Five Sketches™

A few days ago, I tried to pump up my bicycle tires. I had to borrow a pump.
The connectors and attachments suggested this pump would fill North-American and European tire tubes as well as air mattresses, soccer balls, and basketballs.
But the thing is, neither the pump’s owner nor I were able to make it work. […]

I recently moved into a home where the light switches are all wrong. I was able to fix one problem, and the rest is a daily reminder that usability doesn’t just happen by itself.
In one pair of light switches, the left switch controlled a lamp to the right, and the right switch controlled a lamp to […]

We don’t always know what a design is intended to convey. We don’t always recognise or relate to a design’s intended user groups. But we don’t have to know everything that an object’s design is intended to do, in order to make effective use of the object.
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I […]

A simple and good design can last and last. Consider the qualities of a BC Telephones operator’s chair from the 1930s:

Environmentally defensible. It is made primarily of a renewable resource—wood—and is so durable that, after decades, it still withstands daily use.
Functional. Originally, at BC Tel, this chair fit a small space, swivelled so the operator […]

When you have limited resources, how do you prioritise what to provide on an e-commerce website? In the PEW Internet and America Life report, Generations on-line 2009, Jones and Fox present data in a format useful to help you prioritise.
To answer these sample questions, consider the colour coding in the data, below:

Should you do any search-engine optimisation […]

During usability testing, I’m always fascinated to see how creatively users misinterpret the team’s design effort. I’ve seen users blame themselves when our design failed, and I’ve seen users yell at the screen because our GUI design was so frustrating.
Wednesday, the tables were turned.
I unintentionally “agreed” to let Facepoke—that social-networking site—invite everyone with whom I’d ever exchanged e-mail. Think about […]

Peter Merholz of Adaptive Path explained his view that customer experience is an investment, not a cost, in an article this week on Harvard Business Publishing’s site.
I adapted one of the “linking elephants” illustrations in the Merholz article by adding another row of boxes and text to illustrate what Merholz says: it is design that motivates […]

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 […]

It takes a range of skills to develop a product. Each skill—embodied in the individuals who apply that skill—brings with it a different focus:

Product managers talk about features and market needs.
Business development  talk about revenue opportunities.
Developers talk about functionality.
Usability analysts talk about product- and user performance.
Interaction designers talk about the user experience.
QA talks about quality and defects.
Marketing talks about the messaging.
Technical communicators […]

When solving a software-design problem or a web-design problem, you get the best results from following a design process. I’m not referring to something I made up. I’m referring to something that people who are trained in “Design” will recognise as a design process. And such processes inevitably include divergence and convergence.
Divergence is the stage when […]