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.
Teenagers use the internet on many devices in various environments. For our research, we focused on web and app usability for laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. Although teens spend endless time texting and on social media, we didn’t focus on these activities because our goal was to derive
Images that work well on small screens may not be appropriate for big ones. They may become too large in relation to surrounding page elements, force extra scrolling, or lose impact. When you’re designing for multiple page sizes, you need to consider orientation (horizontal or vertical), aspect
While the lack of visual clutter might be aesthetically pleasing and create a more emotional response with the user (such as the feeling of control over the potentially harrowing task of writing a novel), the deeper usability issues might detract from the façade of a beautiful product. Clean and
What B2B Companies Need to Implement Blockchain Solutions
All enterprises should consider the benefits that blockchain technology can have on their businesses and work to understand the investment required to reach a competitive advantage. Early adopters will discover cutting-edge strategies for capturing, tracking, and securing data (and will
Robotics and Big Data are Transforming Nursing: 4 Key Insights
In healthcare, the robot’s role is to take over tedious, time-consuming, and dangerous or dirty jobs for nurses. Very few nurses dream of sanitizing equipment or dispensing medication when they enter nursing school. They want to be working directly with patients, healing the sick and providing
3 Reasons Decentralization is the Future of Currency
Governments have all sorts of tools at their disposal affect currency rates. If they merely print more money—as they did during the recovery from the last crash—the value of the currency will fall. If they change interest rates, they affect the supply of money available, also changing its
3 Design Considerations for Effective Mobile-App Permission Requests
In the United Airlines iOS app, the purpose string reads more like placeholder text than informative description. It makes the app look clumsy and arouse suspicion. (The capitalization of the words Travel and Payment also seems random and reinforces the impression of unprofessionalism.) Moreover
understanding a model for conducting ux workshops and exercises get
Browser and GUI Chrome
What do we mean when talking about the "chrome" in a user interface design? An attendee asked this question during a recent course on Visual Design for Mobile and Tablet. Whenever someone asks us a basic question, I assume that many more people want the answer as well — and thus, this article on
The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
One of usability’s most hard-earned lessons is that you are not the user. This is why it’s a disaster to guess at the users’ needs. Since designers are so different from the majority of the target audience, it’s not just irrelevant what you like or what you think is easy to use — it’s
Overloaded vs. Generic Commands
For mobile apps, it's usually a good idea to have an "application home" that users can return to as a safe base after exploring the apps various areas. This is particularly important for content-rich apps, such as magazines or newspapers. Used this way, the "home" button serves as a generic
Defeated By a Dialog Box
Upon further experimentation, I discovered another way of getting rid of the options box: uncheck the checkbox marked "Show options dialog." This, of course, completely violates the design rules for checkboxes and radio buttons , which are not supposed to have any immediate effect when they are
Progress Indicators Make a Slow System Less Insufferable
It can also be helpful to add additional clarity for the user by including text that explains why the user is waiting (e.g., “Loading comments…”). One note of caution though: spinning gears can be dangerous for data that is loaded from a server, simply because the connectivity quality is
Pricing information gives B2B sites a competitive advantage
B2B transactions tend to have high-price tags and purchase decisions could result in strong repercussions. Relieve any tension people might have about doing business with your organization by offering details about products and services in a meaningful manner. This means being candid about the
room a model for conducting ux workshops and exercises do
Customer-Service Information on Websites: The Hub-and-Spoke Model
The links to the hubs should be found in the body of the page. Don’t rely on the links in the global navigation as the only pathway to hub and other related service pages. Often, if users didn’t find the answer on the first page they visited, they assumed it wasn’t provided on the site and
Informational Articles Must Ask For the Order
The Iams kitten food page contained a clear link to Feeding Tips for Growing Kittens , which was highly attractive: all of our test users clicked it. The article was also very interesting and informative: all users scrolled through four screens of text. At the bottom of this fairly large page
10 Must-Have Features for a WordPress Website in 2018 .
Your website needs to load fast, everyone knows that. However, no longer is this advice just for user experience. Page load speed now factors heavily into your search engine ranking. There are a number of cache plugins out there and tools to improve performance, but above all, I’ve found that
WP Engine: 2018 in Review
New year, new you, did you say? Well, that was our reality in 2018 as we rolled out some of our favorite new platform additions. We took the lead on the Amazon Polly plugin, the first plugin to bring voice technology to WordPress. The WP Engine Digital Experience Platform continued to evolve and
WP Engine Raises $30K for Central Texas Food Bank
WP Engine employees are rarely hungry. Our office kitchens are fully stocked with cereal and snacks, and lunch is catered Monday through Thursday, every week, for the entire team. Unlike the 46,000 people who rely on Central Texas Food Bank for food assistance every week, our employees don’t have
What Does Your Credit Card Company Know About You?
Credit card companies also care a lot about how you’re paying their bills, and how you’ve acted in the past. If you’ve historically always made the minimum payment, but keep a moderate balance on your credit cards, you’re practically the ideal customer; you’re paying off your debt
In Mark Zuckerberg We Trust? The State and Future of Facebook, User Data, Cambridge Analytica, Fake News, Elections, Russia and You
In a rare move, Mark Zuckerberg invited press and analysts to a next-day call where he shared details on the company’s latest moves to protect user data, improve the integrity of information shared on the platform and protect users from misinformation. After initially going AWOL following the
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
Your Swag is an Extension of Your Brand, So Don’t Neglect It
Here’s the bottom line. When your swag is premium, your brand is premium. Conversely, poor quality swag sends a bad message to not only the public but also your team. Unless you’re a household name like Nike or Apple, there’s a slim chance someone is going to stick your company logo on the
the a model for conducting ux workshops and exercises facilitators
Standardizing “Tribal Knowledge”: It’s Time for Your Company to Grow Up
Time and time again, I’ve noticed that information gets locked inside the minds and computers of employees, and, as a result, not shared with wider teams. That lack of communication can inhibit both ongoing operations and further innovation and expansion — and it becomes an even more
Coming to Terms – Why Terms of Use are Critical for Your Company
Despite the relative ease with which these legal terms are bypassed, or the wide range of names they are called (e.g., Terms of Use, Terms and Conditions, T&Cs, Terms of Service, End User License Agreement, EULA, etc.) these terms contain critical contractual language limiting your rights as a
A Model for Conducting UX Workshops and Exercises | Comparison Tables for Products, Services, and Features
Comparison Tables for Products, Services, and Features
The biggest problem with most comparison tables isn’t a design problem, it’s a content problem. When attribute information is missing, incomplete, or inconsistent across similar offerings, otherwise handy comparison tables quickly become useless. This is especially problematic for dynamic
"Get Started" Stops Users
A critical mistake on many websites is designing only for those who already know about the company and the services it provides. With the assumption that everybody is familiar with their offerings, these websites attempt to get people to sign up without explaining what they do. Perhaps they place
The Roots of Minimalism in Web Design
The portfolio of designer Brian Danaher is a typical example of what many designers would call a minimalist site. When viewed full screen on a 15-inch MacBook Pro, the homepage is almost entirely white space. The site uses a grayscale color palette with a single bold accent color to draw attention
