April 2014 - Boxes and Arrows

Three Ways to Improve Your Design Research with Wordle

“Above all else show the data.” –Edward Tufte Survey responses. Product reviews. Keyword searches. Forums. As UX practitioners, we commonly scour troves of qualitative data for customer insight. But can we go faster than line-by-line analysis? Moreover, how can we provide semantic analysis to project stakeholders? Enter Wordle. If you haven’t played with it yet, Wordle is a free Java application that generates visual word clouds. It can provide a compelling snapshot of user feedback for analysis or presentation. Using

April 22, 2014 Deliverables / Process and Methods

Forms: The Complete Guide–Part 3

Posted by Martin Polley

Forms are important—they’re the most common way to get information from our users. But just making wireframes of a form misses a big piece of the picture—what it’s like to interact with it. An HTML prototype of a form, on the other hand, can look and behave just like the real thing. In the first post, I showed you how to lay out a form and align the labels the way you want, using HTML and Foundation. In the second

April 15, 2014 Business Design / Foundational Thinking / Learning From Others / Workplace and Career

Reorgs: Rocky or Righteous?

Posted by Rich Lee

As designers, we grapple every day with challenging projects. This of course is part of what keeps us coming back. Some challenges, although not directly related to project work, can still be looked at through a UX lens. In this case, I’m talking about a phenomenon you’re likely familiar with: company reorganization. If you’ve been through a reorg (that’s ‘reorganization’ in water cooler parlance), you’ve probably experienced your share of the whispers, closed-door meetings, and mixed messages that seem to