On Tending the Garden (and Fighting Kudzu IA)
“Kudzu IA” becomes a cognitive tangle for users and customers to follow. When you ask people to understand the maze of links presented to them, needless complexity turns into needless cognitive load. User confusion comes out in the analytics. You find users pogoing between pages trying to fulfill their goals. Eventually, they give up.
Learn, Discover, Find, and Search: Elements of Usable Design
A while back Amy Grace Wells, one of the editors of UX Booth, pitched me an article idea: What do you think of an article that explains, compares, and contrasts the ideas of learnability, searchability, discoverability, and findability and how each can affect UX? I mulled it over, since… how do you explain how all […]
The New, New Design Frontier
Stop making designers feel inadequate for not running “Level 5” “Visionary” organizations. Our journey starts with understanding our opportunities to constantly improve ourselves and our design organizations. And that begins, first and foremost, with focusing on the work.
The New, New Design Frontier
Stop making designers feel inadequate for not running “Level 5” “Visionary” organizations. Our journey starts with understanding our opportunities to constantly improve ourselves and our design organizations. And that begins, first and foremost, with focusing on the work.
How To Make A Dashboard That Doesn’t Suck
The dashboard is the face of the application, so it must have curb appeal. But there’s a problem when you prioritize curb appeal above all else: Your dashboard will likely be utterly useless. It will be a work of art to hang from a wall, but it won’t be a dashboard.
How To Make A Dashboard That Doesn’t Suck
The dashboard is the face of the application, so it must have curb appeal. But there’s a problem when you prioritize curb appeal above all else: Your dashboard will likely be utterly useless. It will be a work of art to hang from a wall, but it won’t be a dashboard.
Alexa Skill Blueprints and the Promise of User-Centered Voice Design
Building applications without having to intensively write code have been a quest throughout internet history. Amazon taking the plunge into an easy-to-build set of Alexa applications bodes well for the maturity of voice assistance. More than that, the injection of solid design practices into Skill Blueprints affirms what we’ve known about user experience all along – it is the keystone to any organization making usable applications that people come back to again and again.
Where’s The Lamb? Finding Perspective with IA and Content Strategy
Experience design and content strategy want the same things. We’re all trying to converge on the same perspective. We’re all trying to design the best experience. Let’s start working together to build those lines into the things we design that will help users find the things they’re looking for.