Design for Community: An Interview with Derek M. Powazek

Derek M. Powazek has worked on community features for Netscape, Nike, and Sony, along with creating the community sites, {fray}, Kvetch!, and SF Stories. Christine Perfetti, a consultant at User Interface Engineering, recently talked with Derek about his experience. Here is what he had to say about creating effective online communities.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2002). Articles>Web Design>Community Building

Driving Innovation and Creativity through Customer Data

This article explores the foundations of designing for innovation. Karen Holtzblatt has created contextual inquiry, a practical, customer-centered approach that helps designers develop creative solutions that dominate the competition.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2002). Articles>Usability>Methods>Contextual Inquiry

Five Survival Techniques for Creating Usable Products

When we ask designers what stage they spend the bulk of their time in when launching a product, the majority of designers answer, the Implementation Stage. However, our research shows that the teams launching the most usable products on schedule and on budget spend the bulk of their time in the Measure and Learn stage.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2007). Design>Usability>User Interface>Methods

Five-Second Tests: Measuring Your Site's Content Pages

On your site, the content page is the user's most frequent final destination. This page contains the information the user came to the site to find. Sites often have hundreds, if not thousands (and in some cases, millions) of these critical pages. How can design teams be confident their content pages are understandable to users? How does a team ensure they've designed content pages that communicate the essential information effectively?

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2005). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Centered Design

Flash Strikes Back: Creating Powerful Web Applications

Flash is a powerful tool that offers developers huge capabilities. Until recently, developers mostly utilized Flash's strengths to create complex animations or fast-loading movies. However, the most recent versions of Flash offer developers power that's far beyond the tool's original scope. With the advent of Flash MX, we've seen that developers have the power to create web applications with more sophisticated client- and server-side interactivity. When integrated with sophisticated server-side software like ColdFusion Server and JRun, Flash delivers the power and flexibility to become a serious contender in the web application space.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2002). Design>Web Design>Interactive>Flash

Goal-Directed Design: An Interview with Kim Goodwin

Kim Goodwin is the General Manager and Vice President of Design at Cooper. The great folks at Cooper created an interaction design methodology known as Goal-Directed Design. Their methodology identifies the goals and behaviors of users and directly translates them into the design. UIE's Christine Perfetti recently had the chance to talk with Kim about her work and we've included an excerpt of their conversation below.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2007). Articles>Interviews>Web Design

Macromedia Flash: A New Hope for Web Applications  

Some new, cutting-edge applications have demonstrated Flash's potential to surpass the power of traditional software applications. These web applications leverage the strengths of Flash to help users make better sense of large amounts of data, presenting information in an easily accessible, graphical visual representation. In this white paper, we will explore how Flash can help developers easily build the next generation of web applications. We will also look at several new applications that have recently appeared on the scene and talk about how they leverage the benefits of Flash.

Perfetti, Christine and Jared M. Spool. User Interface Engineering (2004). Design>Web Design>Multimedia>Flash

Personas: Matching a Design to the Users' Goals  

Perfetti discusses the use of personas--profiles of archetypal users synthesized from interviews with real people--in product design.

Perfetti, Christine. Intercom (2002). Articles>Usability

Personas: Matching a Design to the Users' Goals

We hear all the time from designers that they're faced with the huge challenge of designing products and web sites for a large number of different users. Many designers tackle this problem by making the functionality of the web site or product as extensive as possible. To do this, they outline all of the goals of each user, identify any commonalities between these goals, and add all of the functionality needed to satisfy these common goals.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2001). Articles>Information Design>Usability

The Truth About Download Time

We hear all the time from web designers that they spend countless hours and resources trying to speed up their web pages' download time because they believe that people are turned off by slow-loading pages. What we discovered may surprise you.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability

Usability Testing Best Practices: An Interview with Rolf Molich

If you’ve done any usability testing, design evaluations, or heuristic inspections, then you’ve been affected by Rolf Molich's pioneering work.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods>Testing

Words Drive Action: An Interview with Gerry McGovern

Gerry McGovern is a world-renowned content-management expert and author of the books, 'Content Critical' and 'The Web Content Style Guide'. User Interface Engineering's Christine Perfetti and Josh Porter recently talked with Gerry about the importance of an editorial perspective in a web development process. Here is what Gerry had to say about his experiences.

Perfetti, Christine and Josh Porter. User Interface Engineering (2002). Articles>Content Management>Web Design

Snap Decisions on the Web

We’ve seen in testing that users make important judgments very quickly when they arrive at a web page. That’s one of the reasons we use 5-second tests as our primary technique for evaluating users’ first impressions.

Perfetti, Christine. User Interface Engineering (2006). Articles>Web Design

Guiding Users with Persuasive Design: An Interview with Andrew Chak

An easy way to define persuasive web design is to contrast it with usable design. Usability focuses on giving users the ability to complete a transaction if they so desire. A usable site makes it easy for users to complete transactions, from buying products to convincing users to read featured articles. Unfortunately, having a usable web site is not always enough to convince users to transact. Even if a user can complete a transaction on your site, doesn't mean that they will transact. To be successful, sites must go beyond Usability by focusing on Persuasive Design.

Perfetti, Christine and Andrew Chak. User Interface Engineering (2003). Articles>Interviews>Usability>Persuasive Design