I had this somewhat long post prepared on Steve Jobs, but instead of talking about how great Steve Jobs was and how much he inspired us, I decided to just let Mr. Jobs inspire you himself. “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly [...]

So, I’m sure most of you have seen the huge changes with Facebook profiles. User statuses (“What am I doing”) took a major backseat in lieu of brief personal intros pieced together by the data you give Facebook. It’s like they changed the entire MO of the site. Instead of the recent status update being [...]

The internet has been around for almost 50 years and since its beginnings as a text-based system, it’s become an essential tool for nearly 2 billion people worldwide. The early 90s presented us with one of the first “modern” browsers: Mosaic. It was extremely mundane, but it allowed everyday users like us to access and [...]

You can spend thousands of dollars on a shiny new brand, but that brand won’t be successful without a good user experience. The user experience is everything. It can either make or break the brand. And whether or not you’re creating a brand for the web or a brand for a product or both, and [...]

JavaScript is ubiquitous on homepages all over the web. Images slide in all directions, things fade in and out and mouse clicks prompt color changes and other cool visual effects. Despite all the Flash-like features, I’m all about simplicity. I believe that most people (myself included) use the web as a tool, whether it’s to [...]

Part of the user experience is how well the site or application works and how easy it is to perform tasks. The design of the web site or application helps visually guide you in performing those tasks. So when then design throughout the site is inconsistent, you’d likely assume the usability would take a big [...]

Such is the mantra of the Google design team and such is a good mantra to follow. I’ve always been impressed with Google’s steadfastness to simplicity. The worlds most popular search engine does’t need a glamorous, superfluous interface; it only needs to perform a search. I believe without any reservation that focusing on the user [...]

Whitney Hess recently wrote a really great article about the top ten common misconceptions of the user experience. In it she explains what those top ten misconceptions are and details their truths using quotes from well-known UX designers. Here they are in synopsis form. For the full article see Whitney’s blog. User experience design is [...]

On the Today Show this morning I saw a segment about subliminal advertising that was talking about how product makers are studying the psychology – how the consumers feel – when using their products. For example, a remote control. We don’t feel powerful or in control with a small light remote that feels cheap. We [...]

Psychology has a large role in usability. Understanding how people think can be very important in creating usable applications or web sites. Yesterday while doing some grocery shopping at a place I’ll leave unnamed (but I will tell you out of 30 lanes only a few were open……) I got at the back of a [...]