Usability Experts Archive

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Contrast is King in Design

Tweet“If you can make a solid design in black, white, and shades of gray, it will often allow you to translate your design to almost any color combination—as long as that color combination maintains... 
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Quick and Dirty Remote User Usability Testing

Tweet“There are three basic approaches to conducting quick remote interface tests, whether you’re testing live websites, designs, wireframes, or prototypes. The approach you take will depend mostly... 
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6 Tips for Better Branding with Avatars

Tweet“We’re living in a social media world, and, like it or not, our avatar is often the first impression others get about us as we interact virtually on social networks, blogs, microblogs and... 
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Xobni Organizes Your Outlook Email

TweetAs a web designer and coder, I collect tons of emails and attachments from clients that have to be carefully tracked and easily found. And many projects have three, four, or more people attached.... 
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UI Pattern Documentation Review

Tweet“To date, the most common approach to propagating a single user experience standard is the development of UI guidelines and principles documentation within an organization. Development teams... 
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Google Voice Launches, Perfect for Small Businesses

TweetGoogle stepped up its attack on the telecommunications industry on Thursday with a free service called Google Voice that, if successful, could chip away at the revenue of companies big and small,... 
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10 Steps to the Perfect Portfolio Website

Tweet“A personal portfolio website is all about promoting you. You are a brand, and your name is a brand name. No one is going to know about your brand unless you get it out there; and if you’re... 
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20 Tips for Better Conference Speaking and Presentations

Tweet“I’ll be straight up with you: I don’t profess to be an expert speaker. I’ve had my share of presentations that have been total flops, along with some very successful ones. But if anything,... 
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Usable Accessibility: Making Web Sites Work Well for People with Disabilities

Tweet“Such problems often come from trying to make a Web site accessible without understanding how people with disabilities actually use the Web. The challenge for UX designers is to find ways of... 
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An Overview of Prototyping and Interactive Design

Tweet“In the broadest sense, all kinds of design artifacts are prototypes. Pencil sketches, blocks of wood, storyboards, wireframes, foam-core models, pixel-perfect state renderings,... 
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Anatomy of an Iteration

Tweet“Unfortunately, we’ve found that many teams don’t know how to iterate effectively. Good iteration is a deliberate activity, with four important stages: planning, implementing, measuring,... 
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The Relationship between Creativity and Play

Tweet“At the 2008 Serious Play conference, Tim Brown, CEO of the superstar design thinking firm Ideo made a fascinating presentation about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and... 
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Introducing Interaction Design Frameworks

Tweet“Whereas a design pattern is a common solution to a specific, recurring problem (such as pagination interfaces), an interaction design framework is a set of design patterns and other... 
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Quick Turnaround Usability Testing

Tweet“It starts with any number of scenarios: Design and development have taken too long to produce a prototype, you need to release in three weeks, and you suspect there may be design flaws. You... 
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Use of Photos in Interaction Design

Tweet“The barrier between web pages and desktop software is beginning to disappear, and modern rich client user interface technologies such as Silverlight/WPF, Air, or Java FX enables designers to... 
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Filling Your Dance Card in Hard Economic Times

Tweet“If you’re not peering over the cubicle wall, hoping that the global economy won’t affect your workplace, you’re either a Trump (or a Hilton) or in a watertight business—or possibly... 
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Lego Planes: From GeekDad Project to Real Business

Tweet“About two years ago, my then-9-year-old and I worked on a cool project to program Lego Mindstorms to fly a RC plane, which we cheekily called a Lego UAV. (And were then, even more cheekily,... 
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15 Tips for Freelancers Starting their own Business

Tweet“So you’re a skilled developer or design freelancer who has established a handful of customers who pay your bills and provide you with an income. That’s great. You may wish to keep things... 
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Search Pad: Making Online Search Easier

Tweet“Our user studies show that people often use word-processing documents, sticky notes, emails, bookmarks (or a combination of the above) to record what they find on the Web. These methods can... 
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How to Be More Creative

Tweet“Point 1 is that old chestnut: if you produce a lot of ideas there will be a good one in there somewhere. It’s received wisdom, part of the creativity and innovation orthodoxy, so I’ll probably... 
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