Articles & Videos

  • 3 Design Processes for High Usability: Iterative Design, Parallel Design, and Competitive Testing

    3 methods for increasing UX quality by exploring and testing diverse design ideas work even better when you use them together.

  • The Danger of Defaults

    Assume that users will not change defaults and plan for this in your designs. Ask yourself 3 questions to create good defaults.

  • The Biggest Challenges Practitioners Encounter Working in UX

    We surveyed 126 practitioners, uncovering the biggest challenges in the UX field. Almost all responses originated from the same core problem: perception of UX.

  • UX and CX Merge: The Shift from Products to Journeys

    Organizations are starting to merge user experience and customer experience into a single function, setting the foundation for a journey-centric-experience practice.

  • Attitudinal vs. Behavioral Research

    Explore the difference between attitudinal and behavioral UX research. Learn how combining these methods offers a complete view of user interactions and perceptions.

  • Design Systems vs. Style Guides

    A design system is a complete set of standards intended to manage design at scale, while a style guide is a piece of documentation that provides specific style guidance.

  • Alt Text: What to Write

    Images are decorative, functional, or informative. Skip alt text for decorative. Describe the action for functional. Convey the message for informative.

  • UX Metrics Are Like Beans

    Common UX metrics can be grouped into three types: continuous, discrete, and binary. Continuous metrics occur on a smooth spectrum, like time. Discrete metrics have regular intervals between them, such as satisfaction score. Binary metrics have two possible values, like pass or fail.

  • Upfront vs. Continuous Discovery

    Upfront and continuous discovery are two approaches to implementing discovery in product development. Both approaches help teams solve real problems.

  • Alt Text: Not Always Needed

    Write alt text that communicates an image's purpose without repeating page content. Focus on meaning rather than visual description.

  • 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.