Theo Mandel is one of the organizers and presenters at the ninth annual Internet User Experience conference – IUE 2013. The April 2-3 conference in Tempe, Arizona, highlights top industry speakers, practitioners, and authors to provide attendees with a complete package of Internet user experience design training, case studies, and real-world examples. Mandel’s sessions include: Golden [...] read more

Mandel organized the Arizona World Usability Day event on November 8, 2012 in Scottsdale, Arizona. The wildly successful event was captured on film and is now available on the World Usability Day YouTube Channel. Check out the Arizona WUD event on the World Usability Day website. read more

An obituary in the New York Times highlight’s John Karlin’s historic influence on digital dialing. Karlin died on January 28 at the age of 94. Ed Israelski, a well-know human factors professional, was fortunate to work under Karlin at Bell Labs. Karlin designed the famous (or infamous) telephone keypad layout. He also conducted innovative research [...] read more

“I’ve been in three board meetings in the last month where it was painfully apparent that there wasn’t a person in the company who owned the UX philosophy of the product. I’m explicitly saying “UX” (user experience) rather than “UI” (user interface) as each company had an excellent designer and the application looked great. But [...] read more

“As the digital world shrinks down to a screen the size of your hand, demand for user experience designers explodes.” The surge of mobile and tablet devices has placed more emphasis and need for user experience skills. UX practitioners have been promoting awareness and education of UX and usability for years, and it has paid off. Read [...] read more

Thought-provoking video on Vimeo about the future of our field – https://vimeo.com/52861634. The follow-on comments are just as interesting as the video. Here’s the summary: The 18 minute “Connecting” documentary is an exploration of the future of Interaction Design and User Experience from some of the industry’s thought leaders. As the role of software is [...] read more

Great advice from a world-famous Boulder start-up mentor and founder, Brad Feld. Give Before You Get   read more

Happy New Year 2013!! Here’s a great blog post about integrating your work and your life and living DESIGN! Enjoy! 5 Ways to Begin Designing Your Life in 2013   read more

KISS – Keep it Simple, Stupid! This has historically been a top-level goal for user experience professionals . However, as this blog post describes, achieving simplicity is not a simple exercise. There are many aspects to simplicity. It’s not as easy as saying, “If we look at an Apple UI, that’s our model!” Here’s the post: Simplicity [...] read more

Worth a read! New book available (for free!) – Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving is presented as a handbook for teaching, learning, and doing meaningful disruptive design work. The book includes an introduction to wicked problems, describing some of the challenges and opportunities of design-led entrepreneurial activities. The text describes the skills [...] read more

As a user experience designer and prototyper, one of the painful aspects of creating websites is checking browser compatability. With the demise of IE6, there’s one less browser version we have to worry about! Hooray! Check out the article on BBC Technology News! read more

“To the heart of design” is a phrase that best describes the largest and most successful World Usability Day (WUD) event produced in Phoenix, Arizona, since its first event in 2007. PayPal hosted and sponsored the event, kicked off with a multimedia presentation of examples from its extensive interaction design team members, numbering 250 strong, [...] read more

Very nice example of the discipline called “information visualization.” This is the field best represented by Edward Tufte’s amazing books and courses. On one small notebook page, the complex distinction between the different varieties of scotch whiskey is beautifully displayed. Read the article here. read more

As an independent user experience (UX) consultant, this year has been very busy, with more and more companies and clients realizing that user experience and usability is a critical component of any product or device’s design and and development process. Want to know more details on the resurgence of user experience? Check it out on [...] read more

I love it when journalists don’t let big companies get away abusing their customer’s experience. Here’s the latest user experience blooper, pointed out by Scott Davis at Forbes Magazine: Any time you mess with the user experience, you’re going to risk backlash. If change is based on a solid understanding of your customers and the [...] read more

I was recently interviewed by Beth Stackpole for DesignNews magazine on how traditional CAD and design tool software is being made over to deliver a more natural and compelling user experience for engineers and designers. Here’s my section of the article: Beyond gestures, finger flicks, touch interfaces, and rotating objects around to change orientation, the [...] read more

View an amazing collection of new military healthcare devices in the battlefield! “With the growing swiftness and capability of today’s technology, medical tools are increasing in their specificity to meet military healthcare needs. The combat environment calls for particular solutions; on the battlefield, where time is of essence, military healthcare providers need the right implement, [...] read more

Going back to my beginnings in the new field of building “user-friendly” software in the early 1980′s, usability began a long history as a potential product differentiator in a competitive field. Now, with the onset of a multitude of EMR software programs coming to market now and in the next few years, software vendors are [...] read more

This is a classic debate – whether it is nobler to be consistent or to be usable! EMRs have notoriously been both inconsistent and also very unusable. So, what to do – fix the inconsistencies or fix the usability issues? The problem is, fixing one of these issues doesn’t necessarily fix the other! Here’s an [...] read more

It has become part of the internet vernacular to “Google” something to find out more about it. Once googled, how reliable are the results listed? Are featured listings more truthful or informative than lower-ranked listings? A new study coming out of Northwestern University, discovered that college students have a decided lack of Web savvy, especially [...] read more