Author: Susan Weinschenk
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7 Tips to Get A Team To Implement Your Recommendations: Tip #1
Have you ever found yourself in a meeting trying to convince a team to implement your recommendations? Perhaps you are a web designer who wants the team to move ahead with your design, or you are a user experience professional who has recommended a re-design to make a product more usable. You work hard and…
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Fonts, Typography, And How We Read Online
I’ve been a fan of Kevin Larson’s writing about fonts, typography and online reading for some time. I mention him in my latest book, 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People. Kevin is a reading psychologist that works with typographers at Microsoft. He’s part of a team at Microsoft with a goal to…
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The Only Two Things You Really Need To Know About Web Design
In his (great) book, Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug has a chapter called “Billboard Design 101: Designing pages for scanning not reading.” The idea is that people don’t read all the text at a website, they scan it. So you should think “billboard” when you are deciding what to put on the page, instead of…
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Design Challenge Part 2
A few weeks ago I asked my blog readers to help with design ideas for Martin Reed’s Ilovebluesea.com website. (See the earlier post for the design challenge instructions and to listen to a short interview with Martin). Many of you wrote in via comments to the blog and through email. (Thank you!) Martin wrote up…
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Losing Sleep Over Poor Design
I’m writing this from the CHI (Computer-Human Interaction) conference in Vancouver, BC. I’d like to enjoy Vancouver, but I’m having a hard time doing so because I have a Sony clock radio in my hotel that keeps waking me up. The alarm goes off at 5:50 am every day. I can’t figure out how to…
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There Is No One Right Way To Categorize Information
My favorite conference of my career so far, either for attending or speaking, was the UXLX conference (for user experience designers). I spoke at the May 2010 event (a year ago). It was my first ever time in Europe (I don’t count changing planes in Amsterdam). I was ok when I left the States, but…
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Design Challenge: Help Ilovebluesea.com and the fish
Martin Reed is a tall, young entrepeneur with a passion for fish. I met up with him in San Francisco recently, and we sat down at an outside table at Hog Island Oyster Bar in the Ferry Building. I tried raw oysters for the first time, and Martin told me about sustainable fish, and the…
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100 Things You Should Know About People Has Reached 100!
I started the series “100 Things You Should Know About People” on October 25, 2009. It took me almost 1.5 years (!) but I’ve finally finished. I posted #100 on April 4, 2011. It’s been a lot of work, but a lot of fun, and I thank everyone for all the support and kind words…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #100 — Sustained Attention Lasts 10 Minutes
You are sitting in a meeting, and someone is presenting sales figures for last quarter. How long can this person hold your attention? 7-10 — If the topic is of interest to you, and the person is a good presenter, the maximum you can focus on the presentation is about 7-10 minutes. And if you…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #99 — Well Practiced Skills Don't Require Conscious Attention
I have two grown children. The entire time they were growing up they took Suzuki method music lessons. My son studied violin, and my daughter studied piano. After attending one of my daughter’s piano recitals, I asked her what she was thinking about while she was performing the piano sonata piece (from memory, no music…
