Heuristic Evaluation: How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation

Learn to conduct a heuristic evaluation on any given user interface design. This article will teach you how to generate and conduct your own heuristic evaluations so you can improve the usability, utility, and desirability of your designs. The best practice is to use established heuristics like Nielsen and Molich's 10 rules of thumb and Ben Shn...

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• 1 month ago

Map the Stakeholders

Having faced the problem statement and defined the challenge space, the challenge owner or initiator now needs to gather the troops. In more complex settings or larger organisations, drafting a stakeholder map, outlining people involved, affected, or influenced both internally and externally is a necessary first step. If you’re a project owner ...

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• 1 month ago

Where’s the UX Representative in Your Senior Management Team?

We’re not here to tell you how to run your business but (and isn’t there always a but in a sentence like that?) we would like to ask many of the companies that we come across; “why is there no UX representative in the senior management team?” UX is not Customer Experience Author/Copyright holder: Borys Kozielski. Copyright terms and licence: C...

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• 1 month ago

Design Management (An Introduction) - Taking Charge of Processes and People

Design management is a complex field; it doesn’t relate to a single design discipline and the exact responsibilities attached to a design manager will depend on the organization they work for, the size of that organization (and the tier in the hierarchy at which the manager operates), the industry they work in, the current market position and to...

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• 1 month 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...

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• 1 month ago

No-UI: How to Build Transparent Interaction

Here, we will explore and teach you about the incredible user experience opportunities which you can take advantage of when designing for interaction beyond the classical Graphical User Interface (GUI). Non-visual User Interaction (no-UI) is pioneered by the ground-breaking work of researchers who have realized that, in today’s world, we are sur...

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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

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

Empathy Map – Why and How to Use It

Did you know that users are more likely to choose, buy and use products that meet their needs as opposed to products that just meet their wants? An Empathy map will help you understand your user’s needs while you develop a deeper understanding of the persons you are designing for. There are many techniques you can use to develop this kind of emp...

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• 1 month ago

Apple’s Product Development Process – Inside the World’s Greatest Design Organization

Apple’s Product Development Process may be one of the most successful design processes ever implemented. With the company verging on becoming the world’s first $1 trillion business organization – there’s a lot that designers can learn from Apple and introduce into their own design environments.Apple is a notoriously secretive business. In Steve ...

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• 1 month ago

How to design great 404 Error Pages

Getting a 404 Error page is very similar to many real-life situations. What do we mean? Well, for example, if you are an “I-don’t-need-a-map” kind of person in an unknown place, you will most likely get lost. And while your frustration level rises to the level of Leonardo Di Caprio at The Oscars, imagine that someone approaches you and gently he...

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• 1 month ago

Stage 4 in the Design Thinking Process: Prototype

One of the best ways to gain insights in a Design Thinking process is to carry out some form of prototyping. This method involves producing an early, inexpensive, and scaled down version of the product in order to reveal any problems with the current design. Prototyping offers designers the opportunity to bring their ideas to life, test the prac...

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• 1 month ago

Stage 3 in the Design Thinking Process: Ideate

In the Ideation stage, design thinkers spark off ideas — in the form of questions and solutions — through creative and curious activities such as Brainstorms and Worst Possible Idea. In this article, we’ll introduce you to some of the best Ideation methods and guidelines that help facilitate successful Ideation sessions and encourage active part...

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• 1 month ago

The Pareto Principle and How to Be More Effective

Eighty percent of what we do is pretty much pointless. Twenty percent of our efforts yield 80% of the results. The Pareto Principle is the idea that 80% of our output comes from 20% of our efforts. It’s a measure of where we can devote our efforts so as to increase our productivity and performance. Explore where your 20% lies—and become more pro...

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• 1 month ago

8 Skills That Every Enterprise UX Team Needs

The growing popularity of UX as a profession does not necessarily mean that everything is rosy for UX teams in enterprise development groups. There is still a tendency to assume that “design” is the only part of the UX role that matters. This often leads to UX teams which cannot fulfil their duties to the organization effectively. To deliver ent...

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• 1 month ago

Stage 2 in the Design Thinking Process: Define the Problem and Interpret the Results

An integral part of the Design Thinking process is the definition of a meaningful and actionable problem statement, which the design thinker will focus on solving. This is perhaps the most challenging part of the Design Thinking process, as the definition of a problem (also called a design challenge) will require you to synthesise your observati...

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• 1 month ago

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...

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• 1 month ago

7 Great, Tried and Tested UX Research Techniques

Thinking about conducting some user research? Wondering which techniques are most likely to provide useful results? Then look no further. We’ve compiled a list of 7 excellent techniques which are tried and tested and have been proven to deliver real value in UX projects. Let’s take a look at each technique and see what it is and why it works: T...

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• 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 ...

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• 1 month ago

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...

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• 1 month ago