Needfinding, Redesigns, UX for Everyday Use
Kathy Bateman
Puzzles of Thirst

Puzzles of Thirst: A man dies of thirst in his own home. How's this possible? And can UX help?

Aquent Gymnasium, Resources
Kathy Bateman
Reflections on Google’s New Multi-Screen World ...

How many times do you work on your computer during the day? What about your tablet? How often do you pick up your phone to do a quick internet search or find a store nearby? Do you play on your phone while watching TV?

Google asked these questions in their study "The New Multi-Screen World Study: Understanding Cross-platform Consumer Behavior," published in 2012.

Why am I talking about this on a UX blog? Because there are some incredibly valuable lessons to be learned about when and how people view your website/app/thing-you-designed-to-be-viewed-on-a-screen.

UX History
Kathy Bateman
Dr. Grace Murray Hopper - UX Pioneer

Perhaps, if you are an inquisitive geek or fond of history, you have heard of Dr. Grace Murray Hopper. I think I may have heard the name in passing at one time or another, but the name didn't mean much to me until the other day when I read a section in this book to my daughter:

Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women

Wherein I realized that Grace Hopper is the most awesome role model ever for a woman following her dreams in the user experience field.

Aquent Gymnasium, Graphic Design, Web Design
Kathy Bateman
Fruity Cone: the Food Trailer of the Future

During Aquent Gymnasium's Coding for Designers, the instructor often encouraged us to expand on and practice ideas presented in the class. One assignment was to code the home page for a restaurant website based on a Photoshop comp. Not only did we practice creating pixel perfect CSS, we also learned and experimented with Twitter Bootstrap and Google Web Fonts.

The extra credit assignment for this assignment was to invent our own restaurant and design a Photoshop comp for the desktop version of the home page. Then we had to code the website utilizing Twitter Bootstrap and Google Fonts.

Fruity Cone: the Food Trailer of the Future
Aquent Gymnasium, HCI Course
Kathy Bateman
2013 Online Course Wrap-up

Happy 2014! Want to learn something new? Try a free online course!

I've participated in several during the past year. What I've noticed is that online courses have different goals and different audiences depending on the source. Thus you'll get different things out of each one. Here's an overview of the courses I took. See what works for you.

UX for Everyday Use

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Personas for Everyday Use

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Recently I found myself helping a friend who was stuck while trying to write the cover letter for a job application. Now I know she's not the only person to have writer's block in this situation. After stumbling around for a while I came upon a solution that will hopefully help you as well:

Write a persona for the recipient of the cover letter.