Articles about Technology
Building UX into Development: Create the Ultimate Customer Portal
A customer portal is more than just an add-on to a customer support team. Customer portals are like a second home to customers, helping them solve their problems on the go. User experience is crucial in designing a customer-centric portal and should be involved early in the development process. [Read More]
How Mental Health Apps Do (or Don’t) Support Some of COVID-19’s Most Vulnerable Populations
The emotional impact of the pandemic has taken its toll on people's mental health, which has greatly intensified the need for accessible and usable mental healthcare. The UW ALACRITY Center was given a grant by the US National Institute for Mental Health to study the acceptability, usability, and effectiveness of mental health apps for suicide prevention among essential workers and people experiencing unemployment during COVID-19. [Read More]
Best Practices for Asian Language Site Localization
Localizing your site for Asia may mean a radically different design, brand-new elements, or country-specific SEO. [Read More]
The Fourth Lens: Making Design Thinking Work for Digital Health
When designing healthcare experiences, we need to prove the effectiveness of our solutions as much as we need to consider their desirability, feasibility, and viability. [Read More]
Startups and UX: Relating Success to Good UX Practices
Research conducted on startups in Detroit, Michigan proves that the success of any startup hinges on the employment of UX to feed the ROI. [Read More]
IoT UX Challenges: Designing Unintentionally Stressful Experiences
Following certain principles for designing for IoT can help improve the user experience and relieve anxiety caused by technical breakdowns. [Read More]
Don’t Discount the Role of UX in IoT
The Internet of Things is not limited to a physical product connected to the Internet. It is an ecosystem with its own UX needs. [Read More]
The UX of AR: Toward a Human-Centered Definition of Augmented Reality
With augmented reality, the tech is typically put ahead of the user experience. We need to bring UX more prominently into the AR conversation. [Read More]
Getting a Grip on (Virtual) Reality: My Flights from (Conventional) Reality
Take a trip through different VR effects and how the combination of the technical platform and photography create them. [Read More]
Navigating the Cloud: A Usability Framework
As usage of cloud-based applications grows, usability professionals must define a framework that incorporates user needs into the cloud implementation process. [Read More]
Regaining Trust: What to Do AFTER a Security Breach
Handling a security breach has UX implications. Three case studies of how Home Depot, Wendy’s, and Omni Hotels responded to such incidents show how to maintain and regain customer trust after a breach. [Read More]
Corporate Training Alternative: eLearn at Your Place, Pace and Time
Personalized learning is key to progressive education and skill development. Digital technologies enable and enrich experiences across domains, and there’s plenty of potential for eLearning. [Read More]
The Joys of Labor and the Danger of Automation (Book Review)
A review of The Glass Cage by Nicholas Carr. An examination of the implications of automation for society and our work as designers. [Read More]
Interview with Sci-Fi Author Bruce Sterling: Alien-Computer Interfaces
Bruce Sterling talks about Hollywood, aliens, and how interfaces are depicted in sci-fi movies in a conversation about UX and sci-fi. [Read More]
Helping Software Learn: Designing for Recommendation Engines
Products based on personalized recommendations can make content more relevant and compelling, as long as they are designed to minimize effort for users and maximize transparency. [Read More]
Taxi! Service Design for New York’s Yellow Cabs
As digital information spaces augment physical places, new location-based services will emerge for riding cabs, as well as many other civic, urban, and commercial experiences. [Read More]
Interview with SF Author Rudy Rucker: Interfaces in Sci-Fi
Rudy Rucker talks about user interfaces from voice recognition, hand gestures, eye tracking, to his own invention that is activated by sub-vocal speech and mental commands. [Read More]
The Dystopian Experience: Technology and UX in Science Fiction
Dystopian sci-fi can make us more aware of the potential negative consequences of technology that we might not otherwise be able to imagine. [Read More]
The View from Here: Beyond Books
What will libraries be in the future as they go beyond books to embrace technology like streaming audio, video on demand and virtual reality? [Read More]
You Need an Outlet and a Browser: How Children Understand and Use the Internet
Children are not the most effective Web users and more research is needed to explore children’s mental models related to Internet use. [Read More]
The New Reality – Coming Soon
The increasing use of handheld devices with cameras, GPS, wireless Internet, and relatively large digital viewing screens has made Augmented Reality technology available to the general public en masse. [Read More]
What Does “Personal Computer” Mean? Communicating a New Paradigm
The PC is no longer the center of the digital universe. Soon service providers will offer desktop as a service to companies of all sizes. [Read More]
What’s News: Automating Baggage Handling
Using feedback from ground handling staff, RampMate was created, increasing efficiency and airport baggage tracking capabilities while decreasing handler injury rates. [Read More]
What’s News: No More Goofy Glasses
Three-dimensional (3-D) movies may soon become more mainstream thanks to technologies that are making 3-D viewing more user-friendly. [Read More]
Access in Africa: A Personal Perspective
A digitizing project highlighted additional accessibility challenges for many in Africa: a lack of the basic infrastructure that the Global North takes for granted. [Read More]
Universal Life: Multi-User Virtual Environments for People with Disabilities
It’s necessary to consider the benefit that barrier-free virtual environments provide for people with disabilities in terms of pain management, distraction, and socialization. [Read More]
What’s News: Blio Software: E-reader = Easy to Read?
Blio, designed to make e-books accessible to the visually impaired, allows users to read, or have read to them, e-books on regular computers or handheld devices. [Read More]
What’s News: New Computer Technologies to Be Rolled Out
Flexible, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display technology is about to revolutionize the world of portable computing, making mobile phones lighter and more durable. [Read More]
What’s News: Hey Good Lookin’
The marketing campaign for TriSpecs™ is focused on user experience as the key selling feature, however the website itself is not a great model of usability. [Read More]
Making Forms Accessible: Accessible Forms Help all Users
Development of an accessible pdf form for students with disabilities that provides both the required level of usability and accessibility and the necessary backend features. [Read More]
Finding Uses For New Technology: Moving with a Magic Thing
The user cannot always be the starting point for new products but involving users provides us with a way to find applications for technology-driven innovations. [Read More]
Radio Frequency Identification: How User Expertise Can Make a New Technology Welcome
Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is a good example of how user experience professionals can influence the adoption of new technology. [Read More]
What’s News: Speck-tacular Computers
A group of computer science, electronic engineering, and physics professors is developing a system of tiny programmable semiconductor specks that can work together to sense, compute, and network wirelessly. [Read More]
