User Experience Design Blog

Dec 4, 2008 - This article strives to explain, in non-technical terms, what is user experience design, why it is critical in the modern business landscape, and how businesses can take advantage of what the field has to offer. What Is User Experience Design? User experience design is a specialized field that combines product strategy and usability engineering. It aims to [...]

Nov 4, 2008 - Today is the big day, and no matter for whom or what you are voting on November 4th, you not only want your vote counted, but you also want it counted correctly. In the spirit of fair elections with a twist of usability geekiness, we at Montparnas compiled a few resources where you can learn [...]

Oct 20, 2008 - ReadWriteWeb wrote on Thursday that the news feed is the “dominant information paradigm of our time.” I don’t know that I would go quite that far, but it has spread like wildfire throughout the web despite causing a ruckus when its originator, Facebook, first launched it just two years ago. Today, most respectable social websites [...]

Oct 2, 2008 - Social media includes community-based video, photo, audio, and news websites as well as blogs. Although each of these types of websites has unique content and dynamics, they are also alike in many ways. This article explores various ways to get the most out of any social media site. Social media sites rely on user-generated or user-submitted [...]

Sep 17, 2008 - From mood lighting, to an exhaustive entertainment system, to reasonable fares and good service, there is a lot that Virgin America is doing right. I recently flew the airline, and was taken aback by the attention to detail and the luxury experience that VA has created. I flew on their 1 year anniversary so there [...]

Sep 4, 2008 - A while ago, I wrote about the dangers of radical experience redesigns and how to implement them so the fewest number of users will abandon the product during the transition from old to new. The main points articulated in the article were: Make only changes that really will benefit users Let users know what improvements will be [...]

Aug 18, 2008 - This survey takes a look at the various example and trends of headers and navigation across major websites. (Scroll down to see examples.) In particular we focus on headers coupled with horizontal navigation as that has become the industry standard. Many top sites, like those shown below, have adopted this paradigm. A few notable exceptions [...]

Jul 29, 2008 - Jakob Nielson’s article, Weekly User Testing: TiVo Did It, You Can Too provides a great case study supporting testing early and frequently in the design process to produce exceptional design. Having worked with TiVo, I can say that their approach to usability and research is stellar, and their user experience team is very talented, so [...]