Methods & Tools

If you haven’t already seen the Adobe Thermo demo…

This demo video came out in December, but if you haven’t already seen it, you can watch this edited down version (without the warm-up chatter). Online Videos by Veoh.com Thermo is basically a tool for interaction designers (rather than developers), … Continue reading

The ‘Boxing Glove’ Wireframing Technique

I’ve been delivering a lot of User-Centred Design training lately at Flow, and I’ve noticed that when most people do paper UI sketching, they can’t help going “hi-fi”, and making very precise wireframes. It’s just too easy to get sucked … Continue reading

Cool GUI whiteboard magnets

Coming soon – GUI whiteboard magnets from Eight Media in the Netherlands. These look quite useful for collaborative wireframe sketching sessions in front of the whiteboard. I’ll definitely be ordering some.

Techsmith Snagit & Camtasia software give-away

The nice folks at Techsmith are giving away free copies of Snagit 7.5.2 and Camtasia 3. Both apps are really useful for UX professionals, and they’d normally set you back a few quid. They aren’t the newest versions but they … Continue reading

Eye tracking: some thoughts from an ex eye-tracking researcher

There’s been a fair amount of discussion over the past week about eye tracking. As someone who used to do a bit of qualitative eye tracking research at Amberlight, (a great London-based UCD consultancy that I used to work at), … Continue reading

What people say they do vs. what they actually do

I read a nice factoid on this topic this morning in Eric Schaffer’s Institutionalization of Usability book. It’s a quote from Jared Spool: In April of 2002, Princeton Survey Research Associates surveyed 1,000 adult Internet users about their concerns with … Continue reading

Great discussion on Personas over at Signal vs. Noise

If you don’t know much about Personas, or have your doubts about them, read this article and the comments thread over at Signal vs. Noise (the 37signals blog). Here’s an excerpt: We don’t use personas. We use ourselves. I believe … Continue reading

Two types of usability issue: “now” and “later”

This post by Christopher Fahey of graphpaper.com got me thinking about the longitudinal nature of usability issues, and what it means for user experience research & design. Now: the teething problem This is a usability issue that you experience at … Continue reading

Google’s website optimizer: fantastic, but not a magic bullet for User-Centred Design

Google’s new “website optimiser” is one of the biggest and most exciting user research tools to emerge on the scene in quite some time. It’s a bit surprising, then, that hardly anyone in the User Centred Design field is talking … Continue reading

Out of box experience design: the Bento Box metaphor

I’ve been having a lot of fun doing out of box experience design consultancy over the last few weeks (OOBE as it is pretentiously called by those in the know). If you’ve ever opened an Apple product then you’ll know … Continue reading