Tools & Techniques

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 […]

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

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

  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