- 5 Design Decision Styles. What's Yours?
Jared M. Spool
2009-01-21
User Interface Engineering
The five different styles we've found teams use to make design decisions.
- 5-Second Tests: Measuring Your Site's Content Pages
Christine Perfetti
2005-06-09
User Interface Engineering
- 5 Design Decision Styles. What's Yours?
Jared M. Spool
2009-01-21
User Interface Engineering
You may know of Jason Fried and the folks at 37Signals, makers of the Basecamp project-management application, the Highrise contact-management application, and other successful web-based products. Jason spoke at last year's Web App Summit, his basic philosophy is to focus primarily on designs he wants to use. When he builds something he wants to use, he figures there are enough people out there just like him, who will want to use it to.
Jason admits they do very little user testing or field research. They don't create personas to help validate their idea. Instead, they rely on the information they already have and their detail-oriented approach to making the thousands of design decisions that go into every project.
Does this mean that every team could succeed without the traditional research techniques, relying on their own expertise and experience? That's a question we've been researching for a few years now and finally have an answer: It depends.
In this article, I will walk you through the five different styles teams use to make design decisions. He outlined what each style is, the effort it takes, and how to decide when that style will work for your team.
- 12 Best Practices for UX in an Agile Environment - Part 2
Jeff Patton
2008-08-05
AgileProductDesign.com
- 12 Best Practices for UX in an Agile Environment - Part 1
Jeff Patton
2008-08-01
AgileProductDesign.com
- A Recession Strategy for Web Apps
Jared M. Spool
2009-01-06
User Interface Engineering
Recessions are a harrowing experience for everyone. Organizations turn their inspection goggles on every project, looking for ways to cut costs and extract more value. "Is this project doing what we need, right now?" becomes the mantra, as everything comes under review.
In design, it's no different. Inevitably, great design is about producing both long and short term value for the organization. Something that is well designed not only delights the users but shows up positively on the income statement.
We've been looking closely at the practices of some great organizations and one of the common threads we see is how well they match their design goals to the priorities of the business. This is especially important in tight economic times, when the organizations are looking to cut anything that doesn't show immediate value. The best teams have put this practice into place.
- Account Sign-in: 8 Design Mistakes to Avoid
Jared M. Spool
2008-12-09
User Interface Engineering
Eight common design mistakes he's identified while watching users try to create accounts and sign into web sites.
- Design Cop-out #2: Breadcrumbs
Jared M. Spool
2008-08-21
User Interface Engineering
Cop-outs happen when the designers focus on treating a symptom instead of addressing the root problem. This week, we look at a second common cop-out: breadcrumbs.
- Designing for Faceted Search
Stephanie Lemieux
2009-04-28
Earley and Associates
- Field Studies: The Best Tool to Discover User Needs
United States, Massachusetts, Andover
Jared M. Spool
2007-03-13
User Interface Engineering
The most valuable asset of a successful design team is the information they have about
their users. When teams have the right information, the job of designing a powerful,
intuitive, easy-to-use interface becomes tremendously easier. When they don't, every little
design decision becomes a struggle.
While techniques, such as focus groups, usability tests, and surveys, can lead to valuable
insights, the most powerful tool in the toolbox is the 'field study'. Field studies get the
team immersed in the environment of their users and allow them to observe critical details
for which there is no other way of discovering.
- Galleries: The Hardest Working Page on Your Site
Jared M. Spool
2005-11-30
User Interface Engineering
- Gerry McGovern Says "Manage the Tasks"
Jared M. Spool
2009-10-28
User Interface Engineering
For years, we've known about the importance of completing tasks. Not the items on your to-do list -- the users' tasks.
What we found in our research over the last 10 years is that practically every measure of users' performance correlates strongly with the users completing their task. Users who achieve their objective believe the web site looks more professional, rate it as more fun, tell us it runs faster, and are more satisfied with the site. There's no doubt: if you want users to love your site, make sure they complete their tasks.
Yet, even though we know task completion is important, many teams don't have a strategy for it. They adopt a "launch and leave" approach to their sites, moving on to the next project once they've pushed something out the door.
- Great Designs Should Be Experienced and Not Seen
Jared M. Spool
2009-05-14
User Interface Engineering
The goal of a designer is to make their site disappear.
- Great Designs Should Be Experienced and Not Seen
Jared M. Spool
2009-05-14
User Interface Engineering
For years my kids, when assigned the chore of cleaning out the refrigerator, exhibited a consistent idiosyncratic behavior. They'd take a sniff of a far-too-mature item, make a face, then turn to me and insist, "Smell this. It's gross!" My experience and wisdom had granted me the knowledge to know that I didn't have to smell it. >From just the expression on their face, I could discern everything I needed to know about their experience.
It's the same thing that happens when my friends send me a link saying, "You should really see this. The site is awful!" I don't really need to see any more really awful sites.
What I'm very interested in are really great sites -- sites that deliver fabulous experiences. However my friends don't send me these. That's because when they are absorbed in a great experience, the site itself disappears.
In this article, I talk about how the goal of a designer is to make their site disappear. Of course, this has ramifications, but our ultimate goal is to focus the user on their own experience, not on our design elements.
- Hijax: Progressive Enhancement with Ajax
Jeremy Keith
2008-06-17
User Interface Engineering
Strategy for creating applications with Ajax that do the right thing when JavaScript isn't available.
- How to Innovate Right Now
Scott Berkun
2008-06-03
ScottBerkun.com
- Innovation is the New Black
Jared M. Spool
2006-06-01
User Interface Engineering
- Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want
English, Chinese, French (synopsis), Spanish (synopsis)
Karen Calhoun
2009
OCLC Inc.
In 2008, OCLC conducted focus groups, administered a pop-up survey on www.WorldCat.org (OCLC's freely available end user interface on the Web) and conducted a Web-based survey of librarians worldwide.
The Online Catalogs report presents findings from these research efforts. The findings indicate, among other things, that although library catalogs are often thought of as discovery tools, the catalog's delivery-related information is just as important to end users.
In addition, the report presents findings on:
* The metadata elements that are most important to end users in determining if an item will meet his or her needs
* The enhancements end users would like to see made in online library catalogs to assist them in consistently identifying appropriate materials
* The enhancements librarians would recommend for online library catalogs to better assist them in their work
The findings indicate, among other things, that although library catalogs are often
thought of as discovery tools, the catalog's delivery-related information is just as
important to end users.
- Producing Great Search Results: Harder than It Looks, Part 1
Jared M. Spool
2008-07-09
User Interface Engineering
- Producing Great Search Results: Harder than It Looks, Part 2
Jared M. Spool
2008-07-14
User Interface Engineering
- Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World
Cathy De Rosa
2007
OCLC Inc.
The practice of using a social network to establish and enhance relationships based on some common ground -- shared interests, related skills, or a common geographic location -- is as old as human societies, but social networking has flourished due to the ease of connecting on the Web. This OCLC membership report explores this web of social participation and cooperation on the Internet and how it may impact the library's role, including:
* The use of social networking, social media, commercial and library services on the Web
* How and what users and librarians share on the Web and their attitudes toward related privacy issues
* Opinions on privacy online
* Libraries' current and future roles in social networking
The report is based on a survey (by Harris Interactive on behalf of OCLC) of the general public from six countries -- Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States -- and of library directors from the U.S. The research provides insights into the values and social-networking habits of library users.
- Simplicity Is Highly Overrated
Donald A. Norman
2007
Yes, we want simplicity, but we don't want to give up any of those cool features. Simplicity is highly overrated.
- The $300 Million Button
Jared M. Spool
2009-01-21
User Interface Engineering
How changing a button increased a site's annual revenues by $300 million.
- The $300 Million Button
Jared M. Spool
2009-01-14
User Interface Engineering
In this article, I tell a story about a client who found a way to dramatically increase their e-commerce site's revenues with a couple of simple changes. While the story is interesting, the story-behind-the-story is just as interesting.
The client had hired us because they were concerned about checkout-process abandonment. Their analytics were showing a 13% drop off in sales, which, based on the average value of the abandoned shopping carts, was worth about $1.2 million a year in additional revenue.
Checkout-process abandonment is common in e-commerce sites and something that you can easily detect with your site's usage logs. You just look at the number of people who get to the first screen and then the number of people who actually complete the transaction. Everyone who doesn't make it is an abandonment.
When the team contacted us, they'd already pretty much decided what the problem was and how they were going to fix it, even though they had never watched any shoppers make purchases. And they were dead wrong. Not only was their fix not going to help, our research showed that it was going to increase abandonment.
- The Freedom of Fast Iterations: How Netflix Designs a Winning Web Site
Joshua Porter
2006-11-14
User Interface Engineering
- The Magic Behind Amazon's 2.7 Billion Dollar Question
Jared M. Spool
2009-03-17
User Interface Engineering
Reviews on Amazon contribute $2.7 of new revenue to Amazon every year.
- The Quiet Death of the Major Re-Launch
Jared M. Spool
2003-05-20
User Interface Engineering
- The Site Map: An Information Architecture Cop-Out
Jared M. Spool
2008-08-12
User Interface Engineering
Tradeoffs in the design process and avoiding design cop-out with your site map.
- Three Challenges for Design
Donald A. Norman
2007
The invisible, ubiquitous computer has arrived, ensnaring almost any conceivable activity within its grasp. This raises wonderful opportunities and challenges to the field of human-computer interaction, for if the computer is everywhere, then everything is within our domain of study.
It is time to consider where the next application areas might be. As I look to the future, I see numerous domains of concern, but with three large, overriding issues:
* The ever-increasing complexity of everyday things
* The ever-increasing burden of security, authentication, and identification
* The ever-increasing use of automation
- UI Breakthrough -- Command Line Interfaces
Donald A. Norman
2007
Want to know what I think the next UI breakthroughs will be? Here is one:
Command line languages. Did you think they were dead? Forever vanguished by
graphical user interfaces? Think again. Search engines have added command
structures, and now these have migrated to the desktop. The new command line
interfaces still have a way to go. They have appeared serendipitously, as
system developers slowly expanded the capabilities of search tools. But now it
is time to recognize them for what they are -- and for how much better they
could become. Command line interfaces. Once that was all we had. Then they
disappeared, replaced by what we thought was a great advance: GUIs. GUIs were
-- and still are -- valuable, but they fail to scale to the demands of
today's systems. So now command line interfaces are back again, hiding under
the name of search. Now you see them, now you don't. Now you see them again.
And they will get better and better with time: mark my words, that is my
prediction for the future of interfaces.