Attention is one of the most valuable resources of the digital age. For most of human history, access to information was limited. Centuries ago many people could not read and education was a luxury. Today we have access to information on a massive scale. Facts, literature, and art are available (often for free) to anyone with an internet connection.
We are presented with a wealth of information, but we have the same amount of mental processing power as we have always had. The number of minutes has also stayed exactly the same in every day. Today attention, not information, is the limiting factor.
To narrow down the number of alternatives to a manageable one, they usually use one hard criterion that outweighs any other considerations. For example, a user looking to buy a new car might filter out all the cars that are more expensive than that $20,000, even though some of them may be
Users need to be able to update payment information as part of the checkout flow. When sites fail to make these changes possible, they force people to go through extra steps and make the task unnecessarily complex. They also clutter the interface and the site’s backend data with information that
In this case, you have at least two options. You could offer a configurator that lets hospital administrators estimate the exact supplies and their prices. This option might help users who are motivated to engage deeply with the site, but it would also be fairly complicated and time-consuming to
Cross-Platform Scaling: The Way Forward for Businesses on Blockchain
In an official statement on cryptocurrency and blockchain, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton noted, “The technology on which cryptocurrencies and ICOs are based may prove to be disruptive, transformative and efficiency enhancing. I am confident that developers in fintech will help facilitate capital
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
Optimizing Business Decisions With Blockchain Technology
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) is the name given to the organizations where decisions are made electronically through the blockchain and smart contracts system.When a business operates in such a system, it is governed by rules established through open voting with the weight of each
4 Noteworthy Intranet Design Trends in 2019
The intranet team invested in targeted communication about the design and how it would help employees by presenting its research and approach at departmental Town Hall events (which included all employees within a department or division) and by playing a promotional video to generate excitement
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Intranet Design After a Merger or Acquisition
Organizations that have no corporate-communications group sometimes leave the communication responsibility to the intranet team, who may or may not be skilled in this job. Some teams simply do nothing and follow the “business as usual” mantra. When the work and the organization are completely
Incorporating UX Work into Your Agile Backlog
Certain UX-specific items may affect other backlog items, which means you’ll need to determine what needs to be completed first. If you use tags or categories in your product-management software, it may be easy to get away with this. However, pay extra attention to dependencies to avoid
Radio Buttons: Always Select One?
Some designers fear that people won’t see a default selection option. Or an organization’s attorneys or federal agencies mandate that users actively click and accept a choice. In some of these situations designs offer radios with no default selection. The user may be unable to submit a form
UI Copy: UX Guidelines for Command Names and Keyboard Shortcuts
Well-written command names and familiar shortcuts direct users through the interface and help them learn how to use it. In contrast, poorly chosen UI copy confuses people and forces them to spend time to figure out how to use your UI. To learn more about writing meaningful command text, take our
Designing Effective Infographics
Infographics are a hybrid medium, however, and there is room for creative license here. Elements of visual interest such as illustrations, photos, and icons are acceptable and even expected in the medium. Using a visual theme may ground your piece in a metaphor that makes abstract concepts easy to
WordPress for Good: Relieving Fatigue .
In this segment, we highlight Untire, an application that helps cancer patients and survivors reduce cancer-related fatigue (CRF) symptoms and regain life. CRF is a common side-effect of cancer and related treatments; patients describe it as a paralyzing level of fatigue that leaves patients
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StudioPress Theme Spotlight: Altitude Pro .
What is a child theme? A child theme works in combination with the parent theme. With regards to Genesis, child themes serve as a sort of skin that can change the way a theme looks, while relying on the functionality of its parent theme (in this case, Genesis). Child themes offer users the added
A Look at WordCamp Los Angeles 2018 .
Surprisingly, my favorite session of the weekend came from Joe A Simpson Jr who brought a refreshing perspective to why accessibility is important. Imagine a colorblind person watching a football game in which team uniforms were all solid colors. Through a color simulator, we couldn’t tell the
Smart-TV Usability: Accessing Content is Key
The Google Fiber television service (a fast broadband plus TV service available in a few areas of the US) has this problem in the On Demand movie-selection screens. It uses Windows-8-style tiles for content selection. This tile layout does not lend itself well to browsing the entire set of options
Test Paper Prototypes to Save Time and Money: The Mozilla Case Study
The designer made the prototypes using OmniGraffle, and we printed them onto tabloid paper and cut them to size. Because there was no code to change, this prototyping method allowed us to make design changes quickly during testing. Firefox users helped progress the designs rapidly toward better
Test Paper Prototypes to Save Time and Money: The Mozilla Case Study
In a later iteration of the design, shown below, task groupings for the help material were eventually moved under the products on the next layer down in the IA, in part because all tasks were not available for all products and services, and that order of layering helped manage that necessary
4 Things Spotify Can Teach You About Data Sharing
Dutch media studies professor Robert Prey argues that granularity is the key to Spotify’s campaign. “We find that there’s incredible detail in the data,” Prey told Haley Weiss, editorial fellow at The Atlantic. “There’s all this information: everything from what brand of headphones
Rapid Experiments are Key to Making AI Technology Buy vs Build Decisions
Usually, this is due to the emergence of data science teams or the sheer lack of ability of the data science team to communicate with business functions. Hiring a few data scientists does not necessarily give an enterprise the ability to build and integrate quality AI solutions at scale. The sooner
In an Experiential-Obsessed Marketplace, Surkus Uses Tech to Stand Out
This sheer volume helps every activation under Surkus’ umbrella — as its base grows, so does its data collection. This enables Surkus to give first-timers a head start by giving them insight into what’s worked well for similar types of events or which types of audience members responded best
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
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A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
How Do You Determine Which Partners Will Fuel Your Success?
Neil Patel, the marketing expert behind Quick Sprout, has worked with the same partner for more than a decade. He feels their success can be attributed to one thing that holds so many others back: confrontation. “We don’t care if we hurt each other’s feelings. We say what is on our
The Attention Economy | Simplicity Wins over Abundance of Choice
Simplicity Wins over Abundance of Choice
Adding marginally useful features to a product can result in overly complicated rather than desirable interfaces. The paradox is that consumers are attracted to a large number of choices and may consider a product more appealing if it has many capabilities, but when it comes to making decisions and
Website Response Times
In a recent study for our work on Brand as Experience (now a full-day training course on branding and UX), we asked users what they thought about various websites they had used in the past. So, their responses were based not on immediate use (as in normal usability studies), but on whatever past
Photos as Web Content
This is a good example of why it's not always good to copy the biggest sites' designs. Because Amazon hawks a monstrously wide product range, they use a standardized gallery layout that sort of works for many different category pages, without being optimized for any individual category. In
