What we're thinking about, what we're up to, and what comes next

Blink encourages us to spend at least one day a year volunteering around the city. I chose to spend my time counting cyclists and pedestrians for two main reasons.

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!

Blink UX has been named one of Forbes 25 Best Small Companies in America. “It’s a great honor to represent not only Seattle on the Forbes list but the entire West Coast.

Join us at Blink UX in the Seattle Waterfront area for two interesting presentations and an artist’s reception. We’ll feature the art of Gregory Beams and presentations from Dr. Megan Moreno and Dr. Kate Starbird on how technology is impacting our society.

So I realized fairly early on that Blink was the place to be if I wanted to grow as a user researcher. With a little persistence, I managed to squeeze my way through those big glass doors and landed myself an informational interview.

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.

With the evolution of technology only accelerating there is no shortage of possibilities for key UX predictions in 2016. Here are the top 5 UX themes that we predict will be at the forefront this year.

Enterprising Women magazine has named Blink Co-Founder, Karen Clark Cole, as one of their Enterprising Women of the Year. The awards ceremony will be held in Miami, Florida on Tuesday, March 1 at the Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove.

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!

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.

Last week I had the opportunity to present at the Seattle Interactive Conference, a two-day event celebrating the convergence of online technology, creativity, and emerging trends.

Puget Sound Research Forum's November Luncheon is featuring the presentation “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Marketing Research?” on November 19 from 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM.

Last week, I attended the SeaVR conference in Bellevue, Washington, with fellow Blinker Ross Bohner. We were there to talk to the Virtual Reality (VR) community about the importance of optimizing the user experience of virtual reality hardware and software.

Darshana Tuladhar and Tom Columbus will be hosting a workshop at SXSW 2016 on "Happy Little Tingles: Exploring ASMR"

Siri Mehus, a senior researcher at Blink UX, will be presenting“From Speech to Conversation: A UX Challenge” at the 2015 Puget Sound World Usability Day at Microsoft’s Campus on November 12 at 3:55 PM. 

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?

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.

Kelly Franznick, CXO and co-founder of Blink UX, discusses the future of UX design for the Internet of Things with Mark Feffer at Dice.com.