Accessibility is important, but somewhere along the way it got an undeserved reputation for being ugly, costly, and driven only by technical-compliance requirements. Making it an integral part of your design early creates something that is beautiful, inexpensive, and user-experience-driven. When someone with a disability comes across usability issues in your design, they’re likely to be amplified. Something of minor inconvenience for a user could be a significant roadblock to another using assistive technology.

As more web capable devices hit the market, designers need to consider where and how their designs will be seen. Unfortunately, the same consideration isn’t always made when it comes to content. With design changing so much in a multichannel environment, content must be structured independent of how it will eventually look.

In this week’s UIEtips, I discusses the concept of context-aware design, where it is today, and the possibilities of its future. Here’s an excerpt from the article Imagine being in a foreign city, trying to get across town to catch a train. Not knowing where you are, relative to the train station. Getting to the [...]

In this week’s UIEtips, Adam Spool interviews Steph Hay about the difference between marketing and usable content and methods to help copywriters and designers work together in creating design and copy? Here’s an excerpt from the article I have to think about the user, so I typically start with a text file. I create the [...]

What makes a user want to download an app in the first place? Ideally, it’s the promise of fulfilling a goal or need for the user. With the hundreds of thousands of options available, and the immediacy of the mobile context, you have a small window of opportunity to engage your user. If users can’t easily use your app, they simply won’t.

In this week’s UIEtips, I discuss some practices to help prepare your design to be adaptive for multiple device sizes. Here’s an excerpt from the article This year, it will be hard to find an organization that doesn’t prioritize making their web site responsive. Yet, as we talk to organizations moving in this direction, we’re [...]

The ultimate goal for user experience is that users enjoy using your product or service. Many companies use satisfaction as a metric for measuring their success. But satisfaction is really just the lack of frustration. You should be focused on what you can do to delight your users.

With so many teams and divisions within organizations, falling into a pattern of designing within your own silo is incredibly easy. Mobile teams are focused on the mobile products. Desktop teams are concerned with the desktop experience. But customers interact with your product or service from an increasing variety of touchpoints. They expect a seamless experience across channels and devices, but this is often not the case.

We’ve all sat through terrible meetings before. Part of what makes those meetings so bad is poor communication. Being present in a meeting doesn’t guarantee that your attendees will retain the important information from the meeting, or feel like they played any role in it. Improving the way that things are heard, seen, and discussed will go a long way to improving your meetings overall.

Websites are full of links. How useful these links are in helping users complete tasks is another story. Links have to guide users as they follow the scent of information. A vague or confusing link often leads users down a wrong path and in turn increases their rate of failure.