November 4, 2014 — Today’s mobile users have increasing expectations, they are intolerant of faults in their mobile experiences, and they complain about bad mobile experiences on social media and through word of mouth. How do you make sure that your mobile experience meets or exceeds users’ … Read More…

October 20, 2014 — Information architecture (IA) is one of those buzzwords you’ve probably heard before. It refers to the organization of the information on your website and how it all fits together. When planning your IA, involve users of your website in the process as soon as you can. Read More…

October 8, 2014 — Sliders are cool. When they’re done well, customers love to interact with them. When they’re not done well, they can cause a lot of frustration (not to mention lost sales) by standing between your customers and what they want. And getting them wrong is surprisingly … Read More…

September 19, 2014 — As mobile designers, we have a stark decision to make: do we spend time learning new tools and changing our design processes to create our own transitional interfaces, or are the tools that we’ve been using good enough? There’s an old writing adage that advises … Read More…

August 22, 2014 — High school. I won’t lie: I did not have the highest grades in my graduating class. Some classes and lessons were so poorly designed and delivered that I would frequently become frustrated and fatigued and would ultimately shut down. The contents of the lessons would just … Read More…

August 13, 2014 — How can designers create experiences that are custom tailored to people who are unlike themselves? As explained in part 1 of this series, an effective way to gain knowledge of, build empathy for and sharpen focus on users is to use a persona. This final part of the series … Read More…

August 6, 2014 — In my experience as an interaction designer, I have come across many strategies and approaches to increase the quality and consistency of my work, but none more effective than the persona. Personas have been in use since the mid-’90s and since then have gained widespread … Read More…

June 24, 2014 — An “affordance” is a perceived signal or clue that an object may be used to perform a particular action. A chair sits at around knee height and appears to provide support. It affords sitting. A toothbrush has a handle a little longer than the human palm. It … Read More…

June 17, 2014 — How do you balance the creative control you give to the users, the usability of the product they make with your tool and the flexibility of that tool? We designers have always had a problem of handing over creative control to the general population — the basic users. There … Read More…