“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.”
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?
Businesses someday getting on board with virtual reality will need to do some self-examination. Various VR tools are aimed at reclaiming productivity and improving interactions.
The fabled “promise” of virtual reality is expansive. At its loftiest, we’ve been promised not only changes to how we live and how we consume entertainment, but also to how we work.
UX design does not have an official, standard definition because apart from its various visual components, it encompasses information architecture, user research, wireframing and many elements that together decide the fate of UX. The closest to a definition of UX is the one provided by Nielsen and Norman which states that “User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” Thus, UX involves knowing what end-users want from a product or a system and meeting those requirements with perfection and in a way that delights them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Summary: UX teams are responsible for creating desirable experiences for users. Yet many organizations fail to include users in the development process. Without customer input, organizations risk creating interfaces that fail.
A website’s (or product’s) success depends on how users perceive it. Users assess the usefulness and ease of use of websites as they interact with them, forming their conclusions in seconds—sometimes milliseconds.
Forget voice commands and touch gestures: A London firm has developed a way for Google Glass users to control their devices just by thinking.
This Place, an agency that specializes in creating user interfaces and experiences for programs used in the medical industry, developed a software called MindRDR that allows Google Glass to connect with the Neurosky MindWave Mobile EEG biosensor, a head-mounted device that can detect a person’s brain waves.