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A Checklist For Planning A UX Benchmark Study

Benchmarking the user experience of a website, app, or product is essential to understanding how the experience is for your users and if you’re making effective changes to the interface over time. A UX benchmark is similar to going to the doctor to get your blood pressure, weight, and cholesterol checked. You get a series of quantitative measures that help you understand how healthy you are. You…

What does simplicity in UX design look like?

For over a decade, designers have debated what constitutes simplicity in user experience design. As Robert Hoekman Jr. points out in his article When It Comes to UX Design, Simplicity is Overrated, the variation in semantics is confusing. Simplicity could refer to a clean design (then there’s the disparity of what “clean” actually looks like), the complexity of the experience, or even the…

Punching out: how UX can increase your customer’s loyalty

Life is made of experiences, so practicing good UX influences your customer’s behavior. This week, we apply UX design to something we all love: free coffee. I love reward programs. You know those cards you get at the local café that offer a free coffee once you’ve purchased the requisite number of cups? Each time you purchase a coffee, you get a slot checked off and you’re one step closer to…

UX is Not Design

The effectiveness of a site is dependant on one key factor: user experience. But what does designing a user experience actually mean? The ‘design’ in ‘UX design’ doesn’t refer to visual aesthetics. The increase in job titles that have both ‘UX’ and ‘UI’ in them is lending to the confusion that UX and UI are the same thing, and that UX is solely about the process of designing a user interface. The…

How Does Culture Impact UX Design?

Over 3 billion people have access to the internet. This positive trend in global connectivity means that it’s becoming increasingly common for companies to design global web experiences. To do so effectively though, UX designers need to go beyond designing for seamless use and accessibility; they need to create a cross-cultural user experience. The concept of culture at first glance seems both…

Moving to a UX-Critical Culture

“Now, more than ever before, I find myself fighting a different kind of fight, to ensure that teams allocate the proper time to User Experience for us to be effective.” With all the amazing changes that have been happening in the business world over the past few years, thrusting User Experience into the limelight, one would think that UX professionals have arrived. That we’d be able to devote…

The Beginner’s Guide to Capturing UX Requirements

As we move away from the deliverables business, we become susceptible to the poor planning. In order to continue designing great products with less of a paper trail, we must make sure to create the right documents, instead of more documents — especially in the early stages. Let’s explore the documents that help us better understand user requirements without bogging us down in busywork. All these…

The future of UX: Q&A with industry leaders

In our recent webinar, Lou Rosenfeld and Chris Hicken discussed recent changes and upcoming trends in the UX industry. In today’s post, they answer the audience’s follow-up questions with the help of Maggie Young, UserTesting’s Senior VP of Customer Experience. What’s changing in terms of how people conduct UX research now vs. in the past? Chris Hicken: Companies have always wanted to get…

3 things you didn’t know about UX

UX teams that consider these three tips throughout the design process will deliver projects in a smoother fashion. ‘As the design process progresses, it’s not uncommon to have a fall-out over a simple aspect’ The term ‘user experience’ (or UX) has become somewhat of a buzzword recently, as businesses start to take a more user-centred approach to the design of their websites and applications. UX…

The UX Of Ethics: Should Google Tell You If You Have Cancer?

Big data can spot things we’d never see coming. But are companies like Google and Amazon responsible for telling us the bad news? Photos: John Moore/Steve Gschmeissner/Getty Images “If I’m on a park bench, and I’m next to someone, and I hear them talking about symptoms of cancer, am I obligated to turn around and tell them they might have cancer?” Samuel Volchenboum, Director of the Center for…

The Steady UX Diet Versus the Magical UX Pill

No, this headline isn’t a joke about the increasing popularity of the term Lean UX. Rather, I am talking about the choices that organizations make in deciding how to adopt User Experience as a practice and improve the experience they are attempting to create. Do they apply User Experience through intermittent, quick fixes to rectify gaps in an experience? Or do they foster UX practices from…

Moving to a UX-Critical Culture

With all the amazing changes that have been happening in the business world over the past few years, thrusting User Experience into the limelight, one would think that UX professionals have arrived. That we’d be able to devote enough time, money, and resources to ensuring the user experience is just right—because, you know, it’s important. For decades, we’ve been fighting to ensure that User…

25 excellent UX examples from ecommerce sites

It’s a great time to be a consumer. With so many buying options, retailers have to work harder than ever to give people good value and even better service.  For retailers, however, the challenge lies in giving potential buyers the best possible user experience (UX) to ensure they make it all the way to the checkout. I’ve taken a look at some successful ecommerce sites to see what they’re doing…

Good UX Design Means People Enjoy Using Your Product (Or At Least Don’t Loathe It)

What is the ROI of UI/UX design changes? originally appeared on Quora: the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. Answer by Katarina Shaw, UX Designer and Researcher, on Quora: From a business perspective, the value of your product comes from selling it, licensing it, advertising, and collecting user data. Good design can convince people…

Invisible UI: a hidden opportunity for great UX

Several years ago I treated myself to dinner at a fancy restaurant in Paris. The place was not surprisingly known for its outstanding cuisine, but what really drew me there was its reputation for attentive yet “invisible” service. That sounded a bit like an oxymoron, so I made it my mission to find out. When I arrived, no less than six waitstaff interacted with me between the maitre d’ and my…

Cognitive psychology for UX: how to avoid the false consensus effect

We all see the world through our own unique filters. These filters are based on our personal experience, culture, context/environment, and our frame of mind. And they come with an unintended side effect that most of us aren’t aware of: they cause us to falsely believe that other people see the world the same way we do. To show you what I mean, let’s do a quick exercise. If I asked you to walk…

5 Reasons Freelance UX Projects Fail

The ever-so-popular saying, “Fail faster” should always be followed by “… and always learn from each misstep.” If you adopt this mentality, you’ll discover that failure is an incredible opportunity to learn something about yourself—both as a UX professional and as a persevering entrepreneur. If you’re a freelance UX consultant, that sense of perspective becomes even more important. Painting a…