Information architecture (IA) focuses on organizing, structuring, and labeling content in an effective and sustainable way. The goal is to help users find information and complete tasks. The Information Architecture Institute defines information architecture simply: “Information architecture is the practice of deciding how to arrange the parts of something to be understandable.” The purpose of … Read more
Mental models are psychological representations of real, hypothetical, or imaginary situations. They were first postulated in the late 1800’s by the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce but it was the Scottish psychologist, Kenneth Craik, in 1943, who describes mental models as the mind constructs “small-scale models” of reality that it uses to anticipate events, to … Read more
In UX Stories Communicate Designs, Sarah Gibbons shares with us: Stories are a natural part of our lives. We tell, read, and listen to stories every day — from listening to the news to recounting the events of the day. These stories are our way of remembering and communicating experiences. Studies have shown that people’s … Read more
To innovate, you must observe and talk to the people for whom you are designing your solution. Observe them in the place that they will using your solution and hear from them in their own words. The goal of an Interview is to really understand their experiences, needs, and desires. Here are few tips for … Read more
Ethnography is the branch of anthropology that involves trying to understand how people live their lives. Unlike traditional market researchers, who ask specific, highly practical questions, anthropological researchers visit consumers in their homes or offices to observe and listen in a non directed way. In the HBR article, Ethnographic Research: A Key to Strategy, Ken … Read more
Interviews are one of the basic methods of requirements gathering, usability testing, and task analysis. In order to remove our personal biases, expectations and opinions from the questions asked, one of the questioning technique is non directed interview, sometimes called unstructured interview. Mike Kuniavsky, author and a twenty-year veteran of digital product development shares in … Read more
From the article,”To Understand Consumer Data, Think Like an Anthropologist” in From Data to Action: a Harvard Business Review Insight Center Report, Susan Fournier and Bob Rietveld share: “Corporate social-listening efforts are typically driven by econometricians, computer scientists, and IT technicians—the people who are experts in database management. They understand digital information, but they don’t always … Read more
Is big data enough? Aggregate numbers can tell you a lot, but they say very little about how individual customers are thinking and talking about your products. In the article, Don’t Let Data Paralysis Stand Between You and Your Customers, From Data to Action: a Harvard Business Review Insight Center Report, Harald Fanderl shares that: … Read more
Prototype your ideas before you develop them. Use prototypes to solicit feedbacks from subject matter experts to ensure you are solving the right problem, to inform stakeholders, get feedback from your customers, and collaborate with development. Before you write your requirements, create a “prototype.” This could be a sketch – or sketches – on a … Read more
User story maps are a holistic view of your product backlog. Focus on the target outcomes and identifying the best way to ‘slice’ your MVP. A user story map is “a better version of a product backlog. Building a user story map helps us focus on the big picture – the product as a whole … Read more
I recently attended Jared Spool’s presentation “Insecure & Unintuitive: How We Need to Fix the UX of Security.” If you haven’t heard Jared speak then I recommend that you do. Jared is both highly entertaining and highly informative. In this presentation, Jared shared how organizations are losing millions of dollars because people don’t remember their … Read more
I find myself going back to Fabien Girardin’s excellent article, Experience Design in the Machine Learning Era, and mining it for more gold. Fabien shares: “Nowadays, the design of many digital services does not only rely on data manipulation and information design but also on systems that learn from their users. If you would open the … Read more