Why 5 Is the Magic Number for UX Usability Testing
The research needed to create a flawless user experience is of greater importance than ever, but there remains a lot of confusion surrounding the process of usability testing.
Why Hiring Usability Experts Can Save Your Bacon, and Bottom Line
If you haven’t already incorporated usability into your product design process, you might wonder why it is necessary. After all, it’s certainly possible to release a working, bug-free product without performing any usability work at all. But incorporating user-centered design principles can lead to a much-improved product in several areas.
Good UX Is Good Business: How To Reap Its Benefits
User experience (UX) design focuses on enhancing user satisfaction by improving how we interact with the websites, applications and devices in our lives. In other words, UX makes complex things easy to use.
While the term “UX” is relatively new, the concept of user-friendly design has been around for generations. “Good design is good business,” the second president of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, famously told Wharton students in 1973. “We are convinced,” he said, “that good design can materially help make a good product reach its full potential.”
How to Conduct User Research and Build Features
“So, Megan, what do you do?”
What a loaded question, geeze. I do lots of things. I run. I eat. I hang out with my 5 rabbits (yeah, they’re awesome). Everyone asks me this question at every networking event, and I still don’t have a succinct, articulate answer. I usually reply with something along the lines of,
“I do user research and product strategy consulting for early stage startups.”
User Experience Tips: How to Seduce Ecommerce Visitors to Buy
Every day, people visit your store and leave because they couldn’t find what they wanted.
You need more than top rankings on Google. People have to be able to navigate to the product they want and trust you enough to buy. Your website’s user experience (UX) should focus on building your visitor’s confidence by helping them complete their goals.
Balancing Product UX and Lean Execution
Dealing with these competing priorities at each stage of product development
What matters more: killer UX that makes people want to use your product, or shipping the things people want quickly and staking down a huge share of the market? If the UX is bad, people won’t want to use it. On the other hand, if someone else gets it there first, people are happy to use what is available and help to improve it with feedback as it grows.
Scarcity Principle: Making Users Click RIGHT NOW or Lose Out
Summary: Feeling that there is only one chance can convince people to take action sooner, sometimes without careful consideration of consequences or alternative options.
The scarcity principle is a well-documented social-psychology phenomenon that causes people to assign high value to things they perceive as being less available.
Animation for Attention and Comprehension
Summary: Moving elements are a powerful tool to attract users’ attention. When designing an animation consider its goal, its frequency of occurrence, and its mechanics.
Thanks to the rise of HTML5 and CSS3 transforms and transitions, animations and movement are becoming increasingly commonplace in modern web design.
The Virtual Sun Is Finally Setting
In 2006, I switched from PC to Mac in the midst of an aesthetic sea change called Web 2.0. Overnight, all my buttons and toggles became aqueous, squishy blobs. For my entire young life as a computer user, that place had been populated with beige file folders and gray boxes; now it had metamorphosed into a world of glistening chrome, cool blues, and gummylike buttons.
The What, Why and How of User Personas
One of the few proven ways to be successful in any business is to understand your customer’s needs and deliver quality products or services that satisfy those needs in the best way possible. Yes, it does sound too bookish but the truth is knowing your end user is the kernel of a customer-oriented business model.