Methods
-
UX Design-Planning Not One-man Show
by Holger Maassen | [11 comments]
Holger Maassen posits his ideas about the process of planning and designing for User Experience Design-Planning (UXD-P) as Expectation Design. more...
-
Extreme User Research
by Daniel Lafreniere | [34 comments]
Clients don’t know a thing about their users, and designers think that if they like it, everyone will. Sound familiar? Daniel Lafreniere's 30-minute "extreme user research" plan comes to the rescue for those of us facing this exact situation. With this practical method, you can generate loads of useful data that will have a real impact on design, thus making the website more effective and profitable. more...
-
Cues, The Golden Retriever
by Jamie Owen | [10 comments]
Jamie Owen explores how we can best utilize cues in our work by understanding how memory, cognitive psychology, and multimedia research affect how information is encoded and retrieved. more...
-
Enhancing Dashboard Value and User Experience
by Joe Lamantia | [7 comments]
In this article, part five of a series, the author describes ways to enhance the long-term value and user experience quality of portals by encouraging portability and natural patterns of dialog and interaction around aggregated content. more...
-
Personas and the Role of Design Documentation
by Andrew Hinton | [24 comments]
Andrew Hinton digs into the origins of the persona and reflects on how business uses (or misuses) design documentation. more...
-
What Is Your Mental Model?
by Chris Baum | [11 comments]
Indi Young talks about the power of the mental model and how it can grow over time and help your organization avoid strategic blindspots. The story includes an excerpt of her new book, and B&A readers are elegible for a discount. more...
-
Search Behavior Patterns
by John Ferrara | [6 comments]
People search for information online is often in idiosyncratic ways. It's rarely as straightforward as designers of search systems assume. John Ferrara gives us hope as he helps us think about a broader search ecology and identifies patterns in behavior that serve as the basis for good search design. more...
-
Building the UX Dreamteam
by Anthony Colfelt | [34 comments]
Every time you hire someone for your UX team, you make a gut call that their personality and skills are what they seem. Anthony Colfelt looks to arm you with ways to make the hiring decisions that fit the best people into the reality of your business context. more...
-
Building a Data-Backed Persona
by Andrea Wiggins | [14 comments]
While the imaginary persona is helpful in the design process, a data-backed persona lends even more depth and focus to the development process. Andrea Wiggins reveals some effective ways to back up your personas with data easily available today. more...
-
Connectors for Dashboards and Portals
by Joe Lamantia | [4 comments]
This article is the fourth in a series sharing a design framework for dashboards and portals. In this installment, Joe Lamantia demonstrates how to connect content containers to ease navigation at all levels of the architecture. more...
-
In Appreciation of Measures That Tell Stories
by Alison J. Head | [8 comments]
Click streams have made room for bounce rates, search analytics, and much more. Inspire stakeholders to act by telling stories with key metrics and better supporting the narrative with data. more...
-
The Limitations of Server Log Files for Usability Analysis
by Karl Groves | [17 comments]
In the quest to gather more data on user behavior, some researchers and designers look to server log files for usability analysis. While the logs do provide a great deal of information, Karl Groves demonstrates why they are are inappropriate for gathering usability data. more...
-
Building Block Definitions (Containers)
by Joe Lamantia | [4 comments]
Joe Lamantia dives deep into the components of the building block system. Each has a place in his design framework for dashboards and portals. See how you too can use these same elements in your work. (Part 3 in a series) more...
-
A Map-Based Approach to a Content Inventory
by Patrick C. Walsh | [24 comments]
A map-based approach to building a content inventory allows it to be a tool from the concept stages and throughout the life of the website. Patrick Walsh tells us why to use them, shows us how to create the maps, and how to leverage them over the long haul. more...
-
Ease of Use Outside the Box
by Mike Padilla | [3 comments]
When working in an enterprise environment, the interaction between browsers and multitudes of applications often creates user experience nightmares. Mike Padilla introduces some practical ways to relieve some of the biggest issues and start helping shape a larger context. more...
-
PDF Prototypes: Mistakenly Disregarded and Underutilized
by Kyle Soucy | [32 comments]
Creating clickable PDF prototypes for new designs is a valuable tool that is often overlooked and underutilized. Kyle Pero Soucy demonstrates how we can replicate most interactive design elements without investing a lot of time and effort. more...
-
Interactive Prototypes with PowerPoint
by Maureen Kelly | [20 comments]
Many designers use MS PowerPoint to conceptualize wireframes and get buy-in on project direction. Maureen Kelly shows us how to bring those same artifacts to life as an interactive prototype that allows you to validate the design at many levels. more...
-
Introduction to the Building Blocks
by Joe Lamantia | [14 comments]
Joe Lamantia covers the design principles underlying a building block system and the simple guidelines for combining blocks together to create any type of tile-based environment. (Part 2 in a series) more...
-
Using Design Games
by Jess McMullin | [8 comments]
Design games offer an alternative to traditional methods for brainstorming, collecting requirements, building team communication, modeling, and prototyping. Jess McMullin shows us how game principles and examples can complement existing methods. more...
-
Faceted Feature Analysis
by Adam Polansky | [22 comments]
Adam Polansky tells us about how “Faceted Feature Analysis” takes the subjective needs of stakeholders and blends them with objective constraints in a way that ensures all points of view are fairly considered. more...