When it comes to User Experience you don’t have to be a UX Professional to participate. In fact, it’s often more important for you to care if you’re NOT specifically in the field. User Experience Professionals (hopefully) know what they’re talking about. (Note the “Professional” part). UXers have chosen to make a career out of [...]

Formerly the Weekly Seven Plus or Minus Two, we’ve decided to follow our own advice and title our weekly post by its content to give our readers some context. This week is all about wireframes. Some of us prefer to sketch, some use designing software like Photoshop or illustrator, and some lean more towards prototyping [...]

5 Great Reads! 9 Ways To Improve the SEO of Every Website You Design Sometimes enhancing the user experience goes beyond making your site usable. If it’s not findable what’s the point? This post by Six Revisions give you 9 ways to ensure your site gets found! It’s a well-established principle that on-site SEO is one of [...]

Cognitive Dissonance and The Choice Paradox Cogni-Huh What-O-Nance? A powerful cause of dissonance is an idea in conflict with a fundamental element of the self-concept, such as “I am a good person” or “I made the right decision”. The anxiety that comes with the possibility of having made a bad decision can lead to rationalization, the tendency [...]

From time to time we find great lists of resources to help give us inspiration and perhaps learn a thing or two. Here is a collection of resources we feel you will find useful! Wireframing Tools CIO Happy Hour has compiled the list of resources you can use for wireframing and prototyping. It has the latest information [...]

This week’s Seven (plus or minus two) has to do with your shelf. Book shelf that is! Below is a list of 7 books that should be within arms reach of every serious designer. 1. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition – by Steven Krug Five years and more [...]

I was recently asked if I thought User Interface or iA Designers we artists. Initially my reaction was yes. There is certainly an art form to UI/User-Centered design. But after thinking about what (typically) makes a good UI design, I concluded that there is a distinct difference between an artist and an interface designer. Good [...]

We’ve all heard the question before. “Where is the fold?” If you haven’t been asked this question before, consider yourself lucky. Wikipedia says… “Above the fold” is a graphic design concept that refers to the location of an important news story or a visually appealing photograph on the upper half of the front page [...]

In Meyers-Briggs typology, as it pertains to information there are two types, “Sensing(S)” and “Intuitive(I)”. Neither is right or wrong they are just how we prefer to digest information. Sensing personalities prefer the up-front and obvious as where Intuitives get more from reading between the lines and problem solving. Something to consider when developing your UI [...]

Loop11 is an online usability and user experience testing tool, allowing individuals and companies to conduct online, unmoderated user testing on any kind of digital interface. Loop11 is not a survey or web analytics tool, but a user experience tool… helping you to understand user behaviour and improve your website’s usability. How To Enter? 1. Follow Fuel [...]

Sometimes you don’t need to build interactive wireframes, or may not feel all that comfortable in Visio or OmniGraffle. I know here are times I just want to open up Photoshop and start laying things out. This web UI template kit is made completley with shape objects and in some cases converted into SmartObjects. So [...]

Chances are over the last 30 or so years, you’ve sat at a desk typing on a keyboard in front of a monitor, and clicking around with a mouse to interface with technology. Oh sure mobile devices have been around for a while but only over the past 5 or so years has it been [...]

Over the past couple of weeks we have looked at a small handful of 2009s top 100 e-commerce sites. We looked at product detail pages and examined the good and the bad, we looked at footers and how best to organize some of its content and now we will look at navigation. The size of the [...]

In the first in the series last week we talked about the Product Detail page. We looked at two of the top 100 ecommerce sites and picking out the good parts and making suggestions to improve. In today’s post we’re going to take a trip downstairs and have a look at the footers of two [...]

When it comes to eCommerce design there are plenty of Do’s & Don’ts, a ton of “best practices” and even more people claiming they have the keys to successful eCommerce design. Is there a magical recipe that will convert that browsing customer to a paying one? Perhaps the key is a magical button, so magnificent [...]