ExperienceBlogger

Apr 11

Don't give up (you're on the right track)

Apr 10

[video]

Apr 09

Seth's Blog: On making a ruckus in your industry

Apr 05

Improve your startup's surveys and get even better data

Apr 02

User Experience Vision For Startups

Mar 29

Nail the Customer Development Manifesto to the Wall -

There Are No Facts Inside Your Building, So Get Outside
Pair Customer Development with Agile Development
Failure is an Integral Part of the Search for the Business Model
If You’re Afraid to Fail You’re Destined to Do So
Iterations and Pivots are Driven by Insight
Validate Your Hypotheses with Experiments
Success Begins with Buy-In from Investors and Co-Founders
No Business Plan Survives First Contact with Customers
Not All Startups Are Alike
Startup Metrics are Different from Existing Companies
Agree on Market Type – It Changes Everything
Fast, Fearless Decision-Making, Cycle Time, Speed and Tempo
If it’s not About Passion, You’re Dead the Day You Opened your Doors
Startup Titles and Functions Are Very Different from a Company’s
Preserve Cash While Searching. After It’s Found, Spend
Communicate and Share Learning
Startups Demand Comfort with Chaos and Uncertainty

Mar 28

9 Awesome Reasons to Use Infographics in your Content Marketing

Mar 25

Simplifying Frequently Executed User Actions

I could write a looooong post on this and cite a bunch of examples, but I think that because I’m posting this using Tumblr, I’ll just stick with their masterful execution of this design concept.

“Back to the Top” Button

If you use Tumblr for your blogging needs, I’m sure this looks familiar:

It’s the helpful button Tumblr displays after you’ve scrolled too far down on your dashbaord and want to get back to the top of the page. You click it, and “wooooooosh!”, you’re back at the top (side note: they actually force the scroll to occur, versus anchoring you back to the top — here’s a great site about using motion graphics in the user interface I posted about a few weeks ago: UI-Transitions.com).

Why is This Worth Writing About?

Think about it, how many times do you scroll all the way down on a page and there’s no “back to the top” link, and you waste several seconds scrolling back up?

Multiply that several seconds out for the thousands (or tens of thousands) of times you do that in a given month or year and you’ll see that you’re wasting valuable time (7 seconds x 10,000 scrolls per year = 70,000 seconds or almost 19 hours!) — I could’ve watched 2 seasons of The Wire in that amount of time! Some things in life are just more important than scrolling ;)

Tumblr’s implementation of this button is also really slick…

It’s not a permanent fixture on the page - it only appears after you scroll down. And it doesn’t appear until you’ve scrolled down past a certain point on the page, otherwise, it probably would just be faster to scroll back up (as opposed to moving your mouse cursor to the upper right corner and clicking the button).

Look for ways to implement features like this in your app — try to discover what seemingly simple actions your users execute most frequently and try to streamline them. It’s obviously not going to be a game changer for your product, but it’s one of those things that if done often and consistently enough, will improve the overall experience and perception of your product dramatically.

Mar 21

Storyboarding iPad Transitions

Mar 13

Sir Jonathan Ive: Interview with Apple's VP of Industrial Design