Articles & Videos

  • UX Roadmap Themes

    Instead of feature-focused roadmaps, theme-based UX roadmaps visualize experience strategy by communicating high-level opportunities and problems to solve. Include these 7 elements in each theme on the roadmap.

  • Hiring and Retaining UX Teams During the Great Resignation

    A survey of 676 UX professionals explores how well their UX teams are selecting new team members while trying to retain the ones they have.

  • Intranet-Search Essentials

    Well-designed intranet search can become the fastest and easiest way for employees to find the information they need to stay productive.

  • Framing UX Data with Storytelling

    For increased engagement and memorability, combine abstract UX data and statistics with anecdotes and metaphors to help your audience better visualize the numbers.

  • Less Is More (UX Slogan #9)

    If you can add more and more features and several different ways of doing a task, should you do so? No, more UI isn't more usability. Usually, less is more, so focus on users' key tasks and design simple interactions for each task.

  • Personas vs. Archetypes

    Archetypes and personas used for UX work contain similar insights, are based on similar kinds of data, and differ mainly in presentation. Personas are presented as a single human character, whereas archetypes are not tied to specific names or faces.

  • Two Tips for Better UX Storytelling

    Effective storytelling involves both engaging the audience and structuring stories in a concise, yet effective manner. You can improve your user stories by taking advantage of the concept of story triangle and of the story-mountain template.

  • Journey Mapping vs. Story Mapping

    How does a user story map differ from a customer journey map? A journey map is from the perspective of the person's experience, whereas a story map is from the perspective of the product and what it takes to deliver the user experience.

  • You Can't Impose Joy (UX Slogan #3)

    Some UX designers (and many clients) aim to "jazz up" the design to supposedly engage users. This usually backfires because extraneous design elements get in the way of users' tasks.

  • Design Guidelines for Selling Products with Multiple Variants

    Different products should have different listings; product variations should be displayed under a single listing.

  • 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.