What does an information experience design toolkit look like? Posts in this category describe, analyze, critique, and/or discuss emerging or established tools, techniques, methods, and approaches that inform or facilitate the design of great experiences.
In his 2013 Medium article, Kevin Ashton wrote, “Social media is not a bullhorn for broadcast but a coffee shop for conversation.” He goes on to outline how he has used social listening to better inform the design of different products to create a beautiful user experience: “User-generated reviews are the best possible way …
Social Listening and UX: Enhancing the Customer Experience Read More »
When most people think of usability testing, they tend to think of lab settings, where individuals seated at computers are following task, and being monitored by usability practitioners. However, not all usability testing take place in lab settings, at least not anymore. There are a number of testing methods being utilized by evaluators in the …
Educational Technology is currently a buzzword, and many startups have developed around ideas about how to use technology to better the educational landscape. One idea that has rapidly gained traction is online learning. From Coursera to Code Academy to taking university classes online, there are many ways to try and learn a new skill from …
Designing information experiences takes into consideration perception (engaging with the senses), cognition (engaging with the mind), emotion (engaging with the heart), and action (engaging with the body). Other factors such as capabilities, constraints, and context also influence experience, and the process of examining these details involves a great deal of research and evaluation both initially …
Qualitative or Quantitative: When do you ask your users and when your data? Read More »
As academic libraries move toward a more user-oriented approach, they are implementing various ways to test usability and user experience (Tempelman-Kluit, N., & Pearce, A., 2014). One that caught my eye was the use of personas. Personas are prototypes of actual users, developed through multiple means of research including interviews and surveys. The use of …
Use of Personas in usability testing for academic libraries Read More »
Developed in the early 1990s, the heuristic evaluation has come to prominence as a usability evaluation method. Developed in a time when web design meant design for desktop screens, it has been a powerful tool largely thanks to its reliance on the 10 heuristics, defined by Jakob Nielsen in 1995, that categorize the issues found …
Usability Testing & Mobile Devices: New Mobile Heuristics Read More »
Microinteractions are the individual tasks within designs –something like signing up for an account, moments that tend to be invisible unless something goes wrong. The discussion on the subject comes from Dan Saffner, author of the book on the subject, and it is focused on the idea that these small details are crucial to successful …
”Material design is a visual language synthesizes the classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science.” Google uses material design to guide the interaction and interfaces in their apps, mobile and web-based, and makes the standards available for other android app developers. Material design was unveiled in summer 2014 …
The Repertory Grid Interview (RGI) is a technique related to Personal Construct Theory (PCT)—both were developed by George Kelly in 1955 in order to explore people’s conceptions of their relationships with others. PCT centers on the idea that every individual perceives the world based on constructs created from his or her unique experiences and understandings. …
In the service of user experience, evaluation is many things. It can measure identifiable qualities of a system such as efficiency or ease of use. It can solicit emotional responses directly from the user. It checks users’ models of the system against the designers’. And, as we are learning, evaluation does all this in …