User experience, especially today, is not a siloed practice. To collect knowledge, generate new ideas, and ideate on design solutions, it’s best to bring people together. This job often falls on UX and occurs in the form of workshops for ideation, prioritization of ideas, affinity diagramming, or creating empathy maps and numerous other design artifacts. All these team activities are usually facilitated by UX professionals.
The facilitator’s responsibility is to make sure that the time spent in activities or exercises is as productive as possible for participants — clients, stakeholders and other team members —and generates the insights needed to move your project forward.
Conduct audience-based testing in order to increase understanding of UX deliverables such as documentation, infographics, wireflows, and data visualizations. Do a quick sketch test: provide a printed copy of your deliverable, recruit a representative colleague, and ask them to explain to you what
Unicef.org: Important facts are sandwiched between brightly colored boxes that look like advertising. This information doesn’t have a chance of being read. It’s better to tone down the visual design to create a more balanced visual hierarchy. Also, while we support the use of the side columns
Simply put, teams can only move as quickly as they can successfully communicate. The collaborative nature of design thinking circumvents this friction by involving all team members from the very beginning in a workshop-based approach. As the whole team moves through key exercises together, a shared
4 Ways to Enter the Blockchain Industry
The technology uses cryptography to make sure that users can only edit their own blocks. Each user has a unique, private key that’s required to alter their own Blockchain file. Additionally, the technology keeps the entire chain of distribution synched. Many enterprises are still
AI and Blockchain Tech Are The Future of Successful Trading
It is no wonder that the world top financial institutions are now hiring more quantitative analysts and computer scientists than the traditional financial analysts and investment advisors. The CFA Institute, the provider of the world most prestigious professional designation for financial analysts
9 Blockchains Transforming the Way We Pay, Play, and Work
Look past digital currencies’ nosebleed pricing volatility, and you’ll discover a robust, decentralized, secure database. Brands and technologists are quickly figuring out how to put this powerful ledger to good use. Here are several real-world examples that demonstrate cryptos’
The Four Dimensions of Tone of Voice
We wanted to make sure changes in the 4 tone-of-voice dimensions would be noticeable to our users, and not just theoretical concepts. In preparation for an upcoming study, we used these 4 dimensions to create paired tone-of-voice samples for made-up websites from 4 industries (2 samples per
throughout a model for conducting ux workshops and exercises how
Banner Blindness Revisited: Users Dodge Ads on Mobile and Desktop
Let’s focus for a moment on just the content area of the page — the area that does not include the hero. There are 148 fixations on the page, out of which 132 are within the content area. Out of those 132 fixations, only one is within the right rail: that’s 0.8% of the user’s attention
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
At first, you might think that such an innovation in the field of reverse logistics should not be discussed in a UX article, but many pieces of the user experience are improved by optimizing this backend operation. A traditional UI-only solution to the problem of high demand would be to clearly
OK-Cancel or Cancel-OK? The Trouble With Buttons
We get countless questions about small details in UI design that don't matter much to the overall user experience. One classic is the order of buttons in dialog boxes: OK / Cancel Cancel / OK Both are reasonable choices, and people can argue for hours about their preferences: Listing OK
Closeness of Actions and Objects in GUI Design
That mainstream corporate websites make blatant usability mistakes is understandable because most members of their teams aren't grounded in graduate degrees in human-computer interaction. (That's why I have recently added foundational courses, such as The Human Mind, to my usability conference
Slider Design: Rules of Thumb
In cases where the use of a slider may be appropriate, ensure that the visual design of the element does not hinder its usability. For touchscreens, consider where the user’s finger will be placed on the screen—and what areas of the screen will thus be covered—while manipulating the slider
Status Trackers and Progress Updates: 16 Design Guidelines
Many companies decide to use their own site-embedded trackers instead of simply directing users to the tracker provided by the shipping companies (such as UPS or FedEx). There are some advantages to doing so, but also some serious downsides. The big advantage is that people can be kept on the site
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The User Experience of Public Bathrooms
Provide a robot as the bathroom host. A white-glove–clad R2D2-like being would be a fun way to hand people toilet paper. And the robot could be taught to accommodate the particular stall doors. For example, with an open-bottom or open-top stall, the robot could simply hand under or toss over a
Let Loyal Shoppers Edit Saved Credit Cards
ParkWhiz.com did not let users edit existing cards. This resulted in two identical payment options “Pay with my saved Visa ending in 6159.” There was no option to delete old payment methods. (Also note that the use of light blue text on a white background makes the selected payment type
WP Engine CEO Heather Brunner Named as 2019 Great Place to Work For All Leadership Award Honoree
The award itself was inspired by recent research conducted by Great Place to Work, which surveyed about 500,000 U.S. employees at nearly 800 public and privately-owned companies—mostly based in the U.S. Employees were asked how often they were included in larger, strategic decisions, whether they
WP Engine Celebrates Pride 2018 .
Austin’s Annual PRIDE celebration is one of the largest opportunities for local non-profit organizations, social groups, and causes to gain exposure in the LGBTQ community. This year marked 28 years of Pride events in Austin. This year’s parade emphasis was awareness, equality and
WP Engine Named the #4 Best Place to Work in Texas
Texas’ economy is the second largest in the United States, a measure of success that’s only expected to continue; Texas ranks first for its growth prospects due to impressive growth forecasts and competitive employment rates across the state. To tap into this statewide success, however
3 Awesome New Apps for 2010: Thesixtyone, Quora, Plancast
Take a team of early Facebook engineering rock-stars, have them tackle the age-old field of Question & Answer and what do you get? Quora, a social Q&A site that is a whole lot of fun to use and a great place to learn things trivial or useful. The company’s goal is to create a
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
From Hype to Practical: What’s Next for AI?
For startup and vendors, considering these guidelines can help guide technology development and deployments moving forward. End users and prospective investors, meanwhile, should evaluate AI solutions with a critical eye towards the actual customer problems and use cases they solve. Using these
3 Free Banking Apps for Entrepreneurs
Wave offers free financial software for businesses with nine employees or fewer. This easy-to-use software takes on accounting tasks for entrepreneurs by helping them track expenses and sales, manage invoices, accept payments and track accounts receivable, issue payroll, scan receipts, and create
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A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
The 6 Biggest Risks Today’s Internet Entrepreneurs Must Battle
We live in a litigious society where lawsuits are filed with shocking frivolity and without apology. This has lead to a vicious cycle where restrictions are put in place to avoid lawsuits; lawsuits are filed when restrictive rules aren’t in place; and more restrictive rules are created in the
A Model for Conducting UX Workshops and Exercises | Visibility of System Status
Visibility of System Status
The visibility of system status is a basic tenet of a great user experience. At its core, this heuristic encourages open and continuous communication, which is fundamental to all relationships — whether with people or devices. Users who are uninformed about the system’s current status cannot
Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design
Links that don't behave as expected undermine users' understanding of their own system. A link should be a simple hypertext reference that replaces the current page with new content. Users hate unwarranted pop-up windows. When they want the destination to appear in a new page, they can use their
Usability Insights From Sun Microsystem's 1997 Web Design
Smaller sites can get away with a much simpler approach. The figure shows the navigation area from Toby Braun Information Design. It is obvious that the user is in the "visioning" part of the site, which again is a part of the "information" area. This design provides two levels of navigational
