Five Sketches™

Here are three techniques for eliciting more feedback on your designs:

show users some alternatives, so more than one design.
show users a low-fidelity rather than high-fidelity rendering.
ask users to sketch their feedback.

To iterate and improve the design, you need honest feedback.  Let’s look at how and why each of these techniques might work.
Showing alternative designs signals that the design process […]

There’s been a loss of usability for people who type text.
Like me, you may have experienced these unwelcome experiences:

After typing a long message in Facebook, when I click send, I get a page error and my entire message is lost.
After typing a post in WordPress, if the server has gone down or I press an unintended keyboard shortcut, […]

The strength of sketching is that it’s a fast way to capture ideas.
Since a low-fidelity sketch is fast—pen on paper, as shown—it’s also low cost. And low cost means it’s relatively disposable if it turns out you can’t use that idea.
If you don’t like my first 5 ideas, that’s OK. I can have more ideas, […]