CATALOGING THE ART AND SCIENCE OF USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Title: Cognitive Overhead, Or Why Your Product Isn’t As Simple As You Think Context: Making software is hard. Using software better not be. Synopsis: 8 billion features later you don’t have a piece of user-friendly software, you have a usability … Continued
Title: 6 Evil UX Things Companies Do (That Also Happen to Work) Context: Dark side UX is the father of invention. Really crappy invention, but invention nonetheless. Synopsis: User experience as a term is actually neutral. All it denotes is … Continued
Title: Yours vs. Mine Context: Words matter. How to use language correctly in your UI. Synopsis: How much ownership do you really feel over an interface? Maybe it’s “my” email, but is it “my” Gmail? Complexity exists even in the … Continued
Title: If you see a UI walkthrough, they blew it Context: In a world without labeled controls, the first guy who can manage to guess the correct gesture is king. Synopsis: The natural user interface (or NUI for an acronym … Continued
Title: Usable yet Useless: Why Every Business Needs Product Discovery Context: He who would choose to succeed must first understand what success looks like. Synopsis: There are many different types of complexity that designers face when working on a solution … Continued
Title: Olympics: User Experience and Design Context: Building a superior user experience for the world’s biggest, most diverse spectator event. Synopsis: With dozens of sports, hundreds of events, thousands of participating athletes, an even greater number of hours of live … Continued
Title: You Cannot Think Like Thy Users Context: Think you know what your users need? Think again. Synopsis: Of course your opinions matter when you are designing a product. I mean that’s why we get paid the big bucks, right?* … Continued
Title: Decision Fatigue is Why Designers Need to Respect Consumers Context: Making your users make too many decisions makes them make other purchasing decisions. Synopsis: Click here or click there? Drag this and drop where? Right click or file menu? … Continued
Title: What’s the waiter doing with the computer screen? Context: Knowing how you want users to behave and how users actually behave are rarely the same thing. Synopsis: This has to be one of the most interesting anecdotes about how … Continued
Title: Teller Reveals His Secrets Context: Getting a user to do what you want need not be a mystical endeavor. Synopsis: “How’d he do that?!?!” Even the most prosaic child’s birthday party magician is bound to hear this more often … Continued
Title: Experiences vs. Possessions: You Are What You’ve Done, Not What You Own Context: He who dies with the most toys may win, but he who has done the most is too happy to care who wins. Synopsis: If you … Continued
Title: The Inverted Bike Shop: Collaborative building Context: “Umm, these things are supposed to be about UX. What’s up with the bike shop story?” Just read it and trust me. Synopsis: Customization is the new black. If black was a … Continued
Title: Idiots, Drama Queens and Scammers: Improving Customer Service with UX Context: If making customers happy – truly happy – was everyone’s primary responsibility, everything else would just fall into place. Synopsis: We spend so much time designing and building … Continued
Title: Complexity and User Experience: Understanding features in terms of complexity instead of functionality Context: Reducing complexity involves ruthless editorial control over feature inclusion. Now if we can just convince the sales guys that this is the right thing to … Continued
Title: Easier Is Better Than Better Context: Multiple choice quiz: You should read this article because (A) I told you to. Synopsis: Making decisions is actually a mentally taxing activity. The more decisions one has to make in a day … Continued