April 2010
8 posts
1 tag
Simplicity isn't that simple
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” —Leonardo Da Vinci
Simplicity, by definition, is freedom from complexity; the absence of luxury or pretentiousness. Sophistication, on the other hand, often implies a sense of style, cultivated beauty and refinement. So is Da Vinci contradicting himself here?
On the contrary. I believe the ultimate level of sophistication happens when...
2 tags
UX Engagement Metrics
Remember when hit counters were all the rage? I do. I remember putting them at the bottom of my web pages to see how many people were reading and then reloading them incessantly to watch the number go up. Time was when hits and page views were the king of web metrics. But now we have a new metric to focus our energy on: engagement. How engaged are our users, we ask? How often do they visit? Are...
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The Process Police
The other day our friend Whitney Hess innocently tweeted:
“I find mental models really trying. Does that make me a less skilled UXer?”
I know how she feels. I have dozens of books on my shelves describing different processes for doing design, from mental models to personas to content audits to user testing to you-name-it, and I follow almost none of them. I use bits and pieces,...
2 tags
Design for Delight
“Even if it is true that the average man seems most comfortable with the commonplace and familiar, it is equally true that catering to bad taste, which we so readily attribute to the average reader, merely perpetuates that mediocrity and denies the reader one of the most easily accessible means for aesthetic development and eventual enjoyment.” - Paul Rand
Delight. Surprise. Joy.
...
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The Experience belongs to the User
We all like to play God. We like to imagine that the design we create is ushered into the world and all those who use it have an epiphany…they do things exactly in the way we have prescribed. They approach, use, and experience our design in the manner we envisioned, resulting in an amazing user experience.
You might call this the God complex approach to UX. It is the ego-driven approach,...
2 tags
A picture is worth a 1000 words, except when it...
One of the primary jobs of any designer—regardless the medium—is to convey complex stories and ideas visually in such a way that the viewer can nearly instantly comprehend the information being presented. Human beings are highly visual creatures able to make connections and process visual information almost instantly. Your overall decision to engage, trust, believe, purchase or commit to an...
1 tag
UX Insights: an interview with Andy Budd
This weeks post is an interview with Andy Budd, a founding partner and Managing Director of Clearleft. He also goes by the title of User Experience Director depending what mood he’s in. Andy is the founder of the dConstruct and UX London conferences and has always had an interest in the way design affects human behavior.
52WeeksOfUX: You founded Clearleft five years ago with Jeremy Keith...
3 tags
Finding Flow
In his book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes a state of optimal experience, where people are so engaged in the activity they’re doing that the rest of the world falls away. He defines this state as:
“the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of...
