Experience Design (XD)

Pam Baker at ReadWriteWeb posted an interesting article this morning advocating the atomization and integration of enterprise software. She argues that integration and accessibility are becoming as important as features and functionality. Remember the old days, when a mainframe or PC operating system dictated what corporations would buy and support? They seem so quaint now. “Anything […]

“Critique is a life skill, not a design skill,” Adam Connor asserted in his presentation “Discussing Design: The Art of Critique” at the Big (D)esign Conference. His session as well as the critique activities in Dana Chisnell and Jonathan Knoll’s workshop “Design and Critique for Challenging Problems” made me realize how misunderstood and unpracticed this skill […]

A friend of mine recently showed me an excellent TED talk by Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Blink, Outliers and Tipping Point. The insights in his books have always been entertaining and he has a great way of bringing data to life. In the video below, he recounts the story of a friend who, in his work as a psycho-physicist, uncovers […]

I attended the Big (D)esign Conference last week, and as with UPA 2011, I was inspired and challenged by the opening keynote, Transformational Space: The Power of Place. Gwen Harmon, Director of Governmental and Community Affairs for the National Civil Rights Museum, (NCRM) talked about the museum and plans for renovation to create a greater impact on […]

We are so often asked to “think outside of the box” that the phrase has almost reached a cliché status. What does it really mean, and how can you train yourself to do it? The first step in changing your perception is to acknowledge your background and biases. Consider the following excerpts taken from Horace […]

Tom Ross at Noupe.com wrote a great article about what makes a great call-to-action button on a website. As we all know, encouraging visitors to take the action we want them to take is vital to increasing conversions (leads/sales) and ultimately turning your site into a revenue driver for the business. I took Ross’s suggestions […]

In the film “Up in the Air,” Ryan Bingham makes his living traveling to clients and laying off their employees with his own special charm (he is played by George Clooney, after all). His upstart colleague, Natalie, proposes a new method via videoconferencing. But before the new system can go into place, their boss convinces […]

Isn’t it an annoyance viewing a rotating carousel of a homepage that won’t stop rotating? You’re in the middle of reading some ad or introduction to a feature article, about to click the Read More button and it changes. Then you have to navigate back if there is navigation or wait until it cycles around […]

At UPA 2011, Michael Rawlins, Lori Hawkins, and Jeff Sauro presented about Keystroke Level Modeling (KLM), a tool for estimating the actual movements and the time to perform each step that a particular UI design requires for users to complete a given task. KLM offers a way to analyze the time on task required by a design […]

Making Typographic Images: In this tutorial from PSDTOP Blog, you can make a typographic image from a photo using Photoshop techniques. The effect looks best on images with good contrast and light backgrounds, but you can easily adjust the contrast and background using Photoshop. I used these techniques to modify an image of my guitar […]

As a practitioner in the user experience design field, I have a foundational understanding that the way I do or think of things is not necessarily the same as others. It never ceases to amaze and inspire me when I get user feedback on an existing or proposed design and they bring things to the […]

Stock imagery doesn’t need to be boring. When working within budget constraints, there are still ways to make your design pop. One way to do that is through the use of cinemagraphic photos. A cinemagraph combines still photography with video elements to create something that is more that a photo, but not quite video. The […]