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 [...]

We want to make designs simple, but we don’t want to make them dumb. There’s a difference. The goal is to simplify the design by keeping only the most valuable bits, eliminating everything else.
This is not easy to do. You really have to know something about the users, what they are trying to do, and [...]

While design teams add account registration and sign-in features to enhance the user’s experience, in doing so, they can create all manner of user experience problems. One of the most difficult things to get right is a good sign-in and registration process.
In a recent UIEtips article, I described eight common account sign-in mistakes that we [...]

Jared Spool describes eight common account sign-in mistakes we see all the time in usability tests.

In last week’s issue of our email newsletter, UIEtips, we published a fantastic article written by Luke Wroblewski, a Principal Designer at Yahoo!, where he discusses tips for improving web forms and impacting user success.
Today, we published the second part of the article where Luke shares additional design tips by taking a closer look [...]

UIEtips 9/27/07: The Power of Comics for Understanding User Needs
As designs and product visions become more complex, there is an increasing need to find ways that effectively convey just how people will use the product and integrate it into their lives. Recently, more and more organizations and design teams have turned to comics to communicate [...]

UIEtips 9/18/07: Time for Content to Become More Scientific
Time and time again in usability testing, I watch users struggle with web sites. I’d like to say that the problems I see in testing are always unique and novel, but they aren’t. We’ve been seeing very similar problems with all of the sites we’ve tested.
What problems [...]

UIEtips 9/11/07: 5-Second Tests: Measuring Your Site’s Content Pages
It’s hard enough creating usable designs when there is ample time and plenty of resources, but what do you do when that’s just not an option for your design team? One of the most common reasons designs fail users is because the design team didn’t have the [...]

UIEtips 7/3/07: Ten Ways to Kill Good Design
One way to improve designs is to focus on changes that will produce better quality results. If you can identify areas in your work where you could be more efficient, you will immediately see a benefit.
That’s why this issue’s feature article is about the mistakes we repeatedly see [...]

Jared M. Spool discussed some of these unrecognized benefits of persona creation.