Tag Archives: interface design

Mega IA: Thinking Outside the Box

By Georgia Otto | Published: 11.18.2009
For the November meeting of the NHUPA, I did a 10-minute talk about the effects of social media on information architecture. This blog entry provides some additional resources for anyone interested in doing further research on the topic. You can also download the original slides and handout. For those who missed the presentation, I’ll give you a [...]
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Wireframing & Prototyping Tools: Balsamiq & Friends

By Georgia Otto | Published: 11.12.2009
For last month’s meeting of the NHUPA, a number of people did short presentations and demos of a variety of wireframing and prototyping tools. I presented Balsamiq, a low-fidelity wireframing tool best used for capturing ideas quickly, keeping people focused on concepts/layout or for teaching new user experience designers about wireframing. I figured someone might find it [...]
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Samsung Memoir – Product Review with Photos

By Georgia Otto | Published: 05.18.2009
About a month ago, I bought the Samsung Memoir. The other reviews out there are mostly written from the perspective of people who are highly experienced with using smartphones, comparing them, and writing about them. This review is from the perspective of never having used a smartphone before. Before we begin, I think it’s important [...]
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NHUPA – Design Slam!

By Georgia Otto | Published: 04.21.2009
Last month’s NHUPA meeting had an interesting format, the “Design Slam” workshop. The basic idea was that a non-profit organization presented goals and needs for a new website (to be designed from scratch, not a redesign). Then we all split into groups to plan and design a specific aspect of the site. We determined our [...]
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Is Banner Blindness a Myth?

By Georgia Otto | Published: 04.10.2009
Banner Blindness is a term which refers to the theory that users ignore page elements that have typical traits of an advertisement. Animation is one trait of advertisements which users have allegedly learned to ignore. However, a 2003 study by Ping Zhang and Nelson Massad for the Ninth Americas Conference on Information Systems shows that: Animation [...]
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Etsy Provides Innovative Ways to Browse Products

By Georgia Otto | Published: 04.3.2009
Etsy is a site where people can buy and sell homemade goods, craft supplies and vintage items. This site offers over a dozen unique and innovative ways to browse through products. My top 3 favorites are:
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Error Prevention vs. User Satisfaction – What’s the Deal with Duplicate Form Fields?

By Georgia Otto | Published: 03.21.2009
Lately, it seems to be increasingly common to find web forms with duplicate fields, particularly for the email address. It’s a low likelihood that a user would make the exact same typo in both fields, so by ensuring that the two fields contain matching data, we can more thoroughly prevent user error. In his “Eight [...]
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Lessons to be Learned from Facebook’s Latest Homepage Changes

By Georgia Otto | Published: 03.17.2009
Normally I don’t post such negative commentary on Locus of Control, but I decided to make an exception this time. Regarding the recent homepage updates on Facebook, I would like to point out a few things that I think we can all learn from. Lesson 1: Don’t lie to your users. Facebook’s preview of the upcoming changes [...]
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Why the “Fold” Doesn’t Matter Anymore

By Georgia Otto | Published: 03.13.2009
At a recent meeting of the NHUPA, Will Powley from Mad*Pow gave a 10-minute presentation called “Newspapers Have Folds, Websites Do Not“. In this presentation, a study by ClickTale was mentioned in support of the notion that the “fold” should no longer be a primary concern for designers.
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Two New Tools for Quick Usability Testing

By Georgia Otto | Published: 03.6.2009
In a previous entry, I discussed the need for better UX design tools. Now, from the makers of OptimalSort, come two new tools for testing the usability of your IA and interface design. Treejack You input a sitemap in the form of a hierarchically structured list and assign tasks for test participants to perform. Participants navigate through the [...]
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How to Make the Most of Five Seconds

By Georgia Otto | Published: 02.6.2009
You might be amazed how little time it takes for users to get a first impression of a website and how difficult it is to change that impression once it’s made. Wouldn’t it be great to know what users see in the first 5 seconds of viewing a site design – before building it out?
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User Experience Research – A Study of Zebra Striping

By Georgia Otto | Published: 01.21.2009
Sometimes it seems that there isn’t enough collaboration between the academic side of User Experience and the applied side of it. UX practitioners need supporting evidence to back up their decisions when designing interfaces. Those who run studies about UX need to know that the questions they’re researching are relevant in actual practice. Often I discuss [...]
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Improving User Experience Design Tools – The Spirit is Willing, But the Flesh is Weak

By Georgia Otto | Published: 01.15.2009
User Experience professionals are frequently concerned with bridging the gap between themselves and the users of systems they design. However, there is a parallel gap that needs to be closed between UX designers and the developers of UX design tools. A series of surveys conducted in 2006 by associates of The Information Architecture Institute revealed [...]
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