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.
Still challenged by the global pandemic but unwavering, intranet-design teams committed to accessibility and inclusion. Empathy and logic prevailed, resulting in winning intranets that are accepting and supportive of all employees equally.
Directed user research where you ask people closed-end questions can bias the outcome in favor of those things that are being asked about. Unguided studies are often better at revealing true user preferences.
Polyhierarchy is used to place a single item in more than one IA category. This can support users with different mental models but should be used judiciously.
In a focus group, a facilitator solicits feedback from a small group of people. While insufficient as a standalone research method, data from a focus group still has value.
Misconceptions stem from a lack of understanding of DesignOps, as well as attempts to pigeonhole it. DesignOps is different from design management, it's not always a specialized role, and it should be structured differently in different organizations.
Qualitative user research aims at insights, not numbers. Metrics for individual users help tell the story of how each person did, but mean values across a small sample won't be reliable.
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 maps help UX teams visualize user attitudes and behaviors, building a shared understanding of end users while highlighting gaps in existing user data.
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.
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.
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.
iOS 26’s visual language obscures content instead of letting it take the spotlight. New (but not always better) design patterns replace established conventions.
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.
In a card-sorting study, users organize topics into groups. Use this research method to create an information architecture that suits your users' expectations.
