January UX Roundup
During January we scoured the web for the best UX posts, articles, and videos.

Over the past month we’ve assembled some great UX related posts. January’s roundup was a hit so we figured we’d do it again!

Dmitry Fadeyev of Usability Post writes on Smashing Magazine detailing nine incredible common usability mistakes in web design. These nine points of interest are all hugely important when considering UX in design.

Jakob Nielsen of useit.com writes about how mobile phone users struggle to use websites even on devices such as iPhones. To solve problems he suggests that websites should provide a mobile version. In this article he discusses how to create and what to include in the mobile version.

Verne discusses how websites have grown very complex. This article goes on to discuss how LinkedIn stands out with features that increase usability and goes on to detail a few other tips to consider.

Cre8pc outlines some picks from their usability and user experience reading travels. They describe how to improve search pages that show no results, and more.

Steven has been doing presentation about UX since late 2008. In this article he details what UX is and what exactly it is not. He even mentions an article we covered in last month’s roundup!

Cre8pc offers a tip to avoid losing customers due to an items being sold out. They offer examples of what to do when you are running low and how to present the problem of being sold out.

Gary Barber discusses how emotion plays a role in user experience. He details an article by Eric Shaffer called Beyond Usability: Designing Web Sites for Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust – saying that persuasive design is the next big thing.

This article discusses how the new Gmail buttons may affect usability. The question is asked if they look more or less like buttons and are there usability implications?

Have you ever tried using Drupal? This powerful CMS has a steep learning curve that makes many people wary of using it. Mark Boulton has been added to the team to improve Drupal 7!

If you are a User Experience (UX) consultant, or a client who often outsources to UX consultancies, then this post is for you. It’s about UX skirmishes.

Dmirty writes about how the Mac world is packaged nicely. This extra polish can lead to a better experience and may be one of the reasons people favor Mac to PC. He discusses several aspects of Apple that are examples of this.

Good Usability’s David Hamill discusses how the Hudson River’s usability features added to the safe landing of a plane recently. He copares the work of each person to how they were vital to the process.

Whitney Hess, who we mentioned in our 11 UX experts on twitter, writes on 7 books that are great resources for UX folks.

Ever wonder how people conduct usability tests on their users? The Digital Experience Group at the New York Public Library recently launched Infomaki, a “rapid-testing usability research laboratory”. This article details the process.

Allen Stern writes about FriendFeed’s usability problems. He discusses what features of FriendFeed remind him of Gmail, and why that is good and bad. He also discusses their problem of users who are active but not social.

Theresa Neil is writing a six part series on tips for a great flex UX. This post, Learn from the best: 10 great flex apps, shows what great UX features some flex apps offer to inspire better UX in design.
Here are the top three posts in terms of traffic from the month of February:

This article explores in depth what causes slow load times, and how a website or blog can be minimized for a faster overall user experience.

This post examines 11 quick ways to ensure your website offers content in a usable way, and includes some suggested reading for digging deeper into writing more usable content.

We’ve rounded up some great folks on Twitter that are well versed in UX. If you’re a user of the Twitter community, these are some names you should be following.
Did you read something in the month of January we missed? Feel free to drop it in our comments! Also, if you found a resource you loved in particular let us know.
Information Architects often struggle to stay relevant to business clients and internal project teams due to their academic approach to achiev…
In this video I look at changing the experiences users/customers have in mass consumer environments (i.e. fast food restaurants) and the decis…
There are well-known proverbs that imply (or state outright) that beauty is superficial and limited in what it can accomplish.
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What a great resource!
http://cli.gs/A448R5 – “Finding The Right Balance Between Search Marketing & User Experience”
Every Friday, SearchEngineLand runs usability related articles in their “Just Behave” column. You may find some good items there :)
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for including our article “6 Tips for a Great Flex UX: Part 2″.
We posted Tip 3 today, entitled “Learn from the Rest”. It highlights 19 of the best RIAs on the web.
http://designingwebinterfaces.com/great-flex-ux-part-3
Thanks,
Theresa
Hey, great roundup. Thanks for the mention!
@Kim Krause Berg: Thanks for the update on your series!
@Theresa Neil: Our pleasure.
@Dmitry: Thank you for writing awesome content :D.