Usability
Explore key insights and trends in usability and user experience (UX) through Kent State’s blog posts. Learn from industry professionals about UX careers, design principles, and best practices for creating seamless digital experiences. Discover how UX impacts business success, the latest in responsive web design, and how to build an impactful UX portfolio for career advancement.
Related Blog Posts
Drew Shipka works for the Office of Continuing and Distance Education and has helped improve online classes at Kent State University for over a decade. He leads a team of instructional designers whose primary responsibilities are developing fully online graduate programs. He earned master’s degrees in Philosophy from the University of Western Ontario, and Library and Information Science, and Information Architecture Knowledge Management from Kent State University.
At first glance, Chello Elmi might seem like an unusual fit for a UXD program. She studied psychology as an undergraduate, but when it came time to earn her master’s, all she knew was she didn’t want to continue in a therapeutic or mental health field.
Responsive Web Design (RWD) is the approach that suggests that website design and development should enable each site to respond automatically to a user’s behavior and environment—that is, whether that person is using a laptop, iPad, Android phone or other device, viewing in portrait or landscape mode, and so on.1 In the case of public displays, recent work also considers the viewer’s distance from the screen within the context of RWD.2
The definition of “product designer” as a professional role can be a bit ambiguous. Job titles naturally change over the years as technology and culture change, and because creative professionals such as designers typically want to stand from their peers.1 The title “product designer” is one that has risen in popularity in recent years. Because the job responsibilities of a product designer can overlap those of similar roles such as a user experience (UX) or user interface (UI) designer, even people who work alongside them may not be sure exactly what the job of product designer entails.
Kent State online Master of Science in User Experience Design (UXD) student Kendra Jobes, MS ’19 candidate, has always wanted her work to make an impact on people. When her undergraduate degree in design led to an initial user experience job after college, she quickly learned that she enjoyed developing and using the artistic and technical skill set required for a UX role.
Nobody likes a 404 page. It’s never the page you were trying to find, and it’s usually not your fault that you ended up there. Standard error messages can be inscrutable, and the typically austere 404 page itself can disconnect the user from the overall site experience, which can sour them to your site and even your brand. So how do you create a 404 page that is dynamic, that easily redirects the user back to the content they want and that’s even a little bit fun?
On Saturday, January 13, 2018, a terrifying message populated the screens of over a million smartphones in Honolulu, Hawaii. It read: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” As the world now knows, this turned out to be a false alarm. An investigation into the incident found that the message was sent by mistake when a state employee hit the wrong button during an internal drill.1
The experience one has when interacting with technology is fundamentally human. Our digital lives—from navigating a tablet to paying at a bank kiosk—have become so ubiquitous, interwoven and essential to the way we interact with the world and others, that it’s almost hard to remember what life was like before these technologies existed. Simply put, we depend on technology to move our lives forward. It plays a critical role in our individual storylines as well as our collective narrative.
When studying user experience (UX) online, there’s almost no greater source of knowledge than Andrew Shipka.
Today, when a person explains that they work as a user experience (UX) designer, chances are that more people understand what that means than they would have a decade earlier.1 As technology and innovation become more and more interwoven into the fabric of business, UX design is becoming an increasingly ubiquitous function.
Q&A with user experience design student, Jessica K (Kent State Online, ’17)
Q&A with user experience design student, Jessica K (Kent State Online, ’17)
Q&A with user experience design student, Jessica K (Kent State Online, ’17)
Q&A with user experience design student, Jessica K (Kent State Online, ’17)
When I started Kent State University’s UX master’s program, I was excited about the opportunity to advance my education but apprehensive, because I had no UX experience prior to my enrollment. My expectations were to gain a general understanding of UX, develop a foundation for UX practices and be able to build a portfolio that I could use professionally in search for a career in UX.
When I was considering the Kent State program, I read some UX message boards where posters warned that having a master’s degree in UX would somehow make me less marketable, but now, having finished, the opposite has been true.
I can’t emphasize this enough: Consider each deliverable as possible portfolio material. Starting the course, I was so focused on learning, getting good grades and hitting those deadlines that I often overlooked adequately documenting the process. When it came time to create my portfolio, I struggled to recall all of the steps I took to arrive at my solution. Be sure to take some time after portfolio-worthy assignments to note the steps, objectives and results of your efforts. Your life will be much easier later on.
Most people considering a career in UXD may not fully understand the difference between user interface vs. user experience, but it’s a critical piece of of knowledge to understand. Ryan Spencer, a UX professional, explains these concepts in the most simple, yet matter-of-fact way possible.
Since you made it to this post, you’ve most likely heard of user experience design (UXD). You may even have a clear understanding of what it means already. For those who don’t, however, a UX designer is a person who works to make a platform or product as user-friendly, enjoyable and useful as possible for end users. This involves seamlessly integrating digital systems and technology into both traditional products and new, innovative products.
As more consumer-facing brands look for ways to keep their current customers while implementing measures to help attract new ones, creating a positive user experience has been at the forefront of any new initiatives. Unfortunately, unless something goes wrong, the importance of the user experience goes unnoticed.
Whenever you visit a website on a computer or smartphone, you’re probably not thinking about the layout and usability of it. As a consumer, you generally just want a site that works and navigates you quickly to the buttons that you click on the page. But the fact is that this pleasurable online experience was architected by an individual who understands exactly what people want when they’re online.
User experience design (UXD) is one of the fastest-growing career fields in the United States, according to Business Insider. It is a discipline that combines a number of factors that impact our daily lives, whether we realize it or not.
Have you ever considered a career as a User Experience Designer (UXD)? UXD is one of the fastest-growing career fields in the United States. Check out these facts about a career as a UXD professional!
