I love working from home. I love the fact that I can crawl out of bed 5 minutes before work and still be on time. It thrills me that there’s no dress code and if I want to work in my birthday suit, I can. In fact, the Interaction Design Foundation’s philosophy of “work where you want” has allowed us
If you nail your case study’s conclusion, you’re much likelier to get called to an interview, because employers tend to recall the last parts of a case study the most. Let’s see how you can craft the perfect ending to your UX case study.So, you’ve written a great introductory hook to your UX case st
Design Thinking cannot begin without a deeper understanding of the people you are designing for. In order to gain those insights, it is important for you as a design thinker to empathize with the people you’re designing for so that you can understand their needs, thoughts, emotions and motivations.
“Clearly there are some products that stand little chance of ever becoming symbolic in people's lives-like Ethernet routers, for instance—no matter how wonderful they look or well they behave. However, when the design of a product or service addresses users' goals and motivations-possibly going beyo
No matter how big or small your user research project is, if you're going to do user research, you want to make sure you do it right. You don’t want to waste your time doing research that does not truly represent your users’ opinions and behaviors. That's a waste of both your and your research parti
Content is the key ingredient in so many user experiences. So how does it change when it comes to planning a mobile user experience? Should you rewrite your content for each platform or do you need a different strategy to make the most of your content on all platforms? Handling content on mobile doe
Ideation is at the heart of the Design Thinking process. There are literally hundreds of ideation techniques, for example brainstorming, sketching, SCAMPER, and prototyping. Some techniques are merely renamed or slightly adapted versions of more foundational techniques. Here you’ll get an overview o
Whether you are designing a mobile app, a professional online platform or an interactive museum exhibition, it is essential to understand users and the context in which they will use your design. Traditional methods such as interviews and observations will help you to touch the surface of their live
If you are new to designing voice user interfaces, you may quickly find yourself unsure of how to create great user experiences. The way users interact with voice user interfaces is very different from how they interact with graphical ones. Not surprisingly, users' expectations for voice user interf
User interfaces that you interact with using modalities such as touch, gestures or voice are often referred to as Natural User Interfaces (NUI). We consider them interfaces that we find so easy to use that they feel natural. However, what does it mean for an interface to be natural? Also, how do you
Customer adoption patterns are important to understanding how to market new product for adoption. Without a clear understanding of what each type of adopter values it can be difficult, if not impossible to target them through marketing.In his book, Diffusion of Innovations (1962), Everett M Rogers t
Now that we’ve seen some grids at work in the Rule of Thirds article, let’s examine them a little more deeply. As a concept that deals so fundamentally with the fabric and background of our work as designers, it’s easy to overlook the power of grids and think more about the elements we want to creat
Have you ever thought about how much data flows past each of us in an ordinary day? From the newspaper you read at breakfast, to the e-mails you receive throughout the day, to the bank statements generated whenever you withdraw money or spend it, to the conversations we have, and so on?There is a ti
It can be really tempting to start a design project by leaping into the deep end and starting to sketch out pages and work on the information architecture of the final product. However, it’s almost certainly the wrong approach to take. To create great user experiences – designers must focus on the u
Choosing the best combination of colors for an interactive design layout is not, as it may appear, a guessing game. Knowing which ones to use will save you time (and headaches). Getting it right will also keep your users connected.Since the early days of art and design, the use of color has followed
So, you want to create prototypes to help in your design process or Design Thinking project. However, what kind of prototype should you create? How detailed should your prototype be? What should your prototype be created for? If you’re asking yourself these questions, then great, because you’re on t
“In a world where business is more interested in ‘best practice’ rather than different practice, is it any wonder that products and services, companies and organizations are all beginning to look the same?” the three authors rhetorically ask in ?What If!'s classic book on creativity and innovation,
In your attempts to minimize the effort your users need for performing actions on the website you’re designing, you just might be overlooking one major opportunity: sitemap footers. You might think about footers as a page section where you can dump any links or contact information you couldn’t fit a
“The main thing in our design is that we have to make things intuitively obvious,” the founder and former CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, explained. We can easily agree that design should be intuitive. We can also easily agree that something is intuitive when we can use it without thinking about it. Makin
Focus groups have long been a popular tool in market research and have become more popular in user research in the recent past too. They consist of a group of between 5 and 10 users who work with a moderator/facilitator/researcher. The moderator will pose questions from a script to the group. Their
