If you’ve attended one of my UX lunch & learn sessions, this post will sound familiar. I’ve been telling this story for years, but it’s so good I never get tired of retelling it. That’s because it illustrates so perfectly the … Read more
We spend a lot of time on our screens. Because of that, making text as readable as possible is extremely important for optimal user experience. This article gives easy-to-implement fixes for five common typographic problems seen on many websites: Line … Read more
While I believe it’s important for everyone in an agency or corporate marketing/communications department to understand user experience fundamentals, there’s a critical place for UX specialists in the equation. Just like in the medical profession, it’s important for primary care … Read more
User testing (sometimes called usability testing) is simply having real people test drive your website or app for the purpose of identifying problems and opportunities for improvement. It is not difficult, but it does require effort. And based on my … Read more
After 40+ years in the marketing communications and creative services industry, I can confidently say that creating a good brand name for a new product, service or company is one of the most difficult challenges there is. (I’m talking mainly … Read more
I was recently hired to do a UX audit of a newly redesigned e-commerce website. The business experienced a surprising decline in sales after the redesign. (To be clear, I wasn’t involved in that redesign.) My audit turned up dozens of user … Read more
Once upon a time, while strolling through the Japanese Gardens in Portland, Oregon, I made an incredible discovery. And all of a sudden around a bend in the path I discovered a stone tablet containing the lost “Twelve Dictums of … Read more
In 2021, marketers have a mind-boggling array of data-driven tools available to precisely target their audiences with personalized, relevant messages at exactly the right place and time. But what would happen to marketing and advertising as we know it if … Read more
In UX, using the right words to label things means the difference between success and failure. The wrong label can create user frustration that can hurt a business. Words matter — and sometimes the simplest words are the hardest. Recently, … Read more
I’ve been involved in an agile development process for a new web application for the past several months. The agile process has been “by the book.” A scrum master conducts weekly sprints to review the tasks accomplished, get feedback and … Read more
So the other day in a meeting, a client said he wanted things to be simple. That’s music to my UX ears of course, because simple is almost always best. When the client said this, he used the well-known euphemism … Read more
I hope you enjoy this short collection of user experience design quotations. These words of wisdom from sages and experts say more in a few words than I can say in a 500-word post! “Design is not just what it … Read more
A few years from now, how many of us will remember Mike Bloomberg’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination? I’m guessing it’s something Mike would like us to forget. But like all failures, we can use Mike’s story to learn … Read more
If you’re building a website from scratch – or revamping an existing site – where do you begin? This post will help with the many questions that will need to be answered to create a great website. I believe the … Read more
When we first started building websites, we used what we called the “4D web design process.” I’ve seen 4D expressed a couple different ways as either Discovery, Definition, Design, Development; or, Discovery, Design, Development, Deployment. Amazingly, despite my chagrin, the … Read more
I have a thesis that agency people have a strong bias that is antithetical to good UX (user experience) design. And, like all biases, it must be overcome to achieve the best outcomes possible. I’ve worked in the agency business … Read more
To “optimize web images” means striving to achieve the optimum quality (best looking) and the optimum download speed (smallest file size) at the same time. This is challenging because best looking and smallest file size work directly against each other. Modern … Read more