By Jonathan Follett Published: June 23, 2008 “An organization’s reason for being, like that of any organism, is to help the parts that are in relationship to each other, to be able to deal with change in the environment.”—Kevin Kelly Over the past three decades of computer/human Read More...

By Joe Lamantia Published: June 23, 2008 From “The Big Chill”: [1] Michael: “I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.” Sam Weber: “Ah, come on. Nothing’s more important Read More...

By Ben Werner Published: June 23, 2008 A common frustration among UX professionals who are employed in the software development industry is the perception that executive-level management gives lip service to user experience rather than supporting specific UX activities by allocating sufficient resources Read More...

Usability is an inexact science, but I’m pretty sure there is at least one golden rule that is non-negotiable, and that’s this: Never, ever, insult your users. Unless your web site revolves around insults, and every error message consists Read More...

By Luke Wroblewski Published: June 9, 2008 As enablers of online conversations between businesses and customers, Web forms are often responsible for gathering critical information—email addresses for continued communications, mailing addresses for product shipments, and billing information for Read More...

By Colleen Jones Published: June 9, 2008 The bill is a cornerstone communication in the customer experience, especially when it comes to billing for services. Customers want to easily understand and pay their bills, and businesses want to get paid on time. One would think a business would value the bill Read More...

By Meghashri Dalvi Published: June 9, 2008 When creating Help for any application, the typical starting point is user profiling. We create user personas, find out what tasks users perform, and identify which tasks are more frequent. We also note users’ preferences for delivery format and language. Read More...

Sun’s JRE6 install now comes with the Yahoo! Toolbar . We can’t get clear confirmation as to whether this is an entirely new deal but it’s a mistake either way. Surely, this is a misguided attempt at making money from a free download. The tech crowd will deplore it as an attempt at Read More...

I’ve just published the transcript of an interview I did with Andy Budd at Web Directions UX last week. It’s quite long, but well worth the read — we cover all sorts of topics such as careers in web design, the future of CSS, IE8, HTML Read More...

By Mike Hughes Published: May 19, 2008 Jean-Luc Dumont is a respected authority in international technical communications, but he is most renowned for a particularly entertaining presentation he gives about road signs. This genre of tight communications that are written for small spaces and meant to Read More...

By Keith LaFerriere Published: May 19, 2008 The Roman philosopher Cicero stated, “Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.” The trouble is, even though people have repeated this particular quotation over the past couple of millennia, our clients often push the limits excessively—beyond Read More...

By David Kozatch Published: May 19, 2008 Being a consultant with experience in both traditional marketing research and user experience and usability gives me a unique perspective on a broad range of issues relating to customer experience. Not only do I have a good idea of what the other discipline does, Read More...

Nathanael Boehm is reporting for SitePoint from Web Directions Government 2008, in Canberra Australia. It was a chilly start to the day with the temperature hovering just above zero degrees as we waited in the dining area of Old Parliament House, cups Read More...

Andy Budd kicked off the Web Directions User Experience conference this morning with some terrific insight into what makes a site that really works so memorable for the site’s users. The core message of Andy’s presentation was that other industries Read More...

By Steve Baty Published: May 7, 2008 It’s not uncommon for projects to lack the time, money, or resources to conduct ideal user research activities. There are many reasons why this occurs: Sometimes we’re brought onto a project late. Perhaps we’re new to an organization that doesn’t Read More...