Black and white group photo of Blink team members

Brian Essex, Ph.D.

User Researcher

Brian Essex works in user research at Blink, joining the team after attaining a Ph.D. in Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience from Vanderbilt University. He is passionate about uncovering insights from user research and brainstorming design solutions that address user needs.

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The UX of Digital 3-D Interaction

Brian Essex, Ph.D.

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.

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Brick & Mortar Meets Digital Shopping

Brian Essex, Ph.D.

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.

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Q & A: Virtual reality user research

Brian Essex, Ph.D.

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.

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You CAN Design For Both Trust & Conversions

Brian Essex, Ph.D.

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.

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Three Essential Components of Persuasive Design

Brian Essex, Ph.D.

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.

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Fundamental Dimensions of Contrast

Brian Essex, Ph.D.

Designers know that using contrast is an effective way to direct attention to a specific design element. But what makes it so effective?

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Six Evidence-Driven Best Practices for Game Websites

Brian Essex, Ph.D.

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:

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