Personas are my jam. I teach a full-day training course on them: what they are, why they work, how to create them, and how to use them to do great work. I love teaching this course because personas are one of the most abstract components in the very analytical discipline that is UX. I love demystifying this abstract topic, making it concrete, and addressing common pitfalls that practitioners encounter.
Personas are fictional representations and generalizations of a cluster of your target users who exhibit similar attitudes, goals, and behaviors in relation to your product. They’re human-like snapshots of relevant and meaningful commonalities in your customer groups and are based on...
Airbnb makes it easy to satisfy the needs of these travelers by connecting them with owners who want to make an extra dollar by renting out their property. Before Airbnb, sites such as Home Away and property-management agencies used to connect owners with interested renters, but these were focused
During our study, many people complained that if a WeChat message arrived while they were in a mini program, they couldn’t easily check the message and then resume their task in the program. Instead, they had to quit the program to view messages. Unfortunately, some mini programs didn’t save
Minimizing the amount of instructions focuses the users’ attention on a single, primary action. The less text overall, the more likely it is that users will read it and then actually follow that instruction. This idea of deferring secondary content is not unique to coach marks, but applying it to
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
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’
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’
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Unless you have an unlimited clothes budget, it’s unrealistic (and wasteful) to wear a new outfit for every single occasion, yet social media pressures us into it. Rent a Runway solves this tension elegantly by recycling (expensive) clothes across a large set of women. It’s an example of the
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Banner Blindness Revisited: Users Dodge Ads on Mobile and Desktop
The hot-potato behavior is a defense mechanism to avoid wasting time and fixations on irrelevant elements. It’s also an example of the availability bias: based on one or a few examples, web users assume that the same type of content will always appear in that same location on other pages. But
The Impact of Interaction Design on Brand Perception
For each interactivity attribute, Tolstrup and Heyer constructed simple interactive prototypes meant to embody the two extremes of that attribute. For example, they created one prototype for direct manipulation in which users could change the width of a circle by directly clicking on the circle
The Anatomy of a List Entry
Booking.com’s list entries for different hotels are inconsistent — hotel details change placement from one item to the next. This example also shows how using too many indicators can easily get out of hand. In the 3 hotel descriptions above, there are 11 dynamic indicators featuring different
Good UX: What I Learned While Working in Restaurants
When we asked 1,015 UX professionals for their career advice and experience, one respondent claimed to have learned everything about UX from playing Dungeons and Dragons. Although such experience is sure to be good, I think you can learn even more about UX from waiting tables in a restaurant. You
Accot-Zhai Steering Law: Implications for UI Design
When designing other UI elements that involve path-steering tasks, such as sliders, scrollbars, and video playback heads, remember that users will have a hard time achieving precision with such controls. Therefore, for precise tasks, supplement these UI elements with other secondary controls that
It’s Time to Take Advantage of Amazing Web Week Savings
StudioPress offers world-class WordPress themes that excel in design, security, and performance. The whole range of themes are built on top of the world’s most popular WordPress theme framework, the Genesis Framework. With the purchase of the Pro Plus Package you receive instant and unlimited
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StudioPress Theme Spotlight: New Breakthrough Pro
As we continue to showcase a sample of the amazing StudioPress themes now available to WP Engine customers, we’re extra excited to bring you this new StudioPress Theme: Breakthrough Pro, which is the first new theme to be launched since our acquisition of StudioPress in June. Breakthrough Pro
WP Engine Participates in the Day of Understanding
WP Engine was proud to take part in this event sponsored by the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion. Each company was encouraged to customize the events during the day according to the needs, nature, and geography of its workplace. At WP Engine, multiple company-wide workshops were held in
Consistency in the Omnichannel Experience
It’s true that different channels have different capabilities, and some tasks may be optimally supported on one channel. However, we cannot assume that, because a channel is not ideal for a particular task, it will not be selected for that task. Some people may not have access to the optimal
Preventing User Errors: Avoiding Conscious Mistakes
It’s important to use confirmation dialogs carefully, however, since they interrupt users’ workflow, and inherently slow them down. If a confirmation dialog asks “do you really want to do that?” after every decision, many users won’t spend the time to double-check whether they made an
Why Zen Mode Isn’t the Answer to Everything
Unfortunately, software is still imperfect at guessing user intent, and will probably stay so for a long time. Most user actions are ambiguous: grabbing the mouse can mean that the user is ready to start formatting, or that she has discovered a typo in the preceding paragraph and wants to move the
The Way Forward: Responsibly Deployed Facial Recognition
At Trueface, we are partnering with like-minded businesses to enable them to make immediate, informed decisions by applying pattern recognition technology to their existing camera infrastructure. Like many facial recognition companies, we acknowledge the implicit bias in publicly available training
How tweaks to IoT’s supply chain can close security gaps
Sure, we could blame it on the pressure on companies to get IoT products to market, but sadly, I think it still stems from a deficiency of good cybersecurity governance. Everyone is happy to talk about their cyber posture, but we still lack regulated security standards and widespread adoption of
Has Martech Made Things Too Complicated?
Jebbit’s worked with brands like Cathay Pacific Airways. Cathay Pacific Airways ran several Jebbit experiences to capture where visitors might want to go next to give them personalized sets of routes Cathay Pacific runs. The airline went beyond consumers’ searched destinations into discovery
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
work why personas fail needs
4 Ways Early Stage CTOs Can Learn to Roll With the Punches
Internally, you’re the company’s technical guru who can handle anything from a QuickBooks installation to the beginning stages of product development and management. Don’t be surprised when you learn there’s no one else around to set up G Suite calendaring and payroll software
Building a Workplace for the Next 100 Years
How can companies manage a seamless flow of data to synchronize the work performed by humans and robots? Employees need one efficient tool and not a pile of fragmented, inflexible applications. This single tool is required in order to manage whatever kind of work that comes their way, both
Why Personas Fail | Can Hated Design Elements Be Made to Work?
Can Hated Design Elements Be Made to Work?
That said, PDF has its uses — they're just not in the realm of interactive information access. When people want to download a report for later reference, PDF shines. Indeed, I use it myself for this purpose. (As an example, see our report on social media usability, which is available for free
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
Why Country Sites Are So Bad
This third problem isn't found only with lumbering multinationals. NIH (not invented here) is a universal human feeling, even though it often degrades usability and causes inconsistent design. In our work on non-profit organizations' websites, we often see that local (city or state) groups have
