Information Overload, Why it Matters and How to Combat It

Designers often need to convey information to the users of their designs. Specialists in information visualization design in particular find themselves presenting data over and over again to their users. However, it’s important when developing your designs that you don’t create “information overload” – that is presenting so much data that you le...

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• 4 weeks ago

When Should I Conduct Usability Testing for a Product?

Usability testing is an essential part of product development. A common question from those new to the field is “when should we test?” The answer is simple; you test before a redesign, you test during the redesign and then you test afterwards too. Here’s why: Usability Testing Before a RedesignThis might sound silly because you know you’re goin...

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• 4 weeks ago

The Basics of Recruiting Users for Usability Testing

Recruiting the right participants is crucial if your user research is to get your design anywhere. Your research participants must be able to represent your target group or end users; otherwise, your results will not translate into something you can use. The level of difficulty you will face when recruiting participants depends on your criteria....

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• 4 weeks 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...

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• 1 month ago

5 Things Everyone Should Know About UX Work

The howls of frustration that we hear on many UX projects are often to do with how badly misunderstood the UX role is in business. Here are 5 things that everyone should know about UX work: 1. UX Research is EssentialThe first barrier to many a UX project is people in the company who think they already know the customer inside out. “We’ve done...

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• 1 month ago

Empathy – How to Improve Your Designs by Developing Empathy for Your Target Group

Empathy is the ability to understand and identify with another person’s context, emotions, goals and motivations. In order to design great experiences, successful design firms actively search for empathic insights into their target group. In a design context, empathy serves a distinct purpose: to inspire design decisions in the early stages of t...

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• 1 month ago

Principle of Consistency and Standards in User Interface Design

Learn to design with consistency and standards in mind and understand the reasons why they’re important to incorporate them into your work. Derived from Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich’s Ten User Interface (UI) Guidelines, ‘Consistency and Standards’ are evident in many of the widely-used products created by some of the most successful companies. ...

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• 1 month ago

Affinity Diagrams – Learn How to Cluster and Bundle Ideas and Facts

Affinity diagrams are a great method to help you make sense of all your information when you have a lot of mixed data, such as facts, ethnographic research, ideas from brainstorms, user opinions, user needs, insights, and design issues. Affinity diagrams or clustering exercises are all about bundling and grouping information, and this method can...

• 299 shares
• 1 month 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 ...

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• 1 month ago

An Overview of The Factors of Success for New Product Development

Bringing a successful product to market is a team effort. While designers are responsible for usability, utility and the rest of the user experience there are many factors which contribute to the success or failure of new product development and many of these are outside of the designer’s direct control. The figure above shows the main factors ...

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• 1 month 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...

• 334 shares
• 1 month 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; ...

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• 1 month ago

The Rule of Thirds: Know your layout sweet spots

Now that we’ve started covering the topic of proportion in design (beginning with the Golden Ratio article), let’s look at another vital subject. Getting a firm grasp of the Rule of Thirds will empower you to fine-tune your eye to bring out the best of the elements in your design by placing them where they belong best. What Is the Rule of Th...

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• 1 month 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...

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• 1 month ago

Affect and Design

“...we now have evidence that aesthetically pleasing objects enable you to work better...products and systems that make you feel good are easier to deal with and produce more harmonious results. When you wash and polish your car, doesn't it drive better? When you bathe and dress up in clean, fancy clothes, don't you feel better? And when you use...

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• 1 month ago

Information Visualization – Who Needs It?

Jesse James Garrett, the information designer, says; "What makes people passionate, pure and simple, is great experiences. If they have great experience with your product and they have great experiences with your service, they’re going to be passionate about your brand, they’re going to be committed to it. That’s how you build that kind of commi...

• 224 shares
• 1 month ago

Customer Lifecycle Mapping - Getting to Grips with Customers

Customer experience is the key to running a successful business just as user experience is key to developing a successful product. Customer experience encompasses a larger range of interaction than user experience in that it not only takes into account UX but also the needs of those paying for the product or service (which may be very different ...

• 273 shares
• 1 month ago

How to Align UX with Product Management

The introduction of UX to a company’s workflow is often a straightforward process. There’s a common understanding that you will be delivering improvements to products that will enable better acceptance of those products in the market.However, the role of the product manager can often clash with the UX role. Why? Well… they really ought to be the...

• 201 shares
• 1 month ago

I’m a business manager. How do I become a UX designer?

Career changes aren’t always money oriented. While UX designers can earn up to $120,000 a year according to Dashburst’s(1) analysis of UX jobs, it’s fair to say that many business managers make similar salaries. However, business managers like you are often concerned with the bottom line, and there’s no doubt that UX design has a huge impact on ...

• 280 shares
• 1 month ago

The Laws of Figure/Ground, Prägnanz, Closure, and Common Fate - Gestalt Principles (3)

We’re now going to take a look at some more Gestalt principles, building on what we’ve learned in the first two articles. This third piece is particularly useful because having a good grasp of Figure/Ground, Prägnanz, Closure, and Common Fate will enhance your ability to design with more thoughtfulness, confident that you’re making the best use ...

• 465 shares
• 1 month ago