Tag: user experience

UX research: balance and iterate

Tricia1 Comment

Interesting food for thought in this article published in the Weave Journal of Library UX:

The goal of user experience work, as I see it, is not a purity of methods but a balancing of these methods with a practical effectiveness of outcomes. If ethnography and service design can be understood as poles on a spectrum, with methods on one side and outcomes on the other, then user experience would be my term for the spectrum itself.  – Andy Priestner

I’m not sure I get much out of the idea of user experience as a spectrum between ethnography and service design, but I wholeheartedly agree that the goal of UX work is a balancing of methods more than a purity of methods. This view came up frequently in talks at both this year and last year’s IA Summit. FJ van Wingerde did an especially nice job of synthesizing how all the UX research tools we have are basically problematic, but we still have to use them:

Use typographic variations with restraint

TriciaLeave a comment

I’m reading Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability, and I can’t help but share the following since it’s something I’ve seen incredibly frequently, from library resources guides to I&R intake screenings:

You MAY be tempted to use bold, italic, and CAPITALS and underlining to emphasize IMPORTANT INFORMATION. Problem: you can END UP with a sort of VISUAL SOUP where none of the emphasis works.

It’s challenging to design a user manual, resource guide, or other sort of instructional document without falling back on these kinds of typographic variations.  There are so many points that need to be emphasized, and you want to make sure your audience (readers or end-users) pays attention to the important information.  Here’s some advice that seems good:

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There’s so much to find on the web about this topic, it’s hard to know where to start.  Here’s one suggestion with (probably) more to come as I continue to investigate usability and user experience in the world of online forms.