From the category archives:

Usability

If You’re Confused, Chances Are Everybody Else Is, Too.

July 30, 2010

If you have a new idea—a design, an interface, an app, a product—and you start shopping that whatever it is around, pay close attention to people’s reactions. The reason why we sometimes find user testing a necessary and valuable process is because often we have become too familiar with that on which we are working; [...]

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Less is Best

July 26, 2010

If you want, you can make the simplest task the most complicated waste of time imaginable with almost a guaranteed outcome of non-completion. Now why on earth would we choose to do this? Well, there are a few reasons we tend to do this, and hopefully by identifying them early, you can avoid them and [...]

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Don’t Ask Ordinary People What They Think

April 15, 2010

“Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.” – Albert Einstein
Clients often ask me if we test designs. I usually say no. This is different than usability testing, which has its merits. Unless we are testing for very specific things like, “Can you find where the search box is?” or “Where would you [...]

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Have an Opinion, and Don’t Tell Me Everything is Fine

April 14, 2010

I’m not interested in feeling better. When I am at work, I am dealing with problems—my client’s problems, my agency’s problems, somebody’s problem. I always joke that we aren’t designers or programmers, rather we are problem solvers. When I meet with potential clients, they are meeting with us because they think we might be the [...]

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Don’t Expect Your Audience To Do What You Want

January 5, 2010

We are often stuck seeing things from a singular perspective. For example, when I go to J.Crew’s website, they expect that I will start to identify myself based on my gender, the type of clothing I am looking for, the color and size I want, etc. They have organized their information and site navigation to [...]

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How You Buy Determines How Much You Spend

November 17, 2009

Let’s face it. There is an expected experience when you purchase something expensive vs. something cheap. We as consumers expect to have the corners cut, the experience less than stellar, the packaging and perhaps even the contents compromised when we shop for extreme bargains. When we prepare to pay a premium we expect the entire [...]

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New York Times – Email Fail

November 4, 2009

I am constantly annoyed by the prominent advertising the New York Times places in their email newsletters.
I understand that these newspapers need to generate ad revenue, but you would think someone with the prestige of the NYT would find a more elegant and less obtrusive way to do it for those of us who invite [...]

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