Developing Personas
Personas help companies understand their users. They represent a user archetype that allows development teams to quickly communicate goals to everyone on the team. Once a company has performed field studies and user interviews, they gather the data together and start looking for patterns. Again, the focus is understanding the goal of the user. Notes are gathered and grouped based on an...
Read MoreEthnographic Research (Field Studies for the rest of us)
I am a firm believer in ethnographic research. What is it? Ethnographic Research comes to us from the field of anthropology. It is the process of observing a culture and reporting on it. It is a qualitative research method that focuses on understanding the perspective and context of those living in a given culture. You may have heard them referred to as contextual inquiries, a process fine tuned by the fine people at InContext. You also may have heard it referred to as field studies. Why...
Read MoreThe Design Process
My design process has evolved over the years. There are no great revolutions in the way that I look at design. My skill has improved dramatically, especially on the graphic design side of the equation, but my overall process is remarkably similar to where I started. Listening to the Customer A lot of designers will tell you that customers don’t really know what they want, and this is indeed often true. However, it is a little arrogant to think that they know nothing of what they want, and...
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