Methods
-
Using Wikis to Document UI Specifications
by Peter Gremett | [8 comments]
As Agile gains momentum as a development approach of choice, documenting design becomes a challenge. Peter Gremett shows how using a wiki to capture
your design is a great way to
be adaptive as you build and
deliver product to customers. more... -
UI Pattern Documentation Review
by Patrick Stapleton | [9 comments]
Patrick Stapleton takes a look at some of the world's most popular pattern libraries and presents the case for a standard approach to documentation and categorization. more...
-
Photos for interaction
by Milan Guenther | [8 comments]
Visual design of software interfaces is becoming increasingly complex due to more possibilities and fewer platform standards. Milan Guenther introduces how to support interaction with the visible part of software, using photography as an example. more...
-
Quick Turnaround Usability Testing, Part II
by Paul Nuschke | [8 comments]
You’ve already learned how to use QTUT to reduce usability study prep time. Now, in part two of his article, Paul Nuschke describes how to expedite usability test sessions, and analysis & reporting. more...
-
Prototyping with XHTML
by Anders Ramsay and Leah Buley | [22 comments]
Looking for another way of realizing your design deliverables? XHTML are easy to code, can double as specifications, and create constraints that increase design effectiveness. more...
-
Quick Turnaround Usability Testing
by Paul Nuschke | [11 comments]
Completing usability testing in a short amount of time is a challenge that consultancies and development teams often face. In the first part of a two-part series, Paul Nuschke describes how to cut time out of the preparation leading up to a study. Part two will discuss how to run the study and analyze the findings. more...
-
Information Architecture for Audio: Doing It Right
by Jens Jacobsen | [5 comments]
Audio content is becoming increasingly prevalent. How do you design it effectively? Jens Jacobsen combines information architecture, journalism, usability engineering, and interface design to resolve some of the issues that arise from introducing audio. more...
-
People Finder: Searching Without Logic?
by Vivek Deshmukh | [10 comments]
In large organizations, finding
people is a very common intranet task. Vivek Deshmukh gives us advice on how to improve people search and really help staff find
one another. more... -
UX Design-Planning Not One-man Show
by Holger Maassen | [11 comments]
Holger Maassen posits his ideas about the process of planning and designing for User Experience Design-Planning (UXD-P) as Expectation Design. more...
-
Extreme User Research
by Daniel Lafreniere | [35 comments]
Clients don’t know a thing about their users, and designers think that if they like it, everyone will. Sound familiar? Daniel Lafreniere's 30-minute "extreme user research" plan comes to the rescue for those of us facing this exact situation. With this practical method, you can generate loads of useful data that will have a real impact on design, thus making the website more effective and profitable. more...
-
Cues, The Golden Retriever
by Jamie Owen | [13 comments]
Jamie Owen explores how we can best utilize cues in our work by understanding how memory, cognitive psychology, and multimedia research affect how information is encoded and retrieved. more...
-
Enhancing Dashboard Value and User Experience
by Joe Lamantia | [9 comments]
In this article, part five of a series, the author describes ways to enhance the long-term value and user experience quality of portals by encouraging portability and natural patterns of dialog and interaction around aggregated content. more...
-
Personas and the Role of Design Documentation
by Andrew Hinton | [26 comments]
Andrew Hinton digs into the origins of the persona and reflects on how business uses (or misuses) design documentation. more...
-
What Is Your Mental Model?
by Chris Baum | [13 comments]
Indi Young talks about the power of the mental model and how it can grow over time and help your organization avoid strategic blindspots. The story includes an excerpt of her new book, and B&A readers are elegible for a discount. more...
-
Search Behavior Patterns
by John Ferrara | [6 comments]
People search for information online is often in idiosyncratic ways. It's rarely as straightforward as designers of search systems assume. John Ferrara gives us hope as he helps us think about a broader search ecology and identifies patterns in behavior that serve as the basis for good search design. more...
-
Building the UX Dreamteam
by Anthony Colfelt | [36 comments]
Every time you hire someone for your UX team, you make a gut call that their personality and skills are what they seem. Anthony Colfelt looks to arm you with ways to make the hiring decisions that fit the best people into the reality of your business context. more...
-
Building a Data-Backed Persona
by Andrea Wiggins | [15 comments]
While the imaginary persona is helpful in the design process, a data-backed persona lends even more depth and focus to the development process. Andrea Wiggins reveals some effective ways to back up your personas with data easily available today. more...
-
Connectors for Dashboards and Portals
by Joe Lamantia | [4 comments]
This article is the fourth in a series sharing a design framework for dashboards and portals. In this installment, Joe Lamantia demonstrates how to connect content containers to ease navigation at all levels of the architecture. more...
-
In Appreciation of Measures That Tell Stories
by Alison J. Head | [8 comments]
Click streams have made room for bounce rates, search analytics, and much more. Inspire stakeholders to act by telling stories with key metrics and better supporting the narrative with data. more...
-
The Limitations of Server Log Files for Usability Analysis
by Karl Groves | [17 comments]
In the quest to gather more data on user behavior, some researchers and designers look to server log files for usability analysis. While the logs do provide a great deal of information, Karl Groves demonstrates why they are are inappropriate for gathering usability data. more...