Category: design

  • 5 Ways A Task Analysis Results In Great Design

    5 Ways A Task Analysis Results In Great Design

    A task analysis is the one document that really spells out what the users’ experience is going to be before you design anything at all. I think the process of task analysis ,and the document that comes out of the process, are some of the most interesting and useful things one does as a UX…

  • 4 Ways Personas & Scenarios Result In Great Design

    4 Ways Personas & Scenarios Result In Great Design

    I find myself these days working on two streams: on the one hand I’m working on my next new project (which is another book called “How To Get People To Do Stuff”) and on the other hand I’m recording a series of online training videos that cover the basics of doing usable design. Sometimes I…

  • A Podcast With Paul Boag — Author of Client Centric Web Design

    A Podcast With Paul Boag — Author of Client Centric Web Design

    I was sitting in the audience in Newcastle, UK in April 2012, and Paul got up on the stage to talk. About 5 minutes into the talk I was sending him an email asking if he would be willing to do a podcast. That’s how good his talk was. It may sound obvious that we…

  • Gamestorming — An Interview With Author Dave Gray

    Gamestorming — An Interview With Author Dave Gray

    I actually can’t remember how I came upon the book Gamestorming. I probably read a review of it on one of the blogs I regularly read. I ordered the book and started reading it right before I was going to leave for a trip to meet with a client team. The book is full of…

  • Do people have relationships with forms?: Podcast with author Caroline Jarrett

    Do people have relationships with forms?: Podcast with author Caroline Jarrett

    I met Caroline Jarrett in 2010 in Lisbon Portugal, where we were both speaking at a conference.  Caroline is a usability consultant in the UK, and she specializes in designing forms. She has a great book, Forms That Work. In this podcast Caroline and I have a fun conversation about designing usable forms. You can listen…

  • 7 Tips to Get A Team To Implement Your Recommendations: Tip #2

    7 Tips to Get A Team To Implement Your Recommendations: Tip #2

    This is the 2nd in a series on how to get a team to implement your recommendations. Tip #1 was: Hide Your top 3 Recommendations. Now for Tip #2. The context is that you want to see your recommendations implemented. How can you present them to a team so that they will be acted on…

  • 7 Tips to Get A Team To Implement Your Recommendations: Tip #1

    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…

  • Losing Sleep Over Poor Design

    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…

  • 100 Things You Should Know About People: #93 — Titles Provide Context

    100 Things You Should Know About People: #93 — Titles Provide Context

    Read this paragraph: First you sort the items into like categories. Using color for sorting is common, but you can also use other characteristics, such as texture or type of handling needed. Once you have sorted the items, you are ready to use the equipment. You want to process each category from the sorting separately.…

  • 100 Things You Should Know About People: #73 — 1st Screening About Trusting A Website Is Based On The "Look And Feel"

    100 Things You Should Know About People: #73 — 1st Screening About Trusting A Website Is Based On The "Look And Feel"

    There isn’t a lot of actual research on trust and website design. There are a lot of opinions, but not necessarily much real data. Research by Elizabeth Sillence and team (2004) provides some solid data, at least in regard to health websites. Sillence researched how people decide whether and which health websites to trust. Participants in…