user experience design
A regrettable consequence of getting older is that both our senses and our memory tend to be less acute. While I scoffed at this notion when I heard about it in HCI class back in my 20s, it is now a fact of my daily life. The National Institute of Health (NIH) describes how changes in…
BlogI have read many software specifications over the years that simplistically list being “user friendly” as a design requirement. User Experience (UX) designers can get a chuckle from this, knowing that there is a fair bit of effort involved during the design phase to make that happen. …
BlogIn this next blog post, we will explore the sixth rule of Ben Shneiderman's Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design. This rule is for designers to permit easy reversal of actions. Shneiderman explains this rule as the following, “As much as possible, actions should be reversible. This feature…
BlogShneiderman’s Rule 5 is the one that I suspect is most often violated by software developers, and I say that looking back at 20 years of writing code. When writing software, developers think in terms of edge cases and data validation. The rule of thumb is that, for example, when a user…
BlogContinuing this series, the second of Shneiderman’s Golden Rules is that User Experience Designers should design systems and software for the widest range of reasonably possible users. This is a challenging, but not insurmountable, activity. People come in a wide variety. For example,…
BlogSome time ago, I wrote a post about the use of patterns in user interface (UI) design. The idea is that, when one solves problems for a living, over the years the same problems will crop up, and similar solutions will be re-used. The context may change, but a solution that worked…
BlogDesigning 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…
BlogAlthough design is a subject of much interest in this age of highly usable technology products, misconceptions about the user experience (UX) design process abound. A fundamental fallacy is that the design process is one-dimensional, involving essentially one kind of thought process. The ‘…
BlogBefore getting the opportunity to run a design team, I worked as a Qt developer and trainer for many years. This has given me some insights into the development pipeline that I think a lot of people have missed. I’ve heard both developers and designers complaining about one or the other…
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