Research | Akendi UX Reflections

Top 10 UX Blogs of 2017

By Amanda Billark

04.01.2018

To celebrate the new year we've rounded up our top 10 most read blogs of 2017: The Art of Asking Questions: The quality of the information relies entirely on the quality of the questions we ask. This article explains...

UX Researchers are worth their weight in gold!

By Leo Poll

18.12.2017

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. Employing a good experience researcher will have massive effect on your future revenues...

5 User Experience Research Tips You Can’t Afford To Ignore

By Geoff McCormick

16.10.2017

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 bare facts on mobile phone usage. 2,600 interactions, just 6 ‘phone unlocks’ per hour and...

Not Choosing Sides: Customer Experiences vs. User Experiences

By Tedde van Gelderen

27.04.2017

Ok, we’re all humans. It is a label that encompasses us all. But in experience research and design we rarely, if ever, create for or try to understand the human. It’s usually the different types of humans we’re interested in. Because...

The Art of Asking Questions

By Hamilton Hernandez

18.04.2017

Surveys, interviews, usability tests and other UX research methods are meant to elicit information to help us clearly understand a user/customer, their needs and their experience when using a service/product; to find the best...

Collaboration is a team sport

By Yvonne Shek

01.12.2016

If there is one topic that stands out in my mind in the last few months, it would be the topic of collaboration. We have been asked to help others collaborate and we ourselves also desire greater collaboration in our work. Why is...

How to Create a Space for Design Thinkers, Part II

By Maya Levin

20.09.2016

In my last blog post, I talked about creating an interior space through the lens of User Experience Design (UXD). This perspective introduced the concepts of budget, circulation, and communication that would affect Akendi Ottawa’s...

The Inverted UX Funnel: Or The Cost/Benefit Of UX Work

By Tedde van Gelderen

08.09.2016

Today I came back from a lunch where I talked with a potential client about their product. This was a first conversation so most of the time was spent discussing what their software and business was and what I could do to help improve...

Menus, Navigation, Pages, Content Structure: Which one of these things doesn’t “belong”?

By Cindy Beggs

25.08.2016

I think information architecture, (IA), is a fascinating topic and an IA is a very fulfilling thing to construct. So why is it that, during the design process, so many conversations about IA quickly turn into conversations about menus...

It’s True: Users Don’t Know What They Want

By Lisa Min

26.07.2016

Users don’t know what they want; this is a fact of user research. Of course, it would be great to be able to ask users “How would you design this?” or “Where would you place this call to action?” or “What do you want to see in this...

Journey Mapping My Commute to Work

By Amanda Billark

01.06.2016

An Authentically Torontonian Example of Journey Mapping Last week, I participated in ‘Experience Mapping’, a course offered as part of Akendi’s UX Training and Certification program. The course covered the theory, principles and...

The Trials of Boaty McBoatface: Achieving balance between customers, users and business

By Dominira Saul

12.04.2016

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 hyper-relevant events that will forever go down in history as defining moments of our...

The Power of Three

By Dan Iaboni

17.03.2016

Is three the magic number? Culturally, and historically, the number three is very significant. In Christianity there is the Holy Trinity, and in Hinduism, there is the Trimurti. In Chinese, the word for three is considered lucky...

Library Science and User Experience? Makes Sense?

By Cindy Beggs

08.03.2016

I’m a librarian and I work in the user experience, (UX), field. From time to time when I tell people that I’m a librarian and I work in UX I see raised eyebrows, heads that turn slightly to one side, brows that furrow. Unfortunately...

The Art of Getting Started

By Siobhan Kennedy

07.01.2016

Diving into a new project takes a different trajectory for everyone but for this visual designer it often begins with a healthy dose of fear. It has taken time, experience, and the influence of supportive colleagues to become friends...

Exploring the Design Principle of Hope

By Cindy Beggs

24.12.2015

This is a time of year when I have extra and renewed hope. It’s a very happy time for me and my family where we share a sense of hopefulness and cheer. I know we’re among the very fortunate to have this hope along with a holiday to...

Experience Thinking Maturity: 5 strategies to de-risk the experience

By Tedde van Gelderen

15.12.2015

Predicting how many teams figure out their product requirements has been following a distinct pattern over the years for me. Many times when I find myself in a sales situation, the conversation arrives at how the organization’s team has...

‘I feel as though I’m cheating…’

By Lisa Min

26.11.2015

A client once said this to me after watching his very first focus group session. The concept of getting answers to questions from real potential users was foreign to him. This comment didn’t come as a surprise to me as many other...

What do Tamagotchis, Furbies, and Smoke Alarms All Have in Common?

By Michelle Brown

17.11.2015

The Tamagotchi As a young child in the 90’s with no dog, I desperately wanted a Tamagotchi. Desperately. The pocket-sized virtual pet promised all the love and companionship that I had been missing out on. Everyone in my class seemed...

The Art of Asking Questions in Usability Testing