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The Opportunity As a member of the UM team, you will design strategic solutions for our clients using UX tools and best practices. We want someone who is passionate about user experience and will share that passion with our team, our clients, and our colleagues in the field. The Company Usability Matters is a dynamic firm devoted exclusively to user experience. We are an established boutique agency with a stellar rep

Most of the time, Usability Matters is part of a client’s multi-vendor ecology. It is great to be one of several specialists working on particular aspects of a digital product. However, sometimes, this means that the client is left to balance conflicting advice from several trusted sources. This was the case recently on a project with a major health-focussed non-profit. The project owner was forced to balance input f

  [Update: we are happy to report this role has been filled. Keep your eyes peeled for an announcement in the next few weeks!]   The Opportunity As a member of the UM team, you will create strategic solutions for our clients using UX tools and best practices. We want someone who is passionate about user experience and will share that passion with our team, our clients, and our colleagues in the field. We ar

No, it’s not. Stop calling it that. Shush. No, just shush. A “game changer” comes about when someone finds a way to change the dynamics of a market—the “rules of the game”—to their competitive advantage, leaving their competitors scrambling to figure out these new rules. A game changer is, to use another hot little term, “disruptive.” The iPhone? That was a game changer. The game was mobile phones. Mobile phones suck

Since 2005, the Usability Professionals Association has designated the second Thursday of November of the year as World Usability Day, a day to raise awareness of and to train professionals in good usability practice. Last week, the team at Usability Matters decided to find out just what makes our lives easier. So we bundled up, wheeled out our mobile whiteboard, grabbed some candy and took WUD to the streets of Toro

Too often I have observed visitors struggle with the elevator panel in our building. After a few seconds of watching them push a button, the light not staying on, pushing it again, them looking around confused and flustered I jump in and say: “You have to push 2R to get to the 2nd floor”. The confusion continues… They freeze and stare in dismay… I push the button for them… The elevator t

One of my absolute favourite books as a child was Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day. It’s one of the series of children’s books Scarry wrote and illustrated about a fictional town called Busytown. I adored Scarry’s illustrations: the architecturally-correct drawings of buildings, the cutaways showing the plumbing and sewer systems, the fascinating mechanical devices, all depicted in minute detail and careful

We’ll go to just about any length to improve a user experience, but Dubai in the heat of summer? That’s crazy! Working with a client to launch a new business in the Middle East was a great opportunity to explore cross cultural design and rapid prototype testing in a completely different cultural climate. Dubai is a terrific launching point for cross-cultural design efforts in the Middle East / North Afric

At Usability Matters, we’re all loving Nick Finck‘s awesome list of Gifts for User Experience Geeks. To the outsider (e.g. Mom, Grandma, Cousin Bob) it’s easy to pass off our profession as “cool”. But those of us in the industry know it’s all about geeking out. Our favourites from his list include: Mental Notes ($33) Stephen P. Anderson gave out samples of his brainstorming cards a