Articles & Videos

  • Keep It Simple (UX Slogan #2)

    The road to usability is paved with temptations to complicate the design with extra features and options, but resisting featuritis is the best prescription for a good user experience.

  • DesignOps: 5 Common Team Structures

    The structure of a DesignOps team should be derived from the team’s specific challenges and needs. These types of team structures illustrate the varied approaches that can support and enable DesignOps teams.

  • Three Methods to Increase User Autonomy in UX Design

    Designers should help people use interfaces in ways that align with personal preferences and priorities.

  • Don’t Be Scared of Saying ‘I Don’t Know’

    Saying 'I don't know' at work can be scary, but by focusing on how you would find the answer to the question, you'll still be in control of the conversation.

  • Making UX Research Goals Specific

    User research studies need research goals: what are you trying to learn? Too broad, and you may have no actionable insights to drive the design process.

  • How to Conduct a Cognitive Walkthrough Workshop

    Step-by-step directions for running a cognitive-walkthrough workshop with examples and templates included.

  • Information Architecture: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about information architecture (IA).

  • Five User Interview Mistakes to Avoid (in 5 Minutes)

    Probing vs. leading. Saying enough to make your participant comfortable, but not so much you derail the research. 5 pitfalls in the user interview process are demonstrated so that you can avoid them the next time you talk with users.

  • User Story Mapping 101

    User story maps visualize the activities, steps, and details users go through in a product or feature. Instead of heavy requirements documents, story maps communicate how the pieces fit together before design and development.

  • Creating Engaging Reports & Asynchronous Presentations

    To keep your stakeholders and team members engaged, incorporate storytelling techniques such as writing for your audience, adding anecdotes, and using analogies in your asynchronous research deliverables.

  • 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design

    Jakob Nielsen's 10 general principles for interaction design. They are called "heuristics" because they are broad rules of thumb for UX and not specific usability guidelines.

  • Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking

    Empathy maps help UX teams visualize user attitudes and behaviors, building a shared understanding of end users while highlighting gaps in existing user data.

  • Journey Mapping 101

    A journey map is a visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal.

  • How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation

    Step-by-step instructions to review your product to find potential usability and experience problems. Download a free heuristic evaluation template.

  • When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods

    Modern day UX research methods answer a wide range of questions. To know when to use which method, each of 20 methods is mapped across 3 dimensions and over time within a typical product-development process.

  • Service Blueprints: Definition

    Service blueprints visualize organizational processes in order to optimize how a business delivers a user experience.

  • Design Thinking 101

    Design thinking is a user-centered process that helps teams understand needs, generate ideas, test solutions, and drive innovation.

  • Usability (User) Testing 101

    UX researchers use this popular observational methodology to uncover problems and opportunities in designs.

  • User Interviews: How, When, and Why to Conduct Them

    User interviews have become a popular technique for getting user feedback, mainly because they are fast and easy. Use them to learn about users’ perceptions of your design, not about its usability.

  • Usability 101: Introduction to Usability

    Usability makes designs easy, efficient, and satisfying to use. Improve it through early, repeated user testing with real users

  • User Journeys vs. User Flows

    User journeys and user flows both describe processes users go through in order to accomplish their goals, but they differ in scope, purpose, and format.

  • Affinity Diagramming for Collaboratively Sorting UX Findings and Design Ideas

    Use affinity diagramming to cluster and organize research findings or to sort design ideas in ideation workshops.

  • UX Research Cheat Sheet

    User research can be done at any point in the design cycle. This list of methods and activities can help you decide which to use when.

  • Using “How Might We” Questions to Ideate on the Right Problems

    Constructing how-might-we questions generates creative solutions while keeping teams focused on the right problems to solve.

  • Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

    iOS 26’s visual language obscures content instead of letting it take the spotlight. New (but not always better) design patterns replace established conventions.

  • User-Interface Elements: Glossary

    Use this glossary to quickly clarify definitions for key graphical user-interface elements and controls.

  • Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users

    Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.

  • Card Sorting: Uncover Users' Mental Models for Better Information Architecture

    In a card-sorting study, users organize topics into groups. Use this research method to create an information architecture that suits your users' expectations.

  • Open-Ended vs. Closed Questions in User Research

    Open-ended questions result in deeper insights. Closed questions provide clarification and detail, but no unexpected insights.

  • The Definition of User Experience (UX)

    "User experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products.