May 11, 2015
How the Apple Watch Cured My iPhone Addiction
The Apple Watch has one magical, ill-advertised feature: it doesn’t just show you the time, it can reclaim a lot of your time.
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July 4, 2014
Giving Context for iOS Permissions
This just in: tying permission dialogues to their value dramatically increases the percentage of users that will tap “allow” instead of denying system permissions.
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October 24, 2013
Usability testing is all practice, not magic
In three hours, attendees at my Usability Testing How To’s workshop found some massive usability problems to fix. And learned a few things about the challenges of facilitating, recruiting, and running usability tests cheaply and quickly. Here are three lessons from the discussion portion of the workshop.
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September 18, 2013
What Having a Spaceship in Your Closet Has to Do With User Experience
Guessing how to design or build something for someone else is like pretending to be a nurse or a detective. When we mentally try to put ourselves in the shoes of our users, we are still us. We can try our best to imagine their experiences and needs, but we will always be free to choose the parameters we think apply to those experiences.
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August 14, 2013
What Norway’s Taxi-Driving PM Can Teach Us About Empathy
In a world where decisions about customer service are based on statistically-significant surveys, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg rides around Oslo, pretending to be a taxi driver, just so he can talk to his citizens. What can can his approach teach us about helping clients and stakeholders be more empathic toward end-users?
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August 10, 2013
Book Review: UX Team of One by Leah Buley
UX Team of One by Leah Buley is one of my favorite books on the subject. It has been with me since my first steps in the world of UX. In the process, I discovered my own perspective and an approach that fit my unique work context. With her help, I became a UX Team of One within a supportive, user-centered team of many.
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August 8, 2013
On ideas, research, & augmented reality
To build a successful digital product, it’s not enough to have a cool feature idea. Perhaps a fashionable feature is the right answer sometimes but first, we must build solutions to our users’ basic needs. To do that, we need to know who the product’s users are. In other words, before you build a chair, make sure you find out who’s going to sit in it.
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June 11, 2013
Why I Won’t Make Up My Mind About iOS7
iOS7 will be judged by its long-lasting ability to bring joy, usefulness, and convenience to its large pool of users. Sure, the demos and images are exciting, but they’re no measure of a good user experience.
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June 6, 2013
Apple and the Tamagotchi That Broke My Heart
Accidents happen and it is the choice of the companies who serve us to decide what experience we should have when things don’t go as planned. They can decide to tell us we need to have behaved differently and have us pay the price. We might not argue with their logic but it leaves a bitter tastes in our mouths.
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June 4, 2013
Flat Design and Flat Aspirations
What fascinates me about the flat vs. skeumorphic detabe is the amount of passion attached to the concept flat design. Sure, the internet is known for heated, passionate debates. But there’s something else that makes people crazy about flat design, and I think it’s hope.
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