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Search for Items with Scrolling Lists, Archive Lists or List Inlays
Even if you’re not the to-do list maniac like some of us, lists are a great way to deliver content to your users. A list allows them to navigate quickly to the section of content that is most relevant to them, while maintaining an overview of the entire body of information that is accessible. It also helps them understand the logic of the conten...
15 Guiding Principles for UX Researchers
We’ve found that a lot of first time UX researchers have similar questions and concerns when they start working in UX design. So, we thought we’d round up and tackle some of the most common questions to form a set of useful principles for UX researchers. Of course, this isn’t a complete guide to UX research (there are some fairly weighty tomes o...
The Seven Simple Principles of Conversion Centred Design (CCD) and How to Use Them
Oli Gardner – the Creative Director of Unbounce (a landing page builder for marketers), is an advocate of CCD. He says that deploying CCD makes each page you create on a website a piece of “accountable content”. In that you can measure the impact, purpose and success of each page as that page plays a part in converting visitors into customers.De...
Embrace the Mental Models of Users by Implementing Tabs
Users of all ages will still remember the tabbed file folders people used to bring order into a vast amount of information and make it super simple to find what they were looking for. If you’re trying to design a good way to prevent your users from having to search for a needle in a haystack every time, the tabbed user interface is just what you...
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...
How to Change Your Career from Graphic Design to UX Design
If there’s an occupation that is 100% linked with the public’s idea of what design is all about, it’s graphic design. From the familiar golden arches of the McDonald’s brand to the typography and colors of movie posters, graphic designers create some of the most iconic and ubiquitous designs around us. So why would a graphic designer like you wa...
Emotion and Design: Affect and Design
“If the product is something fundamental to life and well-being, then the proper response is to ignore continual shifts in popular sentiment and aim for long-lasting value. Yes, the product must be attractive. Yes, it should be pleasurable and fun. But it must also be effective, understandable, and appropriately priced. In other words, it must s...
Show Me the Way to Go Anywhere – Navigation for Mobile Applications
It doesn’t matter how great the functions and content, that your mobile apps serve, are – if your user can’t find them, they aren’t going to contribute to a great user experience. Navigation on the mobile web comes with challenges thanks to the reduced screen real estate available on smartphones. However, there are some good best practice guidel...
Preparing for a Design Job Interview
There are few things in life as critical to us as getting it right at interview. The design job of your dreams might as well be on top of Everest in a blizzard if you can’t deliver what the interviewer wants. We can’t guarantee success but there are some simple tips to follow to improve your chances when you get to the interview. Personalize Yo...
Norman's Three Levels of Design
In the human mind there are numerous areas responsible for what we refer to as emotion; collectively, these regions comprise the emotional system. Don Norman proposes the emotional system consists of three different, yet interconnected levels, each of which influences our experience of the world in a particular way. The three levels are visceral...
Task Analysis a UX Designer’s Best Friend
Task analysis is a critical part of any design project and one that is all too often skipped in favour of other seemingly more interesting actions. In fact, task analysis is essential to the success of a design project and once you’ve got the hang of it – it’s surprisingly easy too. It can be used equally successfully on both mobile and desktop ...
Making Use of the Crowd – Social Proof and the User Experience
Social proof (sometimes referred to as informational social influence) is a psychological concept. It refers to the tendency of human beings to follow the actions of others when making decisions and placing weight on those actions to assume “the correct decision”. It’s a concept that can be used in product design for the Internet and mobile web ...
How to Apply Search Boxes to Increase Efficiency
Have you ever felt overwhelmed with information while you were searching for something specific? Have you ever been lost in the haystack, looking for that one tiny needle? If your users are anything like you, they will sometimes feel overwhelmed or lost, too, unless you minimize their efforts by providing them with a search box. These may be sma...
Design iteration brings powerful results. So, do it again designer!
The iterative design process is a simple concept. Once, through user research, you have identified a user need and have generated ideas to meet that need, you develop a prototype. Then you test the prototype to see whether it meets the need in the best possible way. Then you take what you learned from testing and amend the design. Following that...
Don’t Make Me Think – Key Learning Points for UX Design for the Web
Don’t Make Me Think is the title of a book by the HCI and Usability engineer Steve Krug. It teaches UX designers how to deliver great user experiences in a very simple and accessible way. Since its release in the year 2000 it has become one of the defining texts in the industry and an invaluable guide to UX professionals around the world.Don’t M...
The Concept of the "Triune Brain"
In the 1960s, American neuroscientist Paul MacLean formulated the 'Triune Brain' model, which is based on the division of the human brain into three distinct regions. MacLean's model suggests the human brain is organized into a hierarchy, which itself is based on an evolutionary view of brain development. The three regions are as follows: Rep...
The power of white space
We want to show you a tool so vital that it may amaze you as a designer. It’s as underrated as silence between musical notes. However, it’s powerful enough to mean keeping people on your page – survival, in other words. Many elements form the layout and structure of an interactive design. Often neglected, one of the most vital is white space (o...
Make Your UX Design Process Agile Using Google’s Methodology
In an age of tight resources and constrained finances companies are more reluctant than ever to commit to big design projects without a thorough understanding of their chances of success. Google has developed a methodology to make the design process fast and still offer valuable insight. Forget minimum viable products and focus on prototypes and...
User Goals and How They Influence Information Design Decisions
As an information designer, your main aim is to help people understand the world better. Whether they’re trying to make sense of national election sentiments or get a grip on tourism activities in a region, people need to understand the meaning and implications of facts and figures. These collections of words and numbers are raw data. Your duty ...
5 Awesome TED Talks for Designers
We know, TED talks can sometimes feel a little… overblown. While there are loads of great talks; some of them go nowhere and don’t seem to add much to your life at all. To make things worse… there are a lot of TED talks and it’s hard to tell which are going to motivate you to do something new and interesting and which are going to bore the socks...
