Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D.
Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. is Chief UX Strategy Officer for ICS and Boston UX. She is focused on designing natural user interfaces to achieve simple-but-compelling user experiences for emerging technologies and the Internet of Things. Dorothy has 30+ years of experience in a broad range of user experience (UX) skills, including UX strategy, user research, interaction design, visual design, and programming. Dorothy is passionate about creating usable beauty and beautiful usability.
Articles by Author
Industry publications:
Design Leaders Ask Pushy Questions
Monday, January 16, 2017 - 08:57 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • Success in UX Design, UX design team
Empathy is at the core of great design. Understanding what others see and feel leads to more effective design and, ultimately better products.
What Do Castles Have to Do with UX Design?
Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 10:12 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • UX, UX Design
A family vacation touring the castles of Europe turns into a real-life lesson in UX design.
Want to Empower Touchscreen Users? Let Them Choose Their Own Layout
Tuesday, October 4, 2016 - 13:13 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • UX, Interactive Kiosk
Whether designing for desktop or touchscreen, your goal as a UX designer is to allow users to interact with content in a way that works for them.
Turning the Page: Creating Natural-Feeling Touchscreen Interactions
Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - 09:27 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • UX
Creating user experiences that feel natural should be the goal of any touch-interface designer. Here's how we developed the page turner.
Want to Create Touchscreen Layouts that Feel Great? Embrace Human Movement Patterns
Wednesday, August 10, 2016 - 11:32 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • UX, UX Design, Touch Gesture, touchscreen
Incorporating natural behavior in touch interaction enhances the user experience.
Virtual Tactile-ness: Creating Engaging User Experiences
Monday, July 18, 2016 - 10:08 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • UX, Virtual Tactile-ness, haptic
Touch delivers heightened, more viscerally powerful user experiences.
Tap, Tinder and Touchscreens: How Swipe Can Improve the User Experience
Wednesday, June 29, 2016 - 10:06 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • UX, touch, touch gestures, tap, swipe, compelling touch, touch user experiences, TInder, natural touch gestures
If you are overusing the tap gesture, it's time to re-evaluate your design approach.
Good Design is Fast
Monday, December 14, 2015 - 17:26 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • UX, User Experience, Design, rapid prototyping, iteration
Can user experience (UX) design be fast and good. We think so. Check it out.
A Sure Way to Succeed in a Design Process
Tuesday, November 3, 2015 - 14:15 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • user experience design, UX, user experience designers, designers
Designing is a process, and as a designer you can utilize numerous strategies to progress to a successful outcome, but a sure way not to succeed is to deny the process. I like to describe it as not “honoring the design process.” You need to pay homage to the natural forces of doing and deciding. In other words, performing a bunch of random activities utilizing gathered requirements, constraints and user profiles does not necessarily lead to a solid design. A couple of examples that I have witnessed:
Is the Design Process Like a Wave or a Particle?
Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - 14:56 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • UX Design, user experience design
Although design is a subject of much interest in this age of highly usable technology products, misconceptions about the user experience (UX) design process abound.
Internet of Things vs. Internet of Everything
Monday, July 13, 2015 - 17:27 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • Internet of Things, IoT, Internet of Everything, IoE, User Experience, UX
Does the distinction matter to User Experience (UX) designers? Since the IoE is really a wider view of the IoT, do the additional components, issues or aspects of the “everything” view actually add more complexity to the UX design of connected devices? My answer to these questions is a resounding Yes!
Internet of Things: Designing a User Experience for No Learning Curve
Monday, June 29, 2015 - 15:43 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • UX patterns, user experiences, Internet-enabled, Internet of Things, IoT, designer, UX
How does a designer deal with the dilemma of creating devices with little or no learning for users to be effectively proficient with them?
Internet of Things: Easy to Use is Complicated to Design
Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - 16:57 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • Internet of Things, IoT, user experiences, UX, Design
The demand for increasingly better-quality user experiences requires increasingly more work effort on the part of UX designers.
Internet of Things: Will GUIs Still Exist?
Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - 16:04 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • Internet of Things, IoT, graphical user interface, GUIs, NUIs, touch
The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) is reshaping our relationship with computing technology.
Internet of Things: Are Your User Experience Design Skills Up to Speed?
Monday, May 18, 2015 - 15:46 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • Internet of Things, IoT, User Experience, UX, smart devices, smartphones
Internet of Things: Are Your User Experience Design Skills Up to Speed?
Does Your User Experience Deal with Connectivity Failures Gracefully?
Monday, April 20, 2015 - 13:46 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • IoT, User Experience, UX, Internet of Things
Users find it frustrating and reluctantly accept the fact that connection to the Internet sometimes has glitches. Wait times are the norm.
Internet of Things: Content Strategies Require Innovation
Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - 13:47 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • IoT, Content Strategies, Innovation, Internet of Things, Interactive Retail Kiosks
Digital signane (DS) is one of the emerging Internent of Things (IoT) technologies that are invading our lives, forbetter or worse.
Internet of Things: Living in the Periphery of User Attention
Monday, March 2, 2015 - 16:47 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • Internet of Things, IoT, User Experience, UX
When designing a user experience, we usually assume we are engaging a user's center of attention, albiet short.
Internet of Things: Should Designers Focus on Devices First or Services First?
Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - 16:47 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • Internet of Things, IoT, in-vehicle, navigation, robots, usability design, User Experience, UX, GUI, NUIs, context of use
Internet of Things: Should Designers Focus on Devices First or Services First?
Internet of Things: Context of Use Just Became More Important
Thursday, January 29, 2015 - 15:18 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • Internet of Things, IoT, User Experience, UX, context of use
Internet of Things: Context of Use Just Became More Important
2014 and the Expanding Internet of Things
Monday, December 22, 2014 - 16:48 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • Internet of Things, UX, User Experience, touchscreens
During 2014, the user experience (UX) group at ICS worked on our usual fare of mobile and desktop apps, but we also saw a large expansion of embedded device projects that fall into three categories: kiosk information systems, in-vehicle infotainment systems (IVI) and robotics control systems. Each area presents unique and complex challenges for a UX designer. However, we noticed some common requests between all three of those areas: the preference for touchscreens and the desire to be connected to the Internet.
User Experience Design Principles of a Natural User Interface (NUI)
Monday, November 24, 2014 - 15:19 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • UX, User Experience, User Experience Design Principles, UI
In a previous blog post (Defining a Natural User Interface) I explained how finding a clear and concise definition of a Natural User Interface (NUI) was not easy.
Applying Scrolling and Eliding Text in a Natural User Interface
Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - 13:06 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • ViewPoint, Scrolling and Eliding Text, natural user interface (NUI), Scrolling with Fading Effects, Make Your Content Shine: Design Choices for a Qt Touch Kiosk, Qt Developer Days conference in San Francisco
We recently made a presentation at the Qt Developer Days conference in San Francisco, entitled Make Your Content Shine: Design Choices for a Qt Touch Kiosk.
The Idea of a Natural User Interface is Not Naturally Easy to Grasp
Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - 15:34 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • Natural User Interface, NUI, gesture interface, User Experience, UX
Natural User Interface (NUI) is a concept that sounds simple enough at first but then it defies a simple, one-sentence definition.
Kiosks and Learnable Interfaces
Monday, September 15, 2014 - 17:05 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • UX, user interface, kiosks, ViewPoint, interface hints, natural user interface (NUI), Hint animations, discoverable, Consistency, Prompt feedback, easy to learn, learnable
When a person encounters a kiosk or computer device in a public space, such as a sales or museum kiosk, they can only benefit from it if they can figure out how to interact with it rather quickly. So one of the requirements of public interactive devices is that they be very easy to use, or easy to learn to use. But the learnability must be part of the user experience design. Depending on the content, a design may use very common interactive navigation patterns such as “next” and “previous” buttons that leave no questions about how to interact with them.
User Attention and Duration of Engagement in Public Kiosks
Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - 14:09 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • User Experience, UX public kiosks, Usability, duration of use, duration of your content, kiosks, Users' Attention, User Interaction
Common user experience (UX) wisdom says that you have a short period of time (approximately 3 seconds to 3 minutes) to attract, seduce and convince a user to use your app, site or device. Once you capture their attention, you need to sustain a long-term relationship by offering the user real value (Skype), enduring enjoyment (Candy Crush) or at the very least, an obligation to be a participant in popular experiences (Facebook). Do the same principles apply to public kiosks, such as ticketing, retail and museum kiosks? The answer is yes and no.
Touch Gesture Success and Screen Angle for an Interactive Kiosk
Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - 12:55 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • touch gestures, Touch Gesture, Touchscreen Kiosks, touch-enabled, wall-mounted screens, Interactive Kiosk
When installing a touchscreen kiosk, the angle of the screen is a major consideration. First, it affects how quickly people perceive the device as interactive and also touch-enabled. (See my previous post, Is That a Kiosk? How to Best Position Your Public Touchscreen Display for Use.) Second, it affects how comfortable it is for users to perform touch gestures.
Is That a Kiosk? How to Best Position Your Public Touchscreen Display for Use
Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - 16:36 "> • By Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D. • UX, Touchscreen Kiosks, angle of a display, interactive tabletop devices, zone of viewability, screen angle
At Integrated Computer Solutions (ICS), we recently have begun marketing a touchscreen kiosk product that we call ViewPoint (www.viewpointkiosks.com).