Task model and service blueprint templates By Nic Price on 14 February 2020 — 1 min read Here’s a task model and service blueprint I made using Google Slides (see speaker notes for further information): Task model with user needs: Complete an ONS survey on behalf of a business (with added service blueprint) Feel free to make a copy and use it for your own work. Let me know if you do,... More
Google Drawing template: GOV Flow kit By Nic Price on 4 October 2019 — 1 min read I recently made – and have been using – a Google Drawing version of the GOV Flow kit. If you’re involved in designing government services and transactions you might find it useful for mapping out online user flows. It’s based on the excellent Gov Flow kit for Sketch made by Charles Reynolds-Talbot. It’s meant for... More
Blogging on the People Thinking website By Nic Price on 26 May 2017 — 1 min read I’ve started work on a side project with Ben. We’re calling it Participant Discovery. We want to understand what it’s like to be a research participant. We wonder if understanding this will help us design better research. We’re blogging about it over on the People Thinking website. More
A short talk I gave about systems thinking at UX Bristol 2014 By Nic Price on 29 January 2015 — 1 min read UX Bristol 2014 Short Talk: Nic Price – Systems Thinking in 3 Minutes from Bristol Usability Group on Vimeo. Okay so it’s nearer 8 minutes. In which I talk about elephants and bicycles… world view, mental models, Russ Ackoff’s definition of a system, and what happens when you change the boundaries of a system. For... More
My five minute talk on analogy at UX Bristol By Nic Price on 10 October 2011 — 1 min read At the end of the excellent UX Bristol back in July, a few of us gave 5 minute talks. These talks are now available to watch online. I talked about how – when I was running the intranet at the BBC back in 2005 – I was inspired by the transformation programme at London’s South... More
Why I think ASUS Padfone misses the point By Nic Price on 1 June 2011 — 1 min read I’ve just watched the shiny video promo for the new ASUS Padfone. It’s a tablet (think iPad, Galaxy) with a marsupial-style pouch for a mobile handset. No longer will you suffer eye-strain trying to read those tiny words on the handset screen. Just pop it in to the tablet, and read them in large print... More
Find, Understand, Share, Extend By Nic Price on 11 November 2010 — 1 min read Today is World Usability Day. The theme this year is communication. I’ve chosen to write about something which I find helps teams I work with communicate and explore what we design and put on the web. Back in 2005, Yahoo! Search announced a “vision statement”. Enable people to find, use, share and expand all human knowledge. Somewhat ambitious, sure. A little... More
Traffic lights and inclusive design By Nic Price on 10 June 2010 — 3 mins read Why are there three separate lights in the standard traffic light setup? Why are they vertically arranged? In a nutshell: don't rely on colour alone to convey meaning in your information design. More
How would a butterfly inspire your next design? By Nic Price on 22 July 2009 — 1 min read That’s the question currently on the homepage of Ask Nature, a new web-based resource which catalogues the many ways we can learn from nature when we’re trying to solve problems. The project is run by the Biomimicry Institute. The site was announced this morning at TED Global in Oxford. Here’s an excerpt: Anchors of bull... More
Quick user research tip: Open All in Tabs By Nic Price on 30 April 2008 — 1 min read We’ve been running some design research sessions which involve several scenarios, each of which uses a slightly different design version for a website. Each scenario has its own starting page, each of which we put in a different tab in Firefox. This means setting up all the tabs and start pages for each research session.... More