“May I have your attention, please?” This is a common phrase in our everyday lives. Other attention-seeking requests include a supervisor instructing a worker to stay focused, a parent warning a child, a teacher expressing a firm request to students, or an announcement at an airport. Such requests are so common we often miss their deeper meaning. When someone is asking for something from us, our attention is precious. In this article, I’ll explore why human attention is so valuable.

In today’s world of constant distractions, when phone notifications never stop, and information continually bombards us, our capacity for focus has become challenging. When we pay attention and focus, we’re devoting a finite asset that shapes our experiences and influences what we notice and retain. In studying how the human brain focuses and why, we must observe how, in every second of our lives, we are bombarded with numerous stimuli, each competing for our limited attention. We live in a world where everyone wants to grab our attention in some form and hold it. UX designers with knowledge of how the mechanism of attention works can create digital products that connect with users and have a meaningful impact on their lives. Read More

Most online users expect user-friendly designs across all of their platforms when interacting with your brand. However, many businesses struggle to meet these expectations, which leads to poor user experiences. Disregarding users’ expectations during your UX design process not only leads to frustrated users, but can also cause the loss of potential customers, result in users abandoning your Web site or app, and tarnish your brand reputation. The stakes are high, and these consequences are real.

Given the high cost of alienating potential customers with confusing user interfaces, leveraging the use of Gestalt principles of human perception is crucial. These principles are not just theoretical concepts but practical tools that can empower UX designers to create easy-to-use designs that meet your audience’s psychological needs. Gestalt principles can explain how people categorize similar elements, identify patterns, and comprehend sophisticated images when viewing user interfaces and other objects. Read More

UX researchers now have the important job of ensuring that generative artificial-intelligence (GenAI) products deliver real value to actual people. This involves addressing unique challenges that are inherent to the current state of GenAI technology—challenges such as managing unpredictability, inaccurate outputs, and new interactions—ultimately ensuring that this technology is worthy of human trust. Given this reality, how can UX researchers successfully navigate this new frontier?

Based on our experience leading UX research for GenAI products across a variety of personas and use cases, we’ve identified a few things that you can do to become better prepared to conduct or lead UX research for GenAI products. Remember, you represent the human user and might be the only voice representing the user in creating a completely new experience! Read More

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly playing a greater role in a variety of business sectors. The domain of UX design is no exception. Although some developers and UX designers have lingering skepticism about AI, they are embracing AI because of the many benefits it offers.

In fact, a recent survey by HubSpot shows that about 49% of UX designers are using AI to experiment with new design strategies or elements. What role does AI currently play in UX design? Will AI replace UX design or UX designers? Continue reading to find out what UX designers can expect from AI tools. Read More

As artificial-intelligence (AI) technology advances, traditional user-experience methods must adapt to effectively address the dynamic and relational nature of new autonomous agents. The state of user interfaces has shifted dramatically from interactive systems with fixed, finite states to adaptive AI agents that are capable of flexible, even infinite interactions. Today’s AI-powered user interfaces don’t just respond to commands, they adapt, learn, and interact in ways that mimic human conversations and interactions.

As AI agents evolve to exhibit open-ended interactions, prototyping becomes crucial for UX designers to truly understand and effectively test these dynamic systems—going far beyond the requirements of traditional user-interface design. In this new era of the design of autonomous-agent experiences, UX designers need to more frequently and rapidly prototype throughout the design process and strengthen their skills in computational design to achieve optimal success. Read More

The usability of any platform has a tremendous impact on its ability to engage and achieve traction with its target audience. The easier it is for the intended audience to employ a platform to access the necessary information and functionality, the greater the chances of its successfully conveying your message or promoting your solutions.

Therefore, conducting usability tests is essential to enable product teams to identify issues preemptively and devise viable solutions before they have negative impacts on the user experience. The objective is to build an easy-to-use user interface and offer users an effortless information-navigation experience. However, leveraging usability-testing data in making design decisions can be challenging. Identifying areas for improvement, then devising efficient countermeasures to the problems that you’ve identified might not be as easy as it sounds.

In this article, you’ll learn how to put relevant insights into action and leverage usability-testing data to guide informed decision-making for design. Read More

The Internet of Things (IoT) has quietly changed how we live and work, transforming sensors, cameras, and everyday objects into smart devices that can share data in real time. What is now glut of data from connected devices presents unique challenges for UX designers, whose goal is to create seamless, easy interactions across an increasingly complex ecosystem.

UX design for IoT diverges from traditional software design in several key aspects. UX designers must consider device form factors, integration with broader ecosystems, and limited user-interface options. Complexity increases when users must interact with multiple devices simultaneously, which demands a more holistic approach to UX design that prioritizes simplicity without sacrificing functionality. Read More

UX design plays a crucial role in developing optimal security tools—a notion that the cybersecurity industry often overlooks. If cyber product teams fail to treat cybersecurity and UX design as merged priorities, the user experience almost always suffers. Management apps such as Notion and Monday provide great examples of the success that comes at least in part because of great UX design.

To deliver a well-designed, user-friendly experience, cybersecurity and UX design must go hand in hand. Unfortunately, developers of cyber products often fail to see the need to prioritize design. Plus, many UX designers lack a background in cybersecurity. Everything comes down to process and resourcing, and product development typically leaves design out of the early planning stages. Read More

If you have designed or developed a digital product, you know that it’s crucial to incorporate visual-design elements that are not only aesthetically appealing but also functionally effective. Balancing these two attributes requires both interaction design and visual design.

In fact, these design elements also shape how customers perceive your brand. In fact, 50% of customers consider a Web site’s design to be vital to a brand’s image, as Figure 1 shows. Read More