Making the Urgent Case for User Research
A common ask from clients and students is for me to help them explain the reasons for conducting user research within their organization. While...
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UX Researchers are worth their weight in gold!
Does your company have an experience researcher? The answer is probably no but if you had one then she or he would be worth their weight in gold...
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5 User Experience Research Tips You Can’t Afford To Ignore
There was a great post in my Linkedin feed recently by Luke Wroblewski of Google, with some simple and powerful stats. It's a great post with...
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The Trials of Boaty McBoatface: Achieving balance between customers, users and business
At the time of writing this blog I am facing a real dilemma, nay even an existential crisis.  I am torn between addressing two pressing and...
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Experience Thinking Maturity: 5 Strategies to De-risk the Experience
Predicting how many teams figure out their product requirements has been following a distinct pattern over the years for me. Many times when I...
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Design Thinkers Conference 2015
On November 12 & 13th, Akendi participated in RGD's 16th annual Design Thinkers Conference, the largest Conference for Visual Design in...
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Investing in UX Research: Increasing the Quality of Requirements
In my UX consulting life I go through many, sometimes brief, cycles of meeting a potential new client, talk about what their pain points are, what...
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Designing UX for emerging technologies
I recently participated in an open design challenge from NASA to create an application for a wearable device. The challenge called specifically...
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Developers and UX Designers, a love that dare not speak its name…but it really should
Coming from a development background, from an old school development house, I have encountered a lot of varying responses to UX Design from...
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Designing Good UX Is An Ungrateful Job
Recently somebody remarked that he didn't understand what all the fuss around UX was all about. Surely this was not a professional discipline but...
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Akendi Goes to the Movies – James Bond
As we gear up for summer blockbusters, I thought it would be fun to take a look at how usability and user testing is represented in the fictional...
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Is Responsive Design Great Mobile Design?
The first time in your career that you notice things have changed since you started is a pretty exciting milestone. In a young industry like...
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UX Insight: Measure Twice, Cut Once
I recently attended a large UX conference -“ lauded as one of the largest in Canada. It was an enjoyable couple of days with some well-known an...
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Home is Where the Smart(phone) is
Would you call a smartphone smart, as in SMART smart? Probably not. Granted, it's a very capable device with high speed internet, a large screen...
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