CategoryUX

February 24, 2014 — An off-canvas menu is a great way to maintain context while giving the user a lot of additional information. In this article, Kyle Peatt will talk about why off-canvas has become so successful as a navigation pattern. Countless methods and patterns are waiting to be discovered by intrepid designers. The potential of this pattern is bound only by our drive to pioneer. It’s time that we explore just how far off canvas we can go! Read more…

January 27, 2014 — The debate about what a “User Experience Design” exactly is, is as old as the discipline itself, and while sitting back and watching the drama is sometimes fun, let’s try to figure out which user experience techniques are useful for startups, in-house teams, big corporations and anyone who wants to improve their website, product or service. Read more…

January 8, 2014 — Anthony Viviano has been working at incorporating lean UX at the enterprise level. In studying it, he fond that there’s a temptation to lay down rules, and if the rules aren’t followed, you can’t call it lean UX. At the end of the day, though, some lean UX is better than none. Read more…

January 6, 2014 — In this second part, Pete Smart will share what travelling 2517 miles taught him. Every day, he had 24 hours to observe a problem, attempt to solve it and then communicate the solution. For more of an introduction to the adventure, “50 Problems in 50 Days, Part 1: Real Empathy for Innovation” gives an overview of the project. Read more…

January 2, 2014 — Working walls are known by countless names. Underlying them all is a single idea: that physically pinning our sources of inspiration and work in progress can help us to rearrange concepts and unlock breakthrough insights. According to Vyas and his colleagues at the University of Twente, designers integrate these surfaces “artfully” and organize information in such a way that it empowers them to visualize and extend their work in progress. Read more…

December 16, 2013 — When a group wants to generate ideas, you assemble, spell out the basic ground rules for brainstorming and then have people yell out ideas one at a time. It’s a method chosen for ideation, but it is fraught with problems. Brainwriting is an easy alternative or a complement to face-to-face brainstorming, and it often yields more ideas in less time than traditional group brainstorming. In this article Chauncey Wilson will talk about this method! Read more…

December 11, 2013 — The psychological dimension that springs from a dialogue between two strategic conceptions that depend on the personality of each chess player has long been a mystery. How do Grandmasters think? The most successful strategies are rooted in our very own nature. And common to most Grandmasters is that they almost never take the easy way out. That creativity, that compulsion to look beyond what comes instinctively is what fuels successful strategies and explains why so few Grandmasters are out there. Read more…

December 3, 2013 — Navigation is merely a means to an end, and this is why users have contrasting expectations about content and navigation. While content is supposed to be unique and exciting, navigating to it is supposed to be as simple as possible. In this article, you will find a guide to efficiently simplifying the navigation experience, by analyzing the type and amount of content as well as choosing and designing the right type of navigation menu! Read more…

November 19, 2013 — The best thing any designer can do is to collect feedback from real users. Recently, Joshua Gross had an opportunity to experience thiswhen iterating on HelloSign. Thanks to testing, the app went from four stars to a solid five stars after a redesign. You’ll look at how the app started, how they ran the tests and how the product ended up with five stars. Read more…

November 11, 2013 — If customers can’t find a product, they can’t buy it. Therefore we invested eight months conducting a large-scale usability research study on the product-finding experience. We set out to explore how users navigate, find and select products on e-commerce websites. Throughout the test sessions, the subjects would abandon websites because they were unable to find the products they were looking for. All of these usability issues have been distilled into 79 concise guidelines in a report titled “Homepage & Category Usability.” In this article, we’ll go over seven of the guidelines. Read more…