She suggests that personas and their use is as much motivated by political realities within new media organizations, as it is by the need to incorporate user needs within the design process.

What if all these machines that help us in our everyday lives actually “listened” to our actions? One of the most challenging aspects of the Semantic Web is introducing its concept and benefits to the everyday population. But do we really have to?

He shares the factors that influence how effective various prototyping methodologies will be and how to choose wisely; what level of effort you will need to invest in prototyping in order to get useful feedback...

One thing is brutally clear: no teams – in fact, no two individuals – seem to produce deliverables like wireframes the same way.

Dana focuses on current issues in metasearch interfaces and our findings from usability tests of metasearch capabilities in these three environments, as well as related findings from past testing of other search interfaces.

You wrote some web content. You followed the usability guidelines; it’s findable, scannable, relevant, and readable. But it’s dry. It’s cold. It doesn’t win your users over. Turns out that what’s missing is a big something—influence.

Most of us have experienced the power of a HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) and how it can instantaneously derail a project, kill funding for user research and information architecture work.

This “guerilla-style” approach for Heuristic Evaluation will help IAs engage work partners from other disciplines within the organization and learn to work with them to rapidly in generating useful content for Sales and Account teams.

We are all big fans of user-centered design, and all of us have tried our hand at CSS or database design. But somewhere along the way, the third leg of the tripod got lost: business.

Being inappropriate is a scary and powerful tool that user experience professionals should use more often, taking advantage of humor and non-traditional forms of communication.