Usercentric
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Practical Plans for Accessible Architectures
by Frances Forman | [13 comments]
Accessible information architecture builds a bridge between planning, design, and development. Frances Forman gives us a place to start thinking more deeply about how information can be structured and transformed to make user interaction more flexible for everyone. more...
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Blasting the Myth of the Fold
by Milissa Tarquini | [51 comments]
The need to cram as much into the top few inches of any interface has become nearly branded on the design psyche over the years. Milissa Tarquini considers how the myth of the fold does everyone involved a great disservice. more...
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Comics for Consumer Communication
by Rahel Anne Bailie | [4 comments]
Though popular in the development process, designers can use comics for communication to consumers as well. Rahel Anne Bailie digs into her past to show us how she has used comics in the past in the hope that we can utilize them with a wider audience. more...
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Don't Test Users, Test Hypotheses
by Avi Soudack | [7 comments]
“Observe your users” — a maxim most user experience professionals subscribe to. But how do you “observe?” When testing websites, generating hypotheses about user behavior can help inform the observation process, structure data collection and analysis, and organize findings. more...
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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...
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Blasting the Myth of the Fold
by Jeff Parks | [2 comments]
Milissa and Jeff discuss how this long held rule in web design is being de-bunked by web analytics and user testing, as well as how this will impact design and development processes based on screen resolution and browser compatibility. more...
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Uncovering Users In Your Own Organization
by Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo | [2 comments]
Buying new clothes and looking at current fashions is usually much more interesting and exciting than digging through one's closet or laundry hamper. However, there is a lot one can learn by stopping and taking a minute to examine one's own clothes... more...
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Extending a Technique: Group Personas
by Mike Kuniavsky | [4 comments]
Entertainment, education, and collaboration software is often used by two or more people simultaneously. Each of these groups has a different set of needs and expectations, and each can be modeled as a group persona, rather than as individual users. more...
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Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research
by Andrew Hinton | [2 comments]
With all the attention to usability over the last five years or so and the wonderful swelling of information-architecture-related books just since 2001, you would think we would have enough methods and advice to keep our projects in perfect tack. But so many of these resources, excellent though they are, tend to be more about how to pilot the ship than how to find that all-important star and keep it in sight. more...
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Bringing Your Personas to Life in Real Life
by Elan Freydenson | [5 comments]
The way you communicate the personas and present your deliverables is key to ensuring consistency of vision. Without that consistency, you’ll spend far too much time arguing with your colleagues about who your users are rather than how to meet their needs. more...
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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...
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Making Personas More Powerful: Details to Drive Strategic and Tactical Design
by George Olsen | [5 comments]
Personas ought to be one of the defining techniques in user-focused design, but they've unfortunately become more of a check-off item than a useful tool. So how did we get here? more...
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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...
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Searching for the center of design
by Jess McMullin | [9 comments]
Design is driven by many considerations. But on each project I’ve worked on, there seems to be a consistent center — a driver that determines priorities, direction, and the metrics used to measure success. more...
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Usability Heuristics for Rich Internet Applications
by Jess McMullin and Grant Skinner | [39 comments]
Over the coming months and years, RIAs will move from cutting edge to mainstream. That transformation will accelerate with the Flash and user experience communities working together to understand and develop best practices and shared knowledge. more...
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Bring Your Personas to Life!
by Zef Fugaz | [15 comments]
Method acting can take your personas from the page to the stage. Think beyond traditional practice to give emotional life to your personas. more...
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Straight From the Horse's Mouth with Derek Featherstone
by Christina Wodtke and Bill Wetherell | [0 comments]
Christina talks with web accessibility expert Derek Featherstone about the emergence of accessibility as a way towards better structure and more usefulness. (Part 2 of a series) more...
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Designing Customer-Centered Organizations
by John Zapolski and Jared Braiterman | [4 comments]
Even with the present downturn in the economy, more companies, from new media to established banks, have larger usability and design teams than ever before. Should we be content that we have come so far? more...
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What You Should Know About Prototypes for User Testing
by Chris Farnum | [12 comments]
There are several important factors to consider when you are planning to do prototyping for user testing. You will want to make careful choices about fidelity, level of interactivity and the medium of your prototype. Chris Farnum offers descriptions and best use scenarios to help you make the best prototype decision for your tests. more...