Drop-Down Usability: When You Should (and Shouldn’t) Use Them

Drop-down lists are great – when used correctly.

User Experience Books for Beginners

Through @uxbooks, my twitter feed for all things UX book related, I regularly get asked to recommend books to people and more often than not, it’s to suggest entry-level publications.

11 Principles of Interaction Design explained

This post isn’t intended to be an exhaustive list of interaction design principles, its merely an introduction to the subject. And I’m definitely not going to attempt to enter the lions den of defining what ‘interaction design’ is, that’s for another day!

External links from news sites – what should the user experience be?

Over the last couple of days I’ve been blogging about how external and internal links are placed on guardian.co.uk, following on from Patrick Smith’s debate provoking blog post “Link to the past: why do some news sites STILL not link out in 2010?”.

Agile Experience Design – Integrating the Agile and Experience Design Practices

A Detailed Look at HTML5 for UX Designers

Lately, I’ve been preaching about how it’s important for UX designers to understand the technology our designs will be implemented in. I’m going to try to put this gospel into practice by unpacking for you the hidden treasures that HTML5 offers UX designers.

Adapting Usability Investigations for Agile User-Centered Design

When our company chose to adopt an Agile development process for new products, our User Experience Team took the opportunity to adjust, and consequently improve, our user-centered design (UCD) practices.

User Experience and the Platform War

If there is one thing constant about the technology industry, it’s the fact that there is always a battle taking place. Whether it’s to dominate a platform or agree on standards, we are always evolving, and often debating over which direction is best. It’s imperative, however, that our focus on user experience not get lost in the crossfire.

10 New UX Books To Look Out for in 2010

As the sudden explosion in UXBookClub’s popularity showed last year, I’m obviously not the only UX professional who likes to read the odd book now and then. I often find it hard to devote time to reading books relating to work and far too easy to make excuses; too tired, too busy, too close to the TV remote, too far from the bookshelf and so on.

The ultimate User Experience book league table

Master User Experience design an interview with .Net magazine

Back in November I was approached by Craig Grannell who asked if I’d like to contribute towards the cover article for .net magazine’s December issue. I jumped at the chance and was really pleased to have been given the chance to comment along-side the likes of Leisa Reichelt, Dan Saffer, Andy Budd and Luke Wroblewski.

How Users Read on the Web

In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.

Beyond Frustration: Three levels of happy design

Happiness is a topic I’ve been interested in for a while. According to Darrin McMahon, author of Happiness: A History, happiness is a relatively new construct in the history of humanness.

The Dirtiest Word in UX: Complexity

You don’t have to be a UX practitioner to understand that simplicity is a good thing; no one goes around the office saying, “Alright team, let’s make this application really, really complex!”

The Anatomy of a Website

Many people find it hard to picture a website as more than a bundle of content. This often makes explaining the mixture of languages used and the way everything comes together a difficult task.

10 Steps To A More Usable Ecommerce Website

You could be selling the best products in the world, at unbelievably low prices, but if shoppers can’t find them or get confused along the way, you’re never going to reach your full potential in terms of sales.

UI Pattern Factory

Patternry will be something more than just a collection of design patterns or a design gallery.

UX Engagement Metrics

Time was when hits and page views were the king of web metrics. But now we have a new metric to focus our energy on: engagement. How engaged are our users, we ask? How often do they visit? Are they really involved in our design, or did they give up on it?

Communicating color efficiently – red & green

Natural Selections: Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design

52 Weeks of UX

Design @ IBM | An Agile approach to User Experience and Design

With more development moving to an Agile process, User Experience and Design (UXD) professionals are faced with the task of adapting their activities, deliverables, and even their own role to an Agile development process.

A-Z of User Experience Design Resources

IBM Design Principles

LukeW | User Experience Diagrams

Streams of Content, Limited Attention

The goal is not to be a passive consumer of information or to simply tune in when the time is right, but rather to live in a world where information is everywhere.

iPad Application Design

I held a 6-hour workshop at NSConference in both the UK and USA recently, focusing on software design and user experience. Predictably, an extremely popular topic was the iPad, and how to approach the design of iPad applications.

Fantastic Information Architecture and Data Visualization Resources

Information architecture can be a daunting subject for designers who’ve never tried it before. Also, creating successful infographics and visualizations takes skill and practice, along with some advance planning. But anyone with graphic design skills can learn to create infographics that are effective and get data across in a user-friendly manner.

Human-Centered Design Toolkit

HCD Toolkit helps organizations understand people’s needs in new ways, find innovative solutions to meet these needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind

Journal of Information Architecture