UX Puppy

"Numbers are problematic to the extent that they give the illusion of providing more truth than they actually do. They also favor what is easiest to measure, not what is most important."

Pitfalls to avoid when concerning the love of numbers

dark patterns... sounds so awesome.

Critiques!

Kris Mausser writes it all down for us.

nice, narrative info-graphic explaining the IA's job

Biscuits? Yeah, BISCUITS. 'cause everyone loves biscuits. (and we're from the South)

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"Recently I wrote about User Stories and how card based software development can help identify 'clear, brief descriptions of functionality as described from the perspective of a user'. Today I want to look at how User Stories or 'Stories' can impact the user interface (UI) design and user experience (UX) of a software product."

A good perspective on UX methods from an 'Agile' guy

A great post on how Wordpress handles media and particularly how to use the add_image_size() function to crop featured images. (At least that's how I found it when I was searching on Google.)

Jeff Sauro is a boss.

Another good article by Mike Hughes, IBM fellow and UX'er. Explains the roles of UX vs role of UI

Getting to know Mike Hughes and so should you

example of a script. The theme is sound, but they aren't doing it right. All kinds of errors and badness going on

"1. Assuming you know what the customer wants First and deadliest of all is a founder's unwavering belief that he or she understands who the customers will be, what they need, and how to sell it to them. Any dispassionate observer would recognize that on Day One, a start-up has no customers, and unless the founder is a true domain expert, he or she can only guess about the customer, problem, and business model. On Day One, a start-up is a faith-based initiative built on guesses. To succeed, founders need to turn these guesses into facts as soon as possible by getting out of the building, asking customers if the hypotheses are correct, and quickly changing those that are wrong."

Start-ups are getting user-centered FIRST, before going thru all the pain of starting up. I'm pretty sure this is what the whole Lean Start - up , Lean UX is all about.

"Startups frequently use surveys as a cheap and easy way to get feedback from users. But the resulting data will only be as good as the survey itself. I often see products with surveys that have easy-to-fix mistakes like misleading questions, improper sampling, and skewed rating scales. That's a shame - these teams could be collecting better data and making better decisions if they just paid a bit more attention to survey design."

You can screw up making a survey. Read this to avoid that.

A nice summary and definition of UX and Experience Design by Marc Hassenzahl with comments by Don Norman and Eric Riess

User-testing budget considerations

Tristan Weevers writes about organizing and developing new UX methods and patterns.

"We are a global network dedicated to the professional practice of Interaction Design. With the help of more than 20,000 members since 2004, the IxDA network provides an online forum for the discussion of interaction design issues and other opportunities and platforms for people who are passionate about interaction design to gather and advance the discipline. "

Interaction design association

The US government web design and usability guidelines - HUGE book in PDF format with many guideline explained in a concise format. It's actually pretty good. I wish it was in a better format - PDF isn't the most... um, whats the word I'm looking for - USABLE format. just sayin