How to Fix a Bad User Interface

Hey! This is an excerpt from my book Designing Products People Lovewhich will be published by O’Reilly in December. Learn more about the book and the 20+ product designers from Facebook, Twitter, Slack, etc. who were interviewed about how they work.

Have you ever experienced a user interface that feels lifeless? Have you created a UI that just seems to be missing…something

Read More

Preventing User Errors: Avoiding Unconscious Slips

Summary: Users are often distracted from the task at hand, so prevent unconscious errors by offering suggestions, utilizing constraints, and being flexible.

One of the 10 Usability Heuristics advises that it’s important to communicate errors to users gracefully, actionably, and clearly. However, it’s even better to prevent users from making errors in the first place.

Read More

9 UX Myths That You Thought Were True But Are Not

UX design does not have an official, standard definition because apart from its various visual components, it encompasses information architecture, user research, wireframing and many elements that together decide the fate of UX. The closest to a definition of UX is the one provided by Nielsen and Norman which states that “User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” Thus, UX involves knowing what end-users want from a product or a system and meeting those requirements with perfection and in a way that delights them. 

Read More

The Future of Consumer Tech Is About Making You Forget It’s There

Microsoft, Samsung, GoPro, and others take their best guesses at the next five years of consumer electronics.

When Apple introduced the iPad 2 in 2011, it laid out a noble goal for the future of technology.

“Technology alone is not enough,” an Apple ad proclaimed. “Faster, thinner, lighter, those are all good things, but when technology gets out of the way, everything becomes more delightful, even magical. That’s when you leap forward.” 

Read More

Hands-on with Mattel’s new AR, VR View-Master

A View-Master for virtual reality: Hands-on with Mattel’s new AR, VR phone toy

Mattel is relaunching View-Master, but as a virtual reality and augmented-reality phone toy. And I got to play around with it for a bit…or at least, some of the tech behind it. 

Read More

Welcome to the Age of Holographs

Up close with the HoloLens, Microsoft’s most intriguing product in years

We just finished a heavily scripted, carefully managed, and completely amazing demonstration of Microsoft’s HoloLens technology. Four demos, actually, each designed to show off a different use case for a headset that projects holograms into real space. We played Minecraft on a coffee table. We had somebody chart out how to fix a light switch right on top of the very thing we were fixing.

Read More

User Experience Tips: How to Seduce Ecommerce Visitors to Buy

Every day, people visit your store and leave because they couldn’t find what they wanted.

You need more than top rankings on Google. People have to be able to navigate to the product they want and trust you enough to buy. Your website’s user experience (UX) should focus on building your visitor’s confidence by helping them complete their goals. 

Read More

Balancing Product UX and Lean Execution

Dealing with these competing priorities at each stage of product development

What matters more: killer UX that makes people want to use your product, or shipping the things people want quickly and staking down a huge share of the market? If the UX is bad, people won’t want to use it. On the other hand, if someone else gets it there first, people are happy to use what is available and help to improve it with feedback as it grows.

Read More

Scarcity Principle: Making Users Click RIGHT NOW or Lose Out

Summary: Feeling that there is only one chance can convince people to take action sooner, sometimes without careful consideration of consequences or alternative options.

The scarcity principle is a well-documented social-psychology phenomenon that causes people to assign high value to things they perceive as being less available.

Read More
Back To Top
Search