User-Centered Design Archives - Page 3 of 7

Good UX Is Good Business: How To Reap Its Benefits

December 2, 2015

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

October 5, 2015

“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.”

How to Fix a Bad User Interface

September 25, 2015

Hey! This is an excerpt from my book Designing Products People Love, which will be published by O’Reilly in December. Learn more about the book and the 20+ product designers from Facebook, Twitter, Slack, etc. who were interviewed about how they work.

Have you ever experienced a user interface that feels lifeless? Have you created a UI that just seems to be missing…something?

Preventing User Errors: Avoiding Unconscious Slips

August 26, 2015

Summary: Users are often distracted from the task at hand, so prevent unconscious errors by offering suggestions, utilizing constraints, and being flexible.

One of the 10 Usability Heuristics advises that it’s important to communicate errors to users gracefully, actionably, and clearly. However, it’s even better to prevent users from making errors in the first place.

The Future of Consumer Tech Is About Making You Forget It’s There

March 7, 2015

Microsoft, Samsung, GoPro, and others take their best guesses at the next five years of consumer electronics.

When Apple introduced the iPad 2 in 2011, it laid out a noble goal for the future of technology.

“Technology alone is not enough,” an Apple ad proclaimed. “Faster, thinner, lighter, those are all good things, but when technology gets out of the way, everything becomes more delightful, even magical. That’s when you leap forward.”

Welcome to the Age of Holographs

January 22, 2015

Up close with the HoloLens, Microsoft’s most intriguing product in years

We just finished a heavily scripted, carefully managed, and completely amazing demonstration of Microsoft’s HoloLens technology. Four demos, actually, each designed to show off a different use case for a headset that projects holograms into real space. We played Minecraft on a coffee table. We had somebody chart out how to fix a light switch right on top of the very thing we were fixing.

User Experience Tips: How to Seduce Ecommerce Visitors to Buy

November 26, 2014

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

October 22, 2014

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.

Animation for Attention and Comprehension

October 3, 2014

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 $3.2 Billion Man: Can Google’s Newest Star Outsmart Apple?

September 17, 2014

GOOGLE IS BETTING BIG ON NEST CEO TONY FADELL, WHO HELPED INVENT THE IPOD AND IPHONE. HERE, A LOOK INSIDE HIS DESIGN REVOLUTION.

Lounging poolside in 93-degree July heat as Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” thrums through the patio speakers, Tony Fadell takes a sip of nonalcoholic beer and sinks far enough back into his chair that his belly peeks out from under his Lacoste polo.