An Audience of One: Creating Products for Very Small Workgroups

As creators of digital user experiences, we must transform complex workflows and tasks into useful applications. Experts have written much about the UX design process as it applies to broad audiences, industry-specific vertical markets, and large corporate user groups. However, as our evolving information economy continues to encourage greater and greater specialization of job roles, there is an increased need for customized applications--digital systems that only a select few people will ever use.

Follett, Jonathan. UXmatters (2007). Design>User Interface>Collaboration

Elephants in the Living Room: The Destructive Role of Denial in Web Design

Four of your fellow development team members, all trying to do their specific jobs to the best of their abilities, have the power to sink your best effort at interaction design. As an interaction designer, it is your job to see they don't do so. (If you are not an interaction designer, read on anyway; you may be surprised to learn that you may be part of the problem.)

Tognazzini, Bruce. Nielsen Norman Group (2000). Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Collaboration

Reduce Redundancy: Decrease Duplicated Design Decisions

User interface complexity increases when a single feature or hypertext link is presented in multiple ways. Users rarely understand duplicates as such, and often waste time repeating efforts or visiting the same page twice by mistake.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Design>User Interface>Collaboration

Why is it so Hard to Make Products that People Love?

Why do so many good designs get trampled during the product development process? If everyone is trying to create something good for their customers, why is the development process so rife with disagreements and compromises that actually hurt businesses in the long run? If everyone has the same good intentions, can't the business people just make up their minds about what kind of product they want to create and let design create the right solution?

Adlin, Tamara and John Pruitt. Gain: AIGA Journal of Business and Design (2006). Design>User Interface>Collaboration