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Articles & Videos

  • Why You Cannot Trust Numbers from Qualitative Usability Studies

    Qualitative usability studies have few users and variable protocol; numbers obtained from such studies are likely to poorly reflect the true behavior of your population due to large measurement errors.

  • Remote UX Workshop Challenges

    Participants in the Virtual UX Conference share tips for running UX workshops remotely to overcome challenges of participant fatigue and engagement and getting clients to use collaborative design tools.

  • The Scarcity Principle in UX: Don't Miss Out!

    When people think that something is rare or only available for a limited time, they will tend to act fast to secure that scarce item. This behavioral principle can be used in user experience design, but beware of overuse.

  • 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.

  • How to Design a Good Search UI

    If users don't use your search a lot, it's often because the search user interface is poorly designed. Here are the top guidelines for how to show the search feature on both desktop and mobile.

  • How to Interpret Dendrograms from Card Sorting to Improve Information Architecture

    Card sorting is great for designing or evaluating an information architecture (IA), but can be hard to interpret. Dendrograms visualize the data which can help you make the necessary decisions which are rarely clear-cut but require tradeoffs.

  • 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.

  • 3 Principles of Design Thinking

    User-centered problem solving creates innovative products, based on observational research with real users, visual sense-making, and iterative design.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Sympathy vs. Empathy in UX

    Sympathy acknowledges that users are having difficulties, but empathy goes further by understanding the users' needs and motivations.

  • UX Research Made Agile

    Test early and often is a key recommendation for UX research. Dora Brune shares her approach, including regular Open Test Labs to engage more product teams and make user research more agile. Kinder Eggs make for a nice warmup task, even in remote tests. (Recorded at a participant panel at the UX Conference.)

  • Ethnography in UX

    Good UX design requires understanding the context and patterns of human behavior, especially in new products or features that solve real needs. The 5 steps to rapid corporate ethnography lead you to these discoveries.

  • Reciprocation: Why Login Walls Aren’t Always “Better"

    The reciprocity principle states that people, when given something upfront, tend to feel a sense of obligation to repay what has been provided. Login walls reverse this sequence and require users to disclose personal info before allowing access to content. People often resent this, and may not be as forthcoming or cooperative as a result.

  • UX-Maturity Stage 5: Integrated

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

  • Recognize Strategic Opportunities with Long-Tail Data

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

  • 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.

  • Johnson & Johnson’s Intranet Consolidation and Roadmap

    Johnson & Johnson’s redesigned intranet centralizes company news and digital-workplace tools on a single platform. Its intranet roadmap focused on problems to solve to improve productivity and boost the intranet’s perception.

  • 5 Facilitation Principles for Both UX Workshops and User Tests

    Both UX workshops and usability tests benefit when facilitators are focused on goals, follow a meeting guide yet are open to improvisation, encourage participants to act, and don’t talk too much.

  • UX-Maturity Stage 4: Structured

    An organization recognizes the value of UX and has semisystematic UX-related methodology that is widespread, but with varying degrees of effectiveness and efficiency.

  • Growing in Your UX Career: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to articles, videos, and a free report for advice to grow in your user experience career.

  • DesignOps: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about the components of DesignOps and get started implementing DesignOps activities.

  • 5 Prioritization Methods in UX Roadmapping

    The best prioritization method depends on project context, team culture, and success criteria.