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.
Articles
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.
6 minutes
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?
4 minutes
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.
3 minutes
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.
5 minutes
Innovating in the Field: Agribusiness and UX
Farmers and those involved in agribusiness have historically been early adopters of technology to help increase yield, reduce time, and save costs. Going all the way back to 1793 and Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin we see farmers using design thinking for new solutions to wide and common problems.
4 minutes
Mind Mapping as a Useful Tool in Navigation Studies
Usability studies are great for identifying issues that prevent users from getting things done, however our goals for user research often encompass trying to gain insight into what users understand about the overall structure and layout of a system. Recently I used mind mapping in a body of work around mobile navigation and found it was an effective and helpful research tool.
9 minutes
Trade-Offs In Moderated & Unmoderated Usability Testing
At Blink we practice evidence-driven design. That means that the design recommendations and decisions we make are grounded in solid data and sound reasoning. But what counts as good evidence? What are the data and reasoning that stand behind a well-motivated design decision?
5 minutes
Eight Tips For UX Projects In Complex Domains
How do you provide value quickly to your client or to your product team? How do you confidently argue for findings and steer designs when you are new to that industry’s domain? Below I share a few tips from Sarah Barrett, a few colleagues, and myself.
6 minutes
Up & Running: 3 Tips For An Awesome Onboarding UX
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 minutes
What is a User Persona and How Do You Keep it Alive?
4 minutes
Three Steps To Better Dashboards
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.
7 minutes
Visual design tips for non-designers: using color
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.
6 minutes
Tips for Success in Complex Field Research Projects
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.
4 minutes
Path-Finding in Software: User Assistance in Mobile Apps
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 minutes
Sweat the Details: Animation and Microinteractions in Mobile Apps
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?
6 minutes
The fine art of creating experience maps
Here are more details about how we think about target users and their engagement with products to inform experience maps.
4 minutes
Dear (Digital) Diary: A Powerful Tool in User Research
These days, diary studies can be much richer and more flexible by taking advantage of digital, connected technologies. At Blink we’re developing a suite of internal digital tools that help researchers and designers be more effective; one of these tools is our Digital Diary.
6 minutes
UX and SEO — A love story
If you want to design the best experience for your users, you need to know their stories. Here at Blink we recently wrapped up a project that demonstrated how the “qualitative story” of user research and the “quantitative story” of SEO and analytics can be paired to produce powerful insights that provide the evidence you need to craft the right experience.
3 minutes
Creativity, Collaboration & Confidentiality
So how do we get together and collaborate on ideas when a project is top secret? When only one person at Blink knows what the client is working on, and only a handful of employees at the client’s company even know what it is?
3 minutes
Choosing the Right Level of Fidelity for Your Wireframes
At their core, wireframes are an efficient, iterative communication tool.
3 minutes
Six Evidence-Driven Best Practices for Game Websites
As a user researcher here at Blink UX, I’ve spent some time assessing and testing websites for the game industry. Game websites have a variety of audiences with unique goals, but the most notable ones are these:
less than 1 minute
Improving the User Experience of Healthcare Provider Websites
Blink has worked with a variety of healthcare providers over the last several years to understand the users of their websites. The results of this work have been research-based recommendations and design solutions that address many common challenges. Today, we are publishing a whitepaper that summarizes the challenges providers face online, and how a research-based approach to user experience can help meet the needs of their patients and employees.
3 minutes
Increasing Your Chances of Successful Design Decisions
In the ideal world, every design decision would be informed by user research or usability testing. But in the real world, that’s not always possible. Sometimes, you just have to rely on your own internal decision‐making abilities. Below are some tips we’ve found helpful for increasing the odds of a successful user experience, regardless of the resources available for a project: