From toy to titan: the activations behind the Barbie effect

The marketing budget for Barbie was $150m, more than the $145m for the movie itself—and it shows. Barbie takes over the streets of Dubai. Credit Eye Studio. Operation Barbie Summer (the internal codename from Warner Bros) is in full swing. Since its release on July 21st, just two weeks ago, the Barbie movie has shattered 11 box… Continue reading From toy to titan: the activations behind the Barbie effect

I sent an email, but nobody read it. So I sent out an invite.

When it comes to group dynamics, there are two key factors that play a crucial role: task-oriented and maintenance-oriented behaviors. As you plan your team’s agenda, consider how these factors influence the dynamics and productivity of the group. midjourney 2023 / prompt: Google calendar full of meetings “Not another meeting…” or “this could have been an email…”… Continue reading I sent an email, but nobody read it. So I sent out an invite.

Accessibility Legislation & Regulation Roundup – A LOT Happened in Just July

A lot is happening in the US legislative and international regulatory space right now around accessibility. Not surprisingly, many of these actions were timed to the US’ ADA anniversary. It can be overwhelming. Here are some of the things my colleagues and I are monitoring for you right now and our take on what they… Continue reading Accessibility Legislation & Regulation Roundup – A LOT Happened in Just July

What it takes to avoid an ADA lawsuit, 33rd-anniversary edition

With the number of digital accessibility lawsuits in 2023 on the rise, it begs the question, “Do I really need to consider the needs of 1 in 4 Americans when it comes to their ability to do business with me?” The increasing litigation says yes. Let’s take a look at how you can minimize your… Continue reading What it takes to avoid an ADA lawsuit, 33rd-anniversary edition

What’s the difference between design values and principles?

Collectively, design values and principles are the guiding beliefs and priorities that shape the design process for any design team, product or designer. But what should they be, and what’s the difference between them? Photo by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash We’re all different, and whether we’re aware of it or not we’re all likely to have our… Continue reading What’s the difference between design values and principles?

WWDC 2023 Accessibility Goodies for Developers

This year, Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) was a big deal! Among the many announcements this year, Apple introduced the new Apple Vision Pro headset which has arguably and understandably stolen the show this year.  Although Vision Pro may be the big talk of the town post-WWDC, there was also a myriad of exciting… Continue reading WWDC 2023 Accessibility Goodies for Developers

Finding value at the bookends

Improving the design of solutions by conducting foundational pre-design research and post-launch analyses. The UX research field is experiencing a significant transformation as it becomes increasingly prevalent and expands beyond dedicated user researchers. Both user researchers and “people who do research” are engaging in more user interviews, surveys, and other forms of data collection, recognizing… Continue reading Finding value at the bookends

Innovative Home Decor: How Custom Neon Signs Elevate Interior Design Strategies

‍“There’s No Place Like Home” LED sign by VoodooNeon.com Introduction to innovative home decor In recent years, the world of interior design has seen a significant shift towards innovative and unconventional home decor ideas. As homeowners, we are always on the lookout for unique ways to express our individuality and creativity in our living spaces.… Continue reading Innovative Home Decor: How Custom Neon Signs Elevate Interior Design Strategies

Deque Announces Availability for the axe DevTools Linter Free Trial

Catch accessibility issues while you code & automatically block every inaccessible pull request with the axe DevTools Linter. HERNDON, VA – April 26, 2023 – Deque Systems, the trusted leader in digital accessibility, today announced that a free trial of the axe DevTools Linter is now available via a simple, online self-service process. See for… Continue reading Deque Announces Availability for the axe DevTools Linter Free Trial

The AI revolution for businesses and the customer experience

After scouring the web and experimenting with numerous AI tools I am sharing my predictions for 2030 and beyond. Image created by Midjourney AI using a prompt from Danny Bluestone. In this article I am outlining my 6 ‘I’s to how I see AI evolving over the next decade. They include AI’s impact on the Internet,… Continue reading The AI revolution for businesses and the customer experience

Character creation UX

A guide to CCIs in game design. Walking dressed cyberpunk in a cyberpunk city by Paola Ascanio via MidJourney Character creation is an essential aspect of most video games, allowing players to customize their avatars and immerse themselves in the game world. As a user experience (UX) designer, your role in game design is to create… Continue reading Character creation UX

The art of unlearning

How letting go of the familiar can help product designers become more creative. The pursuit of knowledge — challenging the old & embracing the new (‘School of Athens’ by Raphael) Kids are more imaginative than adults. Not only is this pretty commonly observed, but it’s scientifically proven too. In 1968, George Land conducted a longitudinal study where he… Continue reading The art of unlearning

Understanding Python Regex Functions, with Examples

Regular expressions (regex) are special sequences of characters used to find or match patterns in strings, as this introduction to regex explains. We’ve previously shown how to use regular expressions with JavaScript and PHP. The focus of this article is Python regex, with the goal of helping you better understand how to manipulate regular expressions… Continue reading Understanding Python Regex Functions, with Examples

Should you do UX Research yourself, or hire an agency?

The Pros and Cons of these two options — plus a third you might have ignored The number at the end of the agency’s proposal was over one million Euros. I was floored. A client of mine had sent me a proposal from the latest research consulting firm in the runnings to help them explore a new market. Of the… Continue reading Should you do UX Research yourself, or hire an agency?

Personas should be living and breathing

Too often, designers create a persona at the start of a project, then put it up on a wall like a graduation picture and simply leave it there to be looked at and referenced occasionally…pulling out interesting stories when the situation demands. But your persona should be alive. It should live, grow, evolve and adapt.… Continue reading Personas should be living and breathing

How To Make Your Designs Scannable (And Why You Should)

Jakob Nielsen’s How Users Read on the Web is 25 years old this week, and one glance at an eye-tracking study will tell you its key observations are still relevant today. Simply put, users don’t read a web page; they scan it for individual words and sentences. A typical pattern shown in eye-tracking reports is that… Continue reading How To Make Your Designs Scannable (And Why You Should)

Designing for scalable Dynamic Type in iOS

Designing for scalable Dynamic Type in iOS for accessibility When we wanted to implement accessibility settings on our iOS mobile app, I had to figure out where to start. Looking online, I could only find engineering resources. It was all about code and how to implement it with UIKit or SwiftUI with plenty of great… Continue reading Designing for scalable Dynamic Type in iOS

Webdesigner Depot

Live chat is one of the most powerful tools for customer experience in the current marketplace.  In a world where customers are constantly connected to the online world, online chat is a reliable way of getting quick solutions to common problems.  Today’s consumers prefer talking to an agent over chat to calling a contact center,… Continue reading Webdesigner Depot

How to kick off strategic research if you are NOT Spotify?

First steps of strategic product research at Glovo by UXR & Data ✏️ Illustrations credits to Ivan Mesaroš / Available on Blush From Spotify, all the way to Microsoft, Booking.com and many more, the leveraging of multidisciplinary teams to conduct product research seems THE WAY to achieve more actionable, comprehensive insights providing a higher likelihood of making… Continue reading How to kick off strategic research if you are NOT Spotify?

How to Implement Infinite Scrolling With JavaScript

What is Infinite Scrolling? Infinite scrolling is a feature used to dynamically load more content on a page once a user scrolls to the end of the page. The concept of infinite scrolling is used to load data from a server in a way that feels “seamless” to a user but doesn’t overload the server… Continue reading How to Implement Infinite Scrolling With JavaScript

How to Let Users Dynamically Change the Number of Posts per Page in WordPress

Consider the following scenario: you have a WordPress blog with hundreds of posts. On your blog archive page, six posts appear at a time. Of course, there’s pagination for moving between older and newer posts. But what if you want to give users the option to choose the number of posts they want to display… Continue reading How to Let Users Dynamically Change the Number of Posts per Page in WordPress

Remote friendly or unfriendly?

Some easy steps to elevate remote working amongst colleagues and teams. I’ve been a product designer for a few years now, working in different countries and environments, with clients in completely different time zones, colleagues in different offices geographically, working remotely due to coronavirus, and of course, worked full time in the office with colleagues. Over… Continue reading Remote friendly or unfriendly?

7 Basic Rules for Using Icons in UI Design

Icons are tiny pictograms that you’ll find in almost any app. They help us save screen space, communicate efficiently, and make interaction with a product more fun. But despite their size, creating and using icons in UI design isn’t easy. Since icons directly impact feature discoverability and the number of errors users make when they… Continue reading 7 Basic Rules for Using Icons in UI Design