Insights & Articles
Sharing successes, lessons learned and opinions about user-centered design
Second Annual State of UX in Kansas City Survey Results
Second annual state of UX and design in Kansas City survey results are in!
When Design Bombs
Design your systems with intention and with surety users can accurately accomplish what needs to be done
User-Centered Design – A Balancing Act
Last week, Chrys Sullivan and Yana Beranek participated in the inaugural KC Tech Council’s Tech CEO Retreat, which focused on the future of the technology industry in Kansas City.
4 Traits of Cultures that Breed Innovation
Your company’s culture has everything to do with its ability to innovate. In the past decade as a product strategy and design consultant, I’ve seen a lot of software and worked with teams that [...]
Data, Data Everywhere, but Not a Straw in Sight
Last week, Chrys Sullivan and Yana Beranek participated in the inaugural KC Tech Council’s Tech CEO Retreat, which focused on the future of the technology industry in Kansas City.
Getting Voice-First User Interface Design Right
When it comes to devices with voice-first user interfaces, the numbers are staggering.
4 Questions to Harness the Power of User-Driven Innovation
Last week, Chrys Sullivan and Yana Beranek participated in the inaugural KC Tech Council’s Tech CEO Retreat, which focused on the future of the technology industry in Kansas City.
Hiring a User-Centered Design Firm: The Value of an External Perspective
Whether you call it design thinking, user experience or human- or user-centered design, there’s no question that companies who embrace it perform better than those that don't.
How to Win at UX: 3 Tips for B2B Startups
Recently, Chrys Sullivan hosted a UX workshop with the 2017 Sprint Accelerator cohort. She shared these lessons based on UX mistakes we’ve seen companies make, along with what to do instead.
Improving Customer Experience is a Design Challenge
A great customer experience – like a great user experience with a digital product or web site – is not great by accident; it is purposefully designed to achieve specific customer and business objectives.
The Results Are In: The State of UX in Kansas City
The rising importance of experience strategy and the soft-skills required to bring technology products to market successfully were chief among the themes that emerged from our inaugural survey of Kansas City’s UX design landscape.
What UX Can do for Your Business in 2017
As human-technology interactions continue to evolve and permeate every aspect of our lives, 2017 holds a wealth of opportunity for savvy businesses.
User-Driven Innovation: You Have to be Solving the Right Problem
Useagility’s Chrys Sullivan delivered conference break-out sessions at the 2016 AIM Infotech conference discussing the benefits of involving end-users throughout the product innovation and design process.
UXPA Webinar – Using Automated Testing Tools to Empower your User Research
Useagility delivered the first webinar for the UXPA Professional Webinar series in January.
Why Your Total Project Costs Are Actually Higher Without UX
“We don’t have the budget to include UX.” It always amazes me, but the truth is that we hear this a lot.
When Are Automated Testing Tools Right For You?
Automated, or unmoderated testing tools make it easy to get rapid user feedback on a short timeline and tight budget but come with their own unique challenges.
Using Design Prototypes to Sell a New Product
Nothing brings new ideas to life like a picture. If you are looking at product innovation in the web, mobile and SaaS space, you'll need to start thinking about how to get early buy-in and approval to get projects off the ground.
Making the Shift: From IT-led Design to UX-led Design
The standard for B2B and enterprise systems is changing. As consumer products get easier to use, people’s expectations of ease-of-use for the technology they use at work have also increased.
Beginning with the end (user) in mind
ATI Nursing Education wanted to improve the design and user experience for its mobile assessment program and predictive pass/fail performance tools.
Top Opportunities for Flipped Classroom Platform Innovation
Flipping the classroom is a fast-growing trend in education. At Useagility, we believe that the best digital product strategy starts with uncovering unmet user needs and gathering insights that drive innovation.
Usability of Cloud Storage – Pitfalls and Tips Designers Should Consider
Cloud storage services, while sometimes convenient, still have many usability flaws to work out.
Creating Value in the Sign-up Process While Boosting Conversion
It makes sense that reducing friction to sign-up should always produce the best business results for an e-commerce company. And generally speaking this is true. But some online businesses are actually using complexity in the sign-up process to drive conversion and increase the value of a customer to its business.
Style Tiles: Three Big Benefits To Design Process
It’s easy to lose control of the user-centered design process when visual design is introduced. At Useagility, we’re sold on using Style Tiles as the way to facilitate productive iterations on visual design during the UCD process.
Research Resources Stretched?
When you think about conducting usability testing, does your mind go to fancy labs with one-way mirrored glass, expensive video equipment and equally heavy budgets?
No UX lab? No problem.
High-level design concepts are a great tool for testing product viability and user experience strategy with users early in the process.
The UX DO’s and DON’TS of Product Concepting
High-level design concepts are a great tool for testing product viability and user experience strategy with users early in the process. At Useagility we have designed and tested new product concepts ranging from tax software to trendy fashion mobile apps.
Usability and Voice-Response IVR
IVR systems – like websites – need a little usability T.L.C.. Customers are even less forgiving with phone-based systems than with websites because they often encounter them in customer-service situations where they’d prefer to be interacting with a human.
LEAN on Prototyping
One of the most powerful tools in the Lean UX toolkit is low-fidelity, rapid prototyping.
Responsive Design for Great UX
Wondering if you need to consider responsive design in your next project? Not sure how it applies to your products or the role that User Experience should play implementing responsive design? Useagility can help.
Continuous Scrolling: Useful or Just Flashy? A UX Perspective
We often get asked for an expert opinion about usability factors involved in a decision to use continuous scrolling design in a web site UI. Ask yourselves questions about these three things to determine whether it’s a fit.
UX, Innovation and Consumer Healthcare
Last week Useagility was honored to be a top 10 finalist at the Hackovate Health Innovation Competition.
5 Things To Evaluate Before Going Mobile
Before making the plunge to go mobile just because everyone’s doing it, put on your User Experience Strategist cap to evaluate your idea and get a head-start on success.
Kansas City Southern: On Track with User Experience
Kansas City Southern recently unveiled a new corporate web site at www.kcsouthern.com. Useagility partnered with KCS to redesign the site from the ground up employing User-Centered Design methodologies to ensure the site meets the needs of the company’s target audiences.
Useagility Partners with SMG to Improve Their Clients’ User Experience
Service Management Group’s (SMG) web reporting client portal was powerful but it needed a user interface and design makeover to ensure clients could get the most important information about their business quickly and easily.
Converting Customer Comments Into Telling Data
Service Management Group Fine Tunes Text Analytics With Help From Useagility.
Client Success: Healthcare Data Analysis Made Easy
Treo Solutions is finding ways to appeal to a broader audience by simplifying the user experience of their health care analysis tools.
3 Questions to Help Decide if You Should Redesign or Start Fresh
When I begin a new project by doing a heuristics review of a client’s software or website I often wonder if we’ll have to start from scratch.
New “Uncluttered” Gmail UI may be easy on the eye, but…
Google recently rolled out a new user interface for Gmail – and I’m not impressed. They have opted for reducing clutter at the expense of usability.
Remote Usability Testing: Connect, Test & Get Results Fast!
The reliability and wide-spread use of screen sharing technologies makes remote usability testing a successful alternative to traditional, facility-based testing.