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. […]

The Agile Manifesto includes twelve principles. These two are related:
Deliver working software frequently [in short sprints that last] from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
From discussions with other practitioners, I know that software teams can get dogmatic about the above […]

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 […]

Last week, while waiting for friends, I picked up a community newspaper in hopes of finding a puzzle to help me pass the time. I found a sudoku puzzle.
A sudoku puzzle consists of nine 3×3 squares, sprinkled with a few starter numbers. The player must fill in all the blanks by referring to the numbers that are already […]

For the past few months, I’ve been taking an average of 1.6 flights per week on commercial airplanes. Most of these offered seatback entertainment, so I could watch the TV show or movie of my choice, or listen to satellite radio while reading. Touch-screen controls are easy to use because they let me touch—or tap—the item or […]

In early June, in a hotel lobby, I stopped to observe someone troubleshooting a wireless connection. I’ve faced this challenge myself, since every hotel seems to have a slightly different process for connecting.
The person I was observing was visually impaired and had his GUI enlarged by about 1000% or more. As he attempted to troubleshoot […]

When designing the user experience of software, UX- and Development teams often focus on how the user interface supports user performance, because that’s within their locus of control. Once the product is in the wild, environmental factors may reduce user performance despite the team’s best product-design efforts. But I believe it’s possible for a UX team to […]

How tiny does the keyboard on a handset or smartphone need to be?

If you ask me, I’d say: “Not anywhere near as tiny as they are.”
I’d also say: “If you make an app for iTouch or iPhone, ensure that the keyboard flips into a larger, wider version when users rotate the device on its side.”

If your user persona includes an image, which type of image helps the team produce designs that are more usable?

The illustration on the left?  Or the photo on the right?
According to Frank Long’s research paper, Real or Imaginary: The effectiveness of using personas in product design, photos are better than illustrations. Teams whose user personas include a photograph […]