There is no secret to how we develop an understanding of user experience and user behaviour; simple observation is almost all you need. Taking the time to actually watch and just take in how, where, why, and when users interact with products underpins the process of acquiring UX knowledge. Auth
If you’ve been struggling to adopt useful metrics in your user experience team – you might want to consider the HEART framework designed by Kerry Rodden, Hilary Hutchinson and Xin Fu, from Google’s research team.The idea is a simple one; to deliver a series of user-centred metrics that allow you to
Research suggests that we are more receptive to and likely to remember information when we are in a state of preparedness. This provides strong support to the argument for conditions that get learners into the best possible mental state prior to the presentation of important information. Every insta
Every piece of UX research that we conduct will contain errors. Given that we know this, it’s relatively easy to calculate what’s known as a “confidence interval”. So, for example, if we take a population of 50 people in a survey and 42 people do something in the same way – we can infer that betwe
If you’re thinking about starting out in freelance design practice then we’ve got some handy hints to get you started. It can be tough at the beginning but many designers will tell you that becoming freelance was the best thing that they’ve ever done. Step 1 – Develop a Personal Brand If you want
User Experience design is all about getting people to use our products. We’re not so much concerned with people buying our products, that’s sales and marketing’s focus, we’re concerned with the way that people adopt our products into their lives. We want to create lasting relationships that create b
If there’s any sector that needs to deliver a pleasing user experience; it’s the non-profit sector. Doing good costs money and that means they rely on their users to fund their work. A poor online experience can deter volunteers, sponsors, and even those looking to make a small donation. Yet, it is
Companies don’t invest individuals for the sake of it; well, at least not in most of the world – there are some exceptions to that rule (some Gulf States for example mandate $x spent on development per person per year) but not many. They invest in training to see a return on that investment (ROI). S
So far in our CMS series we’ve looked at open source products and those are free to install. LightCMS is a paid for offering and one that might be useful for very specific projects.About LightCMSPart of NetSuite Inc. Light CMS is an online rapid deployment system for websites. It allows for a single
There’s no doubt that of all the social networks the most beloved by the media is Twitter. The network’s format of quick, pithy opinions has led to dozens of collated articles in the news. It’s cheap and easy to find opinions on Twitter and, of course, whatever viewpoint you wish to represent – ther
We’ve taken a look at the biggest CMS package, Drupal, and the most popular, WordPress, and that leaves us just one more of the big 3 CMS systems to tackle - Joomla. So where does Joomla fit in the CMS world and why would you use it for your web design projects?About JoomlaJoomla is a popular choice
Most of your freelance clients, hopefully, will be wonderful. However, every now and again you’re going to end up dealing with a nightmare client. Here’s how you might want to structure your approach to dealing with clients like this:Protect Yourself From the Outset of a RelationshipAuthor/Copyright
Imagine that you come into work one morning and attend the monthly product meeting. At that meeting the product manager announces that sales have dropped by 75% and customer complaints have tripled in the last 2 months. You’d know that there was a strong likelihood of a user experience problem would
If you want to promote your work widely – one of the easiest ways to make it shareable is to tell a story. Stories give your fans, potential clients and other interested parties a hook to grab their attention and to help them understand your work in context. So how could you go about that?Visual Sto
Welcome back to our series on popular CMS systems for web designers. If you have missed any of the previous parts of the series – you can find them under the UX Daily tab on our home page. Today we’re going to be taking a look at one of the up and coming CMS providers Squarespace.About SquarespaceSq
The theory of behavioural economics has evolved rapidly over the last 4 decades or so. There was a point when economists assumed that all decisions people make are rational decisions. This is because economics is a rational discipline. Whenever a deviation occurred from expected “rational behaviour”
This week we’ve looked at the Big 3 CMS systems; WordPress, Drupal and Joomla and now we’d like to turn our attention to one of the smaller players in the market. Quick.cms is a project that can be found over at www.opensolution.org and as with the other three – it’s an open source solution.About Qu
It’s a funny thing that when we talk of UX work; we tend to talk of the successes of projects and how we can influence them. There’s rarely a mention of the flip side of UX work, the times that we have to take our ideas and extinguish them because they are doomed to failure. The real business case
Designers are often fighting to fit everything into the available space, regardless of the medium and tools they are working with. Web designers must provide all of the necessary buttons, links, images, products, and so on within the constraints of each page and the site overall. Similarly, product
A recent white paper from Alpha-UX showed that one of the biggest challenges in the workplace for product development is internal politics. I can relate to this. In one of my previous jobs, we spent more time in meeting rooms, where the C-Suite conducted witch hunt after witch hunt, than actually
