Over the next ten years, a new, huge market will open for designers that until now have been extremely niche: Voice Designers. Voice design? How does it vary from conventional UX design? Actually, there are many similarities. User research, persona creation, prototyping, user flow creation, usability testing, and iterative design will all be necessary steps in … [Read more...]
Small Print In Graphic Communication And Information Design: A Discussion Of Issues And Interactions
You might consider small print boring or not valuable or interesting, but discussing small print: the way it is presented and used, could be interesting to explore and could raise some interesting points for writing and graphic communication and information design in general. This article is partly inspired by the point from information designer Patricia Wright from … [Read more...]
Pokémon Go And Its Impact On User Experience
By now, everybody has heard about Pokémon Go and its swift and spectacular rise to the top of the app world. For a game based on an old 90's Gameboy game and TV show, it has surprisingly universal appeal - kids and grandparents, hipsters and business people have all embraced it. At its height, the app had 25 million active users. Aside from making Augmented Reality … [Read more...]
Apple’s Mobile Touch ID System: Convenience Or A Security Risk?
To people who are interested in staying on top of developments in the tech world, it probably feels like incredible technology improvements are being unveiled by the day. Many of the tech enhancements that eventually become commonplace get engineered in an effort to create a better UX or make it safer for people and sometimes both. Apple's Touch ID mobile identification … [Read more...]
Social Impact. Market Relevance: The Dual-Threat of Conversational UI
Much has already been written about the Conversational User Interface (CUI). It’s impact on virtual assistants, convenience and search, and even the end of the graphical user interface (GUI) have all been explored, and for good reason. CUI is the future. GUI made perfect sense when our computers were stationary, when they sat on desks and didn’t ride along in our … [Read more...]
7 User Interface Guidelines For Designing Watch Apps
The first constraint (or opportunity) when designing any app is the screen size that the device on which it is accessed is going to offer. With various wearables hitting the market and featuring some exquisite options, a whole new opportunity has emerged for app developers and designers. At face value, the restricted screen size leaves less room for user interaction. While … [Read more...]
First-Time Use: How To Reduce The Initial Friction Of App Usage
There's plenty of material out there that will happily tell you that First-Time Use (FTU) is the most important part of app adoption. After all, it is a precarious time in your app's usage lifecycle. Exactly like everything else relying on the fickle human brain, first impressions count for a scary amount. In fact, by reducing the friction during FTU we could stop … [Read more...]
Humans: The Missing Link In Online Security
Implementing online security is ultimately a human undertaking. The tools have to be sufficient enough to protect you and your clients, but efficient enough not to get in the way of providing the best user experience possible. While technology will get you part of the way, the inevitable corner-cutting by users will ultimately expose the notion that technology cannot … [Read more...]
What Is The Next Frontier For Human Computer Interaction?
Imagine this - you are playing a video game and want to interact with the other character. But, instead of using the mouse, you simply rest your eyes on that particular character and almost instantly, you get a response from it. Wouldn’t that be outstanding? Eye-tracking replacing a task usually performed by the mouse! That’s interactivity at a completely … [Read more...]
Wearable Innovation Management
The rise of wearables and personal data tracking is proving to be more than just a tool for health. It’s all part of that buzz phrase ‘The Internet of Things.’ With Apple’s entry into the wearable game, the app development for this market will really take off. Regardless if you’re a fanboy or not, developers will have to address how wearables will interact with parent … [Read more...]