Giving Users A Voice Through Virtual Personas — Smashing Magazine
Turn scattered user research into AI-powered personas that give anyone consolidated multi-perspective feedback from a single question.
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Paul Boag
26 articles by Paul Boag.
26 articles by Paul Boag.
Turn scattered user research into AI-powered personas that give anyone consolidated multi-perspective feedback from a single question.
Lead your organization’s AI strategy before someone else defines it for you. A practical framework for UX professionals to shape AI implementation.
A simple but powerful mental model for working with AI: treat it like an enthusiastic intern with no real-world experience. Paul Boag shares lessons learned from real client projects across user research, design, development, and content creation.
For too long, personas have been created with considerable effort, only to offer limited value. Paul Boag shows how to breathe new life into this stale UX asset and demonstrates that it’s possible to create truly useful functional personas in a lightweight way.
Bridging the gap between user research insights and actual organizational action — with a clear roadmap for impact.
Learn how to create and implement a UX strategy framework that shapes work and drives real business value.
Design systems play a crucial role in today’s digital landscape, providing a blueprint for consistent and user-friendly interfaces. But there’s another tool that deserves equal attention: the digital playbook.
Design leaders are expected to deliver the impossible. Instead of trying, we need to redefine our role from implementor to enabler.
Discover how AI is reshaping web design, boosting productivity in design, coding, UX, and copywriting while amplifying human creativity in a new article by Paul Boag.
Designing for digital products requires a different mindset than traditional websites. It’s all about continuous adaptation, refining, and iterating as user behavior and needs evolve. Paul Boag reflects on the key differences, including how the frequency of usage impacts your design approach and what you can do about it.
Discover effective pricing strategies for digital projects. Learn how to balance fixed pricing, time and materials, and value-based approaches while managing client expectations and scope creep.
Many UX professionals often find themselves working alone, and usually face more projects impacting user experience than they can handle. In this article, Paul Boag explains how UX teams can be transformed into a significant driver of customer-centric innovation within organizations.
The biggest mistake you can make in UX design is to launch a website or app and then walk away. Monitoring and improving after launch will benefit users and your metrics. Nothing will bring bigger gains.
Unleash the power of creative limitation! Learn how constraints aren’t barriers but instead stepping stones to innovative design. Find out how to challenge unproductive restrictions and leverage the rest to your advantage.
Content matters! Unfortunately, when it comes to informational websites, content quality is often poor. There is no magic answer to fix that. However, there are practical techniques you can use to improve the copy on your websites and ensure your users find the content they are looking for.
Instead of telling you once again what the best practice is and adding to your imposter syndrome, let’s concentrate on some practical approaches to user research that we might be able to fit into our existing projects without being left disillusioned.
Throughout a customer journey (particularly in B2B), there will be interactions that are primarily between two people rather than a human and an interface. In this article, Paul Boag explains why you cannot improve the user experience without considering the entirety of the UX journey.
Freelancers can be a helpful addition to any team when used in the right way and at the right time. But when is that right time? Whether you work in-house or run a digital agency, there are occasions when you will consider hiring freelancers to supplement your team. Today, we’ll take a look into a platform known as [Upwork](https://upwork.pxf.io/c/1221738/1245573/13634) and the best ways in findin
Whether you work in-house or for an external agency, we all share one challenge — dealing with stakeholders, be they your boss, colleagues, or clients. In this post, veteran web designer Paul Boag shares his approach to getting things done in even the most challenging organizations. He will also change some of our prejudices along the way. Because let’s be clear; we need other people for our websi
If users cannot find the answers to their questions or are not exposed to critical messaging, they will not act, and your website will fail. To prevent that from happening, you need an effective information architecture. In this article, Paul Boag provides you with a process to ensure you have precisely that.
Scoping, estimating, and running digital projects can often feel like an exercise in futility. In this article, Paul Boag explains why you need to start breaking your projects down into manageable phases and why that’s the best way to achieve significant benefits.
Word-of-mouth recommendation is an incredibly desirable way to win work. It requires zero marketing efforts and typically converts at a higher rate as your agency has been recommended. However, you should never rely on word of mouth alone. Many web design agencies consider it a badge of honor that they win work exclusively through word-of-mouth recommendations. In this article, Paul Boag explains
With so many great tools available, there really shouldn’t be any excuse for not testing with users these days. It is fast, easy and cheap. But we don’t even need to limit ourselves to testing. These tools also make user research and visualization easier than ever before, making them ideal all the way from discovery through prototype to post-launch optimization. Our lives as UI designers have neve
Getting a client or stakeholder to approve a design concept can be challenging. However, testing can make it easier, as well as ensuring you have the right solution. In this post, Paul Boag will explore some of the advantages testing design concepts can provide to us as designers, and demonstrate that you can do it cheaply and without slowing down the delivery of the overall project. Let’s begin!
Arguing that dark patterns are unethical is not enough on its own. We will also need to make the case to clients and colleagues that they are damaging to business. That’s what Paul Boag has also written in his new Smashing book, “[Click](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/encouraging-clicks-book-pre-release)”. In this post, he will put together a compelling argument you can present to stakeh
A landing page is a standalone webpage created to support a specific marketing campaign or targeting a particular search term. They are where users “land” when they click a link in search results, email or an ad. In this article, Paul Boag will show you how to create a compelling landing page, which involves a combination of clear focus, persuasive copy, considered design and relentless testing. W