The research is clear: The most valuable activity a team can do is collect user research on their design. Seeing the design through their users’ eyes will pinpoint areas of improvement, which will help with every business metric for the product or service. Choosing that first user research project is critical. If you choose right, [...]

Even the best of plans can go awry. We role play in our head how a usability test will proceed, understand the objectives at hand, and do a rigorous job of screening the participants. But what do you do when something totally unexpected occurs? Life circumstances among the participants can throw a curveball at our [...]

To the delight of UX designers everywhere, organizations today increasingly conduct user-centered research methods like surveys, focus groups, and usability testing. In this Next Step seminar, Steve Portigal will give you the talking points to make it happen in your organization. And once you find out how to quell cultural, budgetary, and process resistance to [...]

Getting data from your users is a fundamental part of creating great user experiences. Surveys are a great way to get feedback and learn about your users. The problem is everyone has sat through a painful, monotonous survey that asked a series of frustrating and seemingly pointless questions. As with anything in UX, if your users sense they’re in for a painful experience they simply won’t engage with your survey.

Sure, you already know that data-driven decision-making can be a great thing. And a survey can be a great way of getting hold of a lot of data. But if you’ve ever had to complete a frustrating survey asking seemingly mindless questions, and we all have, then the idea of having to design one yourself [...]

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 [...]

On the Quora, Alexia Tsotsis asked an interesting question: What are the key differences between “Normals” (normal mainstream users) and tech early adopters? Here’s the answer I posted: I’ve been thinking about this question for a while now. Something was bothering me and I think I’ve figure it out. Instead of thinking about ‘early adopters’ [...]

One of the joys of putting together a conference, like the annual User Interface Conference, is the great conversations I have with all the smart people who show up. This year was no exception, and one conversation that stood out was a quick discussion I had with Kim Goodwin, author of Designing in the Digital [...]

UX professionals have made a lot of progress in large organizations. Companies realize the importance of connecting with their users more and more. User research is becoming firmly rooted in many organizations as companies try to produce better products and services for their users. But user research itself can be narrow in focus and full of biases. Lou Rosenfeld of Rosenfeld Media, suggests that by breaking down the silos that exist between other research practices, we can create a complementary research experience. This will produce even better analysis and therefore, better products as a whole.

I took four years of Latin in high school, which has not been useful in my job, except to generate my own Lorem Ipsum copy. However, part of the curriculum involved looking at lots of pictures of ancient Rome and modern Italy. I remember always being impressed with the pictures and talking about the Colosseum [...]