Fifteen Tips for Remote Collaboration

It will always be easier to rally a group of people who work in the same building, but you can accomplish just as much (or more) with a motivated remote team. Getting team members motivated in the first place and holding their interest are your goals. Here are fifteen quick and useful tips to get you started.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2003). Careers>Collaboration>Online

Keep Office Politics Out of Your Design

Everyone has an opinion about design. If your debate is based only on opinions, the person with the most power always wins. Almost always. The team that has rational support for its conclusion can trump power and opinion. User research can give you concrete proof that one direction is better than another.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2003). Design>Web Design>Assessment

Site Navigation: A Few Helpful Definitions

Every site has structure, and visitors will form their first and most lasting impressions of that structure by looking at the links, buttons, tabs, and other controls that form the “navigation.” As designers, we’re very concerned with creating a navigation scheme and interface that makes it easy for the user to understand what they can do and where they can go. But collaborating with your team on the design of a navigation system can be difficult unless you all share the same vocabulary when talking about the different parts that make up the navigation UI.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Site Navigation: Keeping It Under Control

Site navigation is the structure of the site, and is presented as a globally present set of selections on your pages. These selections normally appear in a header, sidebar, or footer; the rest of the page displays content. Navigation is the section of the page that controls what appears in this content area. The beauty of this is that the page content is malleable. The architecture is not, and should represent a strong, extensible foundation that will last at least ten years. It's like building out floors in an office building. You can change the functionality of the floors as needed without changing the structure of the building. Global navigation is often divided into two or three sections: primary, utility, and footer navigation. Primary navigation supports the main tasks the user has in mind when he or she comes to the site. Utility navigation provides tools for the user that will support the main tasks, but are not tasks themselves. Footer navigation contains 'small print' and other links, defined by convention. Secondary navigation can appear when the user selects one of the global navigation items.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability

Task-Based Audience Segmentation

Design research is something that is widely practiced to produce anything from a better version of tax software to a new toy for kids. Its purpose is to understand customers (users) and match products to them. To date, most corporate and nonprofit research has focused either on persuading someone towards a 'purchase decision' or asking current users what they’d like added to a product.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2005). Design>Usability>Audience Analysis

User Research Abroad: Handle Logistics in Four Easy Steps

In our industry, we are often asked to conduct non-directed interviews by telephone with audiences around the globe. This presents several logistical challenges.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2004). Articles>Usability>Audience Analysis>International

Look at it Another Way

Seeing the same thing from different perspectives is much praised but little practiced. We don’t often realize what we can gain by seeing another scene in the picture.

Young, Indi. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration>Information Design

Site Navigation: A Few Helpful Definitions

Every site has structure, and visitors will form their first and most lasting impressions of that structure by looking at the links, buttons, tabs, and other controls that form the “navigation.” As designers, we’re very concerned with creating a navigation scheme and interface that makes it easy for the user to understand what they can do and where they can go. But collaborating with your team on the design of a navigation system can be difficult unless you all share the same vocabulary when talking about the different parts that make up the navigation UI.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2002). Articles>Web Design>Information Design

Fifteen Tips for Remote Collaboration

It will always be easier to rally a group of people who work in the same building, but you can accomplish just as much (or more) with a motivated remote team. Getting team members motivated in the first place and holding their interest are your goals. Here are fifteen quick and useful tips to get you started.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Telecommuting

Is Your Homepage Immature?

Every large corporation has a marketing strategy that outlines what it wants to say to customers, but many of them still aren’t using their homepages effectively to highlight that message.

Young, Indi. Adaptive Path (2005). Articles>Web Design>Business Communication>Marketing