Monthly Archives: July 2012

Software requirements in a nutshell

Requirements are statements of things that your product must achieve for it to be considered successful. If you are building a customized solution for a client, requirements express the wants and needs of your client. If you are building a … Continue reading

Posted in Product Management, Product Marketing, Project Management, Requirements Engineering | Leave a comment

Designing search systems

In document- and content-oriented applications and websites, the quality of the user experience often depends on the user being able to find what she is looking for, and so effective search functionality becomes critical when there is a large repository … Continue reading

Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Usability, User Experience Design | 1 Comment

Designing an interaction framework for your application’s tasks

Many applications are centered around a set of features, tasks, actions, operations, business processes, or use cases that share a similar pattern of interaction. For example: A paint program has a toolbar or palette with various drawing tools. Clicking on … Continue reading

Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Uncategorized, Usability, User Experience Design | Leave a comment

How to build a visual hierarchy to express relationships between page elements

The underlying structure of a page’s layout can be understood as a visual hierarchy, where some visual elements on the page are subordinate to others. The visual hierarchy helps guide the user’s eye through the page, and aids users in … Continue reading

Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Psychology for UX Design, Usability, User Experience Design, Visual Design | 1 Comment

Interaction design and usability for data persistence and transactions

Most applications deal with data that needs to be stored persistently — that is, saved — so that it can be accessed later. A “persistence concept” orĀ “transaction concept” is an explanation, at the user-interface level, of how this works in … Continue reading

Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Usability, User Experience Design, Visual Design | 1 Comment

Designing navigation and wayfinding in software applications and websites

To make your application or website easy to use, you need to make it easy for users to navigate. That means that users have to be able to understand: where they currently are, where they can go, and how to … Continue reading

Posted in Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Usability, User Experience Design, Visual Design | Leave a comment