#27445
Ad Conversion Rate Influenced by Time (Not Click Rate)
Time is an important design variable to understand. Your user experience is effected by it no matter what user experience you are serving up and the rules are different for every context. For example, the "three click rule" (users must get to their destination within three clicks) applies to e-commerce primarily but not to mortgage education, financial services usability or reading the New York Times online.
Spillers, Frank. Demystifying Usability (2004). Design>Web Design>User Experience>E Commerce
#26519
Are Your Prospects Walking Out on You?
Learn how to write compelling copy that will keep your site visitors interested in what you're offering.
Gandia, Ed. Webcredible (2005). Design>Web Design>User Experience
#18395
Banner Blindness, Human Cognition and Web Design 
Benway and Lane have studied 'Banner Blindness' – the fact that people tend to ignore those big, flashy, colorful banners at the top of web pages. This is pretty interesting stuff, for the entire reason they are so big and obnoxious is to attract attention, yet they fail. Evidently nobody ever studied real users before -- they simply assumed that big, colorful items were visible. This paper, shows once again the importance of observations over logic when it comes to predicting human behavior. People behave the way they behave, not the way our logical analyses and wishes would have them behave. People follow their interests, their needs, their customs. They are driven by curiosity, boredom, emotion. And the 'they' refers to 'we': us.
Norman, Donald A. JND.org (1999). Design>Web Design>Usability>User Experience
#28688
Brand Experience in User Experience Design
As user experience professionals, we have the opportunity to work more closely with brand and marketing specialists to clearly articulate the brand perception we want to elicit from our customers. Brand perception is, in part, an expectation on the part of a customer regarding future interactions with a company and its products and services. To achieve our desired brand perception, we must consistently represent and deliver the brand values we have led customers to expect.
Baty, Steve. UXmatters (2006). Design>Web Design>User Experience>Marketing
#28535
Budgeting for Advertising and Customer Experience
The most effective companies realize that they can't succeed on advertising alone; the customer matters.
Hurst, Mark. uiGarden (2007). Articles>Web Design>Usability>User Experience
#30721
Charlie Kreitzberg on Web 2.0 and You
This is the recording of the presentation from the Catalyze Community monthly webcast featuring Charlie Kreitzberg on December 13, 2007. Charlie spoke on "Web 2 and You - How Web 2.0 Will Catapult Business Analysts and Usability Professionals into Center Stage" which examined his models for understanding Web 2.0 and explored the vast opportunities for professionals who define and design new software and websites.
Catalyze (2007). Design>Collaboration>User Experience>Web Design
#14202
We've learned that using a web site is a progressive process. Each user transitions from one stage to the next, as they work to accomplish their goal. The most pronounced transitions we've seen are on e-commerce sites. When we watch shoppers focusing on buying a product, we can clearly see each stage and when the transitions fail or succeed. By understanding the stages and how they work, we can learn a lot about building better sites.
User Interface Engineering (2002). Design>Web Design>User Experience>E Commerce
#27677
A weblog about web, user interface and user experience design.
Deshpande, Amit. Blogspot. Resources>Web Design>User Experience>Blogs
#31998
We create software and websites to display and represent information to people. That information could be anything; a company’s product list, pictures of your vacation, or an instant message from a friend. At this moment, there’s more information available to you than at any other time in history.
van Gorp, Trevor. Boxes and Arrows (2008). Design>Web Design>User Experience>Emotions
#30227
Designing for Nonprofits: User Experience Professionals Can Make a Difference in Society
As information architects, interaction designers, usability consultants, and developers, we don't have to change our careers to do something good for society. All we have to do is connect with the right nonprofit: One that shares our goals and whose mission we support.
Sanchez-Howard, Olga. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Web Design>User Experience
#23818
Many technology companies, consultants, and academics are hyping the future of Web services. But how will this background transfer of data between applications affect the user experience?
Lombardi, Victor. New Architect (2002). Design>Web Design>Content Management>User Experience
#29471
As user experience designers in an enterprise, we find ourselves knee deep in pixels. Should we use a dropdown element or a set of radio buttons? 10pt or 12pt size font? A broad-and-shallow or narrow-and-deep information architecture? While such design considerations are necessary and important, we miss huge user experience opportunities outside the webpage, outside the website, outside the browser. By tackling inter-application usability opportunities, user experience (UX) professionals can make things easier in a big way.
Padilla, Mike. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Design>Web Design>User Experience
#21730
The Elements of User Experience 
The Web was originally conceived as a hypertextual information space; but the development of increasingly sophisticated front- and back-end technologies has fostered its use as a remote software interface.
Garrett, Jesse James. JJG.net (2002). Articles>Information Design>User Experience>Web Design
#20255
It’s time for web designers to peek over the cubicle and start sharing ideas with their peers in related design disciplines. Jacobson suggests one way to do that in this overview of the emerging Experience Design paradigm.
Jacobson, Bob. List Apart, A (2000). Design>Web Design>Theory>User Experience
#26800
Flywheels, Kinetic Energy, and Friction
Whatever the purpose of the sites you work on, their success depends on visitors doing something. We want our visitors to sign up, or buy, or donate, or download, or apply, or post opinions, or pick up the phone and call us. One way or another if we are to judge our sites as being successful, they have to result in some kind of action on the reader's part.
Usborne, Nick. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>User Experience
#28899
Four Factors of Agile User Experience
One of the most important aspects of the work of designers do on a project is their ability to explain their choices and the reasoning that led to given design solutions--both to their clients and to other member of a product team. Clear communication is vital to the smooth progress of a project, as even a single misunderstanding or communication glitch can lead to mistakes during implementation.
Mascaro, Luca. UXmatters (2007). Design>Web Design>Agile>User Experience
#21307
At this point in experience design's evolution, satisfaction ought to be the norm, and delight ought to be the goal. As design professionals, how do we create opportunities for customer delight?
Hanna, Parrish. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>User Experience
#30205
Recent redesigns at Yahoo!, Microsoft Live Search, and Ask.com are providing graphically rich alternatives to the minimalist search giant.
Vella, Matt. BusinessWeek (2007). Design>Web Design>User Experience>Search
#30030
The High Price of Not Listening
Ever visited the website of a company with a glaring error either on the site or in their product, only to discover that they have successfully sealed themselves off from the world, so you can't report it? Sure you have, and it's not only causing you frustration, it's costing that company real money.
Tognazzini, Bruce. Nielsen Norman Group (2004). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>User Experience
#22667
How To Quantify the User Experience
How can you quantify a concept as nebulous as user experience? Rob's tutorial shows how you can statistically assess the experience a site provides - a great way to review a prospect's existing site and springboard redevelopment discussions.
Rubinoff, Robert. SitePoint (2004). Design>Web Design>User Experience>Log Analysis
#10614
The Iceberg Analogy of Usability
Developers sometimes ask which aspects of look and feel contribute most to the overall usability of an application or Web site. They are typically surprised when I answer that the 'look and feel' aspects aren't the major contributors at all. Look and feel have been popular discussion topics for many years, and some developers have proposed various schemes purporting to allow an easy swap of one look and feel for another. They were perhaps compelled to this thinking to compensate for an inadequate understanding of their users. Around 1990, I became alarmed by the popularity of design architectures advocating paradigms like the User Interface Management Systems (UIMS) that enable a pluggable look and feel. Many of my colleagues and I felt that look and feel represented only the tip of the iceberg. We felt that the set of concepts users must learn and understand to use a product or Web site effectively is actually the most important factor.
Berry, Dick. IBM (2001). Articles>Usability>User Experience>Web Design
#27358
Improving Customer Experience (ICE) started out as a paper newsletter back in 2001. Paper. How quaint.
#13370
Since HTML first became mainstream, with HTML version 2.0, there has been a struggle between the structure of a document and its presentation. This battle is symptomatic of two competing visions for the web.
King, Emmanuel Taylor. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Web Design>User Experience
#26564
An Introduction to User Journeys
User journeys are a method for conceptualising and structuring a website's content and functionality. These journeys allow us to shift away from thinking about structure in terms of hierarchies or a technical build; instead you create a narrative around your user's needs.
Hobbs, Jason. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>User Experience
#27009
Live by the Mockup, Die by the Mockup
Regardless of what you call it, the mockup can either sell your design or plummet you into a cyclical tunnel of churn. That's why, like it or not, interface designers often live and die by the mockup.
Wroblewski, Luke. UXmatters (2006). Design>Web Design>User Experience
