Articles

Mobile Application Usability Testing

2 minutes

Mobile Application Usability Testing

We are increasingly using smartphones, tablets, and music players in our work and lives, and there are hundreds of thousands of applications currently available for download. At Blink, we regularly conduct mobile application usability testing for different clients who are optimizing their websites for mobile use or designing new apps.

How to Make Hard Conversations Easier Header

4 minutes

Workplace Culture: How to Make Hard Conversations Easier

Even people with considerable power — owners, CEOs, board chairs — are often reluctant to have the tough talks that are required for them to achieve the outcomes they desire.

Workshop Header Image

5 minutes

How to Improve Creativity and Performance by Optimizing Your Brain

The human brain is not wired to have an "on" and "off" switch for work and play—and operating as if it were will deplete one’s energy and creativity.

Convey Ux Geoff And Bill

4 minutes

Five Tips for Designing Better Conversational Interfaces

From chatbots to intelligent assistants, conversation interfaces are changing the way that people interact with their computers, and designers have a unique opportunity to shape this medium at the ground level. Like all emerging tech, best practices are still being developed, but here at Blink we’ve had the opportunity to design a few of our own and learned a lot along the way.

Redshift Digital Joins Blink

3 minutes

Redshift Digital Joins Blink for a Golden Gate Future

It is with great anticipation and excitement that I announce that the well-known, high-end, wildly creative, and super fun San Francisco UX studio, Redshift is joining forces with Blink!

9 Tips for Better Moodboards

5 minutes

Getting in the Mood: 9 Tips for Better Moodboards

Working as a visual designer, I've learned to use moodboards to successfully pitch concepts to our internal team and clients. Moodboards are more than selecting images that specify type, color, texture, etc. At a higher level, a moodboard should express specific feelings and attributes.

User Research And Data Analytics

3 minutes

Better Together: User Research and Analytics

Incorporating analytics into UX processes and research methods can add value in many ways. Project teams should use a combination of different data types to consistently measure data (in the wild) about usability and user behavior.

A Blink researcher conducting an interview

5 minutes

How Evidence-driven Design Supports Innovation

At Blink, we believe every interaction can be made meaningful if designed with a deep understanding of human behavior. The evidence we uncover through research drives our design process.

Several UX consultants from Blink discuss challenges and opportunities at a kickoff meeting

6 minutes

Hiring a User Experience Design Firm

Thinking of working with a user experience (UX) design firm? You may not know where to start.

Go Full Scale

6 minutes

The Benefits of Recreating Physical Products and Spaces in the Lab

We often perform tests on digital devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and computers. However, there are times when we need to observe user behavior that extends beyond a screen – and this always excites us!

How UX Can Help Io T Products Part 2

9 minutes

How UX Can Help IoT Products, Part 2

In this follow-up we’ll be diving deeper into some of the specifics of what makes a great user experience for IoT products, focusing on the critical areas of onboarding, support, and security.

01 how ux can help iot products part 1 strategy

10 minutes

How UX Can Help IoT Products, Part 1

Smart homes. IoT. Connected devices. VR. What happens when buzzy, emerging technologies begin to infiltrate the everyday? Will consumers face a frustrating gunfight-style showdown with new products, or will they discover a frictionless setup process and experience a product that enhances their life? It all depends on how much effort you put into UX.

01 Top 5 UX Opportunities in Digital Health RE 2 min

8 minutes

Top Five UX Opportunities in Digital Health

Here are five key UX opportunity areas healthcare systems are looking at for improving the patient/provider experience.

A UX Journey Through Airline Apps

10 minutes

A UX Journey Through Airline Apps

I decided to look at some of the big names in airlines to better understand how well they support users trying to book a flight through their mobile apps (full disclosure, Blink has done work for both Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines).

A photo from a workshop about enterprise product design. Several conference-goers collaborate on an activity guides by a Blink's Chief Design Officer, Geoff Harrison

5 minutes

9 Tips for Bringing Mobile UX to the Enterprise

If you—a business analyst, solutions architect, IT project manager—have limited UX resources or experience but need to design a mobile experience for your internal applications, we’re here to help with nine handy tips.

Katie working full DFC 5875b

9 minutes

Our 8 Recommendations for Building a UX Research Program

Katie Greiner, UX Researcher at Blink makes recommendations on how to create a solid research practice within a new company.

01 agile ux research

7 minutes

Three Tips for Agile UX Research

Here are three tips to embrace the constraints and keep UX research as a fundamental part of Agile.

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3 minutes

Tips & Tricks for Field Research: Intercept Studies

You may wonder what situations are best suited for intercepts and how one would successfully accomplish this type of research. Well, look no further, we have put together an intercept field research guide covering the basics.

01 Collaborating and delivering design on enterprise projects rev2

7 minutes

Collaborating and delivering design on enterprise projects

Here are some things we've learned during enterprise projects about navigating complexity, collaborating with stakeholders, and handing design off to development teams.

NU Ib

6 minutes

Developing Hardware With Natural User Interfaces

Here are five things we think about, discuss, and practice when we're working in the domain of hardware and natural user interfaces (NUI).

01 Seven questions to ask when selecting a UX consulting firm

6 minutes

7 Questions to Ask When Choosing a UX Consulting Company

If you're looking for a new UX partner to help you move your product or business forward, here's where to start.

Two Blink employees collaborate on a whiteboard to create an Alexa skill

8 minutes

Five Design Tools for Voice UX

The number of products with a voice component grows daily – just look at the recent announcements of Google Home, the Amazon Echo Dot, and Samsung’s acquisition of Viv. Yet it’s hard to find examples of design tools and artifacts in the voice UX space.

Mark byron full DFC 8200 Two Blinkers sketching on a digital whiteboard

4 minutes

Why UX teams need diversity

The best UX professionals and teams have a diversity of skills in their arsenals that they use to research, design, and communicate effective design decisions.

Innate Needs

7 minutes

Target These Three Innate Needs to Improve User Engagement

We set design objectives for creating engaging products that will keep a user’s attention, encourage task completion, and be enjoyable to use. However, of those objectives, we find “enjoyable to use” the hardest to design for and measure. This is in large part because humans perceive experiences differently – what one person thinks is clever and clear, someone else may see as complex and opaque.