The human brain allows humans to store a vast amount of information by creating “mental shortcuts”, which are based on repeated patterns. These repeated patters allow humans to categorize, relate, and group specific information together to create our mental shortcuts. Although this works in human favor to memorize more things, it also can lead to …
All things in UX design revolve around the user experience, hence the name. Products whether digital or physical should start by putting yourself in the users shoes, which is the best way to create great user experiences. When you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, you empathize with your users. The definition of empathy is …
UX research is systematically studying targeted users to collect and analyze data that will help inform the product design process. Before reaching out to random people, there are some things that should be considered. Below is a summary of how to find and recruit people who would want to be interviewed and a set of …
Persistent failures when trying to succeed can often lead to learned helplessness. It is a feeling where you feel that a situation will not change or is unchangeable due to experiencing stressful failures consistently. This type of mentality can often lead to believing no matter what you do, you cannot fix the outcome or you …
Creating an empathy map not only allows you to better understand the users, it also helps your colleagues understand them and prioritize their needs. An empathy map is a collaborative quadrant visualization map used to articulate what we know about a particular user or group. Throughout the UX process, the empathy map allows the team …
Usability in UX design is a strong mix of both ease-of-use and user satisfaction. According to the ISO 9241-11 standard, usability is described as “the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals, with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use. ”. Having usability in …
Personas are fictional users whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of users. Each persona that you create will represent a group of users with similar characteristics that you’ve learned about through your research. Personas are key to the design process because they reflect the lifestyles of users and give your …
A user story is generally a one-sentence story told from a persona you created to inspire and inform design decisions. This sentence is fictional and allows you to be creative by telling a story based on the needs of your users. Another way to look at user stories is by thinking of them as checklists …
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It is important to include people with disabilities in your research because you will be able to better understand how to go about the design process. Not everyone is the same so there are things that should be considered to also design for accessibility. A few things to consider include: Touch See Hear Speak Accessibility: …
The curb-cut effect is a phenomenon that describes how products and policies designed for people with disabilities often end up helping everyone else. The actual curb-cut is the part of the curve that is cut on an angle to allow those with a wheel-chair have easy access on and off the curb. Although this curb-cut …
