The Illusion of Completeness What It Is and How to Avoid It

When backlog items reach an acceptable level of detail and context, it’s important that they also meet your team’s definition of ready to be pulled into a sprint. This requirement safeguards the team from pulling in sprint tickets that lack the information needed to do productive work, thus having to spend what could have been work time to

Despite the many downsides, we still recommend a heavy dose of direct manipulation for most UIs. Direct manipulation often enhances users’ sense of empowerment over the computer by letting them feel that they are in control and are the ones making things happen. The upsides of DM usually enhance usability more than the downsides degrade it. Any

Alternatively, a toast (a small nonmodal popup that disappears after a few seconds, like the New Stories one used by the Facebook app), while appropriate for passive notifications, would be a bad way to implement an error message, be it validation or otherwise. In fact, one of our mobile users spent 5 minutes waiting for some content to load only

One of the most successful applications of blockchain technology to date has managed to fly almost entirely under the radar, owing to its nuts-and-bolts purpose and decidedly un-sexy industry: logistics. The platform, known as TradeLens, is a joint venture between tech giant IBM and global shipping behemoth Maersk. These two ventures aim to

They act as a third party and escrow in the lending transactions between their clients. The only difference from regular P2P lending services is that they don’t limit users to working with fiat, but facilitate the use of cryptocurrencies, and also use their own token for various services and additional incentives for customers. On the other

As it turns out, the broader technological revolution that’s been underway for the past few decades may have created a solution: data. If you look at today’s most successful businesses, like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, you’ll find that their public-facing product lines and technological innovations aren’t what is fueling

Remember, your job as a designer (whatever type of designer that may be) is not only to produce a good use experience on each isolated channel. It’s also to ensure that every experience you design is made up of components driven by Brand. With key components defined, as well as a clear framework for how those components affect different areas of

While “branding” products with an identifying mark (definition #1) has been around since people first began trading and selling goods, the use of brands to differentiate products — to truly attempt to influence consumers’ perceptions and choices within a market (definition #2) — is a relatively modern idea that appeared with the rise of

Some of these quadrants may seem ambiguous or overlapping — for example, it may be difficult to distinguish between Thinks and Feels. Do not focus too much on being precise: if an item may fit into multiple quadrants, just pick one. The 4 quadrants exist only to push our knowledge about users and to ensure we don’t leave out any important

The OECD project looked at a broad range of job-related skills, but of most interest to us is the test of technology skills. For this part of the study, participants were asked to perform 14 computer-based tasks. Instead of using live websites, the participants attempted the tasks on simulated software on the test facilitator’s computer. This

Service blueprints map out the relationship between various service components (people, processes, and props) and customer touchpoints. The process of creating a service blueprint is just as beneficial as the output (the artifact itself). Service blueprinting, as a process, fosters communication with crossfunctional teams, creates alignment on

If more than two team members participate in the research, don’t place them in the same room as the participant. Instead, live-stream the session and have them observe remotely, taking notes in the same collaborative spreadsheet as the in-room notetaker (see below). If you have back-to-back sessions scheduled with participants and your observers

Despite concerns that Gutenberg would launch too early, that simply hasn’t been the case, and in recent months a herculean effort has gone into checking a considerable subset of the most-used plugins to make sure they’re Gutenberg-compatible. An equally heavy lift  has been undertaken by plugin and theme authors to update their code to be

When it comes to WordPress themes, there’s a crowded marketplace out there that can often feel difficult to navigate. Yet, at the end of the day, all site owners want to have is a stunning, functional website and an easy path to get there. Sifting through the thousands of themes in existence today is a daunting task, and finding the right one for

Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to get readers to take action, investigate a product, or change a behavior. The success of your email marketing, however, comes from your email list. If you need to generate more and better email leads, you need web design that specifically supports that goal. A smart and intuitive user

There are many NGO’s and private IT organizations which foster the development of IT industry in Ukraine, such as BrainBasket Foundation, Kyiv High Tech Cluster, Kharkiv IT Cluster, Lviv IT Cluster, and more. Lviv IT Cluster is an organization that brings together the largest IT companies, universities, and local authorities to grow the IT

Being part of Akka ecosystem, this fast and asynchronous toolkit is used for providing and consuming HTTP-based services. Its modules implement a full server and client-side HTTP stack on top of Akka-actor and Akka-stream. Akka HTTP contains a structured, fully immutable, case-class based model of all the major HTTP data structures, such as HTTP

Most of the clients that opt for a dedicated Scala development team have some technical background but lack on-site experts who could take important technical decisions. So it’s much more convenient to outsource the development of a whole project and hold an outsourcing provider responsible for delivering a quality product. An offshore Scala

You may ask: isn’t it a good thing if users are forced to pay more attention to language and placement of design elements on the screen? In our course on the foundations of HCI we teach that deep processing is better for memory than shallow processing (in other words, processing the meaning and context of text is better than processing only

When deciding where to start or what to focus on first, use some of these top UX methods. Some methods may be more appropriate than others, depending on time constraints, system maturity, type of product or service, and the current top concerns. It’s a good idea to use different or alternating methods each product cycle because they are aimed at

Front-end style guides are becoming one of the most useful UX deliverables. They are especially important in Agile environments, where enabling more efficient design workflows is critical to keeping the fast pace of development. When developed rigorously, style guides promote consistent design practices and enforce developer adherence to

Hurricane Harvey was a Category four storm that hit Texas on August 25, 2017. It caused billions in lost data damage to the residents of Texas. The total loss suffered was more than any other natural disaster in U.S. history except Hurricane Katrina. How Data Recovery Impacts Businesses Besides such disasters, software and hardware failure and

The announcement of the study concludes with these funny lines, from Anstis again: “The other way to look at this situation is from a spammer’s perspective. There are approximately 250 million people out there who are interested in these kinds of products and have made purchases from spam in the past. That’s equivalent to double

The announcement of the study concludes with these funny lines, from Anstis again: “The other way to look at this situation is from a spammer’s perspective. There are approximately 250 million people out there who are interested in these kinds of products and have made purchases from spam in the past. That’s equivalent to double

Widget provider JS-Kit has released their latest widget this morning, Score. Score adds a thumbs up/thumbs down-style ratings widget to any page content, and then aggregates the data across the entire web site into an info box that can highlight a site’s top content. It can also integrate with JS-Kit’s Navigator offering, which pulls

Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues that Hathaway was involved in developing. The

She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability to damage portions of our internal infrastructure

I’m sure you are aware of the alarming rate at which E-commerce businesses shut down. If not, let me share with you the results of recent research about E-Commerce Startups. “90% of the E-Commerce Startups fail within their initial four years.” Are the reasons for startup failure the same as they’ve always been? Why do so many startups

One of the things that startups often struggle with is how to build a workplace culture that prioritizes diversity and inclusion. That’s what the Greenhouse ATS solution aims to help with. It does so by being one of the most data-centric ATS systems available to the startup segment, including built-in analytics and reporting tools that are

She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability to damage portions of our internal infrastructure

Surprisingly, my favorite session of the weekend came from Joe A Simpson Jr who brought a refreshing perspective to why accessibility is important. Imagine a colorblind person watching a football game in which team uniforms were all solid colors. Through a color simulator, we couldn’t tell the difference as the audience.  As the WordPress

Texas’ economy is the second largest in the United States, a measure of success that’s only expected to continue; Texas ranks first for its growth prospects due to impressive growth forecasts and competitive employment rates across the state. To tap into this statewide success, however, Texas-based companies still need to provide a fulfilling

The Stevie Awards are a set of hundreds of business awards given annually by the American Business Awards organization. They were created in 2002 to recognize the accomplishments and contributions of companies and business people worldwide. Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards are given to companies who exhibit excellence in the following