Some designers think User-Centered Design (UCD) is a “philosophy”—one to be developed and nurtured throughout an organization, from the ground up. It’s not. First, a little perspective on UCD and its friends. UCD, Activity-Centered Design (ACD), Goal-Directed Design (GDD), the unfortunately named “Genius Design” (GD), and others have many things in common, but they also have [...]

There are 2 things every team can do right now to improve their chances of producing great results. 1. Designate a design dictator. We all know that design-by-committee leads to subpar results. “Building consensus”, as many designers so eloquently put it, is just another way of saying that the team is willing to make and accept inferior [...]

Yesterday, Jared Spool (UIE) posted a fantastic article about the subtleties of interaction design. And he was dead on. Great interaction design isn’t just about task flows, features sets, and layouts. It’s about all those tiny details that make each and every interaction understandable and (hopefully) enjoyable. These are the things that lead to a great [...]