December 16, 2020
Best Practices for Providing Your Designer with Feedback

Learning how to ask and receive feedback is an important skill for a designer. Providing useful and constructive feedback is an important skill for a client. Feedback is very important in the progress and completion of a design so that it accomplishes the goals of the project.

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December 10, 2020
Decolonizing Design

Decolonizing design is to remove the white or Eurocentric thinking in design. Decolonizing design happens with the understanding of design that establishes and perpetuates the invasion, impoverishment, and destruction of indigenous cultures.

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December 1, 2020
Do I really need a privacy policy on my website?

A Privacy Policy is a document that discloses what personal information you collect on your website, what you do with that information, and who you share it with, amongst other disclosures. Your website needs a Privacy Policy if you use it to collect personal information such as names and emails.

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November 18, 2020
How Can a UX Designer Help You and Is It Worth It?

Good user experience design helps you create the most relevant products and services that can help you reduce costs and provide a more meaningful experience for your customers. UX is a good ROI.

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October 22, 2020
Accessible vs Inclusive Design

Inclusive design is a design process in which a product or service is optimized for a specific user with specific needs. Inclusive design is closely related to accessibility, but rather than an outcome, it’s a methodology for how to approach design.

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October 13, 2020
What is a Sitemap and Why Does it Matter?

In general, a sitemap is a hierarchical diagram that allows you to visualize the structure of a website. They’re used to define the site’s taxonomy. Site maps show us what goes where, and how certain pages are connected.

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October 8, 2020
What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

A minimum viable product (MVP) is an approach to take when developing a new website or mobile app. The new product is created with enough features to be useful for early users, but with fewer features than what are planned in total. 

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September 29, 2020
Factors of UX Design: Valuable

Your product or service must deliver value, otherwise what's the point? It must deliver value to the business which creates it and to the user who uses it.

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September 22, 2020
Factors of UX Design: Useable

Usability is usually the first thing that comes to mind when someone hears that I am a user experience designer. Usability is a measure of how well a specific user in a specific context can use a product/design to achieve a defined goal effectively, efficiently, and satisfactorily. 

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September 16, 2020
Factors of UX Design: Findable

Findability is the ease with which information contained on a website can be found. High findability is primarily the result of well-defined information architecture and a well-designed navigation system but also encompasses aspects of user interface design and accessibility.

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September 11, 2020
Factors of UX Design: Credible

Having a credible website and one that specifically informs the user of its credibility is of utmost importance for conducting business over the web, especially for e-commerce. But what exactly is credibility? Credibility is the quality of being trusted and believed in.

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September 1, 2020
Factors of UX Design: Accessible

Website accessibility focuses on making every website accessible to everyone. While there are rules governing the accessibility of government websites, there is a lack of regulation regarding commercial websites. The American with Disabilities Act (ADA) was made into law before the widespread use of the internet. 

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August 25, 2020
Factors of UX Design: Desirable

Desirable can be defined as wanted or wished for as being an attractive, useful, or necessary course of action. In short, a user experience is useful when It solves a problem and desirable: when the user prefers this experience over other experiences.

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August 19, 2020
Factors of UX Design: Useful

Merriam-Webster defines useful as 1: capable of being put to use, serviceable for an end or purpose (ie useful tools), and 2: of a valuable or productive kind (ie do something useful with your life).

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August 4, 2020
Totally Frustrated! Bad UX in the Wild

Every now and then I encounter a user interface that doesn't work how I expect and it's really frustrating! I find all sorts of poor user experiences, but not all of them annoy me. This one did annoy me!

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July 29, 2020
How Can Data Visualization Help Get Your Meaning Across?

Data visualization is a graphic representation of statistics. It involves creating images that communicate relationships between data to the user. 

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July 22, 2020
What is UX Writing?

UX writing (also known as microcopy) is the interface text, including any other text needed to support the user as they interact with a product or service.

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July 15, 2020
Other UX Deliverables

As a UX designer, I need to effectively communicate my design ideas to my clients and sometimes my client's clients. To communicate designs and the choice behind them, user experience designers use deliverables.

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July 8, 2020
What is a Prototype?

A prototype is a mid-to-high-fidelity design model of the final user interface of a website or mobile app. A prototype offers a more detailed look at the visual attributes of the design, unlike wireframes prototypes usually include interactions.

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July 2, 2020
What are Wireframes?

A wireframe is a static, low-fidelity representation of website and mobile apps. It’s a visual representation of an interface using only simple shapes. Wireframes are used to communicate structure, content, and functionality.

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June 23, 2020
Does Your Website Need an Update? 10 Important Questions to Evaluate Your Website

Is your website responsive to the device the user is viewing your website on? Websites need to look and sometimes work differently if the user is on their mobile phone versus their desktop computer with a gigantic monitor. A responsive design will adjust according to the width of the user's device.

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June 18, 2020
Is Branding Part of the User Experience or Vice Versa?

Yes. Both. A brand can be better thought of as others’ perception of the company, product, or service. User experience is simply how people feel when they use a product or service. UX can become the brand differentiator.

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June 11, 2020
The Amazing Transformation of the Flight Deck Interface for Spacecraft

The user interface of Crew Dragon is all touchscreen-based. I thought this was really wild and for some reason felt really futuristic. I'm sure when the public first view the interfaces of the Apollo spacecraft and the space shuttle, they thought along the same lines.

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June 3, 2020
Don't Know Whether to Push or Pull? There's a Name for That...

A Norman door is a poorly designed door that fails to give you an idea of whether to push or pull. A Norman door is confusing and it's very common. It was named after Don Norman, father of user experience, co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group, and author of The Design of Everyday Things.

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May 27, 2020
How Do Ergonomics and UX Design Relate?

Ergonomics is about designing for people. It is defined as the science of fitting a workplace to the user’s needs, ergonomics aims to increase efficiency and productivity and reduce discomfort.

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May 20, 2020
Blog Posts Now with Audio!

I am now including audio for most of my blog posts! I'm not converting posts that are a collection of links as I didn't think it was very useful. What do you think? I'm using an app called Play.ht. It automatically converts my posts to audio using different AI voices.

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May 13, 2020
8 Effortless Web Accessibility Rules for Your Website

Website accessibility focuses on making every website accessible to everyone. Over a billion people today experience a disability, according to the World Health Organization. That’s about 1 in 7 people on the entire planet!

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May 6, 2020
What is Agile UX and Lean UX?

The terms agile and lean are well known in the software development world and they are also becoming popular terms for non-technical teams and departments. Then it comes to no surprise that agile and lean have their own philosophy in regards to user experience design. 

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April 30, 2020
The Impact of Tone of Voice on the User Experience

Language is a large part of design. And just like any other part of the interface, tone of voice can affect the user's experience with your product or service.  Words can either delight or dissatisfy your users. Which would you rather do?

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April 22, 2020
How UX Design Can Help Fight Climate Change

Can design choices made by user experience and user interface designers reduce their impact on the environment? The answer is YES.

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April 15, 2020
5 Interesting Articles About UX Design and the Coronavirus

Here are links to five articles about the intersection of user experience design and the Coronavirus.

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April 8, 2020
What is a UX Audit?

I'm offering a new service: UX audits. A user experience audit (UX audit) is a way to identify problem areas of an existing digital product or service, revealing which parts of a website or application are causing issues for users and blocking conversions.

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April 1, 2020
The UX Design of Board Games, Part 4: Player Aids

Many of the games we play are complex. Many have simple rules and are easy to play. In either way, there are things that need to be remembered. Some games come with a player aid.

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March 11, 2020
The UX Design of Board Games, Part 3: Diversity

Like in all forms of media, representation in board games is important. Why you might ask? The answer is simply because REPRESENTATION MATTERS!

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March 4, 2020
The UX Design of Board Games, Part 2: Icons

Icons in board games can be a supporting element to color, convey a lot of information in a small space, make a game language-independent, and can add to the theme of the game.

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February 26, 2020
The UX Design of Board Games, Part 1: Color

Color can convey a lot of information in a game when you are typically sighted, but a good chunk of the population has some form of color blindness.

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February 19, 2020
What is Design Thinking?

To put it simply, design thinking is a solution-based approach for solving difficult problems. Design thinking is an iterative process to understand the user, challenge your assumptions, and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative solutions that might not be obvious with our first look at the problem.

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February 12, 2020
10 Tools That I Use for Successful UX/UI Design

There are a lot of tools out there to help both user experience and user interface designers do their work.

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February 5, 2020
What is UI Design?

UI design is shorthand for User Interface design. User interface design is the creation and composition of the elements (typography, layout, buttons, etc.) that enable the user to interact with a product or service.

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January 29, 2020
What is UX Design?

UX design is shorthand for User eXperience design. User experience design is about creating the ideal encounter while using a product or service. The term is mainly used in relation to digital experiences, including websites, software, and mobile apps, but can also apply to the remote control to your TV, the control pad on your microwave, and the process you go through to return an item to a store.

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