Articles
The User Experience of Public Restrooms
Public restrooms have so many UX problems that can go wrong. From a UX designer's perspective, they are a surprisingly rich opportunity space — a collision of human behaviors, psychology, and physical interaction design.
12 Traits of a Great UX Designer
Aside from knowledge and skills, there's another side of the coin — traits and mindset. Here are the 12 traits I've observed in great UX designers throughout my career.
Competitive Analysis: How to Approach It Effectively
If you do competitive analysis with the right approach, you can learn an enormous amount that will benefit your UX work. Here is one effective approach to conducting it in a UX project.
The Importance of Process Documentation in a UX Project
When working on a UX project, things can easily get messy. I learned over time that keeping up with process documentation as I go is more valuable than it first appears — for clarity, for career, and for the craft.
UX/PM/Engineer Collaboration — A Critical Factor for a Product's Success
Many UX educations put UX in isolation and disregard the importance of UX/PM/engineer collaboration. In reality, a product's success is more affected by how well these three disciplines collaborate than by what a UX team can do alone.
Not so fancy (but meaningful) enterprise UX work
Most UX work isn’t on shiny consumer apps. This is a case study of AppAssist—an enterprise mobile app built to help service engineers install and repair Veritas appliances inside loud, cold, internet-restricted data centers.
What I Learned From COVID-19 Data Visualization
During the first wave of COVID-19, charts were everywhere—some helpful, some misleading. This article walks through what I learned comparing data, axes, and context, with public-health commentary from guest editor Amanda Makulec.
How I see a lesson from Flash holds a future of prototyping
Flash was messy technically—but for many designers it was an unusually free place to mix media, motion, and code. Looking back at what made it special helps frame what today’s fast, pattern-driven prototyping tools still owe us.
How to Visualize Layered Data to Show Holistic Relationships
I worked on infographics for the UNDERSTANDING USA TED conference textbook in the year 2000. Twenty years later, re-examining that project revealed insights about layered data visualization that are more relevant than ever.
Seeing the World as 1000 People
Twenty years ago, I worked on a project called Global Village — a data visualization animation presented at TED 2000. Here is what it taught me about content strategy, design systems, and why simplicity is never simple.
- The User Experience of Public Restrooms
- 12 Traits of a Great UX Designer
- Competitive Analysis: How to Approach It Effectively
- The Importance of Process Documentation in a UX Project
- UX/PM/Engineer Collaboration — A Critical Factor for a Product's Success
- Not so fancy (but meaningful) enterprise UX work
- What I Learned From COVID-19 Data Visualization
- How I see a lesson from Flash holds a future of prototyping
- How to Visualize Layered Data to Show Holistic Relationships
- Seeing the World as 1000 People