IA Summit 12: Rhythm & Flow
The first regular session I enjoyed at the summit this year was Rhythm & Flow by Peter Stahl. It was a very interesting talk that made me think about the rhythm of user interactions from a repetitive nature, and the flow that…
Annoying Interactions at Target.com
I had an annoying experience at Target.com today, enough so that it inspired me to write a post about it. To be clear, I love Target and shop there all the time. However, the website I think could still use…
Action Buttons, Designing for Use
A couple weeks ago my email subscribers received a link for a “new post” that didn’t go anywhere. It’s not that the page was broken, or that the post didn’t exist. Instead the problem was that I was working on…
Designing the Little Things That Make an Impression
The home page of your web site is your online store-front. The inside pages are the equivalent to customer facing insides of your shop. So what kind of first impression are you giving to your customers? Are you a high…
Help Users Choose by Reducing Choices
Let’s face it, you probably won’t be surprised if I tell you that you’re faced with hundreds, maybe even thousands of choices a day. We are all increasingly aware that our lives have become busy messes and decision making has…
SpeedyMarks Background Color Changer
I’m testing out new functionality on Flickr, that allows me to immediately post Flickr photos to my blog. I thought I would test this out by posting a screen shot of a new website I recently stumbled upon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/).
10 Web Design and Layout Principles Every Designer Should Know
I recently gave a presentation at the South Florida User Experience Meetup on the top 10 web design and layout principles you should know when designing your website. Below is a summary as well as the presentation with some screen…
Paper Prototyping with Magnets and Dry Erase
Paper Prototyping with Magnets and Dry Erase What is Paper Prototyping? Paper Prototyping is a low fidelity (Low-Fi) way to create and test designs before an application has been built. The nature of a these prototypes as paper and pencil…
Take Advantage of Existing Standards
What are standards? Standards are agreed upon conventions for a particular process or visual pattern based on research and proven best practices. They provide a basis for commonality across many diverse things. They allow us to learn something once, and…
Can Grandma Use Your Website?
A few weekends ago I made the trip to grandmas for some nice rest and relaxation. On the way over I loaded some overdue podcasts onto my iPod for some road trip enjoyment. One of these podcast’s was Userability #…