Author Archives: Matthew Garvin

What about Personas?

As we were going over Personas in my Interaction Design course at UMSI, I began seeing some articles on the topic that I wanted to share to the class. Kill your Personas (Links to an external site.) – Microsoft Design Stop obsessing over user personas (Links to an external site.) – UX Collective The discussion we had on personasContinue reading “What about Personas?”

Critique: Reflections on Taking Design Criticism Well

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a comic book artist. I could draw of course, but I knew I wasn’t skilled enough to really go for it. After I got my first computer with an internet connection, I started thinking about web and graphic design as I was fulfilling these roles forContinue reading “Critique: Reflections on Taking Design Criticism Well”

UX is About Processes, not Products

I keep thinking about comments I’ve seen from UX designers on Instagram discussing posts that are tagged #uxdesign. These posts are almost always finished mockups. And amongst the generic bot comments sporting the ‘fire’ emoji, I often see an actual UX designer saying that this isn’t the kind of work they do in UX. WhileContinue reading “UX is About Processes, not Products”

The Needfinders: a Reflection on Patnaik and Becker’s seminal paper

Patnaik and Becker seem to give us a torch with which to light our path into that immersive, murky realm of qualitative data collecting and assessment. Among the several important takeaways I saw was that in doing social research, it’s easy to just gather data for the sake of gathering data, and you’ll be ableContinue reading “The Needfinders: a Reflection on Patnaik and Becker’s seminal paper”

Compare | Design | Explain Series Part 1

The goal of this report is three-fold. It seeks to compare and evaluate two competing websites in terms of human-computer interaction with a focus on the information processing model. This model likens our cognitive processes to how a computer works. Using this critique, we will then propose a new design, and justify why this design isContinue reading “Compare | Design | Explain Series Part 1”