3 min
People Are the Purpose
My vision for Blink is to make a difference in the world through our work and our people.
3 min
My vision for Blink is to make a difference in the world through our work and our people.
4 min
In just over two months I’m tying the knot. I’ve always considered myself a perfectionist and highly organized, which is why I opted to do all the planning myself and not hire a coordinator. Food, music, venue, photography, décor, invitations, that’s all me.
6 min
The onboarding process is a critical step in setting your users up for success with your product, but there are a number of considerations and hard decisions to be made when you are designing your onboarding to define how best to get your users familiar with your product and its value.
5 min
We’re extremely proud and excited to announce that Karen Clark Cole is a finalist for this year’s Pacific Northwest Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year award.
3 min
Over the past five years I’ve supported users with their technology questions, either as an IT professional or “that techie friend,” and one constant that remains is the usefulness of a universal user experience. Maintaining a consistent design, feel, and set of interactions across devices is at the heart of universal user experience.
5 min
3 min
Not that there is anything wrong with making a dashboard visually appealing—it’s a key part of the user experience. But I’d suggest an approach to designing dashboards that begins with the what before getting into the specifics of how to present the display.
3 min
Recently at Blink we made an online purchase without understanding all of the terms and conditions. We bought 200 attractive, customized mugs for our office, however, there was one unrecognized flaw: After putting them in the dishwasher, some of the imprinted ink came off.
5 min
Communication: It’s how we talk to each other. How we talk to clients. It can be nebulous and squishy, yet it’s important and impactful. Communication is directly related to the quality of the projects we deliver, how well we meet our clients’ needs, and the satisfaction we have with our work.
7 min
3 min
The person hovered over OmniFocus at the start of each day? Yes, that would be me. Rewind 20 years and there I am again, but this time lugging about a three-ring Franklin Planner. Suffice it to say that planning and I go WAY back.
8 min
In an effort to do my part and help increase the world’s number of well-designed presentations, I’m starting a series called “Design Tips For Non-Designers.” These tips aren’t intended to make designers out of non-designers. They are simply to help folks who don’t have design training become better at visual communications. This is for all the project managers, researchers, and marketing folks out there who want to improve their deliverables. You know who you are.
2 min
It’s my goal to build a company that people love. Employees love working for us and clients love working with us. It all boils down to building relationships — myself building meaningful relationships with each employee, and everyone in our company building those same kinds of relationships with each other and our clients.
1 min
A friend told me he usually goes into work late because he’s busy playing Legos with his son instead of racing out the door to work. I thought to myself, “I bet he’s a great employee and gets a lot done.”
2 min
It sounded absurd to me, but apparently no one at Blink had any idea what gets him or her fired. “Oh dear,” I thought. “That’s a problem.”
7 min
We user researchers often find ourselves in unusual places doing unusual things: in homes watching strangers set up media equipment, in passenger seats noting how drivers use in-car technology, in manufacturing settings observing CAD/CAM fabrication, in hospitals interviewing medical staff, just to name a few.
2 min
In the projects we work on here at Blink, our clients have specific actions that they would like their users to take on their website or app. For example, one goal might be for a user to download software from a website, while another might be to complete a registration form.
1 min
Close to 250 people from around the world gathered together for the third-annual ConveyUX conference. Visitors arrived from Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Korea, Mexico, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the USA. More than 30 presenters shared their knowledge and ideas in over 40 sessions throughout the three days
4 min
I’m so proud of so many things that it’s hard to know where to start. Mostly I am proud of every single Blink employee for really taking ownership of our company this year. Below are some of the fruits of our labor…
3 min
To achieve joy in the hearts of children, Santa must have an amazing process and an excellent grasp of the user experience of gift giving. While others have suggested an alternative solution for Santa’s approach, we here at Blink take a more analytical approach.
2 min
I was recently asked how I cope as a busy person in a world that is becoming increasingly complex. I had to think about this. I’m not sure the actual world has become more complex, but how we communicate certainly has.
3 min
Designers know that using contrast is an effective way to direct attention to a specific design element. But what makes it so effective?
5 min
How do people find their way through applications? Generally, words and images carry much of the weight when it comes to path-finding in software. It doesn’t matter whether it is an enterprise-level desktop application, a consumer web site, or a mobile app — text and graphics play an important role in directing the user in performing tasks.
5 min
Crafting a useful, usable, and beautiful app takes a lot of work and a willingness to throw your designs out the window again and again until you get things right. Even if you get that far, there are usually at least five other apps out there that already do what yours does. Why is yours better? What sets it apart?