The risks of dismissing minor usability issues
As a human factors psychologist, I am often asked to predict where users will (or have) run into problems with a product by evaluating its usability — the measure of …
Pittsburgh’s World IA Day 2019
Earlier this year members of our design team attended World Information Architecture Day 2019 in Pittsburgh, a day-long event of thought-provoking workshops and presentations given by remarkable speakers. World IA …
Irredeemable 2-spacers (aka teaching outmoded skills)
A little while back, our office had a rather lively email debate about how many spaces should be typed after a period—no, I’m not joking, this actually happened. Anyway, about …
But we’re all designers!
Sooner or later, everyone who works in design hears something along the lines of but we’re all designers – usually from a Project Manager who didn’t agree with the designer and …
Designing for the age enhanced: touch and proprioception
When I started our Designing for the Age Enhanced series, I thought the articles would informative and fun to write. But, since I’m in my 40s, I have to admit …
Designing for the age enhanced: taste and smell
Welcome to the latest article in our “Designing for the Age Enhanced” series — which internally we’ve started referring to as the “Getting Older Sucks” series. We’ve already talked about what …
“But we only use 10% of our brains!”
“It is estimated most human beings only use 10% of their brain’s capacity.” That’s a line from Morgan Freeman’s character in the new Sci-Fi movie Lucy, coming out this summer. It’s …
Silence is deadly
My posts always argue that as designers (and engineers, manufacturers, etc), we have a responsibility to create smart, beautiful, and useful products for our users. But lately, I’ve realized that …
How to tick off your user….
The other night I was peacefully asleep, enjoying a pleasant dream, when suddenly…. After a few confusing seconds, I realized it wasn’t my alarm clock. It was my Personal Diabetes Manager (PDM) …
Designing for the age-enhanced: cognitive changes
If you’ve read the previous posts in this series, you understand the changes that happen to our vision and hearing as we age and, more importantly, how those changes affect …