Articles & Videos

  • A Guide to Using User-Experience Research Methods

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

  • Enriched Site-Search Suggestions: Rarely Used

    Enriched search suggestions are expanded content recommendations related to a user’s search query on a website. While they can be useful, they are rarely utilized due to a range of implementation issues.

  • 5 Users: Okay for Qual, Wrong for Quant

    The recommended sample size (the number of study participants) is very different for qualitative user testing (small N) and for quantitative research (big N). Here's why the recommendations differ.

  • Five Ways to Recruit Participants for User Research

    Getting representative members of the target audience as your test participants is essential for user research validity. You can outsource recruiting to an agency, or do it yourself. Each method has its own advantages and possible biases.

  • Analyze Qualitative Data: Thematic Analysis

    Identifying the main themes from user studies (such as interviews, focus groups, diary studies, and field studies) is often done through thematic analysis.

  • How to Build a Participant List for UX Workshops

    A successful UX workshop includes a relatively small number of diverse participants and prioritizes users’ needs.

  • The UX of Phone-Tree Systems: 16 Usability Guidelines

    Phone trees are often frustrating. Badly designed interactive voice-response (IVR) systems violate many of the 10 usability heuristics.

  • If You're Not Checking, You're Guessing (UX Slogan #11)

    Even the smallest amount of empirical findings about your target audience and their use of your UI will lead to vastly better design decisions than if you're designing without data. Because then you're just guessing.

  • Should Emojis Be Used in Email Subject Lines?

    We conducted user research to understand the impact of emojis in email subject lines. They can be useful once in a while, but should not be overused.

  • Effective Resumes for UX Career Changers

    Generate more UX-job opportunities with a resume that effectively communicates to UX hiring managers how you are making a career change into UX.

  • 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.