You may have noticed things have gone really quiet on this blog lately – let me reassure you that it is still very much alive. I’ve been taking a short break to focus on some very cool projects at Clearleft, … Continue reading
A few days ago, a friend of mine told me a story about their first visit to IDEO. At one point in their tour they saw a dozen Design Researchers standing in a makeshift kitchen, each holding a different brand … Continue reading
James Reason’s Swiss Cheese Model of System Accidents is quite a useful way to to think about how failures can happen, even when you have multiple layers of “defence” in place. It’s been applied to things like aviation and medical … Continue reading
We’re hiring a Senior User Experience Designer, which would put you in the same role as James Box, Cennydd Bowles (who is leaving soon) and myself. As a newcomer to the company, I thought it’d be useful for me to … Continue reading
Here’s a brief excerpt of Dave Meslin’s TEDx talk on The antidote to apathy: “You ever see one of these before? This is a newspaper ad. It’s a notice of a zoning application change for a new office building so … Continue reading
This talk by Professor Alan Penn of the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture is quite brilliant. He reveals loads of resonance between physical shop floorplan design and UI design for ecommerce, plus he explains exactly how Ikea employ Dark Patterns. … Continue reading
I’ve noticed a fair few designers muddle up observations with recommendations when analysing user research findings. This can really screw up your design process, but thankfully it’s quite an easy one to avoid. It’s important to always state observations separately … Continue reading
Using a CAPTCHA is a way of announcing to the world that you’ve got a spam problem, that you don’t know how to deal with it, and that you’ve decided to offload the frustration of the problem onto your user-base. … Continue reading
Quite a few people in the UX industry have been moaning – myself included – about the demise of critical thinking, and the fact that people don’t question what they read before accepting it as solid fact, particularly if it … Continue reading
Now, I love Silverback just as much as the next User Experience Professional, but it’s not a Swiss Army Knife – it’s designed to do one thing really well, and that’s recording users’ screens in usability tests. What about situations … Continue reading