Archive for the “Development” category
Rapid Prototyping with Sinatra
by jpreardon on May 9, 2012
If you’re looking for a way to prototype an interface, especially one that would benefit from interacting with live data, having a lightweight and easy to use/learn backend is essential. Sinatra fits the bill nicely. It is a Ruby framework (…)
Recommended Data Visualization Tools
by jpreardon on May 8, 2012
There are a lot of tools available to help create data visualizations–so many that it may be difficult to know where to start. The people at datavisualization.ch have put together an extensive list of their recommended data visualization tools. Rather than (…)
Restaurant Menu UX
by jpreardon on May 2, 2012
Chances are, you’ve seen your fair share of restaurant menus, enough to appreciate the common elements presented in most menus. While the size, fonts and overall look and feel varies from place to place, the layout of the information generally (…)
Effective Task Design
by jpreardon on May 1, 2012
Jared Spool tells a tale about the importance of task design in user testing. Based on a real example, he speaks to word choice in a UX testing script and how it can skew results. If you’re interested in that, (…)
Formatting International Phone Numbers for Readability
by jpreardon on April 30, 2012
Have you ever tried to read an unformatted phone number? Reading a string of digits with no spaces or other delimiters is difficult. So much so that we tend to write them in a more digestible way. In North America, (…)
Managing Complex UX Deliverables
by jpreardon on July 21, 2011
Sometimes, people forget that the various UX deliverables on a given project are strongly interrelated. By this, I mean that a deliverable influences and informs downstream deliverables, while the downstream deliverables should support and expand on those that were created (…)
Advice for Small UX Teams
by jpreardon on July 20, 2011
Out of necessity, people on small user experience teams need to be generalists, especially when they are a team of one or two. UX Matters has some great pointers for small UX teams, from selling yourself to getting things done (…)
Metaphors for Explaining Pair Design
by jpreardon on July 19, 2011
It can be difficult to explain the ways by which things get created. The people at Cooper generally have two roles on their pair design teams: Generators and Synthesizers. But,this nomenclature may not go over so well “with parents or (…)
HOWTO: Tracking Social Engagement in Google Analytics
by jpreardon on July 18, 2011
The social engagement tracking in Google Analytics is great. Google +1 works by default if you use the +1 Button Creator. However, one needs to do a bit of configuration to get tracking working for other things like Twitter tweets (…)
Wireframe Primer
by jpreardon on July 16, 2011
Wireframes are old hat to anyone who has been working on web sites and applications for more than, say, 5 minutes. However, for those that aren’t involved in web design, wireframes can be a bit of a mystery. If you’re (…)