Articles & Videos

  • Discovery Mapping Methods

    Mapping can help UX practitioners synthesize insight into one place and visualize the problem space. This video covers 3 maps that are often utilized during the discovery phase of a UX design project: ecosystem maps, experience maps, and process maps.

  • Tips for New UX Researchers Carrying Out Remote Interviews

    Doing your very first remote user interview? Our UX intern has tips for conquering your nerves and getting great research results.

  • Recognize Strategic Opportunities with Long-Tail Data

    Be a strategic thinker by recognizing opportunities at scale with seemingly small and insignificant data.

  • UX-Maturity Stage 5: Integrated

    Organizations at this stage are in an excellent position, with successful, sustainable UX practices and committed people.

  • 3 Types of Roadmaps

    Roadmaps cover future work and vision, but this can be done at different scopes, from everything related to the product to only the UX activities and priorities, possibly narrowed to a sub-specialty of UX.

  • Management vs. Craft: UX Needs to Value Both

    Dual career ladders are important in user experience. Don't force talented UX professionals to become managers if their growth path would instead benefit from focusing on UX craft.

  • Design-Pattern Guidelines: Study Guide

    Unsure how to design and implement user-interface patterns? Use this collection of links to our content about specific patterns.

  • When to Use Context Methods: Field and Diary Studies

    Context methods provide an understanding of users’ real-life settings and behaviors. They inform the design of products and services.

  • Contextual Inquiry Pitfalls

    Contextual inquiry is a UX research method where you shadow people as they do their job (or leisure tasks), allowing you to ask questions in context. This video provides advice on overcoming the main challenges with this method.

  • Overcoming Service Blueprinting Frustrations

    Our research with UX practitioners found 3 main areas of frustrations with service-blueprint projects. Here are recommendations for overcoming or alleviating these problems.

  • 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design

    Jakob Nielsen's 10 general principles for interaction design. They are called "heuristics" because they are broad rules of thumb for UX and not specific usability guidelines.

  • Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking

    Visualizing user attitudes and behaviors in an empathy map helps UX teams align on a deep understanding of end users. The mapping process also reveals any holes in existing user data.

  • When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods

    Modern day UX research methods answer a wide range of questions. To know when to use which method, each of 20 methods is mapped across 3 dimensions and over time within a typical product-development process.

  • Service Blueprints: Definition

    Service blueprints visualize organizational processes in order to optimize how a business delivers a user experience.

  • Journey Mapping 101

    A journey map is a visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal.

  • The Four Dimensions of Tone of Voice

    A website’s tone of voice communicates how an organization feels about its message. The tone of any piece of content can be analyzed along 4 dimensions: humor, formality, respectfulness, and enthusiasm.

  • Between-Subjects vs. Within-Subjects Study Design

    In user research, between-groups designs reduce learning effects; repeated-measures designs require fewer participants and minimize the random noise.

  • UX Research Cheat Sheet

    User research can be done at any point in the design cycle. This list of methods and activities can help you decide which to use when.

  • Usability 101: Introduction to Usability

    What is usability? How, when, and where to improve it? Why should you care? Overview answers basic questions + how to run fast user tests.

  • Usability Testing 101

    UX researchers use this popular observational methodology to uncover problems and opportunities in designs.

  • Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users

    Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.

  • UX Mapping Methods Compared: A Cheat Sheet

    Empathy maps, customer journey maps, experience maps, and service blueprints depict different processes and have different goals, yet they all build common ground within an organization.

  • Design Thinking 101

    What is design thinking and why should you care? History and background plus a quick overview and visualization of 6 phases of the design thinking process. Approaching problem solving with a hands-on, user-centric mindset leads to innovation, and innovation can lead to differentiation and a competitive advantage.

  • The 6 Levels of UX Maturity

    Our UX-maturity model has 6 stages that cover processes, design, research, leadership support, and longevity of UX. Use our quiz to get an idea of your organization’s UX maturity.

  • When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps

    Journey maps combine two powerful instruments—storytelling and visualization—in order to help teams understand and address customer needs.

  • Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes

    Application usability is enhanced when the UI guides and supports users through the workflow.

  • User Interviews: How, When, and Why to Conduct Them

    User interviews have become a popular technique for getting user feedback, mainly because they are fast and easy. Use them to learn about users’ perceptions of your design, not about its usability.

  • F-Shaped Pattern of Reading on the Web: Misunderstood, But Still Relevant (Even on Mobile)

    Eyetracking research shows that people scan webpages and phone screens in various patterns, one of them being the shape of the letter F. Eleven years after discovering this pattern, we revisit what it means today.

  • Checkboxes vs. Radio Buttons

    User interface guidelines for when to use a checkbox control and when to use a radio button control. Twelve usability issues for checkboxes and radio buttons.

  • User-Experience Quiz: 2020 UX Year in Review

    Test your usability knowledge by taking our quiz. All questions and answers are based on articles published last year.

  • Triangulation: Combine Findings from Multiple User Research Methods

    Improve design decisions by looking at the problem from multiple points of view: combine multiple types of data or data from several UX research methods.

  • A Designer's Identity

    What does it mean to be a "designer?" Let's broaden the definition, based on the purpose, not the discipline. (Keynote by our Chief Designer, Sarah Gibbons)

  • Translating UX Concepts into Design Practice

    Edgar Anzaldua presents a 6-year case study of learning and applying ever-more subtle UX concepts and growing his influence. Always something new to learn, from junior to senior professional level.

  • Don't Overthink UX ROI

    It can be hard to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for user experience design improvements. But don't get bogged down in less-important details: often simple metrics can give a good-enough estimate to justify UX investments.

  • Video Game Design and User Experience

    Video game design is a special case of user interface design, with some differences (especially in user goals) but also many similarities with more traditional UX design problems and methods.

  • How to Fit Big Tables on Small Screens

    No matter your screen size, some data tables will be too big for the screen. This problem is particularly common on mobile devices. Simple interaction techniques can help, but you may need to offer users more advanced features for information hiding and column reordering.

  • Identify and Document Your UX Methods

    For each research or design method you employ, create a document that defines this method and can be used to educate other team members on UX activities.

  • Breaking out of the Content Silo

    Coming from a traditional content/writing background, Michelle Blake presents her case study of broadening her remit to a fuller range of user-experience issues and improved the design of her organization's website.

  • Using Fitts's Law to Make Links and Buttons Easier to Click

    Fitts's Law describes how long time it takes to click a target, based on the distance to the target and its size. Use this information to make buttons and links faster to click.

  • Better Charts for Analytics & Quantitative UX Data

    Spreadsheet defaults don't generate the most meaningful visualizations of UX data. Modify charts to enhance Context, Clutter (less of it than spreadsheet software likes!), and Contrast.

  • Left-Side Vertical Navigation on Desktop: Scalable, Responsive, and Easy to Scan

    Vertical navigation is a good fit for broad or growing IAs, but takes up more space than horizontal navigation. Ensure that it is left-aligned, keyword front-loaded, and visible.

  • Three Levels of Pain Points in Customer Experience

    Pain points are problems that occur at the different levels of the customer experience: interaction level, customer-journey level, or relationship level.

  • Common Ground and UX

    Any efficient communication requires that communication partners establish and rely on common ground so that they can take communication shortcuts.

  • Intranet Design Annual Winner Preview: The UN Intranet-iSeek

    The United Nations’ intranet, The UN Intranet-iSeek, consolidated many separate intranets to align and connect employees as they carry out their important work.

  • PM and UX Have Markedly Different Views of Their Job Responsibilities

    A survey of people in user experience and product management shows that these professionals disagree on who should be responsible for many key tasks, like doing discoveries and early design.

  • Lean UX Documentation for Tracking and Communicating in Agile

    Succinctly documenting the right details in key places helps Agile teams avoid information overload. When UX documentation is skipped or disorganized, teams waste time trying to find or remember information instead of improving the product.

  • Collaboration in the Omnichannel Experience

    Collaboration is one of the 5 key components of omnichannel user experience. Collaboration between normally disparate devices or channels creates new ways to interact.

  • Multitasking on Microsoft’s Surface Duo

    The Duo is a two-screen foldable mobile device that enables users to use two applications side by side, but most apps do not take advantage of the two screens. Support for information transfer from one app to the other is limited and multitasking within the same app is at times confusing.

  • Stakeholder Analysis for UX Projects

    UX professionals often work hard to convince stakeholders to support UX research and design efforts. Recognizing who your key stakeholders are and how they impact your work is the first step to building fruitful stakeholder relationships.

  • International Usability Testing: Why You Need It

    User testing in different countries helps identify culturally specific usability issues. Testing correctly and at the right time will help you thrive in a new market.