User Experience Design Blog

Apr 2, 2009 - Without user experience design to ground and inform it, trying to make sense of web analytics results in conjecture. On the other hand, user experience design without analytical testing to validate and fine-tune it can only be informed guesswork. Analytics data is useful when it is utilized to measure success of goals and to understand performance [...]

Mar 26, 2009 - Douglas Bowman, largely credited with building the visual design team at Google, left the company on Friday, March 20. On his last day he wrote his reasons for leaving on his blog, Stopdesign. In the post he states his frustration with data dictating design and leaving barely any room for creativity. Bowman writes: Yes, it’s true [...]

Mar 23, 2009 - BuisinessWeek has a great Q&A with Google’s Director of User Experience, Irene Au. In the article, Irene Au is asked about Google’s approach to design and brand coherence across different Google products. Not surprisingly, Google has a very scientific approach to experience design, heavily rooted in quantitative methods: [Engineers] and analysts pore over streams of data [...]

Feb 17, 2009 - As seemingly everyone is moving toward working online, security concerns are being thrown to the wayside with troubling consequences. A recent occurrence at a hot start-up made me seriously think twice about how safe our online data is from malicious eyes. One of the main themes of Web 2.0 is the large-scale migration to the ‘cloud’. [...]

Feb 11, 2009 - A while back, Marissa Mayer of Google shared some very compelling research results at a Web 2.0 conference. In essence, she stated that an additional delay of 0.5 seconds to page-load time caused a 20% drop in traffic. Naturally, the first question that came to mind is whether this was an isolated case, or if [...]

Jan 26, 2009 - In these tough economic times, one reads of disappointing earnings and layoffs almost every day. Certainly, consumer electronics companies are not unaffected, and major players like Microsoft and Sony are seeing sales plummet and are cutting staff. However, there is one among them that is doing exceptionally well given the market conditions–Apple. Matt Burns over at [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Jul 9, 2008 - To some ‘reputation’ and ‘brand’ may be one and the same. I consider reputation to be an integral part of a company’s brand. Beyond reputation, brand can include things like popularity (market penetration), identity, uniqueness, etc.¬† Yet reputation probably pays the biggest role in building a valuable brand. Indeed, this past week Forbes released [...]