Truly innovative designs anticipate users’ needs and add value in unexpected ways. They require strategic creativity more than invention — as you’ll learn when you join us in Boston from Oct. 21–23 for the User Interface 18 Conference. This year’s speaker line-up will make you look at UX like you’ve never had before. Kevin Hoffman [...]

In the desire to expand your prototyping toolkit, you need to regularly try out new tools and techniques. Your goal is to have, at your disposal, as many different prototyping tools as possible. Maybe you want to learn a new software tool? Maybe you’re interested in practicing your whiteboard sketching skills or play with paper [...]

Shared understanding is important to any team working towards a common goal. Ensuring every member of the team is on the same page can be difficult. Sketching is a quick, lightweight method for communicating design ideas or interactions. Starting with sketching early in the design process lets everyone share the same vision.

In this week’s UIEtips, I discuss how great designers use sketching for notetaking, to convey their ideas in meetings, to record their conversations with their co-workers, and to support their design research. Here’s an excerpt from the article: Words are powerful, but sometimes they don’t cut it. We can try to describe what we’re imagining, [...]

In this week’s UIEtips, Jared discusses the cost effectiveness of responsive design vs. creating a separate mobile version of a web site. Here’s an excerpt from the article Which is more expensive: a responsive design web site or creating a separate mobile version? This is a constant debate among many organizations. We can answer it [...]

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.

Here’s a recap of the resources and information we shared on Twitter last week. Sketching We agree! Why It’s Important to Sketch Before You Wireframe – UX Movement Infographic The Ultimate Customer Experience – infographic User Experience In case you missed @jmspool’s latest blog post, Where Do You Draw The Line Of Quality? Design Useful [...]

Here’s a recap of the resources and information we shared on Twitter last week. Mobile Half way down this article is a good infographic on how tablet shoppers are changing online sales. Some good stats too. Some great examples of creative design in mobile apps in this article. Defining a useful reference set for cross [...]

Critique is an integral part of the design process. Contrasting from feedback, critique is more focused and specific. Often, rather than a gut reaction, it is framed within the context of a dialogue. It is centered around arriving at an understanding.

If your team is transitioning from static documentation to iterative HTML prototypes, then Nathan Curtis’ March 7 seminar, Start Full Screen, is right up your alley. Nathan will talk about how his team at EightShapes brought it’s renowned modular philosophy of modular components and libraries for producing PDFs to prototyping using simple HTML, CSS and [...]