My book, Designing Usable Apps, is now available!
- Available in print and Kindle editions at Amazon.com
- Get more information at www.designingusableapps.com
Welcome!
Hi, I'm Kevin Matz. This is my blog about usability and UX design for websites and software products. Let me know what you think!-
Recent Posts
- How to conduct heuristic inspections for evaluating software usability
- Focus groups as a usability evaluation technique
- Analytics as a usability evaluation technique
- Quantifying cognitive load and task efficiency
- The impact of hardware devices on software ergonomics
- Software requirements in a nutshell
- Designing search systems
- Designing an interaction framework for your application’s tasks
- How to build a visual hierarchy to express relationships between page elements
- Interaction design and usability for data persistence and transactions
- Designing navigation and wayfinding in software applications and websites
- Designing your application’s interaction concept
- What characteristics contribute to a negative user experience?
- What characteristics contribute to a positive user experience?
- How to design software to encourage flow states, concentration, focus, and productivity
- Design techniques for reducing cognitive load
- “Don’t make me think!”: Eliminating excise and reducing cognitive load
- Communicating your mental model to the user: Design models and the system image
- Understanding the process of user interface design
- Donald Norman’s design principles for usability
- How do users perform tasks, do work, and learn how to use software applications?
- Understanding the technology framework for building your product’s user interface
- An introduction to data models and UML class diagrams for user interface designers
- Why understanding your application’s domain and data model is a prerequisite for good user interface design
- Requirements gathering techniques for understanding user characteristics
- How to write user personas
- User requirements: Understanding your users’ characteristics
- End users vs. buyers
- User segments and roles
- How to conduct user observation sessions
- How to recruit users for usability testing
- What user interface designers need to know about how human memory works
- How users’ skills and competence improve with practice
- Designing software for different user skill levels
- Security usability: Designing usable software security measures
- Designing error-handling for maximum usability in your application
- How to name things in your application
- Choosing an interaction style for your application
- Don’t make assumptions about your users’ existing skills!
- What is involved in designing user interfaces for an application?
- What is gamification?
- How do users learn and use software applications? An introduction to mental models
- How to use visual attributes to create contrast and attract interest
- Unity: A primary goal in visual design
- Software delivery mechanisms: Comparing desktop applications, web apps, and static websites
- What should you look for in a usability trainer?
- The Gestalt Laws of Perception and how to use them in UI design
- How do people look at and read pages? (Part 3 of 3)
- How do people look at and read pages? (Part 2 of 3)
- How do people look at and read pages? (Part 1 of 3)
- The impact of visual design on usability
- Preview of upcoming topics for this blog
- What is Information Architecture and why is it important in software application design?
- Overcoming objections to involving users in your software project
- What is User Experience (UX)?
- What is User-Centered Design?
- What does “easy-to-use” mean?
- Welcome to Architecting Usability
Categories
- About (2)
- Information Architecture (18)
- Interaction Design (10)
- Office Politics (3)
- Product Management (20)
- Product Marketing (2)
- Project Management (5)
- Psychology for UX Design (23)
- Requirements Engineering (12)
- Training (2)
- Uncategorized (4)
- Usability (38)
- Usability Testing (6)
- User Experience Design (37)
- User-Centered Design (15)
- Visual Design (16)
Archives
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- September 2012 (2)
- August 2012 (2)
- July 2012 (12)
- June 2012 (19)
- May 2012 (5)
- July 2011 (1)
- June 2011 (4)
- May 2011 (12)
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Category Archives: Psychology for UX Design
How to design software to encourage flow states, concentration, focus, and productivity
Many kinds of software, including productivity applications like word processors and spreadsheets, and enterprise information systems, are intended to be used for sustained periods of time. Such applications should encourage the user to focus and work productively. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi … Continue reading
Design techniques for reducing cognitive load
In the previous post, we argued that minimizing cognitive load is essential for creating an efficient and enjoyable user experience. Here are some design tips and techniques to consider for reducing cognitive load in your software product: Use consistent naming, labelling, … Continue reading
“Don’t make me think!”: Eliminating excise and reducing cognitive load
Users interact with a software application by means of physical actions, such as: Pressing individual keys or key combinations Sustained typing Precisely aiming a pointing device (homing the mouse pointer onto a target) Clicking the mouse or touching and gesturing … Continue reading
Communicating your mental model to the user: Design models and the system image
As a user interface designer, you’ll have a conceptual mental model in your mind of how the application works. In order for a user to be able to operate the application effectively, she will have to have a similar mental … Continue reading
Donald Norman’s design principles for usability
Donald Norman, in his book The Design of Everyday Things, introduced several basic user interface design principles and concepts that are now considered critical for understanding why some designs are more usable and learnable than others: Consistency One of the … Continue reading
How do users perform tasks, do work, and learn how to use software applications?
Users interact with software by performing physical actions with input devices such as keyboards, mice, touchscreens, and microphones. Graphical user interfaces present controls like buttons, sliders, and drop-down boxes, and the user performs actions on these controls, either directly by … Continue reading
