In this week’s UIEtips, Margot Bloomstein shares examples of how organizations are successfully incorporating content strategy into their information architecture. Here’s an excerpt from the article: What’s in, and what’s out? “In my experience, it is very easy for brilliant information architects (or UX people who do information architecture) to underestimate the importance of editorial [...]

“We tried creating personas and it was hard. It took us months and they never got traction. Eventually we abandoned the project.” I’ve heard this dozens of times from design team managers. They all embarked on these big persona projects, often with energy and excitement, only to find that energy dissipate and the project lose [...]

So here’s the thing: Innovation isn’t a bad word. Overused? Perhaps. But not bad. How do I know this? Because cheese in bread, cookie dough in ice cream, and Genius Bars inside Apple stores are AMAZING. These are just a few examples of innovation that create great user experiences. They’re creative ways of putting existing [...]

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 this week’s UIEtips, I discuss the five most common pitfalls of prototyping. Here’s an excerpt from the article: Prototypes are a fabulous way to exploring ideas with a team. They shorten the time between “This is what we’re thinking…” and “Oh, I get it.” In our work with design teams, we see a lot [...]

In this week’s UIEtips, we look back at a past article where I discuss several different user research strategies and the profound impact they can have on your products. Here’s an excerpt from the article: “Damn, I wish we’d done this a year ago.” That’s what I hear right after I’ve started a team on [...]

In this week’s UIEtips, I discuss the sophisticated approach of genius design. Here’s an excerpt from the article: A team that approaches genius design needs to focus on a specific problem that has a big enough market to provide a decent return on the investment. For example, an agency might decide they’ll become the industry [...]

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 [...]

In this week’s UIEtips, I look at how mobile technology affects our design and development decisions and how it changes the user experience. Here’s an excerpt from the article It’s a big deal. A really big deal. The pebble of the mobile phone hitting the market has grown into a massive, earth-moving force of nature [...]