This isn’t breaking news, but it’s an interesting enough tidbit to deserve being shared around. Back in November ’08, Chris Goward of Wider Funnel noticed that Obama’s team used Google Website Optimizer to run an A/B test on barackobama.com. Unsurprisingly
If you are a User Experience (UX) consultant, or a client who often outsources to UX consultancies, then this post is for you. It’s about UX skirmishes. In case you don’t know, a skirmish is a military tactic where the
Can’t see the embedded flash above? [view low res | view high res] I like the way you can see the recurring pattern of a pristine design getting gradually tweaked and cluttered until it hits tipping point, then it gets
I’ve spoken to a few people recently who want a free / cheap PC app for recording usability tests, i.e. a screen recorder that does picture in picture. On a Mac, the solution is easy to find – it’s Silverback
If you don’t know the story of how the role and structure of DNA was discovered, you really should read the full article that I quote below, or even better, read The Double Helix by James D Watson (a charmingly
While I had this on my screen yesterday, the reactions of people walking past ranged from chuckling (“Is that for real?”) to asking enthusiastically if I had a copy to lend out. I’m not going to write my opinion here,
Parag Deshpande asked me to explain about Wicked Problems, so here’s a quick rundown. I’m not going to write a long post since this has been written about extensively elsewhere (including wikipedia). So, what is a Wicked Problem? It means
Here’s a lovely series of pictorial slides from Iain Barker on the perils of rushing into a design solution too quickly. Taken from Iain’s OzChi ’08 presentation “Context is everything”
Check out these initial sketches for the Scribd user interface. This is what they should look like: messy and conceptual. For some reason, a lot of people still don’t get this. Being able to draw is a bonus, not a
Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design by Gary Hustwit, the same guy who did Helvetica. If you haven’t already seen the trailer, here it is. Read more here.
In a recent post on Boing Boing, Clay Shirky talks about the user research approach used at meetup.com: […] Scott pulled me into a room by the elevators, where a couple of product people were watching a live webcam feed
Chalkmark aims to address the “challenge of user testing when there is minimal budget or time” – a worthy goal heading into cash strapped 2009. It’s made by Optimal Usability, a New Zealand based company who also make OptimalSort. Chalkmark
Having problems finding the budget for costly usability testing? Here’s your solution. If your users can solve this CAPTCHA, they will be able to cope with anything you throw at them! Thanks to James Wragg for the link!
Looking back at my last 12 months of analytics, here are some of my most popular posts: My presentation on Out of Box Experience Design: this is all about designing the moments between peeling off the shrink-wrap and getting your
I remember when I was a lad, Google was the world leader in minimalist UI design. Mind blowingly, paradigm shiftingly, amazingly clean, elegant design, where every unnecessary pixel was carefully whittled away using Occam’s own razor, leaving nothing but perfection.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the standard form controls offered in the HTML specification are a good thing. They’ve stood the test of time, they’ve evolved and users have grown up with them. It’s always far safer to use
Nothing says “I am a user interface” than 100 form fields crammed into about 850×550 pixels.
For those of you who don’t know the US cultural reference, the Roach Motel is a cockroach trap. Essentially just a small cardboard box with sticky paper inside, Roach Motels were made famous by Muhammad Ali, who at the tail
One of the main limitations of Morae 1 & 2 was that it could only do PC based user research. The new version offers dual camera support, which is a big deal. This means you can now use Morae to
Mozilla’s blog of metrics has released the results of a small A/B test they ran recently. Which of the following buttons got the best clickthrough rate on the “customise firefox” page, and by how much? One of them was significantly