“This became my mantra: look at my product for the first time, every time. It meant spending a lot of time in the usability lab. But it was a simplifying assumption that helped solve the problem for the three user segments.” From The trinity of product design by Tom Tunguz. /via @dcancel

Continue Reading: The trinity of product design

One of the best reads of 2012 is The best interface is no interface by Golden Krishna. Golden makes a call-to-action to actually get rid of UI by designing more elegant interactions. He extols three principles that help build this framework: Eliminate interfaces to embrace natural, everyday processes. Leverage computers instead of catering to them. […]

Continue Reading: The best interface is no interface

Over at the HBR blog Michael Schrage reacts to how Samsung outsells Apple by an increasing margin while engagement is much higher on iPhones by concluding “Designing a great device is not the same as designing a great user experience” and tells us “don’t confuse engagement with user experience”. I think we can loosely equate […]

Continue Reading: Don’t confuse engagement sales data with user experience

I’ve written before about why you might want to bury your signup button. Here’s another case study that found the same: “One big lesson learned: for software product like us, the primary call-to-action should be the demo/trial, not the checkout/purchase. Because most of the visitors are first-time visitors and they want to focus on learning […]

Continue Reading: ‘Try demo’ increases clickthroughs over ‘Buy now’

Google Ventures UX Researcher Michael Margolis makes an incredibly valuable point: treat your competitor’s software as prototypes. Run usability tests on the apps to see what’s working and what isn’t. Show your users a competitor’s marketing website to see what messages resonate or not. Compare and contrast the experience. Published on DesignStaff…probably the best blog […]

Continue Reading: Your competitors are free prototypes

Don’t agree with all of this, but this Seth Godin piece on customers who care has some gems in it, like this: “It’s totally okay for an organization to have the mission of making a carefree, ubiquitous product or service for people too busy or focused elsewhere. Totally fine to make something that’s popular largely […]

Continue Reading: The cycle of customers who care

Solid piece by Des Traynor. I like the question “what jobs does X do?” because it makes your design (in this case advertising) work for its meal. If you know what jobs it does, you can objectively measure it. Also, includes a helpful framework: “Young stated five reasons companies advertise their products: to familiarise, remind, […]

Continue Reading: What Jobs Does Advertising Do?

Good piece by Gerry McGovern on designing for tasks not engagement. Money quote: “Traditional marketing is about getting attention but online marketing is about giving it.” I don’t agree with Gerry’s conclusion that engagement is a bad metric…it depends on what you define as engagement. If reading marketing copy = engagement, then yeah, that’s a […]

Continue Reading: Customer engagement is not a good metric

Nice bio in the NYTimes of the elusive Maria Popova (aka @brainpicker). I’m a big fan of her blog, Brain Pickings. Maria is a master curator of cool stuff.

Continue Reading: Maria Popova Has Some Big Ideas

Good design advice here. However, I balk when I read “go out and do some research to better understand their audience”. I know it’s true, and designers who have done it know how valuable research is, but I know far too many product people who just don’t do it. How do you convince people to […]

Continue Reading: Product design advice from Instagram’s Mike Krieger