Don Norman is deservedly considered to be one of the greats of usability design. He is founder of the Nielsen Norman Group and he is also a former professor of Cognitive Science (among many, many, many other things). In short, he’s a guy who has spent his whole life researching what makes users tick
UX research is the most essential part of the UX design process. If you do not have a clear idea of who your target user is and what they want (or need); it is nearly impossible to provide them with the right user experience.To make your work easier for you, we have crafted a 10-step guide to make y
There’s a lot of work involved in UX design. There’s the personas, the ethnographic research, the usability testing, the user journeys, etc. Once it’s all done there’s usually something very exciting about being able to share the results of your work with the wider organizational team. Yet, all too
UX projects generate a bunch of documentation by nature. However, one thing many UX designers fall over on is generating good documentation. Documents need to fulfil some basic criteria in order to be genuinely useful and it’s worth taking some steps to generate better UX documentation – your client
The joy of design as a career is that the learning is never over. We have new tools, new software packages, new fields, and new skills to pick up every single day of the year and that’s not likely to change. That huge array of demand can leave us feeling a little overwhelmed too; what should we stud
Since the first product was designed, people have been practicing interaction design; not necessarily in name, but the activities and thought processes have remained largely the same. Interaction design is, to put things simply, the act of designing products that people will eventually interact with
We love what we do. That’s a healthy way to live and manage your life. If you enjoy your work it’s likely to cause less stress and stimulate your interest more. That’s a recipe for health and success. But… there’s a point when loving what you do gets out of control. That’s when genuine joy in your w
If you’re a first time UX consultant on a project there are some things that you may not be prepared for. We’ve got some tips to making the most of your first assignment for both you and your clients.Understand Business Objectives FirstThis should be taken as read but in our experience it’s often fo
This is the last part of our dealing with problem users in user research and user testing. We’ve seen 6 types of problem user and how we can best handle them during our work. If you missed these parts of the series, we’ve saved them all under the UX Daily tab on our website so you can catch up.One L
This is the penultimate part in our dealing with problem users in user research and testing. We’ve taken a look at 5 problem users so far – 4 of which can’t help being a problem and 1 who absolutely can. Today, we’re going to look at our last user type and the one which we can easily create ourselve
We know that the User Persona can be an incredibly useful tool when embedding UX design philosophies in your business. Unfortunately, we also know that developing high quality user personas can be time consuming, expensive and a bit of a PITA. This leads to cutting corners on the development of thos
Welcome back to our short series on users who cause problems for UX researchers or UX testers. So far in this series we’ve looked at four different user types, the shy person, the person who just won’t shut up, the person who digresses at the drop of a hat, and the scatterbrain. If you’ve missed the
Typically, if we want to gain insights into an area, we will research, research, and then research some more. Finding something new from research is an insight in itself, but to develop problem solutions and identify new angles of attack we sometimes have to venture away from the traditional methods
Welcome back to the UX Daily and our short series on dealing with users who cause problems in user research and testing. So far this week, we’ve taken a look at how we get the best from shy people, people who won’t shut up and people who can’t stay on topic for long enough. If you haven’t had a chan
UX can be a lonely job if you let it become that way. This is particularly true at small companies where UX can be a small part of someone’s role. Yet, not only does it not have to be a lonely role but it’s one where many other people in the organization can contribute their ideas too in a useful an
There are only so many hours in the day and after working full-time it can be very difficult to squeeze in the right training courses to develop our skills and move us to the next level of our career path. So how do you go about choosing the right design training approach for your needs?Let’s take a
This week, we’re taking a glance at some of the people we encounter in user research. In particular, we’re looking at those people who may derail the research through their personality traits. We’ve already looked at shy people and their opposite number; the people who won’t shut up. If you haven’t
Before you being development on a product, you need to be able to answer 11 key questions to be reasonably certain that your idea will produce results. When it comes to product development far too many ideas end up in the idea graveyard because the answers to these questions weren’t forthcoming.11 W
Today, let's look at some great value options for developing wireframes and prototypes for your project. If you’re not sure what these are; let’s refresh your memory.What is a Wireframe?A wireframe is a model of your site without the coding and design. It can be used to test ideas for your UX projec
This week we’re looking at users, who aren’t as helpful during user testing as they could be. In most cases this won’t be deliberate but we still need to find coping strategies in order to make the most of our research opportunities. Yesterday, we looked at shy people and how to handle them (if you
