Organizing Your Global Corporate Intranet
November 10, 2006
In our line of business, we're often asked to help corporations reorganize their employee intranets. With the permission of our... Read more »
Is Your Homepage Immature?
October 20, 2005
"...looking at a company's homepage is like reading its palm..." This truism appeared in a recent Business Week article about... Read more »
Task-Based Audience Segmentation
May 23, 2005
Design research is something that is widely practiced to produce anything from a better version of tax software to a new toy for kids. Its purpose is to understand customers (users) and match products to them. To date, most corporate and nonprofit research has focused either on persuading someone towards a "purchase decision" or asking current users what they'd like added to a product. But smart organizations now want more: they expect design research to solve the sophisticated problem of meeting users' broader goals. Read more »
User Research Abroad: Handle Logistics in Four Easy Steps
September 16, 2004
In our industry, we are often asked to conduct non-directed interviews by telephone with audiences around the globe. There are simple, clear ways to accommodate linguistic, cultural, and monetary differences when conducting user research. Follow these four easy steps for a successful interview abroad. Read more »
Six Steps to Better Interviews and Simplified Task Analysis
February 16, 2004
I spend a lot of time helping clients conduct task analysis to form mental-model diagrams. When teams first start analyzing the interview transcripts they've collected, they often run into a confidence issue. 'How will we know if we get the task groups right?' Read more »
Keep Office Politics Out of Your Design
July 28, 2003
You spend hours in design meetings debating, and then a single word from management squashes your decision. Your design debates go on for weeks because of office politics. What can you do? Read more »
Fifteen Tips for Remote Collaboration
May 6, 2003
It will always be easier to rally a group of people who work in the same
building, but you can accomplish just as much (or more) with a motivated
remote team. Here are fifteen quick and useful tips to get you started. Read more »
Site Navigation: Keeping It Under Control
April 16, 2003
If users feel like they can explore your site without getting hopelessly lost, they're more likely to spend time there. That translates into good things, like more revenue, better communication, and more information sharing. Read more »
Site Navigation: A Few Helpful Definitions
September 3, 2002
Collaborating with your team on the design of a navigation system can be difficult unless you all share the same vocabulary when talking about the different parts that make up the navigation UI. Read more »