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I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Color Theory for Designers, Part 1: The Meaning of Color – Smashing …
  Color in design is very subjective. What evokes one reaction in one person may evoke a very different reaction in somone else. Sometimes this is due to personal preference, and other times due to cultural background. Color theory is a science in itself. Studying how colors affect different people, either individually or as a group, is something some people build their careers on. And there’s a lot to it. Something as simple as changing the exact hue or saturation of a color can evoke a completely different feeling. Cultural differences mean that something that’s happy and uplifting in one country can be depressing in another.
• Hierarchical Task Analysis
  As UX professionals, we have a great many analytical and descriptive tools available to us. In fact, there are so many that it can sometimes be difficult to decide which tool is most appropriate for a given task! Hierarchical task analysis (HTA) is an underused approach in user experience, but one you can easily apply when either modifying an existing design or creating a new design.
• Taming the Elephant in the Room: Brand Perception and Bias
  People’s preconceived notions can be another elephant in the room—a barrier to achieving accurate and actionable feedback on a concept or design.
• Browse if the new black
  Search, search, search. Everyone is talking about search these days. Bing, semantic search, site search. That’s all you hear. Don’t get me wrong: search is wildly important to our daily experiences on the web. I’ve written a bit on search on this blog. And I work for LexisNexis, whose core business is based on search.
• Usability Metrics (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
  Although measuring usability can cost four times as much as conducting qualitative studies (which often generate better insight), metrics are sometimes worth the expense. Among other things, metrics can help managers track design progress and support decisions about when to release a product.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• eCommerce ROI: Why Usability ALWAYS Beats Advertising | Useful Usability
  The Return On Investment for eCommerce Usability Will Always Beat Online Advertising, Because of the Principle of Amortized Improved Conversion
• 4 ways to combat usability testing avoidance
  Working with users during the design process will untie project knots and boost team productivity and focus. But there always seems to be an excuse for not testing. Here are 4 ways to counter the excuses and make usability testing happen.
• UX ROI: User Experience Return on Investment
  Calculating and even trying to understand what all adds up to the UX ROI is difficult task. When we are faced with clients and investors – ROI is something they often ask for. How to even start thinking about return on investment in the field of user experience? Here I’m talking about UX ROI discussion tool and other metrics.
• Bloug: Site search best practices
  A client recently asked me to help come up with a list of "world-class" implementations of site search. "World-class" is always a red flag term for me, because it's a crutch term that suggests that there isn't a clear idea of what constitutes actual quality.
• Prototyping: Types of Prototypes
  Based on key factors, such as the problem to be solved or the mandate of the customer, determine the purpose of the prototype. Select the type of prototype that best satisfies the purpose.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Unmoderated, Remote Usability Testing: Good or Evil?
  Recently, there has been a surge in the number of tools that are available for conducting unmoderated, remote usability testing—and this surge is changing the usability industry.
• Embedding User Experience in the Product Development Lifecycle
  All UX professionals, not just user assistance developers, face the problem of integrating their work into the product development lifecycle.
• Label Alignment in Long Forms | Paper Prototyping for Engineers
• Measuring Usability: The Basics
  Usability is not a luxury. If your website drives revenue, no matter how big or small, you have a vested interest in turning motivated users into buyers, and that requires understanding the needs and expectations of those users. Fortunately, you don't need a big budget or a team of men in white coats wielding eye-tracking lasers to get a handle on your website's usability.
• Questions about personas, research sharing, remote usability :: IxDA Discussion
• Solve Existing Problems – 52 Weeks of UX
  In our attempt to create amazing user experiences, we often want to push the envelope, to create something new, to show people a bright new future. But too often we fall into the novelty trap. The novelty trap is when, in an attempt to dazzle our clients and our users, we focus too much on the new and not enough on the now.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

Some of these figures are incredible – and beautifully presented.

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Designing Superior Shopping Experiences | UX Magazine
  Imagine shopping in a store where the displays never change. Customers select items by browsing through monolithic aisles of products. Store displays are minimal and uninteresting. Items in the displays are hard to find or even unavailable. This doesn't seem like a great shopping experience, does it? Yet this is what online shoppers experience (and accept as standard) on many large e-commerce sites.
• Usability Marathon. Tim Bosenick. Measure User Experience
  Qualitative studies allow receiving quick and valid feedback that is needed during the development process of an interface. Another reason is that qualitative tests are usually cheaper than tests with a larger sample size. But this larger sample size is needed when it comes to really «measure» user experience.
• Juicy Studio: Developing sites for users with Cognitive disabilities and learning difficulties
  When people think about accessibility of web content, there's a tendency to concentrate on people with visual impairments. People with cognitive impairments and learning difficulties are often overlooked.

  This article by Roger Hudson, Russ Weakley, and Peter Firminger, examines the types of problems visitors may encounter when using the web, with insightful and practical suggestions on how to develop websites that are inclusive for people with cognitive impairments and learning difficulties.

• Study: Males vs. females in social networks | Royal Pingdom
  Have you ever wondered how many of Twitter’s users are women? Or men? What about Facebook, MySpace, Digg, LinkedIn, and other sites in the social media sphere?
• Accessible Colour Schemes
  Choosing a colour scheme for a website can be a challenge, but what about choosing an accessible colour scheme? By this we mean a colour scheme that provides sufficient contrast between the foreground and background colours to ensure that the text is legible. The aim of this website is to suggest some colour combinations that meet accessibility guidelines and demonstrate that website colour schemes don't have to be boring to make them accessible.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!