Articles & Videos

  • Augmented-Reality Calibration in Mobile Apps: 10 Guidelines

    Instructions for calibration should be clear, high-contrast, descriptive, and augmented with unambiguous visual examples. Users should be given explicit feedback about the results of their actions and about the progress of the calibration.

  • Personas: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about personas and how to create and apply them.

  • Strategic & Reactionary User Research

    User research is often initiated during a sprint, after a design is implemented, or is part of the MVP. But, mindfully planning research earlier reaps far better results.

  • UX Design Prioritization Methods

    You cannot do everything, and in fact the product would be worse if it included everything. Thus, UX relies heavily on prioritization to determine what features add the most value relative to the resources needed to deliver them.

  • Vertical Navigation

    Websites with many categories can benefit from showing navigation menu options in a vertical list: vertical menus allow for easy expansion, are easy to scan, plus users are familiar with this design pattern.

  • How K-Pop Apps Create the Illusion of Private Messaging with Celebrities

    K-pop’s private messaging apps’ psychological and emotional UX tactics are building an unprecedented digital communication experience between fans and artists.

  • Successful Onboarding for New Hires in UX Roles

    A well-documented, collaborative internal onboarding process enables new UX professionals to immediately recognize their impact within the organization and improves employee retention.

  • UX Stakeholders: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos about engaging and collaborating with UX stakeholders.

  • Why UX?

    Key arguments why companies should have systematic user-experience processes. Plus a discussion of the main arguments against UX. (Jakob Nielsen's UX Conference keynote.)

  • Visual Hierarchy

    Visual hierarchy can help users decide where to look in a user interface: what's most important can be shown by color and size, and what things belong together can be shown by proximity and common regions.

  • 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.