Case Study
In-Flight Application
A custom application monitors aircraft positions using satellite technology.
Blog Category: User Experience
April 24th, 2013
3 Habits of Killer Mobile Experiences
My iPhone is bursting at the seams with pictures, music, books, and apps. I’m seriously running out of space so if I’m going to add something new to my iPhone, it’s got to be a killer experience.
So, what makes a killer mobile experience?
April 10th, 2013
Form Under Function
There are few things more frustrating than being shut down by an online business because of their terrible forms (#TOTALFAIL). Books (or tweets) could be written on the subject of form usability, as they are often the worst offenders in my travels on the web. I’m shocked when I’m confronted by an awful or broken form on the site for a large organization that relies on their brand to invoke some level of trust.
March 19th, 2013
Happy Shopping: Tips for E-Commerce Success
E-commerce sales are expected to skyrocket to $370 billion by the year 2017, a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9% since 2012 in the United States alone. The online shopping world is consistently a reliable marketplace and continues to prove its presence as not just an alternative for shoppers without time or access to products in their area, but as a preference to physical in-store browsing. As the upward climb of this chart suggests, e-commerce is slowly but surely becoming the primary way consumers are getting access to the products they want.
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March 7th, 2013
UX and SEO Can Coexist
User Experience professionals and SEO experts have often butted heads in the past about their symbiotic relationship. However, as both of these areas evolve, it increasingly becomes important that UX and SEO are able to coexist in order to have an effective website.
February 14th, 2013
Put Content Strategy on the Front Burner
Like Information Architecture, Content Strategy is an area of expertise that emerged in tandem with the web itself. As sites quickly evolved beyond “brochure-ware” into complex content repositories, the need for specialists focused on site structure and content delivery became apparent.
February 7th, 2013
Returning Relevant Search Using Google Search Appliance
As a User Experience Professional, I commonly encounter “poor site search” as a client pain point. I thought I would share some ways to improve search relevancy without custom development.
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November 15th, 2012
Using Virtualbox to Cross-Browser Test Internet Explorer
Browser testing is a crucial part of the development process; ensuring that all users, regardless of their computer’s platform receive an equal browsing experience. Although there has been a major shift by open-source developers to UNIX development environments, Microsoft has not made it easy for developers to test their browsers unless you are on Windows.
Here is a guide on using Virtualbox to:
Run Windows on your Mac to test your local development sandbox on IE.
Continue reading “Using Virtualbox to Cross-Browser Test Internet Explorer”
November 8th, 2012
The Time Has Come to Declare Cars Extinct
…. Cars as we know them, that is.
Why would I say this? The American auto industry is picking back up, and with advancements in hybrid technology we are on the very cusp of a whole new generation of environmentally friendly automobiles. So how could I even imagine saying that cars are dead as we know them? Well, because I no longer want my car to just drive me from one location to another.
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November 6th, 2012
CQ5 and Maintaining the UX Strategy
You’ve spent months on a web user experience (UX) strategy with user research, business requirements, best practices, competitive analysis, usability testing and whatever else you’ve got in your toolbox. Based on the business needs you also helped select a Content Management System (CMS): Adobe CQ5. But how can you ensure the web strategy remains intact once the site is live and evolving through daily content entry?
September 12th, 2012
Designing & Deploying Accessible Mobile Apps
“Surprisingly, the current crop of mobile devices, particularly iPhones, has more accessibility features built into the operating system than you’d ever expect,” Brashear says. “A small amount of additional design and development time — over what is normally required — can yield a highly usable and accessible app.” Apple iOS’ accessibility features, for example, can get developers 75 percent of the way there, according to Brashear.
I recently discussed Mobile Apps and Accessibility with the Digital Innovation Gazette, and I wanted to expand on that topic and offer advice for designing and deploying accessible mobile apps.
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August 31st, 2012
Customer Appiness
A friend and I took our girls to a swimming hole this weekend. As we watched them swim and climb the rocks, I told him “I hate downloading apps.”
“What?!?” he replied, clearly in shock. “I switched banks for their online app” –as if this were proof of the importance to mankind.
“Yeah, I don’t use mobile banking.”
“What!?! Bank of America’s app was just like their website. It sucked. I picked my current bank because they let me take pictures of my checks to deposit them and give me alerts when I transfer money.”
“The check deposit thing sounds cool. But I don’t need text alerts and whatnot,” I said somewhat smugly, knowing that my friend had banking “issues.”
“I guarantee you, more people are like me than like you,” he said, and he repeated with such certainty that the conversation stopped with me accepting the possibility I was insane.
August 21st, 2012
4 Keys to E-Commerce Success
While the growing market share of e-commerce sales might mean the death of many brick-and-mortar shops, it offers great potential for businesses willing to embrace their online presence. eMarketer estimates that American online retail sales (excluding travel) will rise 15.4% to $224.2 billion this year. But as we have all probably encountered, there is a wide range in quality when it comes to e-commerce experiences. An increasingly savvy public means that sites with better user experiences foster more loyalty and make more sales. So what does it take to create a truly optimized e-commerce site? Here are my 4 keys to e-commerce success:
August 16th, 2012
Usability Starts Off Line: Pay Attention to the Print
I recently worked on the redesign of a web application for a client. We agreed that measures of success for the project would be improved customer satisfaction scores from online surveys and fewer calls to the call center. I came up with a concept and created a prototype to use for research. The client’s call center recruited users and we did multiple rounds of qualitative user testing. During one research session, I had a few technical glitches and the user began to tell me more about her experience with the brand overall. Listening to her talk, I made a surprising discovery: the client’s website starts off line. In fact, the main navigation path to the website is off line.
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August 1st, 2012
10 Tips on Doing User Research with No Budget
You can’t have good design without doing user research. Unfortunately, user research has often been a tough sell to clients, so many projects are scoped without resources for it. But any UX professional knows, the research must get done one way or another. As UX professionals, it’s our job to make sure we produce good design, and ultimately it’s the user who decides if we’ve done our jobs or not. So here are my 10 tips on doing user research when there is no user research budget:
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June 7th, 2012
You’re Jailbroken. Now What? Customizing iOS
After switching from Android to iOS, I found myself missing the customization options that Android has to offer. I decided to jailbreak my iPhone 4s and iPad 2 using Absinthe Jailbreak . While jailbreaking is legal, it does void your Apple warranty, and there is a risk of breaking your device if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Continue reading “You’re Jailbroken. Now What? Customizing iOS”
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