I’ve always liked this story about Betty Crocker and how General Mills took such care in designing the experience of making a cake. They’d been espousing speed and ease in the kitchen since 1931 with products like Bisquick, but this
I have to admit I only tried Pidoco° very briefly at UX Brighton last week, but I was impressed with what I saw. They’ve integrated an Axure-style prototyping tool with a remote, moderated usability testing tool, and the price is
“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” – Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878 “This telephone has too many shortcomings to be considered as a means of
This is going to be something special. Abtests.com is created by Bokardo, Performable, and KISSmetrics. In their words: “Our goal is simple: to help people test their web sites/applications and share that knowledge with others, making everyone smarter in the
Using a feedreader and can’t see the video? This post is all about the importance setting accurate expectations. One of my friends, Ofer Deshe, often uses this clip when running UX training workshops. What a great way of summing it
A while back I blogged about Eben Haber’s FOSS Video Note Taker. Well, if you’re on Mac and you’ve got $40 bucks, you might also want to consider Pear Note for OS X: Pear Note records audio and/or video while
Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg pack a lot of theory about the psychology of persuasion into the concept of a “call-to-action”, but at its simplest, a call-to-action is the area on a page that sums up its main purpose or goal
The whole point of user research is that you get to observe real members of your target user group interacting with your product. However, the cash incentive that you offer – typically £50 for an hour – is compelling enough
Back in the 1990s, when wireframing was a niche activity, you were pretty much limited to Visio or Illustrator. Nowadays there are a huge number of alternatives. If you want an online app, you can choose from Balsamiq, Just in
Dreamworks films are quite clever the way they have jokes for children and adults occur simultaneously, so everyone laughs out loud together. Sorry did I say children and adults? I meant children, adults and UI designers… Using a feedreader and
At UX Brighton last night GiGi Demming (Head of User Testing at SCEE in London) gave a talk on gameplay research involving kids. She neatly summed up one of the problems with interviewing kids – the “I like turtles effect”:
Taken from Rapid Problem Solving with Post-it notes by David Straker (1997). Despite its age this book contains some really useful techniques for stakeholder workshops, such as group sorting activities, trees, and maps.
When you see an Eye Tracking heatmap for the first time, you are probably so busy saying “wow!” that you forget to critically evaluate what you are seeing. This talk is intended to give you a set of questions to
Browser malware warning pages are tricky things to design. Users are a lazy bunch (productively lazy, that is), and they are unlikely to read the text in every single dialog box you put in front of their faces. They’re much
I’ve been on holiday for the past two weeks so this is all a bit last minute – I’ve arranged a great line up for next tuesday (8-Sept-09). Half the tickets are gone already – book your place now to
Earlier this month, Carsten Schmitt & Poppy James of
Rob Gillham of HFI gave a presentation on Persuasion, Emotion and Trust at UX Brighton earlier this month (Aug ’09). Here are the slides from his talk. Many thanks to HFI, Bunnyfoot, iCrossing, Madgex and everyone who attended for making
When you’re designing a website, the range of things a user can do at any one time is fairly limited – you have quite a clear idea of the paths most users will take and this makes your life relatively
Bruce Archer is widely recognised as one of the founding fathers of Design Research. It’s worth reading his wikipedia entry. Here’s a fascinating excerpt about his initial experiences in using research to improve the design of hospital equipment. You’ll notice
“The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you, and they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you’re saying, and they can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you, and they won’t listen to you