June 2010
8 posts
3 tags
Understanding The Journey
How you arrive somewhere is almost as important as where you were going in the first place. It doesn’t matter if it is a website, a boutique clothing store or a diner somewhere in middle America—humans are strongly affected by our surroundings and, for better or for worse, create an emotional connection to the destination based on the journey which brought them there in the first place. ...
3 tags
Email, the Glue of UX
With the rise of social networking, email has taken a back seat to tweets and wall posts as the hip message format. But email is still a huge channel for messaging, and serious business messaging has not yet mingled much with pokes, favorites, or other social message types.
There are many places in the UX Lifecycle where email has a place. Of course, each of these things can be done directly...
2 tags
Gall's Law
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.” - John Gall
Such a simple statement, such profound implications for almost everything we do: design, teach, govern, communicate. The simple idea that, despite our most intricate and thorough planning, we cannot create complexity at the beginning but must instead start with something...
2 tags
Critique me, Please!
“Your design isn’t a work of art. It’s a business solution. Practice being critiqued.” — Matthew Smith (Squared Eye)
Who in their right mind wants to practice being critiqued? Encouraging others to critically examine the work we produce (and in some ways, us as designers or as people even) is not something that comes naturally to most human beings. There is an emotional...
1 tag
The Fundamental Attribution Error
In his now-famous book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell convincingly characterizes influential people as one of three types: connectors, mavens, and salesmen. He describes how each of these types of people have rare gifts that make them unlike regular people, they can either connect others amazingly well, be valuable sources of information, or have a knack for convincing others of something....
4 tags
Innovation-The Next Great Buzzword
In recent years, the notion of design as a strategic advantage has gained a lot of traction amongst business leaders. This is a good thing. More and more designers (UX and otherwise) are having a greater voice in the direction of the company and/or product. However, the new and emerging trend seems to be “innovation.” It is the missing ingredient, the key to success, or better yet,...
1 tag
The Local Maximum
Do you ever feel that your design has become stale and that despite your making lots of little changes to it over time without any big overhaul there is just no way to drastically improve it?
If so you’ve probably hit what Andrew Chen calls the “Local Maximum”. The local maximum is a point in which you’ve hit the limit of the current design…it is as effective as...
1 tag
There's no right answer
This weeks guest author is Donna Spencer. Donna is a freelance information architect, interaction designer and writer who just published A Practical Guide To Information Architecture.
When we are working on a hard design problem (or even on a fairly easy one), we often realise there are many ways we could go – lots of options and lots of potential solutions. It can be frustrating to figure out...
