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A blog about visual design, analytics, usability, user experience, and remote research.
UX Videos
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Josh Seiden, Managing Director at Neo and co-author of Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience (2013). Josh focuses on building bridges between startups and the UX discipline. His approach is extremely pragmatic, reasonable, and smart.
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Design
In the pre-Web days, the main point of a marketing message often got lost. A mailer would have a bold line at the bottom of a letter or include a postage-paid postcard that risked getting lost before a customer thought about filling in a request. Now we have a much easier, powerful tool – the call to action (CTA) button. These simple and straightforward buttons funnel visitors to where you want them to go, such as your shopping cart or your registration page.
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Design
Who says you have to be a creative company to have a creative website? Sure, design firms and creative agencies are expected to have a representative digital appearance. But there are plenty of non-digital and non-creative businesses out there with very creatives websites — so creative that we decided to bring some of them together for your inspiration.
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UX Videos
Steve Portigal is a principal at Portigal Consulting and an author of the book Interviewing Users (Rosenfeld Media, 2013). Steve and I talked about why it is so hard for people to do user research and how startups should approach it.
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Design
Like getting stuck talking to the dullest person at a party, visitors to a website without brand personality will be looking for the nearest escape route pretty quickly. It can wreak havoc with your conversion rate and repeat business. Developing brand personality is like walking a tightrope. Do it well and you’ll create a character for your company that your customers will want to engage with. Do it badly and your brand personality can repel people. It’s a tough gig to get right. In order to help you create a digital persona for your organization, here are 10 useful tips to help you create brand personality for your website.
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Design
So you’ve created your first WordPress theme for a client and can’t wait to put it live to show off your work. Everything looks perfect and the functionality is flawless – what could go wrong?
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Theory
Technological advancements in the past two decades have added a new dimension to the way we communicate, shop and interact on a day to day basis. The spread of internet use has created a very unique and cost effective opportunity for businesses to reach customers and interact with them. At the same time, websites have become an important tool for customers to get in touch with their favorite businesses.
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Theory
The approach to user research has shifted quite a lot lately. Traditional in-person usability testing used to the be ultimate technique to understand how users go about using a product or service. There is no denying that this kind of research is comprehensive and — if conducted well — also very valuable. However, it is also a fact that in-person user testing takes a lot of time, manpower, and money — in other words resources that many companies don’t have.
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Theory
The usability of your ecommerce site can make or break potential sales. How can you tell if usability is an issue and, more importantly, how can you improve it? First, give it a go yourself. It’s probably been awhile since you’ve used your site like a customer. Navigate the steps through your customer’s eyes and see how difficult it is to find items. Making your website more user friendly should be a continuous process — never assume that your site can’t be improved. After all, each incomplete order may be tied to a potential customer you may never get back.
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UX Videos
When you examine people in context, synthesize their stories, and apply the results to solve a business or design problem (as my friend Steve Portigal defines it), you are conducting something people call ethnography, design research, user research, contextual inquiry, fieldwork, or whatever. Without getting into labeling it with a cool name, here are the best videos about this type of research activity. Videos are divided into four categories: introductory videos (mostly primers), examples (summaries or excerpts from such research studies), deeper dives (profound materials), and a fun category with a parody about ethnography.
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