Design That Works.

#ItsNotAboutYou

“Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all,” Ancient One tells Dr. Strange. “It’s not about you.” Let me break this down into four key lessons that this particular arrogant and fearful fool had to learn the hard way.

What is the $1 Prototype Mobile Design Methodology? (Book Excerpt)

The state of your prototype must reflect the state of completion of your system. This simple guideline is also very profound. The degree of certainty in your design should be reflected in the level of completion of your prototype. The project starts with a rough storyboard which is highly uncertain and full of assumptions: no one knows if
the audience will find the product useful, if they will pay for it, or even if the product can (or should) be built.

How to Easily Prototype Your Android L Material Designs: TripAdvisor App Case Study

In my workshops, often the greatest challenge for designers is converting their existing Android designs to the new Material Design approach—making the interface both simpler and more visually rich than their corresponding Android 4.x designs, as well as laying out the “happy path” for the customers (using Floating Action Button or FAB, as one of the tools). The following sticky note wireframes demonstrate my quick take on converting the Android 4.x TripAdvisor app into Material Design using $1 Prototype methodology — perfect for prototyping Android Material Designs.

Visual Guide to Android L Material Design: 7 Insights Every Serious Designer Needs to Know

Material Design is a new Google design language that Google hopes to port to everything from mobile phones and tablets to websites and desktop apps. Here are 7 hard-won insights from 4 Material Design workshops I recently facilitated with my top clients in Argentina, Abu Dhabi and United States.

Let Them Pee: Avoiding the Sign-Up/Sign-In Mobile Antipattern

Anything that slows down customers or gets in their way after they download your app is a bad thing. That includes sign-up/sign-in forms that show up even before potential customers can figure out if the app is actually worth using.

Three essentials of Android design DNA

For many years since its release, the Android OS has been behaving like a teenager in the grip of raging hormones. Growth has been nothing short of explosive and the changes have been sweeping and profound. With the release of Ice-Cream Sandwich OS, the UI standards and design elements have changed dramatically and the platform has really matured and even stabilized somewhat. Nevertheless, the OS has retained it’s rebellious hacker DNA with unique features that are authentically Android.

Mobile Welcome UX Antipattern: End User License Agreement (EULA)

Like the overzealous zombie cross-breed between a lawyer and a customs agent, End User License Agreements (EULAs) require multiple forms to be filled out in triplicate, while keeping the customers from enjoying the app they have so laboriously invested time and flash memory space to download.

Android, Siri and Tangible Future of Voice Search UX

Today, Apple announced a bunch of enhancements to Siri and voice search. How does Siri UX compare with Android 4.0? What’s just around the corner for Voice Search? Don’t tell your phone or tablet anything else until you’ve read the article.

HULT University Course: Advanced User Experience * July 2 – August 3, 2011 * San Francisco, CA

Course Description This course teaches how to create best-of-class cross-channel customer experiences on the mobile, tablet and web. Using Mobile-First design principles, students will learn the practical modern UX methods and best design approaches for each channel, with special focus on critical elements of mobile apps, search, navigation, forms and workflows. Although no technical expertise …

Digital Cream * June 19, 2012 * San Jose, California

E-Consultancy’s exclusive invitation-only roundtable event, Digital Cream San Jose is an opportunity for senior client-side digital marketers to discuss best practice and the reality of digital marketing with the industry’s ‘cream of the crop’.

The event is designed to help you meet your peers and learn from each other about the latest best practice, what’s working and what’s not.

It’s a ‘hands-on’ participatory event: you will network and learn through discussion, roundtables and debate. Attend FREE as my guest by subscribing to Mobile and Tablet Design Secrets.

Cross Channel UX Elements Framework

The Cross Channel UX Elements framework is a practical design tool you can use to create “Magic Moments” of flow and delight for your customers across the different channels in a more deliberate fashion, rather than arriving at great designs only through occasional happenstance.

Mobile Magic Moments: Transform the Trivial

When mobile or tablet design is executed well, the device feels like the extension of our bodies. Because interfaces respond even before we consciously give them a command. Often, the interface “dissolves in behavior” and we feel empowered, as though the device we hold in our hand is the equivalent of Iron Man’s suit of cybernetic armor, or Batman’s utility belt. I call this empowering experience a “Magic Moment”.

Virtual Seminar: Cross-Channel Design: Magic Mobile Moments

Why do some million-dollar apps fail, while simple apps like Instagram make billions? The answer is “Magic Moments”. And on May 16th, the author of best-selling book “Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Success” will show you how to create “Magic Moments” in your own Mobile and Tablet apps.

NOTE: Not for beginners. The Expert Strategy(TM) Series is aimed at mastery of advanced design principles.

Virtual Seminar: QR Codes That Convert: Mobile UX Strategies for Success

“The QR Codes that Convert webinar has already paid for itself. I was able to tweak a client’s QR campaign today, using what I learned, and it started increasing their customer engagement right away. I would recommend this webinar to anyone using QR codes in their marketing campaigns or anyone advising clients who use QR Codes.” – Marty Diamond, Diamond Website Conversion

You can view the recording made April 6th, 2012.

Don’t Put a QR Code on Your Business Card

… until you read this article. I had a QR code on my business card for years, and studied how to engage people after the initial QR Code scan, and how to drive tangible value. Here I will reveal everything I learned about using QR Codes for personal and social connection, including using special formats like MECARD, and the secrets of linking to Twitter, LinkedIn, blog posts and custom landing pages.

Why we don’t do mobile usability tests (and neither should you)

In my experience, mobile usability tests, as they are popularly conducted, are a waste of time and resources and in vast majority of cases fail to lead to creation a better mobile product. Instead, I conduct RITE (Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation) studies: the only methodology that I’ve actually experienced in the real life yielding more delightful, usable and successful mobile products in less time.

IA Summit * March 21 – 25, 2012 * New Orleans, Louisiana

Cross-Channel Search: Design Approaches for Mobile and Tablet
The rise of smartphones and tablets is an unprecedented opportunity for all kinds of search to escape traditional limits and become the single best way to access information. In context. Real-time. Come hear practical tips for designing search with tap-ahead, geo-location, still image and video input, voice and unprecedented personalization… While juggling crushing constraints: limited screen real estate, fat fingers, spotty connections, multi-tasking and shortened attention span. From the author of “Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Success” (Wiley, 2011).

7 Ways to Whip Up Viral Value Through QR Codes: #6 Connect Through Social Networks (Part 1 of 2)

Installment #6 shows how to deliver QR code value by allowing your customers to connect to your company through social networks. As of the date of this writing, many companies have been implementing their social mobile engagement strategy by putting printed Facebook and Twitter “buttons” on everything from print advertising to packaging. We think QR codes offer a much better solution. This is Part 1 of the article: 6 Reasons Printed Buttons Must Die.

Mobile Websites, Tablet Apps and Hybrids: 7 Mobile Strategy Tips for 2012

Sites like YouTube and Facebook are already projecting mobile use to surpass desktop use as early as *this year*. What’s your mobile and tablet strategy? Allow me to humbly present the wisdom I got from the experience of walking the last 365 miles. Barefoot. In the snow. Uphill both ways.

Enterprise Search Summit Fall * November 1-3, 2011 * Washington, DC

Ubiquitous Enterprise Search: New Design Approaches for Mobile and Tablet
Lessons from ecommerce and other consumer-oriented mobile designs will provide practical strategies on managing the high-risk mobile search investment and growing the scope of enterprise search offerings.

ScketchCamp Chi * October 22, 2011 * Chicago, IL

Agile Mobile Design Sketching
In this intensive, hands-on session, participants will learn how to use a pack of post-it notes to successfully simulate a mobile device and re-create and study key interactions, transitions and touch-screen control ergonomics cheaply, quickly and accurately. Participants will walk away with a set of completed paper-prototype screens of their next app, ready for testing.

Designing for Mobile & Tablet Workshop * October 21, 2011 * Milwaukee, WI

Today, mobile experiences are beginning to dominate our connection with technology. Stories we read. Places we go. Stuff we buy. Food we eat. Who we interact with. Mobile is increasingly becoming the platform, the operating system on which we run our digital lives. In this intensive hands-on full-day workshop, you will learn to design authentic mobile and tablet websites and apps that deliver experiences your customers will love to come back to again and again. And create a return on investment that will make your business people tremble with greed.

Designing for Kindle Fire and iPad? What you need to know now.

How would an experience on a 7-inch tablet (like Amazon’s Kindle Fire) differ from one on a 9.7-inch tablet like the iPad? How does the size of the tablet device play into the application design, and how the user interacts with the device? Do smaller 7-inch tablets have the potential to be as popular as the larger iPad, from a user experience perspective?

Practical Ecommerce Search: UX Strategies for Success

I wrote the definitive book on the subject: “Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Success”. In this workshop, I help you understand and create a cross-channel digital search strategy and show you how to improve the search experience through practical, intuitive interface design patterns that create 10X or more in ROI.

Mobile Auto-Suggest on Steroids: Tap-Ahead Design Pattern

In contrast to desktop Web search, auto-suggest on mobile devices is subject to two additional limitations: typing avoidance and slower bandwidth. The new patent-pending design pattern, Tap-Ahead, uses continuous refinement to create an intuitive, authentically mobile auto-suggest solution. This helps dramatically reduce the amount of typing needed to enter queries, and utilizes slower mobile bandwidth in the most efficient manner. Using this novel design pattern, your customers can quickly access thousands of popular search term combinations by typing just a few initial characters.

Immersive Mobile E-Commerce Search Using Drop-Down Menus

Specialized drop-down menu are one of the ways of creating immersive experience in mobile e-commerce search UIs. A novel design pattern, status bar drop-down menu, allows 100% of the screen real estate to be dedicated to search results, while also providing convenient and intuitive access to navigation and filter functions.

Storyboarding iPad Transitions

In confined mobile computing interfaces, on tablet devices or in complex virtual environments, transitions are an authentic, minimalist way of enabling way-finding, displaying system state and exposing crucial functionality – in short, they are key in creating a superior user experience. Here is how to storyboard transitions quickly using Post-it notes.

Designing Brand Landing Pages for Mobile Devices

People love to search by brand names. On the small screens of mobile devices, well-designed landing pages can provide a much better experience than keyword search results. This makes brand landing pages today’s biggest sleeper opportunity for mobile and tablet ecommerce. But you have to learn to be completely ruthless with your features and content. Here’s how.

The Silicon Valley iOS Developers’ Meetup * January 19, 2011 * LinkedIn Headquarters, Mountain View, CA

Designing a Resourceful Mobile Search Experience
“Greg was very knowledgeable and had numerous examples to demonstrate his concepts. Definitely worth my time.”
“Very interesting and insightful talk. We need more Greg’s in the world!”
“Thanks Greg for a top notch presentation on mobile UX.”

Design4Mobile * September 20-24, 2010 * Chicago, IL

Designing Resourceful Mobile E-Commerce Search
Mobile search presents a compelling story in its own right, with it’s own experience considerations and tremendous opportunities. To help illustrate what creates a resourceful and intuitive mobile search experience, I will present the best material from my upcoming book, Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Success due out from Wiley in Spring 2011.

Design Patterns for Mobile Faceted Search: Part II

In Part I of Design Patterns for Mobile Faceted Search, I looked at Four Corners, Modal Overlay, Watermark, and Full-Page Refinement Options design patterns, which maximize the mobile screen real estate. This column covers strategies for making people aware of the filtering options and methods of improving transitions between the various states of a search user interface.

Design Patterns for Mobile Faceted Search: Part I

In my previous Search Matters column, Designing Mobile Search: Turning Limitations into Opportunity, I discussed how mobile search user experiences differ from those on the Web. In this and my next column, I’ll look specifically at the challenges and opportunities of mobile faceted search. This column covers design patterns for maximizing the real estate available for search results, while the next will cover strategies for making people aware of filtering options.

Designing Mobile Search: Turning Limitations into Opportunities

Thinking of porting your Web finding experience to iPhone, Android, or Windows Mobile? Just forget about the fact that these devices are basically full-featured computers with tiny screens. Designing a great mobile search experience requires thinking differently: In terms of turning limitations into opportunities.

Numeric Filters: Issues and Best Practices

Filters with numeric values remain among the most confusing in faceted search, because many sites have not been able to design usable numeric filters that people can use in an intuitive manner. In this column I cover how to show discrete numeric values, avoid overly constrained filter states, and display key inventory information, and introduce a novel pattern of histogram sliders.

More Like This: A Design Pattern

The idea behind the More Like This pattern is very simple: within each group of items representing a particular category from a catalog or accompanying each item in search results, provide a prominent link or button with a label that is some variation of More Like This ». Unfortunately, most sites do not make sufficient use of this pattern and some that do use it design and implement it incorrectly.

Cameras, Music, and Mattresses: Designing Query Disambiguation Solutions for the Real World

Our language is limited and imperfect. When a customer constructs a query that may have more than one meaning, a good search user interface provides tools to help the customer define the query in less ambiguous terms, so the search results more closely match the person’s intention. This process is known as disambiguation.

Make More Money: Best Practices for Ads in Search Results: Part 2

In Part 2 of Ads Best Practices, we’ll discuss: understanding what makes a good ad, limiting cannibalization, providing ads for internal merchandise instead of third-party advertising, and ads on pages that appear if there are no search results.

Make More Money: Best Practices for Ads in Search Results: Part 1

Conflicting demands make many UX professionals think of ads as a necessary evil. Customers frequently go out of their way to say they hate ads, while marketers always seem to try their hardest to stuff as many of them as they can on each search results page on your site. In this column, I’ve teamed up with advertisement and eyetracking research guru Frank Guo to present real-world strategies for successfully integrating ads into your search results.

Best Practices for Designing Faceted Search Filters

Office Depot multiple-select attribute-based faceted search redesign misses some key points, making their new search user interface less usable and, therefore, less effective. This makes it an excellent case study for demonstrating best practices for designing filters for faceted search results.

Brave New World of Visual Browsing

Today, everywhere we look, it seems like image content is taking over the Web. The ubiquitous use of digital cameras and improvements in the picture quality of mobile phone cameras has likely helped this phenomenon along. The shift toward content that is primarily visual introduces new challenges and opportunities for developing intuitive and powerful user interfaces for browsing, searching, and filtering visual content.

The Mystery of Filtering by Sorting

For most users of consumer-facing ecommerce applications, the difference between a sort and a filter presents a mystery they understand dimly, if at all. The distinction between sorting and filtering blurs, because of a phenomenon I’ve called filtering by sorting, which leads to all sorts of interesting search user interface implications.

Search Results Satori: Balancing Pogosticking and Page Relevance

When designing the data and layout for search results pages, the challenge is finding the right balance between providing enough information in individual search results, so customers can make informed decisions without pogosticking, and providing enough relevant search results on each page of results to warrant further exploration of the site.

Making $10,000 a Pixel: Optimizing Thumbnail Images in Search Results

In search results, the old adage a picture is worth a thousand words rings true. When it comes to making your search results more efficient to use, more relevant, and more attractive, while dramatically increasing your conversion rates and revenues, images reign supreme. This column discusses how to avoid common pitfalls, and get the most out of your thumbnails.

Searching Help: Don’t Even Go There

Web site user assistance that consistently exceeds customer’s expectations can catapult your company to legendary status and create brand equity you can measure in billions of dollars. However, making Help a strategic asset for your company is an arduous task. To shed light on this important topic, I have teamed up with Tricia Clement, a renowned SUA expert, to deliver actionable insights about Web site user assistance.

Choosing the Right Search Results Page Layout: Make the Most of Your Width

Page layout forms the foundation in presenting search results. Your layout decisions for search results pages will have tremendous impact on the user experience for your entire site. Choosing the right width for search results is important, and the optimal width for search results may be a great deal narrower than some people using big monitors would believe.

Starting from Zero: Winning Strategies for No Search Results Pages

Search, more than any other activity on your Web site, is a living, evolving process of discovery, a conversation between a customer and your system. Unfortunately, misunderstandings in this conversation are all too common, and the effectiveness of the zero search results page is critical to keeping the customer engaged. Moreover, thinking creatively about the zero results case can turn a temporary snag in communication into an opportunity for deeper connection and a source of tremendous competitive advantage.

Improve the Usability of Search-Results Pages: Add Sophisticated but Easy-to-Use Filtering and Sorting Controls

Originally Published in JavaWorld.com, January 23, 2006 ⇒ E.R. Tufte, in his phenomenal book Envisioning Information, states, “Clarity and simplicity are completely opposite of simple-mindedness.” This false simple-mindedness is often evident in the design of a search-results page. Even on some of the leading e-commerce sites, this important page is frequently made hard to use …