Style guides are a great way to ensure user experience consistency when developing an application and a way to communicate user experience standards across an organization. They can be application specific, platform specific, and may encompass enterprise-wide standards. A style guide can help make the development of user interfaces more efficient and help ensure good user interface design practices. … »

The Johnnies have asked me to write a monthly column about culture and concerns as they relate to cross-border user experience (UX), in Europe and beyond. This is an honour for someone born in Texas, USA (me) but probably seems odd to most everyone else (you). Let me share some background.

My father was Austrian. My mother’s family was German. The “Old World” wasn’t just a place in the memory of an aging grandparent and we certainly didn’t worship our ethnicity (as third- and fourth-generation Americans are apt to do). We travelled extensively every year (Rome and Florence were almost always on the … »

Here in Drupal7 User Experience Project land we’ve been moving from ‘iteration zero’ to the actual production iterations. In iteration zero we’ve been doing a lot of our strategic thinking and documenting, but now it is time to start producing output that the developers who are working with us on this project can turn into something that will be contributed to the Drupal7 Project. … »

UX, experience designer, experience strategy … as far as words go, right now everything around UX design is still up for grabs. However, by focusing on the process ‘The Project Guide to UX Design: For User Experience Designers in the Field or in the Making’ by Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler neatly sidesteps these sticky issues to deliver a fantastic handbook on the topic. … »

Some while ago Don Norman wrote an article called ‘The Psychology of Wating Lines.’ In it he described how to make the necessary experience of waiting pleasurable. For the past eight months I’ve experienced quite some delays on the airport…. So I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to write how airports and airlines fail Don Norman’s methods to create an enjoyable experience. … »

That is the title of a paper written by Donald Norman, of which the last revision was published on August the 21st, 2008. In it he comes with eight design principles for waiting lines. These principles aim at designing the most efficient waiting line which is the least painful for the people in it. The interesting thing about it is that these principles apply to all services. Therefore they can also be related to the findings of the research about progress bars which we’ve published earlier. … »

On physicalinterface.com there is an interesting article about the designproces of the new user interface for the Wells Fargo ATMs. These new designs make use of a touchscreen. An important improvement is the clear and fresh interface, and how the information is structured within the screens. It’s a combination of good information architecture and simple but clean design.To achieve this the designer and information architect had to work closely together to come up with a visual language which should not only be clear and informative, but should also feel very friendly. … »

We all know the feeling. You’re trying to install an application or scan in a picture and slow but steady the progress-bar keeps progressing… and then the moment of truth arrives. The bar approaches 99% and suddenly time seems to stop. Time after time you’ll end up frustrated. Well now they may have find a solution to that. … »

Current business conditions are unforgiving, and seem to be taking their toll on the social media industry, whether it’s in the mood on Sand Hill, in the decline of online advertising, or even in the prognosis for Web 2.0 at large. I’d like to attempt to capture the basics of social media user experience. For the business all of us are in, at the end of the day, hangs on the participation of users. … »