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?

There’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 [...]

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.

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’t be won. There is never a winner in [...]

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.

Bet you didn’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 [...]

We’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’t mean co-located teams will always succeed – they don’t. It doesn’t mean that remote teams will always fail – they don’t either. In [...]

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?

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.

Players of the Nintendo DS game known as Legend of Zelda – 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’s no tool in the game for putting out the flame. They’ll be stuck until they [...]