What is Seductive Interaction Design? More and more, we’re seeing web sites use rewards systems, competitions, and fun progress indicators to get people engaged. Interactions such as these trigger different elements of human behavior and encourage your visitors to engage with your web site more. They differentiate the casual glance from a longer involvement with […]

The AIGA recently published the online version of their 2009 Salary Survey. I was really disappointed with their 1996 approach to the salary survey. The AIGA is filled with talented designers, yet they opted for an impossible-to-use book reader to display their hard work. Locking the survey up in a proprietary, unusable reader was a […]

Producing a brand new event is exciting. Lots to think about: the speakers, the topics, and the locations. Yet what immediately separates one conference from another is its name. We’ve launched a ton of events in the 21 years we’ve been around. But this time, we were a little stuck for the name. So we […]

The plans for the our Web App Thingy event are moving along quickly. We’ve already lined up some kick-ass speakers on topics like Web App Navigation, Design Patterns, and building in Seductive Interfaces. We’re scoping out the venues to decide which of the four cities we’re gonna bring the tour to. And we’re getting really […]

This week the guys spoke with Jon Hartmann of Morgantown, West Virginia. Jon asked about transitioning to UX and usability from development.

Our newest creation: The Userability Podcast. Our listeners call into to ask Jared Spool and Robert Hoekman, Jr. their most vexing design questions. This week: Rob Fay asks about exploring design alternatives.

Have a design question you’re dying to get an answer to? Well, look no further. (For the answer, that is.) Robert Hoekman, world famous author of Designing the Obvious and Designing the Moment, and I, Jared M. Spool, a person who co-authored a book in 1996 that you’ve probably never seen, are joining forces to […]

This time, we spot an embiggen over at macenstien.com (Click to Embiggen):

Randall Monroe’s XKCD is probably my favorite comic strip. Here’s one of the latest ones: (Of course, the flow charting portion of Dan Brown’s Communicating Design: Essential Deliverables for Highly Effective Design Teams session at the UIE Web App Summit will have a lot more depth to it.)

This is my nomination for the Most Amusing Error Messages of the Day award: