Day 90 - Cognitive Load

What's cognitive load?  It's the amount of mental processing power needed to use your product, app, or service.

• Minimize cognitive load by keeping it simple.
• Minimize cognitive load by removing non-essential content and elements
• Minimize cognitive load by breaking the experience into smaller, easily-understandable segments controlled by the pace of the user.

Day 89 - Participant Observation

1. What do people do now?
2. What values and goals do people have?
3. How are these particular activities embedded in a larger ecology?
4. What are the similarities and differences across people?
5. Pay attention to all the artifacts.
6. Look for work arounds and hacks.
7. Errors are a goldmine.
8. If you ask people what they want (lead in questions) as opposed to observing what they do, you can be easily led astray.
9. Find out what people's goals are.
1. Try and do.
2. Ask and listen.
3. Watch and observe.

Day 53 - Maslow's Heirarchy - Designing for Motivation

Maslow's heirarchy of needs is a theory in psychology about human motivations.

The motivations are often portrayed with the most fundamental needs at the bottom of a pyramid and the self-actualization needs at the top.

Psychological needs -  basic human needs like breathing, food, water, sex, excretion..

Safety needs - personal security, safety, health, order, shelter..

Love and belonging - social interactions, relationships, friends, family, community..

Esteem - recognition, status, prestige..

Self-actualization - peace, knowledge, self-fulfillment, personal growth..

As an exercise, think of any product or service and where you would place it on the pyramid diagram.
Here's a small list to get you started.
Health and fitness apps, blood pressure apps, games, the iPhone, Google Docs, wikipedia, a Prius, a Tesla, Chase Bank, Geico auto insurance, AirBnb, Match.com, Bayer aspirin, cotton candy...

Day 47 - User Behavior - Fogg's Behavior Model

BJ Fogg's Behavior Model illustrates how three ingredients must simultaneously come together in order for a user's behavior to occur.

1. Motivation - Pleasure/pain, hope/fear, social acceptance/rejection.
2. Ability - How proficient is the user in doing something. Is it easy to do, hard to do? These elements affect ability:  time, money, physical effort, brain cycles, social deviance, non-routine.
3. Trigger - Triggers are a call to action that tell people to do it now.

Day 27 - 10 Color Tips for UX Visual Design

"Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint." ~ Pablo Picasso

Casual observations and anecdotal evidence about color suggest that in can persuade decision making. Color matters although ultimately the psychology of color and color preferences are dependent on personal experiences.

When dealing with color:

1. Use existing colors that are on brand and follow the brand's style guide or visual specification.
2. If no previous color specification exists, free color generators such as Adobe Kuler or Colour Lovers can help you explore color themes and palettes.
3. Color is part of your brand's personality. Keep it simple and use it wisely.
4. Choose a harmonious font color palette for your headings (titles), subtitles, body text, and links.
5. Ensure that your font colors are accessible to people with disabilities and have proper contrast.
6. If you're on brand but you're at a deadlock as to which of two colors to use for your call to action button, run an A/B test on the colors.
7. Combine color with design fundamentals like shape, space, and typography. Don't rely on color alone. 
8. Test pages and designs by going to grayscale to make sure usability doesn't break when color goes away.
9. Use tints and shades instead of additional colors.
10. Although subjective, think about emotional reaction:

• Red: Exciting, passionate, dangerous
• Pink: Sweet, young, energetic
• Orange: Friendly, tangy, pleasing
• Yellow: Energetic, warm, cheerful, cautious
• Gold: Stable, elegant
• Green: Alive, friendly, organic, money
• Dark Blue: Peaceful, stable, logical, trustworthy, water
• Light Blue: Healthy, cool, young
• Purple: Elegant, mysterious, regal

Now it's your turn: Look up the meaning of complimentary colors, as wells as analogous colors and see how they relate to each other on the color wheel.

Day 18 - Heuristic Methods for Reviewing Websites and Applications

In psychology, a heuristic is a mental shortcut or rule of thumb that allows you to quickly solve a problem or make a decision.  Review a website or app and rate each of these elements from on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = poor and 5 = excellent).

1. Homepage
2. Task orientation and website functionality
3. Navigation and information architecture
4. Forms and data entry
5. Trust and credibility
6. Quality of writing and content
7. Search
8. Help, feedback and error tolerance
9. Page layout and visual/aesthetic design
10. Accessibility and technical design

Day 17 - Users Don't Like ...

1. Nobody wants to work.  Make tasks easy with the least amount of work possible.
2. People don't initially read web pages and screens they scan them. Less is more.  Don't clutter your screen real estate and make the content easy to scan. It only take a couple seconds for a user to hit the back button so get their attention quick.
3. People don't want to think too much. Simplify and automate. Automate repeatable tasks, combine similar tasks, and break complexity down into simpler, digestible chunks.
4. People love to share cool things they discover or create.  Your products and services should be social and shareable by default.
5. People get bored easily.  Keep them engaged and interested by getting them to that "Aha" moment quickly and show them the value.