Either lead, follow, or stop doing UX.
Title: UX Leadership, Part 1: The Nature of Great Leaders & UX Leadership, Part 2: What Great Leaders Must Do Context: Leadership is not just for people leaders. Leaders change the status quo. The smart ones follow these people of … Continued
Good UX comes to those who wait…and wait…and wait…
Title: Let Your Users Wait Context: We all have to wait sometimes, however it’s not the time you wait, but rather how you perceive the wait time that matters. Synopsis: Anticipation can be delicious. Suspense makes us tingle with excitement. … Continued
The future has arrived but has yet to be evenly distributed…nor fully designed for that matter.
Title: 25 Ideas Shaping The Future Of Design Context: The future of design as imagined by today’s leaders of design. Not you guys…those other leaders of design. Synopsis: What does the future hold in store for the professional practice of … Continued
I don’t know about you, but a room without a roof doesn’t make me particularly happy design-wise.
Title: The Science of Happy Design Context: Rather than efficient, connected, and smarter what if we instead designed technology to make us happy? Synopsis: If you wrote down all of the values that we aspire to when working towards a … Continued
Where ideas come from is unimportant. Where you take them is the whole wheel of cheese.
Title: The Reinvention Of Normal Context: We tend to, as a species, equate normal with good for some unfathomable reason. Synopsis: We are all in need of inspiration on pretty much a rolling basis, but it’s what you do with … Continued
These are not the good user experiences you are looking for.
Title: Calculated Misery: The Dark Side of UX Strategy Context: What’s worse; an unintentionally bad user experience or one designed poorly on purpose? Synopsis: One of the unassailable tenets of modern business is that failing to supply customers with a … Continued
If a user experiences and the user experience is not measured did the user really experience?
Title: One Magic Formula to Calculate User Experience? Context: The holy grail of UX: quantifying a user’s experience. The bane of UX: math. Synopsis: It is impossible to quantify every aspect, input, factor, and interaction vector that go into designing … Continued
#ux iota: Winning through accessibility.
Title: Accessibility Wins Context: Everyone is supposed to design with accessibility in mind. Here are the few and far between that actually do so. Best Bit: “Sadly, with accessibility so much of the conversation is about what was done wrong.” … Continued
“Yes…it is true…this man has a dick for a head…” and other team building rules to live by.
Title: NO DICKHEADS! A Guide To Building Happy, Healthy, and Creative Teams. Context: It’s easy to call yourselves a team. However, actually being a team takes a lot of hard work. Synopsis: Tolstoy famously said that “All happy families are … Continued
#ux iota: Typical UX situations + Animated GIF reactions = Ensuing hilarity
Title: UX Reactions Context: Why come up with your own reactions to ridiculous UX situations when GIF makers have already done all the hard work for you? via uxreactions.com
Great UI’s aren’t just designed, they are also written.
Title: 5 Rules For Writing Great Interface Copy Context: You wouldn’t use clip art in a final design comp so stop using “lorem ipsum” before I…ummm…sorry, the words escape me… Synopsis: Words matter. We spend obscene amounts of time honing … Continued
Can’t afford to put design at the center of your business? No worries. You soon won’t have a business to worry about.
Title: Design In Tech Report 2015 Context: Design no longer contributes to business success, it drives it. Synopsis: Let’s be frank: it’s a helluva good time to be a designer in tech. It’s not always easy, but it certainly is … Continued
#ux iota: You can lead a user to water but you can’t make him drink.
“How IT people see users, using their app for the first time.” via thehipperelement.com
While a kidney punch seems like the right response to “Why do we need UX?” a good story is probably more effective.
Title: The hardest thing in UX design… Context: It gets easier. Or so I’ve been told. Synopsis: There are many difficult aspects to being a user experience designer: long hours, constant rework, uncertainty, but nothing is so hard, or dispiriting, … Continued
If everything was easy to use, everyone would use everything. Or even worse: no one would use anything.
Title: Why We Should Design Some Things to Be Difficult to Use Context: Easier is not always better. Damn you Easy Button™! *shakes fist* Synopsis: People seem to prefer getting better at things to being good at things. Making noticeable … Continued