General UX

Yesterday I was considering the commonly recognized generations - the Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y. I had been watching HFI’s webcast on “the generational dilemma” as to who we are designing for. The speakers pointed out that most designers find themselves in Generation X, yet Generation Y is a much larger population, and in [...]

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Recently there was one red question on Red Canary that had me thinking. The question was, what advice would you give to a young graduate starting a tech career. More specifically though, I was intrigued by some of the answers. I’m in no position to give advice but I could use it. One answer that [...]

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Recently a wonderful friend and fellow designer turned me onto the idea of mind mapping, and through some of his posts on the process and software he definitely had me ready to buy MindManager 8 (btw he’s also got me sold on Axure, so somebody ought to be paying him for this by now). If [...]

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Having attended a few webinars recently, I have realized I enjoy the format. It allows me to see excellent presentations while networking with like-minded individuals, yet I don’t have to get a passport or get on a plane. Most recently I joined a local group in seeing Michael Hughes, a User Assistance Architect at IBM, [...]

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So, I boldly pointed out in my previous entry that UX designers are there to “translate customer needs effectively”.
My spouse is a developer and we have this discussion quite often actually. He can recite the deepest details of coding and architecting software as if it’s a mysterious, ancient language (I like to compare it to [...]

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I started ranting on Twitter some time last night and realized it was apropos here.
I’m reading About Face by Alan Cooper, and Cooper writes,
If we design and construct products in such a way that the people who use them achieve their goals, these people will be satisfied, effective, and happy and will gladly pay for [...]

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When I first mentioned buying The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, I knew it was a well-respected classic for those in user experience design. Amber - a friend who designs Technical Poet - pointed out she did not enjoy it, in fact, because the examples related to engineering physical products such as tables, [...]

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Success in UX design is driven by a particular personality. UX requires straddling so many elements, and includes a wide range of experience and expertise, rather than allowing one to become comfortable doing the same ol’ same ol’. Not only are user needs met first and foremost, there is an ongoing feeling of growth and [...]

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Designing Web Navigation is subtitled “Optimizing the User Experience”, and therefore drew my attention immediately. Written by James Kalbach, and published by O’Reilly, this book is also elegeantly designed and in full-colour with examples throughout. Once again the book itself conveys it’s own message - that user experience is holistic and that products must not [...]

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