Author Archive
A Primer on A/B Testing
Data is an invaluable tool for web designers who are making decisions about the user experience. A/B tests, or split tests, are one of the easiest ways to measure the effect of different design, content, or functionality, helping you create high-performing user experience elements that you can implement across your site. But it’s important to make sure you reach statistically significant results and avoid red herrings. Lara Swanson shows us how to do that.
Making up Stories: Perception, Language, and the Web
Stories have been around as long as we have, helping us understand our world and ourselves. We learn and retain information best through stories, because they turn information into more than the sum of its parts. But what makes a story a story, and what does it mean for the digital world we’ve built? Elizabeth McGuane and Randall Snare weave an enchanting tale of attention, comprehension, inference, coherence, and shopping.
Web Governance: Becoming an Agent of Change
Shipping is easy, making real change is hard. To do meaningful web work, we need to educate clients on how their websites influence their business and the legal, regulatory, brand, and financial risks they face without strong web governance. Learn why web governance is important to us as web professionals and how to influence your clients to think carefully about how to align their websites to their business strategy.
Designing Fun
How do you define fun on the web? Fun means different things to different people. Debra Levin Gelman says that to create fun, we need to allow users to create, play, and explore. Learn how to help your client define fun, rank its importance on their site, and user test it to create a delightful experience, regardless of whether you're designing for suits and ties or the sandbox crowd.
The UX of Learning
Think of the last time you ordered a book, booked a flight, or bought a car. How did you choose which book to read, where to go for vacation, or which car was best for you? You may have searched online, read reviews, or asked others for advice to help you make an informed decision. In a word, you learned. Learning is a complex process with distinct stages, each with corresponding tasks and emotions. Understanding how users learn can help us design experiences that support the user throughout the entire process. To design better learning experiences online, start by learning a thing or two about learning itself.