The Law of Similarity - Gestalt Principles (1)

Gestalt is a German word that carries much importance, especially for us as designers. Let’s have a close look at its principles so that we can see how much information this little word encompasses! The central principle to the Gestalt theory was neatly summarized by the Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka: "The whole is other than the sum of the ...

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• 2 hours ago

Monitoring Player Motivation for Gamification

One of the big questions facing us as gamification designers is, “When will your player get bored of your gamification project, and how can you keep their interest as long as possible?” Fortunately, there are ways to monitor player motivation so that you can respond to them accordingly. In their book, Gamification at Work: Designing Engaging Bus...

• 59 shares
• 4 hours ago

User Stories: As a [UX Designer] I want to [embrace Agile] so that [I can make my projects user-centered]

Let’s examine a tool so simple yet so powerful that once you’ve learned about it, you will apply it in all your projects. It is a great design method that enhances collaboration among all stakeholders. Users’ Needs are a core part of Agile: the User Stories There are so many articles about UX and Agile. Lots of them are rants about how Agile i...

• 170 shares
• 7 hours ago

14 Barriers to Ideation – and How to Overcome Them

Would you like to facilitate successful ideation sessions? Or would you like to learn how to contribute to ideation processes in your team more effectively? In either case, you should know the ideation traps and how you can prevent yourself and your team from falling into them. You should give the following 14 important barriers to ideation your...

• 110 shares
• 1 day ago

Design Thinking: A Quick Overview

If you have just started embarking your journey through the Design Thinking process, things might seem a little overwhelming. This is why we have prepared a useful overview of the Design Thinking process, as well as some of the popular Design Thinking frameworks commonly used by global design firms and national design agencies. To begin, let’s ...

• 78 shares
• 1 day ago

7 Key UX Topics that Every Manager Should Understand

The new entrant into UX in an established business often has a tough time of things. People understand what UX stands for (some of the time at least), they may even have an idea of why it is important but they often have no real understanding of what is required to achieve a good UX. This lack of understanding and particularly from management; ...

• 117 shares
• 1 day ago

A User-Centred Approach to Mobile Design and a 5 Stage Process for You to Use

The mobile web is here to stay. However, it’s important to remember that having a mobile website isn’t the key to success – it’s providing the right approach to the mobile user experience that brings success. Taking a user-centred approach to mobile (and other) design can help you keep in mind the outcomes that you intend rather than wasting tim...

• 173 shares
• 1 day ago

The Myths of Mobile Design and Why They Matter

When it comes to any school of thought surrounding a new concept – there comes a point when there is a body of “accepted knowledge”. That body of knowledge then becomes sacrosanct and instead of being treated as a guide to inform our work – it becomes practical dogma. It is worth challenging such myths and seeking to explore beneath the surface ...

• 146 shares
• 1 day ago

Designing for the Mobile Environment – Some Simple Guidelines

If you’re going to design for mobile, then it’s likely you’re going to need to consider the way that the device is used and the specifics of the device itself. There are some general principles that can help designers for mobile get started but don’t forget that these don’t replace the need for user research. They are guidelines not hard and fas...

• 149 shares
• 1 day ago

7 UX Deliverables: What will I be making as a UX designer?

What does a UX designer actually produce? Here, we will explore the concept of UX Deliverables, a term that describes the outputs of a UX design process during its various stages. The deliverables produced by UX designers vary according to their role in the design team and also depending on the methods and tools used by each role. We will provid...

• 147 shares
• 2 days ago

From Prototype to Product: Ensuring Your Solution is Feasible and Viable

The end goal of a Design Thinking work process is to create a solution that is desirable, feasible, and viable. This means that your product or solution should not only satisfy the needs of a user but be easy to implement and have a commercial model as well. During the bulk of your Design Thinking work process, desirability would be at the foref...

• 198 shares
• 2 days ago

User Input and the Mobile User Experience – We’re All Thumbs Now or Maybe Not

Mobile platforms are both limited in terms of their user input and also, in other ways, vastly superior to traditional laptops and desktops. Designing apps or web sites for mobile means taking into account the differences in the way that users can interact with a device and shaping the experience of the final product to take advantage of the str...

• 263 shares
• 2 days ago

Ideas for Conducting UX Research with Children

One of the most challenging realms to conduct user research with is when you have to conduct research with children. There are, obviously, stringent ethical and legal protocols to be kept to if you work with children but it’s not just the moral aspect of this world. Children are not miniature adults and the way we develop and design research wil...

• 150 shares
• 3 days ago

Stop Yourself from Becoming Content Fried and Free Your Mind to be Productive

Content fried is the point we reach when we subject ourselves to too much data. It commonly affects content curators but it can affect any of us. The “always on” Internet may be a blessing much of the time but it can also be a curse. The term “content fried” was defined Beth Kanter, who is a trainer, researcher, speaker and motivator. Content ...

• 267 shares
• 3 days ago

5 Proven Tactics for Evangelizing UX

If you work in an area related to UX, you’ll probably agree that good UX has a huge business value. Good UX helps you create the most relevant products and services for your customers and ensure that they are a joy to use. But if you have any practical experience of working with UX in organizations or as a consultant, you might also have found t...

• 101 shares
• 3 days ago

Simplicity in Design: 4 Ways to Achieve Simplicity in Your Designs

Learn ways to achieve simplicity in your designs and recognize why certain designs are overly complex. Simplicity is evident in many of the widely-used products created by some of the most successful companies. Simplicity is also one of the key reasons why some companies do better than their competitors. Google’s search engine, Apple iPhones, an...

• 250 shares
• 4 days ago

How to Do a Thematic Analysis of User Interviews

You have been in the field talking to users and you now find yourself with a massive amount of audio, notes, video, pictures, and interesting impressions. All that information can be overwhelming, and it’s difficult to know where to start to make sense of all the data. Here, we will teach you how to go from information chaos to patterns and them...

• 163 shares
• 4 days ago

Customer Touchpoints - The Point of Interaction Between Brands, Businesses, Products and Customers

There are as many different definitions for the word “touchpoint” in customer experience design and marketing as there are flavors on the average restaurant menu. Why? Because these disciplines have been evolving rapidly over the last decades and terminology has become fluid rather than static. To make matters more complicated – the term “touchp...

• 300 shares
• 4 days ago

Service Blueprints - Communicating the Design of Services

Service blueprints were first described by Lynn Shostack, a banking executive, back in 1982 in the Harvard Business Review. They’ve become popularized over the last few years as service design has grown as a profession. In addition to being useful in service design they are often used by operational management to gauge the efficiency of work wit...

• 234 shares
• 5 days ago

Visual Hierarchy: Organizing content to follow natural eye movement patterns

Let’s look at a topic that deals with, oddly enough, how we look at designs. Once you understand how the human eye processes these, you’ll find yourself better able to arrange your elements more effectively. Content in any digital page layout will follow a specific hierarchy. Headers appear above body text. Menus go at the top, bottom, left, or...

• 303 shares
• 5 days ago