User Experience

Above: Caktus uses several mobile devices for accessibility testing. For a more realistic experience, it’s important to test on devices, and not just with simulators.

In 2018, we published 44 posts on our blog, including technical how-to’s, a series on UX research methods, web development best practices, and tips for project management. Among all those posts, 18 rose to the top of the popularity list in 2018.

Businesses and organizations come to Caktus to build custom web applications that will help solve their users’ problems. Before contacting us, clients spend time and effort thinking through their users’ problems. But in doing so they do not always talk directly to potential users of the application. As a result, they come up with ideas for the application based on who they think the target users are rather than who they know those users are. Or, if they have correctly identified their target user segment, they may make assumptions about the ways users think, behave, or accomplish tasks.

In previous blog posts on UX research methods, I discussed techniques we use to understand how users think and feel, what they need and want, and why; and those we use to analyze and understand user behavior.

Previously, I explained interviews, surveys, and card sorting as techniques that help UX researchers understand how users think and feel, what they need and want, and why. In this post, I will review UX research methods best suited to understand user behavior and its causes.

In a previous blog post, Types of UX Research, I discussed how UX research can be classified. I explained qualitative and quantitative, generative and evaluative, formative and summative, and attitudinal and behavioral types of research. Within each of these categories of research, there are several methods that can be used to reach specific project objectives.

Requirements gathering (or product discovery) is a part of every development project. We must know what to build before we build it, and we must refine our understanding of what we are building as we move along. Discovery workshops are a format well-suited for certain types of projects before development begins, although requirements gathering continues throughout a development project.

With 2017 now over, we highlight the top 17 posts published or updated on the Caktus blog this year. Have you read them all?

Before an app can be built, the development team needs to know what they are supposed to be building. How do they establish that? With requirements gathering.

What White Space Is

In the context of web design, white space (or negative space) is the space around and between elements on a page. To non-designers, it may seem unnecessary or an expression of a particular aesthetic (and therefore non-essential to a web page). To designers, it is an essential tool to increase the comprehension of a composition and guide a viewer’s attention and focus.