User Experience Design Blog

Feb 27, 2008 - In my last article ‘Radical Redesigns May Be Dangerous,’ I wrote about the potential hazards of drastic changes to existing user experiences. In a poorly executed redesign, these pitfalls can turn away hard-won users (customers). In this article, I explore ways that radical redesigns can be successfully implemented, so fewer existing users leave, and more [...]

Feb 26, 2008 - Gender Bias in Tech Products An article in the Boston Globe last week explores gender bias in tech products and how companies are beginning to “feminize” their products. However, “it would be a mistake to think that designing for women simply means adding sparkles”–rather, it requires that companies put “style and functionality on equal footing with [...]

Feb 19, 2008 - 6 Types of Mobile Internet Users Broadband analyst group Point Topic reports six main types of mobile Internet users: Road warriors, gadget joys, MI lifers, mid-market moderates, entertain us and light & easy. Of these, the newest types to be identified are the mid-market moderates–late-adopters waiting for a compelling reason to use mobile Internet, “entertain us”–young [...]

Feb 12, 2008 - Logo Evolution Neatorama posted last week on the evolution of company logos. Along with reproductions of the logos through time are brief histories of the name changes, mergers, and executive decisions that framed each adaptation. Companies included: Adobe, Apple, Canon, IBM, Google, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Mozilla Firefox, Nokia, Nortel and Xerox. The post also includes interesting [...]

Feb 5, 2008 - The Usual Suspects: Alertbox, Boxes and Arrows, and UIE User Skills Improving From the Alertbox, Nielsen reports that users are getting better at moving their mouses, clicking on things, and the basics of search. Though users might be fluent on sites they know, they still trip over new sites, new information architectures, and information overload. To help, [...]

Jan 29, 2008 - “Small Pond, Smart Fish” The latest from Coroflot’s Creative Seeds blog contends that Design Capitals are “rarely the best locations to start a career.” Rather than eking out a living in some of the most expensive cities in the world, going deeper into debt, at a temporary internship getting “small pieces of pick-up work”–why not [...]

Jan 23, 2008 - Many clients are excited by radical user experience redesigns; few realize that radical redesigns are not always warranted and often pose potentially grievous problems for users. Throughout my career I have been involved in a number of projects that called for a ‘radical redesign’ of an existing product or service. To their credit, those clients realized [...]

Jan 22, 2008 - Neglect Advanced Search, Never More A new article on Boxes and Arrows calls advanced search “an under-utilized tool hampered by its own design.” “Normal” people don’t use it. The “old framing” of search versus advanced search, of “geeks versus normal people”, is prohibitive and doesn’t allow users to tackle the problem of too many results. The [...]

Jan 15, 2008 - Engagement in Web Metrics Print advertisers buy space. Broadcast advertisers buy time. We used to measure the success of online ads by page views. The Washington Post this week suggests that given multi-tasking users and the rise of development techniques like Ajax, a better measure of success would be to develop new metrics, like “engagement”–a way [...]

Jan 8, 2008 - In the tradition of the New Year, best-of lists and some things to look forward to… Ten Best Intranets 2008 From the Alertbox, Mr. Nielsen reports the Ten Best Intranets of 2008. Half the winners are from the U.S., among them Bank of America, Barnes and Noble, Campbell Soup and Coldwell Banker. The financial industry is strongly [...]