UX Daily - User Experience Daily

Today is a HUGE day for us. On this day, we’ve launched a head-to-toe redesign of our entire platform—our biggest release ever! Today marks the culmination of more than a year of intensive, painstaking work, and we’re so proud and excited to finally be able to share this with you!Why did we do all this work? Well, since 2002, the Interaction Design Foundation has been on a tireless journey to inc…

When we design products and services, we use human-centered design insights to help us focus on the people. But how do we focus on the people in the context of complex global challenges? What should we be aware of? What are the pitfalls? And when should we reach out to help people? In this video, Don Norman will tell you how he thinks we can learn from the people-centered principle of human-cente…

A UX designer creates and optimizes the overall human experience when interacting with digital products, systems, or services. Your role as a UX designer would revolve around working on every aspect of digital product development, which includes design, usability, functioning, and sometimes branding and marketing. While this is pretty straightforward, why do we come across different UX designer j…

Design plays a role that’s utterly crucial in our daily lives—it bridges functionality with aesthetics to meet user needs. In product development, it’s design that determines how user-friendly and appealing a product is. The field of human-computer interaction (HCI) is foundational to UX design. To excel as a UX Designer, you need to understand HCI. Learn the core principles and main highlights o…

[[video:112]] Sometimes, you get stuck when you’ve been working and working on a problem. Perhaps it’s a crossword or a difficult design issue. You go over the same things again and again, but you don’t make any progress. And the more you try to get unstuck, the harder it becomes to think outside of the box and see things from a different angle. In this video, you’ll learn why this happens, how y…

Can you design for someone you don’t understand? Too often, biases and assumptions creep into the design process. Cultural context shapes the way people navigate, interpret, and engage with digital products, services and experiences. What feels intuitive in one culture might be confusing, or even alienating, in another. Research, cross-cultural UX design and personas can bridge this gap. The worl…

[[video:91]] Do you prefer to think abstractly or concretely? It can help you see your problem area from a different perspective if you move between the two types of thinking when you work with ideation and design. In UX design, we often start with quite vague sketches of an abstract idea, but then move to high-fidelity prototypes or detailed scenarios. As with so many dichotomies the real fun―an…

[[video:107]] Busywork is work that keeps us busy, but the work has little value in itself—for example, washing the dishes. These are tasks that you know you can easily do. Busywork is used in many different senses, but always to represent something very uncreative. Sometimes it’s even used for work that will appear productive, but it really only keeps us occupied. It’s first and foremost the f…

When you create a journey map, it can be a challenge to combine research data and the ideas of people in your organization into a map that tells an accurate, simple story. But success in this is critical. An inaccurate map could lead to bad decisions, and one that is too complex may prevent people from using it at all. If you find yourself in this situation, consider running a perspective grid wo…

Agile methods boost UX design teams' adaptability. The shift from traditional to agile methods occurred because the former fell short. Agile nurtures a dynamic environment where innovation thrives—it promotes early and frequent testing to minimize risks through short, iterative cycles while teams collaborate closely as they apply feedback to designs. This approach enhances usability and user sati…

A low conversion rate (below 2%) usually means a website struggles to keep visitors interested. Journey mapping helps identify why visitors leave quickly and tracks every step of a user's interaction with a website. The goal is simple—to create a smooth, enjoyable journey to make users return. Learn the secrets of journey maps with the IxDF course, Journey mapping. This course shows you how to pi…

People often describe what they think they want, but that doesn’t always match what will actually solve their problem. Most of the time, they’re describing symptoms, not the root cause. That’s where you come in. Your job is to dig deeper, ask better questions, and help them uncover what they really need. Interviews might sound insightful, but users are human. We are subject to memory lapses, bias…

Activity-focused design centers on the actions people need or want to take in order to reach a goal. For example, if you are designing a home lighting control app, an activity-focused approach will help you to identify and design the steps a user must take to connect their lights or switch them on and off. There are many activity-focused approaches to UX design, including task analysis, jobs to b…

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs asserts that when we fulfill unconscious goals such as food, shelter and approval, we improve our quality of life. The improvement of technology has also been driven by the fulfillment of human needs; that’s why the shift to service orientation in the digital world has meant that user experience (UX) has become increasingly important in the field of HCI.Maslow’…

When you think of personas, your mind might jump to UX design or marketing. But the truth is, personas are far more versatile than most people realize. Whether you work on mobile apps, train staff, manage patients, or in human resources, personas help you make better, more human-centered decisions. Why? Because they’re rooted in powerful psychological principles that apply to everyone.Personas wo…

Have you ever teared up watching a Pixar film? Felt the thrill when a superhero overcame impossible odds? Cheered for a villain’s redemption? That’s the power of great storytelling—and it's exactly the emotional clarity and focus that UX designers can bring into persona creation.How do we make our personas less like bland cardboard cutouts and more like real characters? Easy, we borrow from Holly…

Mobile makes up over 54% of global website traffic—a far different world from how users used to get online. Exceptional mobile user experiences are a prime necessity in our digital-first world, and the quality of a mobile user experience can mean the difference between a product that thrives and one that just survives. With the IxDF Mobile UX Strategy: How to Build Successful Products course, you…

What makes some professionals consistently stand out—regardless of their role, industry, or resources? It’s not just talent or tenacity. The real differentiator is this: they understand the people they’re trying to serve. Whether you're designing a product, launching a campaign, leading a team, or shaping strategy, personas—research-based profiles of your users, customers, or stakeholders—can hel…

[[video:89]] In this video, you’ll learn the different roles that divergent and convergent thinking play in creating innovative and useful solutions. It’s the interplay of exploratory divergence and analytic convergent activities that allows us to build a map of our design space and hence identify creative solutions that are both novel and fit for our purpose.

The four threads of experience and six processes of sense-making outlined by McCarthy and Wright in their "Technology as Experience" apply to both digital and non-digital experiences. Here we’ll learn how they can be used to design more meaningful and impactful experiences.In this short clip, HCI Professor Alan Dix discusses experience itself, primarily based on an influential book in this field …