Articles

Jen Cardello

Currently the Head of Design Platforms at athenahealth, Jen leads teams focused on Experience Measurement & Insights, Design Systems, and DesignOps. Her group's charter is to empower the entire organization to innovate, design, and build great experiences.

Jen has spent 20 years helping organizations utilize human-centered design to gain business advantage and ensure end-user value. Prior to joining athenahealth, she was a director at Nielsen Norman Group, conducting user research, consulting, and teaching courses worldwide on topics including persuasive web design, information architecture, navigation, web analytics, and web-based social strategies. (See Jen's articles written at NN/g.)

Since 1996, Jen has consulted to over 60 organizations in a variety of sectors including healthcare, retail, government, financial services, lodging, transportation and charitable organizations.

Jen has a B.F.A. in Architecture from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Articles and Videos

  • The 'Liking' Principle in User Interface Design

    People prefer to say “yes” to individuals and organizations they know and like. Same goes for websites and other user interfaces.

  • Social Proof in the User Experience

    People are guided by other people’s behavior, so we can represent the actions, beliefs, and advice of the crowd in a design to influence users.

  • Scarcity Principle: Making Users Click RIGHT NOW or Lose Out

    Feeling that there is only one chance can convince people to take action sooner, sometimes without careful consideration of consequences or alternative options.

  • Low Findability and Discoverability: Four Testing Methods to Identify the Causes

    Use IA- and UI-focused user research to determine if low findability and discoverability are caused by site information architecture or navigation design.

  • The Difference Between Information Architecture (IA) and Navigation

    IA is the information backbone of the site; navigation refers to those elements in the UI that allow users to reach specific information on the site.

  • Define Stronger A/B Test Variations Through UX Research

    Complement A/B split tests with user research to identify true causes and develop well informed design variations.

  • Killing Off the Global Navigation: One Trend to Avoid

    For desktop sites, demoting your main content categories into a drop-down menu makes it harder for users to discover your offerings.

  • Five Essential Analytics Reports for UX Strategists

    Google Analytics is filled with very useful information for UX Strategists defining a baseline and tracking trends in order to define goals, strategies, and concepts for a brighter tomorrow.

  • Three Uses for Analytics in User-Experience Practice

    In order to make the most of analytics data, UX professionals need to integrate this data where it can add value to qualitative processes instead of distract resources.

  • The Halo Effect

    The "halo effect" is when one trait of a person or thing is used to make an overall judgment of that person or thing. It supports rapid decisions, even if biased ones.