8 min
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.
Articles
5 min
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).
7 min
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.
10 min
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.
3 min
BlinkThink: Gallery Opening and Speaker Series is Back October 2016!
Join us at Blink UX on Thursday, October 20 in the Seattle Waterfront area for BlinkThink. There will be two interesting presentations and an artist’s reception.
4 min
Blinker Profile: Serena Down
I’ve always loved listening to stories. My relatives used to worry about me staying inside talking to the old folks while the other kids were out lighting off fireworks, but that was where I wanted to be.
0 min
Blink UX Featured in MetLife Commercial
Earlier this year Blink was selected to be a featured company in the MetLife small business benefits commercial called “Anything But Small.”
6 min
eero Unboxed: Future Meets Reality
As a UX designer, I can’t help but evaluate the user experience of products I interact with. I recently moved into a new house and found myself in need of boosting the WiFi signal, so I purchased the highly reviewed WiFi system called eero.
6 min
The UX of Digital 3-D Interaction
With the emergence of virtual and augmented reality, we will have many more 3-D digital experiences available to us. Many of these upcoming 3-D experiences will be interactive, requiring the user to navigate a 3-D space. While it may take some time for these experiences to catch on and become pervasive, They will.
4 min
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.
6 min
Investigating ASMR in “the Wilds”
What if I told you that there are people who are able to feel a sensation without any sort of tactile input?
3 min
Enterprise UX: A State of the Union
For anyone who regularly designs enterprise software (raising my hand here), you have likely been asked to move a dated, difficult-to-use interface to a modern user experience.
5 min
Brick & Mortar Meets Digital Shopping
The retail environment is evolving rapidly. Increasingly, retail stores are leveraging smartphone apps and other digital technology to enhance in-store experiences and to nudge users towards buying products.
2 min
Blink UX Named One of the Best Small Companies in America By Forbes
Being named on Forbes Magazine’s Best Small Companies in America list is truly amazing. It’s a great honor for Blink UX to represent not only Seattle on the list but the entire West Coast!
7 min
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.
4 min
Rolling out the Radical Redesign
For years I’d heard references to the Winchester House—a mansion built over many years by an eccentric heiress without any master build plan. It is well-known for its oddities such as as doors and stairs that go nowhere and windows overlooking other rooms. A couple of years ago on a Blink project I wound up staying less than a mile away from the famed mansion. Of course I had to go!
9 min
College and Career Tips for Future UX Pros
If you are a college student considering a design degree—or any degree, for that matter—you’re probably stressed, scared, and unsure about your career path.
5 min
Q & A: Virtual reality user research
When I attended the 2015 SeaVR conference in Bellevue, Washington, I had a lot of great conversations with the virtual reality (VR) community about the importance of using hardware and software design to optimize the virtual reality user experience. During our interactions, I noticed that many in the community shared some of the same UX questions. I answer those questions in this post.
7 min
Should You Use a Focus Group for Product Design Research?
At Blink UX we perform qualitative research to inform the design of digital products. Focus groups are a familiar form of qualitative consumer research. But while the focus group has a place in our research methods toolkit, we rarely pull it out. Why is that?
5 min
The Client Debrief, Part Two: 7 Steps to a Successful Meeting
Now that the benefits have been covered, let’s talk about the nuts and bolts of running an effective research debrief meeting with your clients. A little smart prep work can save a lot of time and effort when analyzing/reporting research results, especially when your time and budget is limited.
7 min
Fast Field Research in Just 5 Days
It was a Tuesday at 11:00 am and we just got off a kickoff call with a new client. We stared at each other and knew what had to happen: I needed to be on a plane the next day to cross the country to conduct customer interviews on Thursday.
3 min
The Client Debrief, Part One: Purpose & Value
One of the important aspects of customer research is talking about the observations with clients afterwards—what worked well, what didn’t, as well as “ah-ha” moments that generate lively discussions and ultimately innovation.
4 min
Virtual Reality: Current and Future States of Immersion Multimedia
Many leaders in tech industries are now investing multiple billions of dollars into bringing consumer-level VR to market. Facebook bought Oculus, a forerunner for consumer-level head mounted display (HMD) hardware. Samsung, HTC, Microsoft, and Google are also investing heavily.
8 min
Grappling with Platform Strategy
Why would Apple seemingly limit what could be developed for the browser? In theory, to push developers towards developing native iOS apps. Thus, yet another shot was fired in the web app vs. native app discussion.