User friction refers to the minor irritants in your design that has little or no impact until someone starts using it constantly. That friction point becomes more and more unbearable as the user scratches themselves on it, eventually the minor friction is a massive source of pain.
Why is something so small such a big issue?
Minor friction points mostly affect your best users, people who […]
When you look at a design, and you hate it, it’s probably because you’re not the target audience. Designers often create great designs that people hate, the important thing is to understand the difference between good and bad execution.
How do you identify bad design?
I have a checklist that I run through which helps me make sure I execute as […]
Harnessing the power of people, to benefit your enterprise community.
Enterprise communities, like real world communities, need an army of people to help build, strengthen and protect, this process is vital to it’s survival and continued growth. Fostering an enterprise community will draw the same parallels in real world examples of community building, you’re tapping into the same […]
Communities need three things to exist, people, places and process. Because I’m such a funny guy, I refer to them as the three P’s of community, but that’s only because I am so funny.
People
Communities need a population, a group of people.
Places
Historically communities need to share a common ground, either through nurture or defence, or both.
Process
Process is […]
A great Intranet is a balance of both talk and task, combining a managed communication strategy with effective processes.
Talking about it
Talk is your communication strategy, it uses information based applications to keep users up to date in the business communication stream. PR, News, Annual Results or Corporate Events are all obvious parts of the talk […]
Understanding how different content types work together is integral to content delivery, it helps to define content for quick scanning from visitors, based on a logical placement process which is generally determined by your layout.
To do that effectively, it helps to understand the function of content and to break it down into base states.
I call […]
Martyn Green and I have just finished the London Successful Intranets course, where we made some new friends and met up with some old friends. I had a really good time, meeting, teaching, learning and spreading the word in general about the Intranet Journey. I always find these events massively interesting, there so many pertinent […]
The difference between clarity and clutter is concision, your objective is to achieve information balance.
Don’t just be concise in your content, be concise in your interface too. Ensure that everything has a reason for being there, aesthetics are expected but must be functional, whether that function imparts information or elicits emotion.
In the war against clutter:
Be […]
If I was to use a single word to apply to everything I try to do with regards to UX, that word would be “clarity”. I know it seems like a silly thing to think about, but many of the practices of UX come from strategic processes of simplification. In everything I do the first […]
Sometimes I get asked to elaborate on certain techniques or user disciplines because people they think they’re unnecessary, or stupid for that matter. An important part of usability is being eloquent in your narrative but when people cannot see the reasons for a something it’s very difficult to get your point across, no matter how definitive your explanation.
Most often, the […]