This is an article I wrote for the Guidewire Design Blog.
Designing usable, intuitive interfaces in any context is difficult, but enterprise software — large-scale systems used by businesses to manage operations such as accounting, people management, or customer data — presents unique challenges. During my own UX career, I’ve worked in both consumer and enterprise environments. Continue Reading
If you’re a designer joining a sales-led organisation, forget everything you know about putting UX into practice!
Product design and UX books, articles, courses, and other training materials typically assume you’re in a product-led, possibly B2C, environment. But the reality in a sales-led B2B SaaS company is starkly different, presenting unique challenges and opportunities. Continue Reading
In the early stages of web design and later UX design, designers typically flew solo. They were either freelancing or were the only designer in their team or even the whole company.
Tools of that era reflected this solitude – designers would create mockups in PowerPoint and hand them over to developers, complete with specs about paddings, spacings, alignments, etc. Continue Reading
Measuring success is one of the challenges in leading a modern Product Design team, which encompasses roles like Product Designer, UX Researcher, and UX Writer. Continue Reading
Knowing what to measure can be difficult. You can’t track everything. Even if you could, where do you get the data?
Remote working has reshaped product design. As the Head of Product Design at a remote-first SAAS company, I’ve seen firsthand the ups and downs of remote collaboration. Despite some challenges, the benefits are clear, and I wouldn’t want to go back to a traditional office setup. Continue Reading
Following my previous two posts (A Book That Inspired Me and A Book That Made Me Think), let me share another story about a book that has impacted my life and career. Continue Reading
Nearly 20 years ago, I stumbled upon Robert B. Cialdini’s “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” in a friend’s house.
In my role as a Head of Product Design, I’m passionate about making software more usable. I can trace this passion back to year 2000, when I was managing a design team on an online banking project in Edinburgh. To guide us, we hired a human computer interaction (HCI) consultant — loosely equivalent to what we now call a UX Researcher. Continue Reading
Twenty-odd years ago, I found myself in the transient space of an airport between business flights, where I chanced upon a book that would leave a lasting impact on my design career. Continue Reading
Paul Arden’s “It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be” sat unassumingly on a crowded bookshelf, raising my curiosity with its enigmatic cover and audacious claim, “The world’s best selling book by Paul Arden.”
Having built more than one design team over the years, I’ve sifted through numerous CVs and portfolios. Within seconds, I form a gut feeling about a designer that is usually validated as I review their work. Continue Reading
To help you make an outstanding first impression, here are my tips for crafting a compelling product design portfolio.
Since my own childhood in the 1970s and 1980s, there’s been a significant change in how kids explore the world around them.
Back then, we would roam and play outdoors until darkness fell. If someone was needed at home, a sibling was sent to fetch them. Continue Reading
It’s easy to think that writing created by AI might push independent authors out of the picture. But I believe it could do just the opposite. Hear me out! Continue Reading
The more AI writes, the more people might value stories only humans can tell. When AI-written content is everywhere, the personal touch of human writers could become a rare and valuable thing.
While usability testing is now standard practice in consumer software development, enterprise software still poses challenges for those seeking to conduct usability testing, including
Enterprise software products typically have fewer users than consumer software products, so you’re likely to be recruiting from a limited pool. Continue Reading
Error handling is too often an overlooked aspect of UX design. Removing the pain from error experiences is critical because if a user encounters an error, they are probably already frustrated.
Error messages expose the interface. A well-designed interface becomes invisible; the user is not thinking about the interface but about her tasks. So Continue Reading
When clients tell me they want to make an app, the question I ask is: why?
The potential rewards of creating a successful app are huge. The internet has recently crossed the mobile tipping point; in the US alone, adults now spend more time accessing digital media from their mobiles than from desktops. Continue Reading
The first book I bought on web design, in 1998, was The Principles of Web Design by Jeffrey Veen. Jeff’s tips included how to create a striped web page background using by repeating a single-pixel GIF as a pattern in the HTML code (CSS hadn’t really caught on yet).
Today’s designers face different constrains and challenges. Continue Reading
The video above shows a simple prototype for an Android Wear app, running on an an LG G watch R, which I created within a few hours of coming up with the concept — with ZERO CODING.
The idea of the app is to show the user the names (and faces) of other people attending a meeting. Continue Reading
Initial client meeting…
Client: “We’d like you to conduct user testing of our website.”
Me: “Great.”
Client: (Laughs.) “And don’t worry. We’ve got thick skins. We want honest, open feedback.”
Later, in a worskshop to discuss the findings…
Me: The users I tested loved the “Try it Now FREE” button on the homepage. Continue Reading
After you’ve done usability testing, or got user feedback of any kind, what should you work on? Most people prioritise low-hanging fruit. Clients ask me if there are “quick wins”.
But a better question to ask is “What is most broken?” Continue Reading
I’ve written previous posts about how I use Balsamiq Mockups to create wireframes and prototypes, and my methods for usability testing.
But these are parts of a bigger process — to get from an idea to a finished website, application or software product.
When a new client engages me to work with them on a new design (or redesign) project, they are keen to know “What method did you use?”. Continue Reading
Many of my clients have never previously carried out usability testing. Even when I tell them about how successful testing has been for my other clients, I can sense that they are nervous. For many people, usability testing feels like a step into the unknown. Continue Reading
I recently completed a fascinating usability study with the help of Dr. Stephan Weibelzahl and Sara Kyofuna at NCI in Dublin. Here is a report of our findings. NCI will be publishing an academic paper on the study.
Question: Are interactive infographics better than spreadsheets? Continue Reading
Study: In an eye-tracking study involving 32 participants, User Journeys (my company) and National College of Ireland compared two interactive infographics to their tabular data (spreadsheet) equivalents.
Last night I released Happy Shapes – a free Android game for kids.
Here is how it all came about.
Originally, I had the desire to create a software product. After months of wrangling with complex wireframes, I realised the development was going to cost $$$. Continue Reading
Comedian Eddie Izzard has a funny routine about ticking the “I have read the terms and conditions” box.
“Even God,” quips Izzard, “has not read the terms and conditions!”
The terms and conditions tick-box is a charade. Companies know that users do not read the linked-to T&Cs, which are often many pages of legalese. Continue Reading
In the age of the smartphone, tablet, and other touch screen electronic devices, is this the end of the physical (non-virtual) keyboard?
I recently noticed a clue to the answer when shopping for a tablet device. Many of the manufacturers offered cases that came bundled with USB keyboards. Continue Reading
People sometimes ask, “what’s the difference between user experience (UX) and usability?”. Let me try to explain, by borrowing from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Let us assume that the user of any software has three hierarchical types of needs:
1. The software must work; it must be functional. Continue Reading
Updated: Oct 2023
I’ve noticed that many companies spend too much time and money on mobile apps; and not enough time considering their mobile web presence. With the rise of smartphones, mobile-responsive design is more than just a trend – it’s a necessity.
A critical principle to embrace is: adapt to the user’s screen size. Continue Reading
When your website is not achieving its projected sales targets, your first instinct will probably be “get more traffic”.
But those striving to grow online sales tend to focus too much on generating new visitors, while neglecting the experience of visitors on the site. Continue Reading
As the old saying goes: You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Web designers everywhere are adding ‘infographics’ to their list of services. Here’s an infographic to illustrate the rise in infographics.
A decade ago, most websites betrayed a lack of understanding of basic usability principles; so it is with today’s infographics.
This was starkly evident when Smashing Magazine recently published The Do’s And Don’ts Of Infographic Design:
Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and produce a traditional bar graph or pie chart; nevertheless, always consider ways to dress it up…
The article was met with horror by the data visualization community. Continue Reading
Data, data, everywhere. It comes from public bodies, social networks, personal devices, healthcare systems, media sources, etc. The technological revolution of the last two decades has cracked open wellsprings of data that never stop giving.
Data visualization will be an important craft/technology over the coming years. Continue Reading
Update August 2015: Now HTML5 lets you validate forms without the need for any JavaScript. See: http://www.the-art-of-web.com/html/html5-form-validation/
Here’s the original article, for posterity:
One way of making web forms less painful is to use inline validation.
This jQuery plugin makes it easy for designers and developers to add inline validation to web-based forms. Continue Reading
Update: Oct 2023 — UX Design has evolved a lot since I wrote this article but I’m keeping it here for posterity, to reflect my thinking at the time. Continue Reading
The Comic Sans font has often been derided as the font choice of amateurs, but it is useful for creating mockups.
Starting January 2011, I am adding new blog entries exclusively on this site.
You can still view my old blog Mediajunk.com, which I started back in 2002, on the Wayback machine (2002 to 2011). I no longer own that domain.
— Michael Heraghty Continue Reading