1. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
  2. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
  3. Abbott, Edwin A. 1
  4. Abo, Akinori 9
  5. absence 2
  6. academia 1
  7. Acaster, James 2
  8. adolescence 4
  9. aerospace 5
  10. Akasegawa, Genpei 3
  11. Alexander, Christopher 135
  12. Alexander, Scott 5
  13. Ammer, Ralph 6
  14. analogy 3
  15. Anderson, Sam 1
  16. anger 2
  17. Appleton, Maggie 5
  18. Arango, Jorge 4
  19. architecture 110
  20. Asimov, Isaac 5
  21. Aurelius, Marcus 14
  22. Bacon, Edmund 1
  23. balance 3
  24. Barragán, Luis 1
  25. Barrett, Sarah R. 1
  26. Beck, Kent 1
  27. Beddoes, Thomas Lovell 1
  28. behavior 4
  29. Beneyto, Carlos 1
  30. Bertaud, Alain 1
  31. blogging 22
  32. body 11
  33. books 5
  34. boston 2
  35. Brander, Gordon 1
  36. Branwen, Gwern 1
  37. Bray, Tim 2
  38. breakups 0
  39. brevity 1
  40. bridges 0
  41. Brooks, Frederick P. 22
  42. building 16
  43. Burnham, Bo 9
  44. Cage, John 2
  45. Camus, Albert 13
  46. capitalism 3
  47. Caro, Renan Le 1
  48. Centers, Josh 1
  49. chance 11
  50. Chang, David 1
  51. chaos 4
  52. Chapman, David 1
  53. childhood 6
  54. Choi, Roy 3
  55. Churf, Young 1
  56. Ciechanowski, Bartosz 1
  57. clarity 3
  58. class 3
  59. Cleary, J.C. 8
  60. Clegg, Gordon 2
  61. cliché 4
  62. collaboration 18
  63. color 23
  64. commonplace 11
  65. competition 3
  66. Compton, Michael 1
  67. consciousness 5
  68. conservation 3
  69. consistency 2
  70. constraints 25
  71. consumption 5
  72. content 9
  73. control 5
  74. Cooper, Muriel 1
  75. Copland, Aaron 1
  76. Corum, Jonathan 2
  77. craft 66
  78. Crichton, Michael 1
  79. crime 9
  80. Critchlow, Tom 5
  81. critique 10
  82. Cross, Anita Clayburn 10
  83. Cross, Nigel 12
  84. Danielewski, Mark Z. 4
  85. darkness 28
  86. Dawidjan, Ryan 1
  87. death 38
  88. Debord, Guy 6
  89. deception 1
  90. DeCorah, Katy 1
  91. defiance 1
  92. democracy 2
  93. density 2
  94. design 131
  95. desperation 1
  96. destiny 5
  97. details 31
  98. disaster 2
  99. discrimination 1
  100. distortion 1
  101. Dondis, Donis A. 1
  102. Donnelly, Kate 2
  103. drawing 23
  104. dreams 6
  105. drugs 3
  106. dystopia 2
  107. economics 13
  108. Eden, Terence 2
  109. edges 3
  110. efficiency 7
  111. Eisenman, Peter 8
  112. elements 4
  113. emotion 8
  114. emptiness 6
  115. endurance 1
  116. energy 6
  117. Enslen, Brad 1
  118. entropy 1
  119. environment 5
  120. essays 2
  121. ethics 14
  122. ethnography 3
  123. evil 4
  124. evolution 9
  125. examples 1
  126. exercise 0
  127. experiments 6
  128. expertise 3
  129. fame 5
  130. farming 8
  131. Farnaby, Thomas 1
  132. Favreau, Jon 3
  133. fear 5
  134. features 25
  135. Few, Stephen 2
  136. film 3
  137. fire 5
  138. Fishburne, Tom 1
  139. flight 6
  140. Foulston, Marie 1
  141. freedom 3
  142. friendship 6
  143. Froes, Hugo 1
  144. gardens 26
  145. Garfield, Emily 4
  146. Garfunkel, Art 6
  147. gates 0
  148. genius 5
  149. geography 8
  150. geometry 18
  151. goals 9
  152. goodness 12
  153. grammar 1
  154. graphics 13
  155. grids 4
  156. growth 6
  157. Guston, Philip 1
  158. haiku 3
  159. Hansen, Tully 1
  160. harmony 1
  161. Harper, Thomas J. 15
  162. hate 3
  163. health 6
  164. heuristics 1
  165. Hido, Todd 1
  166. Hill, Dan 2
  167. Hoff, Melanie 1
  168. Hoffman, Yoel 10
  169. Hofstadter, Douglas 6
  170. Hohne, Courtney 2
  171. holism 4
  172. Holzer, Jenny 1
  173. home 15
  174. horror 3
  175. Hurst, Mark 1
  176. iconography 6
  177. illusion 1
  178. images 10
  179. industry 9
  180. intelligence 1
  181. interest 10
  182. interfaces 37
  183. intimacy 1
  184. intuition 8
  185. invention 10
  186. Isaacson, Walter 28
  187. iteration 13
  188. Ive, Jonathan 6
  189. Jackson, Steven J. 14
  190. Jacobs, Jane 54
  191. Johnson, Rian 2
  192. justice 1
  193. Kafka, Franz 2
  194. Kate, Maya 2
  195. Kaufman, Kenn 4
  196. Kaufman, Charlie 2
  197. Keith, Jeremy 6
  198. Keller, Jenny 10
  199. Kelly, Kevin 3
  200. Kerouac, Jack 1
  201. Kingdon, Jonathan 5
  202. Kiriakakis, Kostas 1
  203. Kleon, Austin 13
  204. Knuth, Donald 2
  205. Krakauer, John 1
  206. Kramer, Karen L. 10
  207. Krishna, Golden 10
  208. Krishnan, Rohit 0
  209. Kwan, Jeong 1
  210. Lee, Chang-dong 1
  211. legibility 1
  212. Lewis, C.S. 1
  213. light 31
  214. listening 1
  215. Liu, Howie 1
  216. Lloyd, Alexis 1
  217. Lo-Fang 1
  218. Loewy, Raymond 2
  219. logic 2
  220. Lovell, Sophie 16
  221. Lu, Ryo 1
  222. Luhmann, Niklas 1
  223. Luu, Dan 8
  224. Lynch, David 1
  225. machines 6
  226. magic 2
  227. Magnus, Margaret 12
  228. Marr, David 1
  229. Mars, Roman 13
  230. math 16
  231. Mazanek, Claudia 1
  232. McConnell, Ivana 1
  233. McGilchrist, Ian 1
  234. Menking, Amanda 1
  235. Miller, J. Abbott 10
  236. minimalism 10
  237. Miyazaki, Hayao 30
  238. modernism 5
  239. mondegreens 5
  240. morality 8
  241. motivation 1
  242. movement 2
  243. Mudford, Trys 1
  244. Murray, Gordon 2
  245. mystery 3
  246. Müller, Boris 7
  247. Nanda, Neel 1
  248. navigation 1
  249. networks 15
  250. Neustadter, Scott 3
  251. Newport, Cal 1
  252. Nielsen, Michael 1
  253. Nietzsche, Friedrich 1
  254. Nilsson, Magnus 2
  255. O'Connor, Siobhan 1
  256. Oh, Jung-mi 1
  257. optimization 1
  258. order 10
  259. organization 6
  260. Orr, Eric 1
  261. Orwell, George 7
  262. Ott, Matthias 4
  263. ownership 6
  264. paradox 1
  265. parks 2
  266. Parr, Kealan 1
  267. Peacock, E.E. 1
  268. performance 17
  269. Pernice, Kara 1
  270. Perrine, John D. 9
  271. Perry, Sarah 1
  272. personality 4
  273. Pinker, Steven 8
  274. play 3
  275. Pleşoianu, Felix 1
  276. poetry 13
  277. Pollan, Michael 6
  278. Popova, Maria 2
  279. Poppendieck, Mary 1
  280. practice 10
  281. production 7
  282. Prokopov, Nikita 2
  283. psychology 6
  284. purpose 3
  285. Pye, David 42
  286. pylons 5
  287. questions 8
  288. quirks 3
  289. Qureshi, Nabeel 1
  290. Raskin, Aza 1
  291. Reichenstein, Oliver 5
  292. Rendle, Robin 12
  293. Renieris, Elizabeth M. 1
  294. repair 28
  295. research 17
  296. respect 3
  297. rest 0
  298. Reveal, James L. 4
  299. rights 1
  300. Robinson, Edwin Arlington 1
  301. Rodrigues, Ana 1
  302. Roethke, Theodore 1
  303. Rohe, Ludwig Mies van der 1
  304. Rossetti, Christina 1
  305. Rougeux, Nicholas 4
  306. rules 2
  307. Rushdie, Salman 1
  308. Russell, Bertrand 1
  309. Rutter, Kate 3
  310. Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de 2
  311. scale 6
  312. Schapiro, Meyer 1
  313. school 1
  314. science 17
  315. sculpture 2
  316. seafaring 3
  317. security 2
  318. self-reference 2
  319. senses 11
  320. serendipity 2
  321. Shah, Ankit 1
  322. Shakespeare, William 4
  323. silence 9
  324. Silver, Adam 1
  325. Silverstein, Murray 33
  326. Simmon, Robert 1
  327. size 3
  328. skill 17
  329. sleep 4
  330. Sloan, Robin 5
  331. slowness 2
  332. smell 1
  333. Smith, Justin E. H. 6
  334. Smith, Cyril Stanley 29
  335. Smyth, Hamish 1
  336. socializing 7
  337. software 68
  338. Sorkin, Michael 56
  339. space 20
  340. Spolsky, Joel 1
  341. sports 2
  342. stairs 4
  343. Stengers, Isabelle 1
  344. strangeness 1
  345. streets 10
  346. strength 1
  347. Strunk, William 15
  348. success 2
  349. suffering 3
  350. surprise 2
  351. Takatani, Shiro 1
  352. talent 3
  353. Taylor, Dorian 16
  354. tea 3
  355. teaching 21
  356. teamwork 17
  357. technique 5
  358. Thomas, Dave 1
  359. thomassons 3
  360. Tolkien, J.R.R. 6
  361. tradition 4
  362. transitions 5
  363. trash 5
  364. travel 2
  365. Trombley, Nick 44
  366. trust 2
  367. Tschumi, Bernard 0
  368. Turrell, James 6
  369. Tzu, Sun 2
  370. Vallandingham, Jim 1
  371. values 4
  372. vanity 0
  373. Vieira, Sara 1
  374. wabi-sabi 8
  375. Wallace, David Foster 33
  376. Wang, Shawn 6
  377. Watanabe, Kei 1
  378. weakness 1
  379. Webb, Matt 14
  380. Webster, Noah 2
  381. Wechler, Lawrence 37
  382. Weinberg, Gerald 1
  383. Weinberger, David 1
  384. whimsy 11
  385. White, E.B. 15
  386. Wibowo, Amy 1
  387. windows 6
  388. wisdom 20
  389. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 7
  390. work 81
  391. Wurman, Richard Saul 18
  392. www 88
  393. Xu, Bing 2
  394. Yamashita, Yuhki 4
  395. Yanai, Itai 1
  396. Yang, Katherine 1
  397. Yu, Lu 1
  398. Yudkowsky, Eliezer 17
  399. Yurieff, Kaya 1
  400. Zakas, Nicholas 1
  401. zen 38
  402. Zittrain, Jonathan 1
  403. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
  404. About
  405. RSS Feed
  406. Source

Ryan Singer

Close
  • Two kinds of usability

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    world.hey.com

    I divide usability problems into two kinds:

    1. Perceptual: "They couldn't figure out what to do next", "they couldn't find the feature", "they didn't know they could click that button..." etc.
    2. Domain-specific: "We need a way to jump back here because in their workflow this happens..."

    In general, usability testing only catches type 1 perceptual problems. Because in those tests you take people out of the real world and assign them tasks. Usability testing doesn't catch domain-specific problems because they only come up in real life use.

    • ux
    • ethnography
  • Keep digging

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    m.signalvnoise.com

    The hardest thing about customer interviews is knowing where to dig. An effective interview is more like a friendly interrogation. We don’t want to learn what customers think about the product, or what they like or dislike — we want to know what happened and how they chose... To get those answers we can’t just ask surface questions, we have to keep digging back behind the answers to find out what really happened.

    • questions
    • research
    • understanding

    I asked one of my favorite questions: What was happening that showed you the way you were doing things wasn’t working anymore?

    This question is extremely targeted and causal. It’s a very simple question that invites her to describe the problem in a way that is hard, factual, time-bound, contextual, and specific — without any analysis, interpretation, speculation or rationalization. Just: What happened. What did you see. What was wrong.

  • UI and Capability

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    rjs.medium.com
    Screenshot of rjs.medium.com on 2021-09-05 at 1.39.21 PM.png

    I’m very conscious of whether I am affording a feature or styling it. It’s important to distinguish because they look the same from a distance.

    ...Affording a capability and styling it are both important. But it’s essential to know which one you are doing at a given time. Style is a matter of taste. Capability and clarity are not. They are more objective. That person standing at the edge of the chasm cares more about accomplishing their task than the details of the decor.

    • function
    • style
    • design
  • How I Wrote Shape Up

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    m.signalvnoise.com

    Here’s a little behind-the-scenes look at the development of our newest book, Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters.

    1. ​​To Make a Book, Walk on a Book​​

    A very different process from Craig Mod, but I always enjoy reading case studies about how information artifacts are made.

  • What happens to user experience in a minimum viable product?

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    signalvnoise.com
    Screenshot of signalvnoise.com on 2021-09-05 at 1.22.31 PM.png

    "Feature complexity is like surface area and quality of execution is like height. I want a base level of quality execution across all features. Whenever I commit to building or expanding a feature, I'm committing to a baseline of effort on the user experience."

    There’s a distinction to make: The set of features you choose to build is one thing. The level you choose to execute at is another. You can decide whether or not to include a feature like ‘reset password’. But if you decide to do it, you should live up to a basic standard of execution on the experience side.

    Features can be different sizes with more or less complexity, but quality of experience should be constant across all features. That constant quality of experience is what gives your customers trust. It demonstrates to them that whatever you build, you build well.

    1. ​​Minimum Awesome Product​​
    • quality
    • products
    • features
    • ux
  • The Fidelity Curve

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    m.signalvnoise.com

    How do we choose which level of fidelity is appropriate for a project?

    I think about it like this: The purpose of making sketches and mockups before coding is to gain confidence in what we plan to do. I’m trying to remove risk from the decision to build something by somehow “previewing” it in a cheaper form. There’s a trade-off here. The higher the fidelity of the mockup, the more confidence it gives me. But the longer it takes to create that mockup, the more time I’ve wasted on an intermediate step before building the real thing.

    I like to look at that trade-off economically. Each method reduces risk by letting me preview the outcome at lower fidelity, at the cost of time spent on it. The cost/benefit of each type of mockup is going to vary depending on the fidelity of the simulation and the work involved in building the real thing.

    1. ​​Four levels of fidelity​​
    2. ​​Time to build versus confidence gained​​
    • prototypes
    • interfaces
  • What UI really is (and how UX confuses matters)

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    rjs.medium.com

    People mix the terms UI and UX together. UX is tricky because it doesn’t refer to any one thing. Interface design, visual styling, code performance, uptime, and feature set all contribute to the user’s “experience.” Books on UX further complicate matters by including research methods and development methodologies. All of this makes the field confusing for people who want to understand the fundamentals.

    That’s why I avoid teaching the term ’UX.’ It means too many things to too many different people. Instead I focus on individual skills. Once you understand the individual skills, you can assemble them into a composite system without blurring them together. For software design, the core skill among all user-facing concerns is user interface design.

    • ux
    • interfaces
  • Time-based analytics

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    feltpresence.com
    Image from feltpresence.com on 2021-09-05 at 2.07.11 PM.jpeg

    Analytics apps don't tell you much about usage behavior. You might be able to see how many users performed an event, or how many times they did it. But none of the analytics packages out there are good at showing you how often people do things. Are they using to-dos once a week? Every day? Only signing into the app once a month but happily paying for years?

    Time matters. You can't understand usage without time.

    • analytics
    • metrics
    • features
    • visualization
  • Domain-specific vs. Domain-independent UX

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    m.signalvnoise.com

    Domain specific UX means understanding how the supply should fit the demand considering a specific situation and use case.

    On the other hand, many aspects of UX don’t require knowledge about a particular situation. They‘re based on the common constraints of human sense faculties, memory and cognition or the net of ergonomic factors around the device and the setting where it’s used. These domain independent elements of the UX are important too.

    Domain independent UX should absolutely pervade the organization. It belongs to the general skill and knowledge of each supplier at their link in the chain. It’s part of learning to be a good designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson etc.

    • ux
    • design
    • context
  • Framing vs. Shaping

    An Article by Ryan Singer
    world.hey.com
    Image from world.hey.com on 2022-05-21 at 2.00.58 PM.png

    Framing is all about the problem and the business value. It's the work we do to challenge a problem, to narrow it down, and to find out if the business has interest and urgency to solve it.

    The framing session is where a feature request or complaint gets evaluated to judge what it really means, who's really affected, and whether now is the time to try and shape a solution.

    • products
    • problems

See also:
  1. ux
  2. interfaces
  3. products
  4. features
  5. design
  6. quality
  7. function
  8. style
  9. prototypes
  10. analytics
  11. metrics
  12. visualization
  13. context
  14. questions
  15. research
  16. understanding
  17. ethnography
  18. problems