Articles

Find Me on Forbes

0 min

Find Me on Forbes.com

In the spring of 2016 I had the good fortune of starting a blog on Forbes.com in the Entrepreneur channel.

Go Full Scale

6 min

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!

Adventures in Accessibility

5 min

6 Tips for Improving Your Website Accessibility

The benefits of the web are not evenly distributed. It promises easy access to content and tools for everyone, but frequently fails to include the needs of people with impairments, whether permanent (over 57 million people in the US alone) or temporary (all of us at one point or another).

How UX Can Help Io T Products Part 2

10 min

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

12 min

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

9 min

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

12 min

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 min

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

10 min

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

8 min

Three Tips for Agile UX Research

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

Image 08

3 min

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

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.

NU Ib

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).

01 Seven questions to ask when selecting a UX consulting firm

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.

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

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.

Gathering Viii Vhh 770X446

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.

Erro

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.

Zspace header

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.

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

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.

DFC 0385 mark gsellman Alan Baumgarten speaking at Convey UX

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.

A cartoon of someone using a mobile app in a retail store

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.

Forbes blog

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!

Innate Needs

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.

Should You Use a Focus Group for Product Design Research

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?