My new book Designing Information Architecture: A practical guide to structuring digital content for findability and easy navigability provides a practical and comprehensive guide to designing effective information architectures (IAs), taxonomies, navigation systems, and search systems for digital information spaces.

Chapter 3, Design Principles, provides a solid grounding in UX design principles that have their basis in our understanding of and need to support the cognitive and physical capabilities and behaviors of human beings. These broadly applicable design principles offer a firm foundation for user-centered design (UCD). The chapter also explores wayfinding design principles, including placemaking, orientation, navigation, labeling, and search principles. Read More

The Build-For Framework is a human-first, empathy-driven methodology based on intentionality in design. This framework serves as a guide for UX designers, providing a checklist to ensure their design process remains purposeful and customer centered. While creativity and spontaneity are essential in UX design, we need to balance them with structured principles to maintain practicality and intentionality throughout the design process.

This framework provides 24 principles to guide UX designers and product teams in creating meaningful customer experiences. Plus, this resource offers actionable steps for creating designs that prioritize clarity, trustworthiness, recovery mechanisms, and delight, thus enabling teams to integrate empathy and effectiveness into the core of their design practice. The Build-For Framework can serve as a mindset and toolkit for product managers, UX designers, and digital strategists leading transformation and innovation in digital product development. Read More

In recent years, we have witnessed the banking and fintech industries making tremendous steps toward digitizing their products. From mobile banking apps to artificial-intelligence (AI) powered chatbots, convenience and efficiency have become priorities. However, for many people around the world, these technologies still remain out of reach years later—not owing to a lack of demand, but because design excludes the digitally marginalized.

After working in User Experience for several years, designing and testing banking digital products, I became aware of a recurring gap between the slick user interfaces that we create and the real-world issues that users who are frequently excluded from digital advancements experience. Through direct contact with what I refer to as digitally marginalized communities, who have with restricted access to technology or low digital literacy or who operate outside the mainstream cultural norms of technology, I began to ponder more deeply what inclusive design truly means in practice. Read More

The global fitness app market is growing. Valued at $2.47 billion in 2024, this market is poised to increase to $9.67 billion by 2033. As more people rely on digital platforms for exercise, coaching, and overall wellness, the user experience has become increasingly important, playing a central role in the effectiveness and sustainability of fitness apps.

But designing for fitness isn’t just about functionality. It’s about meeting users where they are. Fitness apps have become more complex because they must account for different fitness levels, routines, and expectations, while supporting the evolving market over time. Read More

The headlines are stark: junior UX design roles are disappearing, AI can generate wireframes in seconds, and UX recruitment has slowed to levels we’ve not seen since 2019. For experienced UX designers who have built careers on their mastery of the craft of user-interface (UI) design, these developments might feel existential. But there is a crucial distinction that we should not overlook: AI is automating execution, not expertise.

UX designers don’t reach senior-level positions by being exceptional at drawing rectangles, but because of their understanding of the business context and their ability to navigate organizational complexity and make informed judgment calls that shape human-centered product strategy. These capabilities are not only safe from AI disruption—they are becoming exponentially more valuable. Read More

The reality of startup design work is far from the idealized process taught in design programs. Having worked with fintech, sustainability, and real-estate startups, I’ve experienced how traditional design processes often falter under the constraints and challenges of design for a startup. Startup designers must deliver comprehensive research and polished solutions with limited resources, compressed timelines, and while wearing multiple hats.

Therefore, the startup environment demands a different approach. The adoption of AI tools—not as replacements for design thinking, but as practical extensions of the startup designer’s capabilities—can help these designers deliver better work in less time. A variety of AI tools excel at specific design tasks. Read More

Despite the UX design industry’s growing emphasis on inclusivity, digital user experiences still often fail to reflect the full spectrum of human diversity. Traditional UX design frameworks prioritize generalized user personas, leaving behind those whose cognitive, sensory, or physical differences don’t fit neatly into the typical mold. What happens when shifting our focus from the average user to the marginalized and neurodiverse? In this article, I’ll explore how neuroadaptive design can move beyond the user interface toward user experiences that are not just usable, but meaningfully accessible for all.

Technological advancements and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) are changing the way people interact with products and services. Unfortunately, because of these changes, we’re also leaving a huge chunk of users behind. Read More

Personalized digital greeting cards capture the essence of the traditional, physical cards that convey tangible sentiments. When someone chooses to send a personalized card, they’re not just sending a message; they’re crafting an experience, a moment of connection through a carefully designed package. Therefore, the user experience of personalized greeting-card platforms must go beyond that of the typical digital product by translating heartfelt intentions into visual artifacts that create genuine emotional impact.

This article explores how thoughtful UX design can transform personalized greeting-card platforms into powerful tools for emotional expression by balancing technology with the human touch. Read More

15 seconds. That’s how long 55% of users stay on an unfamiliar Web site before bouncing. Think about that—you spend time, money, and effort to bring people to your site, only for them to vanish in less than a minute. What makes new users leave? What makes other users stay longer? And, most importantly, how can you increase the duration of visits?

The answer to all these questions lies in understanding what users actually do when they land on your Web site. The discipline that lets you gain this understanding is user-behavior tracking, which enables you to figure out what users click, how far they scroll down pages, and the exact point at which they lose interest. Read More