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...
He was the only user to test this site because he encountered it during a task in which users could choose a site to visit (usually from a search listing). In this case, the user eventually overcame the confusion and proceeded to enter his measurements. If we had tested more users, a small
Common interactive controls for numeric parameters range from text input fields, sliders, virtual knobs that rotate, 2D matrices with editable curves, and steppers that increment or decrement a given value. Each type of control is useful in different circumstances and communicates information about
If you follow the design guidelines in this article, users will know how to use your tabs without further exploration or error-prone guessing. This again means that they can devote all their time and brainpower to understanding the content and features that you’re making available under these
A marketplace solution for IoT development through decentralized smart contract ledger
A smart contract, as shown in the infographic, is a digital contract or a protocol in the form of code that executes a function depending on the terms involved in a contract. The key here is that it enforces an action automatically depending on whether the terms in the contract have been fulfilled
Is Blockchain Winning or Losing? — 4 Stages of Blockchain Evolution
The time bitcoin increased its digital value, altcoins (alternative digital currencies) started cropping up – Namecoin (the first altcoin that appeared in 2011), Litecoin, Monero, Dash, Factom, Dogecoin, etc. Generally, the first altcoins were simply iterations of bitcoin with some improvements
Freewheeling Freelancers will Dominate the Future Jobs Market
Fortunately, as more people turn to this form of work, so too has the attention of regulatory bodies around the world. Writing for Forbes, Abdullahi Muhammed expects to see increased pressure in the coming years on local, state and national authorities to recognize the fledgling form of freelancing
When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps
Journey maps should result in truthful narratives, not fairy tales. Start with gathering any existing research, but additional journey-based research is also needed to fill in the gaps that the existing research won’t cover. This is a qualitative-research process. While quantitative data can help
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Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
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
Website Logo Placement for Maximum Brand Recall
There is no formula that can tell you exactly what your website should look like. But it’s clear from this research that you can’t rely on shortcuts like disregarding standard web conventions to make your site look special. People are attracted to novelty, but we’re also creatures of habit
Creepiness–Convenience Tradeoff
In each of our studies, we asked participants to share their perceptions about new technologies such as smart-home devices (e.g., smart thermostats, window shades, or speakers). In the US and Canada, most of our participants’ comments were dominated by concerns about privacy and creepiness. In
How Community Can Drive Commerce: A Lesson from China’s Little Redbook
Even if you don’t have a lively and engaged community on your ecommerce site, you may be able to create a link between existing communities and your business. Leverage existing social channels and such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest and encourage website visitors to explore key
Store Finders and Locators
Our initial research on store locators was conducted 18 years ago. Our subsequent studies have found that the majority of our initial findings have remained stable, though many of our guidelines have been updated to reflect modern design trends and developments, as well as changes in user behavior
WP Engine Culture Recognized at Greater Austin Business Awards
The annual Greater Austin Business Awards competition, presented by The Austin Chamber of Commerce, is designed to honor excellence in all aspects of business. In order to promote awareness and perpetuate good practices, the Awards recognize companies and organization in the Austin region for
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Always Innovating for You: WP Engine Mid-Year Review 2018
As voice technology continues to expand and see greater adoption, expectations that digital experiences include voice tech are growing. The Amazon Polly plugin for WordPress, co-authored by AWS and WP Engine, lets users bring voice technology to their websites by turning text into lifelike speech
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
Customer Journeys and Omnichannel User Experience
Nowadays, air travel is a lot more streamlined and enjoyable. When I am away from my computer, I still have access to tools like my smartphone and airport kiosks that help with travel-related tasks. However, the biggest reason for the improved air-travel experience is that airlines use these tools
Customization vs. Personalization in the User Experience
Customization works well under the assumption that users know best what their goals and needs are. Thus, it is based on natural intelligence (the users’) over artificial intelligence (the system’s). On the other hand, personalization is based on artificial intelligence (about a user or a group
Using Prioritization Matrices to Inform UX Decisions
Prioritization charts are helpful outside of work, as well. If you are considering a new job opportunity, try plotting opportunities against the things most important to you: pay, travel, growth, or mentorship. If you are contemplating a big trip, perhaps you plot cities against what you value
2 Billion Downloads Later, Apple’s App Store is Still Going Strong
The App Store is obviously one of Apple’s most important assets in the mobile market. While Microsoft’s Zune HD, for example, is getting a lot of favorable reviews, the absence of an application ecosystem makes it a far less compelling product than Apple’s more expensive iPod
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
Blockchain Supercharged with AI: The Next Revolution
Artificially intelligent systems could help bring down this cumbersome process by reducing the computing power needed to confirm these transactions. As the Hashing algorithms used to confirm transactions on a blockchain network often uses a “brute force” approach. An AI system could
Killer Marketing Plan For Startup Entrepreneurs
Why break the bank for your marketing needs when you can brainstorm your way to a killer marketing plan? The best marketing ideas come simple and cheap but these ideas do not come out of the blue. Your actual business plan will require an out-of-the-box, innovative thought process. You’ll
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RW Q&A: Monisha Perkash, founder of Lumo Bodytech
Perkash came up with the idea for Lumo seeing her co-founder and CTO, Andrew Chang, suffering from debilitating back pain. Perkash is married to a spine and sports physician, so she could understand how important posture really was. Perkash advised Andrew to attend a posture class and as a result
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
Why Personas Fail | Evolution of a Home Page Design: Article by Jakob Nielsen
Evolution of a Home Page Design: Article by Jakob Nielsen
Actually, of course, the page is not perfect. User tests in several different countries have all shown the same problem: people have difficulties interacting with hyperlinks on imagemaps because there is no indication about what is clickable and because they don't get "breadcrumbs" on
Kill the 53-Day Meme
I arrived at the estimate by quite simple means: I collected estimates of the number of web servers from many public sources, such as the various WWW robots (programs that traverse the Web and move on from each server to any other servers it links to). I used the average of the numbers from those
Website Logo Placement for Maximum Brand Recall
There is no formula that can tell you exactly what your website should look like. But it’s clear from this research that you can’t rely on shortcuts like disregarding standard web conventions to make your site look special. People are attracted to novelty, but we’re also creatures of habit
