology/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Bending the Protocols &#8211; Useful Variations on Usability Tests</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I remember my first usability test like it was yesterday, even though it was actually more than 30 years ago. I sat in the newly built lab (first of its kind) and watched the participant through the silvered glass as they struggled with the design we were working on. What I didn’t know then was [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/20/uietips-bending-the-protocols/</link>
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		<title>Exposure Hours Drive UX Innovation</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Want to achieve a dramatic innovation in your design’s user experience? That’s easy. Just increase the hours of exposure to real users that your design team has. In our research, we found successful design teams have each team member spend a minimum of two hours every six weeks watch real users interacting with either their [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/19/exposure-hours-drive-ux-innovation/</link>
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		<title>When Does A Persona Stop Being A Persona?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Personas are a powerful tool in the UX toolbox. When done well, they rally the team around a small, specific set of archetypal users. Each team member becomes closely familiar with each of the personas, then can create designs that closely match those persona’s needs. In our research on personas, we&#8217;ve found this works best [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/15/when-does-a-persona-stop-being-a-persona/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Three Perils with Search Landing Pages</title>
		<description><![CDATA[How is a search result like a thoughtful gift? The outcome exceeds the expectation. Ok, that&#8217;s kind of a lame riddle, but it&#8217;s accurate nonetheless. When we get a wrapped present, we hope the unwrapping will produce something that delights us. The same is true when clicking on a search result. We anticipate it will [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/14/uietips-3-perils-search-pages/</link>
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		<title>Net Promoter Measures The Wrong Thing (or Why I Don’t Like United Airlines)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[How likely am I to recommend United Airlines to someone else? If asked this question, I&#8217;d answer that it&#8217;s pretty likely, especially if that person lives here in the greater Boston area. Of all the major airlines, United has the best service out of Boston. The only other options if you need to travel all [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/12/net-promoter-measures-the-wrong-thing-or-why-i-don%e2%80%99t-like-united-airlines/</link>
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		<title>Help us name our new conference and you could win a free pass</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Back in November 2009 we asked for you to dig deep into your creative powers and help us name our spring conference. Out of that brainstorm activity, the Web App Masters Tour was born. Well we&#8217;re doing it again. During the spring of 2012, (hint: probably late April) we&#8217;re producing a new conference. We&#8217;re still [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/08/help-us-name-our-new-conference-and-you-could-win-a-free-pass/</link>
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		<title>An Uncommon Definition of Common Sense</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Over at the User Interface Conference LinkedIn Group (which you should join, as we&#8217;re having lots of interesting conversations over there), a discussion popped up about Lean UX. In the discussion, one group member, Lorena, posted what she&#8217;d been doing, which sounded a lot like what I&#8217;ve heard folks are doing in Lean UX. She [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/07/an-uncommon-definition-of-common-sense/</link>
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		<title>Leaving The Bliss of Unconscious Incompetence</title>
		<description><![CDATA[How did all those horrific designs in Myspace come about? Two words: Unconscious Incompetence. Unconscious incompetence is the first of the Four Stages of Competence. In this stage, someone doesn&#8217;t realize just how much they don&#8217;t know. It&#8217;s a blissful state and, frankly a place that is wonderful. Imagine not knowing what you don&#8217;t know. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/06/leaving-the-bliss-of-unconscious-incompetence/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: The $300 Million Button</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Back in January 2009, we published an article that received quite a bit of attention, The $300 Million Button. This article quickly became our most popular article and was often found on other web sites. The interest was around how a major retailer dramatically increased their e-commerce site&#8217;s revenues with a couple of simple changes. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/05/uietips-the-300-million-button/</link>
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		<title>Jeff Gothelf &#8211; Understanding Lean UX</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The term Lean UX is bandied about quite a bit these days. Along with it, there seems to be some confusion as to whether this is just a buzzword, a new way of working, or simply a new description for what people in the UX realm already do. Jeff Gothelf of The Ladders is a champion of Lean UX, so Jared Spool sat down with him to find out what Lean UX was all about.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/01/jeff-gothelf-understanding-lean-ux/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Is There Any Meat on This Lean UX Thing?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;As we practice Lean UX, it becomes a mindset. It becomes a way of thinking about our development and design process.&#8221; That&#8217;s what Jeff Gothelf said to me when I asked him to explain all this fuss about Lean UX. As our clients are moving to more rapid development processes, like Agile&#8217;s Scrum, their design [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/11/30/uietips-lean-ux/</link>
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		<title>Severe Change and the Sudden Loss of Competence</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Four Stages of Competence. These four stages are unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. As someone learns and adapts to your design, they are working their way through the stages. The ultimate is the user who is unconsciously competent — they can seemingly move [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/11/29/severe-change-and-the-sudden-loss-of-competence/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Essential UX Layers for Agile and Lean Design Teams</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The migration to agile and lean development methods has thrown a wrench into the world of user experience professionals. Now on unfamiliar ground, these professionals want to know what new techniques and tricks help integrate UX into the development process. As we study what makes teams successful, we realize that the successful teams aren&#8217;t doing [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/11/22/uietips-lean-design-teams/</link>
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		<title>Kevin Hoffman&#8217;s Use of Pecha Kucha-Style for Workshop Presentations</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In full-day workshops, it&#8217;s not uncommon for the workshop instructor to put together exercises. When the workshop is about design, those exercises are often design projects, where the attendees work through the techniques while building something. Now, what they are building is usually some made-up project, constructed to practice the techniques. The actual results of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/11/21/kevin-hoffmans-use-of-pecha-cucha-for-workshop-presentations/</link>
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		<title>Kim Goodwin&#8217;s 5 Essential Questions for Great Design</title>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the joys of putting together a conference, like the annual User Interface Conference, is the great conversations I have with all the smart people who show up. This year was no exception, and one conversation that stood out was a quick discussion I had with Kim Goodwin, author of Designing in the Digital [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/11/17/kim-goodwins-5-essential-questions-for-great-design/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: The Flexibility of the Four Stages of Competence</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Because my son is a professional magician, I&#8217;ve picked up a bit of magician&#8217;s lore over the years. Amongst the pros, they have a saying: &#8220;If you want to learn a new trick, read an old book.&#8221; Turns out, there&#8217;s a lot of excellent illusions which have been lost for years that, when you bring [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/11/16/uietips-4-stages-competence/</link>
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		<title>The Value of Apple&#8217;s Knowledge Navigator: Gruber Has It Partially Right</title>
		<description><![CDATA[John Gruber has it partially right: When companies release these futuristic videos (like Microsoft and RIM), they are doing it for PR. And I agree with Gruber that if those companies don&#8217;t have a current experience that matches the awesomeness of the videos, then they are sending mixed messages. However, where I think Mr. Gruber [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/11/09/the-value-of-apples-knowledge-navigator-gruber-has-it-partially-right/</link>
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		<title>Fill Your Portfolio With Stories</title>
		<description><![CDATA[On the trail of exploring our next career move, it&#8217;s likely we&#8217;ll need to show the path we&#8217;ve been on. As part of a design team, that usually means displaying our work. However, if we didn&#8217;t make proper arrangements before we took the job, it&#8217;s very likely we can&#8217;t show much of our work to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/11/07/fill-your-portfolio-with-stories/</link>
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		<title>Clutter</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;The problem with this is there&#8217;s too much clutter.&#8221; That&#8217;s what the legal secretary told me when we were studying her firm&#8217;s intranet home page. In fact, the page was pretty sparse in layout. The text was nicely laid out in a readable font, with different weights given to headings and body text. Overall, it [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/11/04/clutter/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Riding the Magic Escalator of Acquired Knowledge</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Getting your head around a complex design is, dare I say, a complex process. It&#8217;s difficult to understand why your users are struggling with all the features and concepts they want and need in your design. One cause is that we tend to think of complexity as a holistic effect. We try to decide if [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/11/02/uietips-magic-escalator/</link>
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		<title>The New Amex Biz Travel Site Thinks I&#8217;m An Idiot</title>
		<description><![CDATA[American Express is rolling out a new travel service for its business customers. As is customary for today&#8217;s web services, there&#8217;s are terms and conditions that the new user needs to agree to when they sign up. Now, these are often implemented with a checkbox that says something like &#8220;I have read and agree to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/31/the-new-amex-biz-travel-site-thinks-im-an-idiot/</link>
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		<title>Lou Rosenfeld &#8211; Beyond User Research Live!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[UX professionals have made a lot of progress in large organizations. Companies realize the importance of connecting with their users more and more. User research is becoming firmly rooted in many organizations as companies try to produce better products and services for their users. But user research itself can be narrow in focus and full of biases. Lou Rosenfeld of Rosenfeld Media, suggests that by breaking down the silos that exist between other research practices, we can create a complementary research experience. This will produce even better analysis and therefore, better products as a whole. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/28/lou-rosenfeld-beyond-user-research-live/</link>
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		<title>The Dog and Hummer Trap</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A while back, a client handed me some persona descriptions they&#8217;d written for their project. Immediately, I saw several red flags. See, these personas descriptions had something that always put me on alert: they described the character&#8217;s car and pet. Now, if we&#8217;re building enterprise accounting software, why do we need to know whether Mary [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/28/the-dog-and-hummer-trap/</link>
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		<title>Moving from Critical Review to Critique</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We&#8217;re really good at criticizing things. We can spot the flaws instantly. But that&#8217;s different than a critical exploration of what we&#8217;re trying to do. Where we learn what it takes to make a great design. Where we explore both the problem space and the possible design solutions. I ask teams whether they do critiques. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/27/moving-from-critical-review-to-critique/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: On UX Leadership</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The field of user experience has grown incredibly over the past decade. It is really quite refreshing to see the number of companies who are starting to view user experience as an essential part of their business strategy. Design skills are in high demand. It is a great time to be a UX professional. But [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/25/uietips-on-ux-leadership/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Good Design Faster &#8211; An Interview with Brandon Schauer</title>
		<description><![CDATA[At times, getting a team to produce good ideas is like pulling teeth. You try to inspire, create, promote, even cajole people to dream up great design ideas. Some times it works. Other times you&#8217;re sitting around a conference table feeling clueless. That&#8217;s not the case when you bring Adapative Path&#8217;s CEO, Brandon Schauer into [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/18/uietips-good-design-faster/</link>
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		<title>The Back Story for the $300 Million Button</title>
		<description><![CDATA[By far, The $300 Million Button is the most popular article on UIE.com. Here’s the back story for how we discovered the problem and the role that analytics played: We had been working on a client project, helping their team redesign their checkout process with some new user research and design techniques. As we were [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/17/the-back-story-for-the-300-million-button/</link>
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		<title>Dave Gray &#8211; Gamestorming Live!</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Gamestorming can allow collaboration to happen. It quickly gets a lot of people working together, sharing ideas, and getting creative. Words may be tricky because you're not certain if someone has interpreted what you’ve said the way you meant it. The beauty of Gamestorming is it gets people to think visually and physically express their thoughts and ideas on paper.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/14/dave-gray-gamestorming-live/</link>
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		<title>It&#8217;s A Great Time To Be A Designer</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Right now, it&#8217;s a great time to be a designer, particularly a talented one. Everyday, more companies are recognizing the value of design. They are realizing they need to have strong design to compete in the marketplace. They see their competitors, even the small ones that don&#8217;t offer as full a feature set, are eating [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/14/its-a-great-time-to-be-a-designer/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Why I Love Taking Teams On Field Visits</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I took four years of Latin in high school, which has not been useful in my job, except to generate my own Lorem Ipsum copy. However, part of the curriculum involved looking at lots of pictures of ancient Rome and modern Italy. I remember always being impressed with the pictures and talking about the Colosseum [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/13/uietips-teams-field-visits/</link>
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		<title>Socially-Transmitted Functionality</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Pull-to-Refresh is all the rage in mobile apps. Take something like the Twitter client. In the timeline, if you want to see if any new messages have been posted, you pull down on the list with your thumb, then release. The gesture signals the app to check with Twitter&#8217;s servers to see if anything new [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/12/socially-transmitted-functionality/</link>
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		<title>Free Access to UI15 Recordings and Materials</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Get all of the recordings and slide decks from last year&#8217;s User Interface 15 Conference for free. We&#8217;re celebrating this year&#8217;s User Interface 16 Conference&#8217;s fantastic program by giving everyone access to last year&#8217;s great show. The recordings and slide decks contain these great topics: Engaging team members in the design process Developing a content [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/11/ui15-conference-free-recordings/</link>
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		<title>Experienced Designers: Choose Your Next Manager</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The other day, I was sitting with a very talented designer who was debating what her next job should be. She was looking at several different opportunities, each sounding pretty good. When she asked my opinion on how she should decide, I asked her what the opportunities would be. She&#8217;s been a designer for a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/10/experienced-designers-choose-your-next-manager/</link>
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		<title>Jeff Patton &#8211; Story Mapping for UX Practitioners: Tying Agile and UX Together</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Story mapping is a way to build a model of user experiences. More than that, in the Agile context, it allows you to tactically plan for what should go into each release. It is a way to get everyone on the team thinking and talking about user experience. Getting people into a discussion mode starts to create a very collaborative environment. Jeff discusses how to create a story map and how it fits into the Agile process.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/07/jeff-patton-story-mapping-for-ux-practitioners-tying-agile-and-ux-together/</link>
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		<title>UI16 Spotlight: Mobile Web Design with Luke Wroblewski</title>
		<description><![CDATA[[Here's another introduction to one of the folks speaking at the User Interface 16 Conference in November.] Right now, few things are hotter topics that mobile in the design world. With the burst of smartphone and tablet technology, the mobile design landscape has just exploded. With this new landscape comes a new way of thinking [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/07/ui16-spotlight-mobile-web-design-with-luke-wroblewski/</link>
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		<title>Luke Wroblewski &#8211; Navigating the Mobile Landscape</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Mobile is the “hot topic” these days. It’s increasingly at the front of designers’ minds. In a world where the power and capabilities of the device in your pocket are so great, the possibilities become somewhat astounding. The mobile landscape is changing so rapidly that it makes developing a formal strategy to “figure mobile out” all but impossible. Luke discusses how taking advantage of the market as it is today and the capabilities of these devices can lead to the refinement and evolution of your product.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/05/luke-wroblewski-designing-for-mobile/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: Why We Sketch</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In our ongoing research into design excellence, we&#8217;ve come across an interesting correlation. The designers who are at the top of their game are mostly people who sketch. Even though every designer we talked with had completely different backgrounds, training, and work habits, they all shared one common element&#8212;they sketched their work. In addition, they [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/05/uietips-why-we-sketch-2/</link>
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		<title>iPad + Siri = Knowledge Navigator</title>
		<description><![CDATA[[Update: MSNBC picked up on this story and reminded me that I wrote an article deconstructing the Knowledge Navigator a while back.] Back in 1987, Apple (under the direction of John Sculley, not Steve Jobs), released a video of what Apple products could be like in the future. Called the Knowledge Navigator, it showed a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/05/ipad-siri-knowledge-navigator/</link>
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		<title>Nobody Comes To Work To Make A Bad Design</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In the 30+ years I&#8217;ve been working in designing online experiences, I&#8217;ve met a lot of folks. Good folks, interested in creating really great products, services, and designs. I&#8217;ve seen my share of really great designs. However, I&#8217;ve also seen many bad designs. Yet, interestingly enough, I&#8217;ve never met anyone who wanted to make a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/10/03/nobody-comes-to-work-to-make-a-bad-design/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: 3 Questions You Shouldn&#8217;t Ask During User Research</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When we prepare for our user research sessions, it&#8217;s easy to focus on the questions we should ask. But what about the ones we shouldn&#8217;t ask? Our goal, of course, is to learn everything we can. We need to leverage the research time to ensure we&#8217;re filling our brains with the information. Then we&#8217;ll need [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/29/3-questions-not-to-ask-during-user-research/</link>
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		<title>Hagan Rivers &#8211; Simplifying Complex Applications</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s easy for applications to get overcomplicated and bogged down with data - especially in an enterprise setting. It’s hard to keep track of so many different things. When dashboards and widgets are employed, the goal is to make your life easier, but often that’s not the result. The solution - simplifying these applications for specific use cases and giving the right people the right information they need for their given task. Hagan Rivers spends her time meeting with teams to show them exactly what they need to do to streamline these complex applications.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/29/hagan-rivers-simplifying-complex-applications/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: 5 Ways To Suck Value Away From Your Persona Projects</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I love red velvet cake. I&#8217;ve got a great recipe to make it. And I stick with that recipe. I don&#8217;t decide to leave out the baking soda (even though I don&#8217;t really know what the baking soda does). Nor do I decide to cut the sugar in half (even though I think lots of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/21/uietips-persona_value_suck/</link>
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		<title>JQuery for UX Designers</title>
		<description><![CDATA[JQuery facilitates the vital steps of designing and testing complex interactions of today’s modern websites and web applications. In the next UIE Virtual Seminar, Rich Rutter gets you started with JQuery—assuming no prior knowledge—and shows you lots of examples, hints, and tricks. Just 5 minutes into this seminar, you’ll see JQuery in action and have something you can use in your own wireframes.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/19/jquery-for-ux-designers/</link>
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		<title>Bill Scott &#8211; Design Patterns for Multiple Platforms</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As we use a multitude of devices to access the same content, we expect a similar experience across platforms. If you have a great user experience on the desktop, it would be easy to rationalize that your mobile experience, for example, shouldn’t be painful. User experience professionals now need to consider how and where their applications and content are being accessed more than ever before. Developing rich interactions across all of these platforms can be a daunting task. Bill Scott discusses how employing design patterns can help ensure that your users have a great experience wherever they use your product.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/16/bill-scott-design-patterns-for-multiple-platforms/</link>
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		<title>Margot Bloomstein &#8211; Combining Curation with Your Content Strategy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[With the amount of content coming at you from all sides, it can be difficult to make sense of it all and present it in a logical fashion. Curation allows you to create order out of all the chaos. Borrowed from the world of museums, curating your content allows you to form a narrative, showing your users what they can and should do with your content. Margot showcases lessons she has adopted from museum curators. She shows what content strategists take from these lessons and apply to their practice. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/15/margot-bloomstein-combining-curation-with-your-content-strategy/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: A Snapshot on What Designers Need to Know about HTML5 and CSS3</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Could the new changes with HTML5 and CSS3 create a utopian society? Doubtful, but what it can do is make a designer&#8217;s life a lot easier and bring about more SEO results. A few weeks ago I interviewed Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis and Greg Rewis to find out what they&#8217;ll cover in their UI16 workshop, Everything [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/14/uietips_snapshotk_html5_css3/</link>
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		<title>Do users change their settings?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[[Thanks to Yaniv Sarig, who translated this post into Hebrew.] Back in the early days of PC computing, we were interested in how people used all those options, controls, and settings that software designers put into their applications. How much do users customize their applications? We embarked on a little experiment. We asked a ton [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/14/do-users-change-their-settings/</link>
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		<title>Brandon Schauer &#8211; Getting to Good Design, Faster</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Everybody strives to arrive at the end of a project with a great design. But often times the “brilliant idea” isn’t easy to communicate and takes a long time to develop. Brandon Schauer believes that you can develop techniques to help this communication, arriving at good design in shorter amounts of time. By putting your ideas on paper and post-its, and getting everyone participating, you create a collaborative environment that allows these ideas to grow and develop.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/09/brandon-schauer-getting-to-good-design-faster/</link>
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		<title>UI16: Want a Pro Sketchpad and Drawing Tools?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Need another reason to be in Boston, November 7-9 for the User Interface 16 Conference? How about your own personal designer&#8217;s toolkit? C&#8217;mon, you know you want one. Communicating your design ideas is hard enough. You certainly don&#8217;t want to worry about the tools you use to get your message across. So we made a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/08/ui16-want-a-pro-sketchpad-and-drawing-tools/</link>
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		<title>UIETips: CSS3 &#8211; Tools and Mobile Implementation</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Incorporating CSS3 into your designs allows you to create innovative designs with less code and reliance on images. The level of compatibility with many of the browser options out there is already impressive and it continues to grow. Taking advantage of the new CSS3 features helps to shift heavier visual elements to the browser itself. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/09/06/uietips-css3-tools-mobile/</link>
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		<title>Cennydd Bowles &#8211; UX Design when Time, Money, and Support is Limited</title>
		<description><![CDATA[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.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/31/cennydd-bowles-ux-design-when-time-money-and-support-is-limited/</link>
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		<title>Convincing Your Boss to Send You to UI16</title>
		<description><![CDATA[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 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/31/convincing-your-boss-to-send-you-to-ui16/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: 12 Best Practices for UX in an Agile Environment &#8211; Part 2</title>
		<description><![CDATA[From a user experience perspective, it&#8217;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&#8217;s being built. And [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/29/uietips-ux-agile-part2/</link>
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		<title>Steve Portigal &#8211; Immersive Field Research Techniques</title>
		<description><![CDATA[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. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/25/steve-portigal-immersive-field-research-techniques/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: 6 Epic Forces Battling Your Mega Menus</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;This is a perfect opportunity for us to use that mega menu we wanted to try out.&#8221; That&#8217;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. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/24/mega-menus/</link>
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		<title>Kevin Hoffman &#8211; Facilitating Project Kickoffs</title>
		<description><![CDATA[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.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/19/kevin-hoffman-facilitating-project-kickoffs/</link>
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		<title>UIEtips: 12 Best Practices for UX in an Agile Environment &#8211; Part 1</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When shooting the movie, the director doesn&#8217;t necessarily film the scenes in the order they&#8217;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&#8217;s not unusual for the movie&#8217;s final climax to be among the first [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/17/uietips-ux-in-agile-part-1/</link>
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	<item>
		<title>Tying Agile &amp; UX Together</title>
		<description><![CDATA[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. ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/17/tying-agile-ux-together/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Stephanie Sullivan Rewis and Greg Rewis &#8211; What Designers Need to Know About HTML5 and CSS3</title>
		<description><![CDATA[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.  ]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/12/stephanie-and-greg-rewis-html5-and-css3/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>UIEtips: Field Studies &#8211; The Best Tool to Discover User Needs</title>
		<description><![CDATA[To improve the designs we&#8217;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 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/11/uietips-field-studies-the-best-tool-to-discover-user-needs/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Materials from the Web App Masters 2011 Tour Are Now Available</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If you weren&#8217;t able to attend this year&#8217;s Web App Masters Tour, we have the next best thing for you and your organization: Web App Masters 2011 OnDemand. This is your opportunity to hear all 12 Masters from the Tour give their 75-minute presentations. The OnDemand collection consists of 15 hours of audio recordings, Q&#038;A [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/10/materials-from-the-web-app-masters-2011-tour-are-now-available/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Kim Goodwin &#8211; Developing Effective Scenarios</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Combining compelling storytelling with research data can help you craft realistic scenarios to guide your design process. Getting to know the specific needs of your users will allow you to address any potential problems they may have. As a consultant, Kim Goodwin uses her experience and expertise in working with teams to develop effective scenarios. In this podcast, Kim discusses the role that scenarios play in the design process with Jared Spool.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/05/kim-goodwin-developing-effective-scenarios/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>UIEtips: The Discipline of Content Strategy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Content is the substance that draws and keeps the users at the site. It&#8217;s what sells our products, describes our services, and provides our support. And it&#8217;s what teams struggle with the most. When you break it down, the elements behind content strategy, such as information architecture, copywriting, search engine optimization, and content management, are [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/03/discipline-content-strategy/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>UI16 Update! Only 28 Spots Left at the Sneak Preview Price</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We weren&#8217;t kidding when we said seats were going to move fast for the User Interface 16 Conference. There are only 28 spots from the original 100 available at the $1,349 sneak preview price. This means that a whole bunch of folks will show up in Boston this November to hear some amazing speakers and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/03/ui16-update-only-28-spots-left-at-the-sneak-preview-price/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Outsourcing Your User Research Is Like Outsourcing Your Vacation</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Hang around me long enough and you’ll hear me say this: Outsourcing your user research work is like outsourcing your vacation. It gets the job done, but probably won’t have the effects you were seeking. I usually say this when someone is asking me to do their user research for them. This is something we [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/02/outsourcing-your-user-research-is-like-outsourcing-your-vacation/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>UI16 Spotlight: Immersive Field Research Techniques with Steve Portigal</title>
		<description><![CDATA[[In essence, the User Interface 16 Conference is all about the full-day in-depth workshops. This is my third entry in our series to introduce you to the amazing workshop faculty we've assembled.] More and more, we&#8217;re finding ourselves in situations where the design just &#8220;has to be right.&#8221; No longer, can we just have incremental [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/08/01/ui16-spotlight-immersive-field-research-techniques-with-steve-portigal/</link>
			</item>
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