Jun 04 2013
“As UX professionals, we generally have an abundant breadth of experience across different industries and businesses. Our clients, on the other hand, have great depth of knowledge in their own domain. However, only users themselves can intimately appreciate their own needs, and user experience is the only field that considers the user’s perspective at every stage of a project.” View the entire story at UXmatters.
May 30 2013
“We all know basic tenets of user-centered design. We recognize different research methods, the prototyping stage, as well as the process of documenting techniques in our rich methodological environment. The question you probably often ask yourself, though, is how it all works in practice?” Read the entire article on Smashing Magazine.
May 23 2013
“When users land on your website, they typically read the content available. Then, the next thing that they will do is to try and familiarize themselves with your website. Most of the time this involves looking for navigation.” Read the full story on Smashing Magazine.
May 21 2013
“Guidelines are considered to be the best resource that designers and developer can use to ensure that the applications and websites they produce are usable. Operating systems, devices, and development environments are very specific in nature. Because of this, their manufacturers have devised their own set of usability, UX, and UI guidelines.” View the full article on Usability Geek.
May 16 2013
“When you do a lot of writing, you’ll end up with lots of ideas and articles at various stages, including your idea lists, articles you’ve just started writing, halfway-finished articles, completed drafts that you need to review, final versions you’re waiting to publish, and articles that have already been published. It’s hard to keep track of all these pieces without good organization.” Learn more at UXmatters.
May 02 2013
“As designers and developers, we spend a great deal of time and effort getting a project just right for a client, yet often we don’t do it justice when we display the extent of our involvement and the various component parts that go into the whole thing. So many personal and agency portfolios simply display a couple of screen grabs of a project along with a few hazy bullet points saying things like “HTML & CSS”; or “WordPress CMS development.” These tell us very little about the effort that’s gone into a project and aren’t really very helpful to visitors who might be looking to your portfolio with a view to working with you on a project.” Read the full story at Smashing Magazine.
Apr 30 2013
“Today’s web design professionals practice any mix of graphic design, information architecture, user interface design, usability testing, user research, and front-end or back-end development skills. The value of the modern web design professional is not those disciplines, however, but the ability to combine them to solve real problems, especially as a group. Effective group work requires structured, strategic meetings, and good facilitation provides that structure.” See the full piece at A List Apart.
Apr 11 2013
“How many times have you thought of a neat idea only to forget it hours or days later? Our most innovative ideas are more likely to come to us when we are away from the office, thus, we are not necessarily in a position to act on them right away. Think of a way you can capture these ideas on-the-go, perhaps in a notepad application on your phone.” View the full article on The Fast Track.
Apr 04 2013
“In content strategy, content governance is a broad term that can apply to everything from workflows to style guides. The problem that arises with such a varied theoretical understanding of the term is that it is often talked about at the tactical level instead of at the strategic one. Meaning, content owners may be provided with governance documents to delineate how a content asset moves through the pipeline from ideation to publication, but it rarely leverages the organizational chart in a way that involves decision-makers at the higher levels. Content simply can’t be an organization’s biggest asset if the buy-in isn’t there to appreciate its value.” Learn more at Follow the UX Leader.
Apr 02 2013
“In the workplace, both how you work and how long you work on a project matter. Regardless of your seniority, the total number of hours you put in at work gets tracked—especially if you work for a consultancy. The ratio between the number of hours you actually put into a project versus the number of hours allotted for the project—in other words, the cost of your working on a project in comparison to how much a client is paying your company for the work—are numbers that drive the success or failure of your company. If you spend a lot more time on a project than you were supposed to, your company is losing money.” Read more at UXmatters.
Feb 07 2013
“For a UX professional, one of the hardest things to measure is how much stakeholders and clients have bought into UX research. There is no clear, quantifiable answer to this question. Nevertheless, there are several signs that indicate stakeholder engagement, uptake, and buy-in.” See the full article at UXmatters.
Jan 15 2013
“Creativity can solve almost any problem,” according to legendary adman George Lois. “The defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything,” is just one of the mantras he’s lived by for 80, very successful, years. So, with the thought in mind that every creative person (be they an artist, architect, designer, photographer – whatever) can always do with a helping hand we’d like to draw your attention to his great new book, Damn Good Advice (for people with talent!).”
Read the full article at Phaidon.
Dec 27 2012
“Clients under business pressure often have aggressive deadlines and expect the most useful results in the shortest possible time, so deciding how long to spend on a review is crucial. For UX reviews, the 80:20 rule generally applies: 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This is the best approach in most cases, as it helps UX reviews quickly identify the few vital issues that make the biggest difference in terms of results. So let’s look at the three types of review, their uses, and how long to take for each.”
Read the full article at UX Magazine.
Dec 20 2012
“Outside of the tech sector, most of the large companies that I encounter are startlingly similar.
They’re massively successful, indisputably recognized as world-class leaders by consumers and the business community. Their executives are all smart and good at what they do. They acknowledge the world is going through a technological revolution and that digital technologies are transforming their businesses. They know that to stay up to par, they have to lead in the Internet space, too. But for some reason they just can’t get it done.
Here’s why: traditional organizational structures are ill-equipped to meet the challenges of the digital age. While they can execute like a fine-tuned machine against core business goals, they generally consist of a series of silos–and digital is inherently integrated. Management of what I call the Software Layer, a layer of technology that surrounds the core business and serves as the focal point of interaction with the outside world, requires a more unified approach.”
Read the full article at Fast Company.
Dec 11 2012
“Agile has a relatively short history in the broader view of software development. Integration of User Experience into Agile has an even shorter history with relatively few stories of overwhelming success. Over the last eighteen months, we at TheLadders have had some successes—and some failures—in our foray into a post-waterfall way of developing elegant, efficient and sophisticated consumer-facing software. This is our story.”
Read the full article on Johnny Holland.
Nov 27 2012
“UX practitioners, both consultants and in house, sometimes conduct research. Be it usability testing or user research with a generative goal, research requires planning. To make sure product managers, developers, marketers and executives (let’s call them stakeholders) act on UX research results, planning must be crystal clear, collaborative, fast and digestible. Long plans or no plans don’t work for people. You must be able to boil a UX research plan down to one page. If you can’t or won’t, then you won’t get buy-in for the research and its results.”
Read the full article – by our very own Tomer Sharon – on Smashing Magazine.
Nov 20 2012
“A development approach based on incremental change may present a less attractive design task for a UX designer than doing wholly new development, but refactoring an existing design offers a number of advantages.”
Read the full article on UXmatters.
Nov 06 2012
“The first meeting is about getting to know each other and seeing whether you are really interested in the product that a team is developing. Is there is a good fit? The second meeting is about getting to know more people on the team, seeing whether there is receptiveness to your approach, and planning how to take a project forward with more intelligence. Test your hypothesis for how you can best to do additional work together.” Read the full article on UXmatters.
Oct 20 2012
The 2012 Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) will be held at the Westin Boston Waterfront, October 22-26. User Experience Day is a dedicated programming track geared for user experience (UX) professionals on Wednesday, October 24, 8:30 am to 7:00 pm.
The goal is to deliver a great program of technical sessions and networking opportunities for all attendees. This is your chance to make personal connections with a variety of UX professionals from around the world. The full day of high-quality programming includes something for everyone:
Interested? Learn more about User Experience Day events and also HFES conference information.
Oct 18 2012
Hey, all!
There’s four openings at my company – Constant Contact – for your consideration:
Enjoy!
Michael Kennedy
