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Articles

Kara Pernice

Kara Pernice is Senior Vice President at Nielsen Norman Group. Pernice pioneered UX research methods beginning in the early 1990's, and continues to evolve user-centered research methods and processes to best collaborate with organizations. She helps to improve their UX strategy, increase their UX maturity, and derive experiences that useful, simple, and surpass business goals. Pernice is accomplished at evaluating and managing design situations, and crafting with a team the most fitting research methods, and converting this analysis into insights and outstanding designs. She is the creator of NN/g's Intranet Design Annual and UX Certification Program. 

@karaann

Articles and Videos

  • 4 Things to Do When Designing for Seniors

    The number of senior citizens who use computers and the Internet grows every year. This user population does have special needs, driven by the human aging process, and modest design changes can vastly increase the business you get from seniors.

  • How to Maximize Insights in User Testing: Stepped User Tasks

    You can learn the right kind of things and much more in user tests if you start with broad tasks instead of immediately leading to areas of interest. Prepare additional, focused tasks that can be used to direct users.

  • Top Tasks for UX Design: How and Why to Create Them

    Top Tasks are a tool used to focus a design team on the same, best set of user tasks. It comprises a list of 10 or fewer activities that users should be able to achieve using a design. If people can’t do these things, the design has failed. It takes a small amount of effort to create Top Tasks lists, but their impact is great.

  • Six Pillars Supporting Better and Easier UX

    Great design doesn't just happen. Rather, the organization must build 6 pillars that carry UX to success: capabilities, executive support, teams, resources, process, and schedule.

  • What Every Intranet Needs: Reflections After 20 Years of the Intranet Design Annual

    Communication, credibility, collaboration, consistency, and a central place that organizes policies, forms, and all the tools offered in the digital workplace are some of the marks of successful intranets.

  • Where Should UX Report? 3 Common Models for UX Teams and How to Choose Among Them

    Design and user research usually report to either a centralized UX team, a product team, or a hybrid of these. There are clear benefits and drawbacks to each model.

  • Designing Effective Carousels for Websites and Mobile Apps

    Sliding hero images that rotate through a set of promotions, news, or the like on the top of web pages are often annoying to users and are definitely error prone, unless they are designed according to usability guidelines.

  • Text Scanning Patterns: Eyetracking Evidence

    Eyetracking research shows that there are 4 main patterns that people use to scan textual information on webpages: F-pattern, spotted pattern, layer-cake pattern, and commitment pattern.

  • The Layer-Cake Pattern of Scanning Content on the Web

    When headings and subheadings visually stand out on the page and are descriptive, users engage in an efficient scanning pattern that allows them to quickly find the information that they need.

  • Affinity Diagramming: Collaborate, Sort and Prioritize UX Ideas

    Use the affinity diagramming method with stakeholders and members to efficiently categorize then prioritize UX ideas, research findings, and any other rich topics. Work together to quickly develop a shared understanding among your team.