This page is a collection of guidelines and principles for the practice of User Experience Design and Usability.
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Double Diamond
The nature of the process forms the diamonds. Divergent, then convergent.
I also really appreciate the description of each Diamond,
- Design the right thing
- Design things right
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| Double Diamond process |
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The Design Sprint
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| Agenda for 5-day Design Sprint |
The Design Sprint is how smart teams start big projects.
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| Sprint book by Janke Knapp |
It takes the normal research and design process and compresses it into a easy 5-day format. If you need to figure out if a project is worth doing a Design Sprint is worth it.
I have facilitated several of these and they bring many problems to the surface and since everyone is there you can work through them much faster.
Their website is full of checklists, templates, how-to videos and examples.
The big idea with the Design Sprint is to build and test a prototype in just five days. You'll take a small team, clear the schedule for a week, and rapidly progress from problem to tested solution using a proven step-by-step checklist.
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7 Facets of the User Experience (Morville's Honeycomb)
by Peter Morville, Semantic Studios
JUNE 21, 2004
- Useful. As practitioners, we can’t be content to paint within the lines drawn by managers. We must have the courage and creativity to ask whether our products and systems are useful and to apply our knowledge of craft + medium to define innovative solutions that are more useful.
- Usable. Ease of use remains vital, and yet the interface-centered methods and perspectives of human-computer interaction do not address all dimensions of web design. In short, usability is necessary but not sufficient.
- Desirable. Our quest for efficiency must be tempered by an appreciation for the power and value of image, identity, brand, and other elements of emotional design.
- Findable. We must strive to design navigable web sites and locatable objects, so users can find what they need.
- Accessible. Just as our buildings have elevators and ramps, our web sites should be accessible to people with disabilities (more than 10% of the population). Today, it’s good business and the ethical thing to do. Eventually, it will become the law.
- Credible. Thanks to the Web Credibility Project, we’re beginning to understand the design elements that influence whether users trust and believe what we tell them.
- Valuable. Our sites must deliver value to our sponsors. For non-profits, the user experience must advance the mission. With for-profits, it must contribute to the bottom line and improve customer satisfaction.
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10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design
by Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group
Summary: Jakob Nielsen's 10 general principles for interaction design. They are called "heuristics" because they are broad rules of thumb and not specific usability guidelines.
- Visibility of system status. The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable time.
- Match between system and the real world. The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases, and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
- User control and freedom. Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
- Consistency and standards. Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
- Error prevention. Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
- Recognition rather than recall. Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
(Read the full article on recognition vs. recall in UX.) - Flexibility and efficiency of use. Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
- Aesthetic and minimalist design. Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
- Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors. Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
- Help and documentation. Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
Sign up for their newsletter, it is really good.
Usability Severity Scale
The following Severity Ratings for Usability Problems should be used to prioritize usability issues.
The scale considers Frequency, Confusion/Frustration, and Task Performance Impact.
Credit: Nielsen Norman Group
- The defect is not persistent and/or causes minor confusion or frustration for the user.
- Potential for a minor impact on task performance or cause errors.
It does not need to be fixed before the initial release unless extra time is available on the project.
- The defect is not persistent and/or causes minor errors, confusion, frustration or distraction.
- Causes minor delay in task performance.
- The defect is persistent and creates significant errors, confusion, frustration or distraction.
- It causes a significant delay in task performance.
- The defect is persistent
- It prevents a user from completing a task or has a severe impact on the business or brand.
- Don't make me think
- It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.
- Omit
needlesswords
The Elements of User Experience
by Jesse James Garrett, Adaptive Path- the original diagram that started it all
- the simple planes poster
- Chapter 2: Meet the Elements
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Design Thinking process and mindset
There are lots of articles with various approaches describe the process, search Design Thinking on Google
Here is one article on Design Thinking by Voltage Control.
- Empathize
- Define
- Ideate
- Prototype
- Test
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| Design Thinking process |
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99% Invisible
A fantastic podcast that highlights the value of design in a wide range of applications. The title is based on the concept that when something (a product or service) is thought out very well then it is nearly invisible.
This is from their about us page...
"99% Invisible is a sound-rich, narrative podcast hosted by Roman Mars about all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world. With approximately 500 million downloads, 99pi is one of the most popular podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Pandora, and is available via RSS, and through other apps. Sirius XM subscribers may also listen on the SiriusXM app."
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Growth Design
This group is fantastic. They have a great content on their site.
- Lots of well-written, entertaining, and easy to consume case studies.
- High quality lists of psych and bias definitions. PDFs of cheat sheets, too.
- A newsletter that insightful and bite size - sign up, it is really good.
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| Screen shot of case studies on Growth Design |
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| Screen shot of case study of Duo Lingo on Growth Design |
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| Screen shot of Psychology of Design on Growth Design |
What are your go-to references and thought leaders?
Let me know