“EffectiveUI came up with a clever design and super interface that has everyone talking!”

Michael J. Heneghan
Technology Director
Herff Jones Yearbook Products

User Experience Whitepapers and eBooks

Whitepapers, Articles and Reports

How to Build a Mobile Web Site:
Choosing an Approach to Meet Your Objectives Cost-Effectively

Julie A. Ask, Forrester Research

The browser-based mobile Web experience is more important than ever. In 2009, consumer brands built iPhone applications; they are now asking what’s next. The answer for many is to improve the quality of their mobile Web site. The first step is developing a business strategy to guide a vendor requirements document. Working through the mobile POST process forces brands to answer strategic questions before making technology decisions and thinking about vendors.

Purchase Forrester Report

Does Your Company Need a Mobile Application?

Lance Christmann, EffectiveUI

If you’re like most companies, your CEO or CMO is probably saying, “We need a mobile app!” Having a mobile presence is a good idea: 234 million Americans age 13 and older are mobile subscribers, and only three percent of mobile phones sold today do not have data capability. However, an even better idea is finding out whether a mobile app makes sense in meeting your customers’ needs and your own business goals. This article outlines the top five factors to consider when deciding whether your business needs a mobile application.

Free article download

Developing Client Empathy: How Designers can Balance User and Stakeholder Interests

John McRee, EffectiveUI

Experience designers must develop a deep understanding of and empathy for their clients’ needs, frustrations and the constraints and challenges they face. While it’s critical that project teams invest heavily in user research to uncover user needs and interaction patterns, it’s equally important that designers reach out to project stake holders early in a partnership and establish a relationship of mutual respect and trust. You can do so by proving that you are both a user and client advocate.

Free article download

Steering the Ship: Making the Business Case for User Experience

Focusing on user experience (UX) reduces costs, increases customer loyalty and boosts revenue. In pleasing users and helping them better interact with your company, UX also drives adoption of your products and helps grow your customer base. In this article, we examine the top six ways to introduce the concept of UX to your organization and demonstrate how user-focused strategies can steer an organization away from practices detrimental to business and toward success.

Free article download

IT Accessibility for Enterprise: Flirting with Risk

Michelle Bagur, EffectiveUI

This article summarizes the basic principles of IT accessibility and how failure to make software available to people of varied abilities can affect enterprise. Ths article also highlights risks and rewards enterprise encounters when making accessibility part of its IT roadmap, and how accessible IT can help a company gain market share, extend brand and present a leadership image.

Free article download

Getting in Touch with New Technology: Why Businesses Should Consider Touch and Multi-touch Technology to Stay Competitive in Tomorrow’s Market

Chris Aron, EffectiveUI

As touch and multi-touch technology evolves, touch-enabled devices give users more meaningful interactions, personalized experiences and opportunities to achieve or exceed goals. In this article, we will explore touch technology’s path to widespread adoption and the powerful implications it has had for those businesses that have used it.

Free article download

Bolstering Government 2.0 with User Experience:
Improving Citizen Participation and Adoption Online

Rebecca Flavin and Joy Sykes, EffectiveUI

In this paper, we’ll explore why government must take a user-centered approach to its services to meet citizens’ increasingly high expectations of Web technologies. It must embrace the Web as a powerful citizen-engagement channel that integrates into its Web sites and applications UX practices that enhance citizens’ experiences with the democratic process.

Free article download

Developing Your Mobile Strategy: The Ultimate Debate

Sean Christmann and John Blanco, EffectiveUI

Smartphones are now interacting with brands, Web sites and social networks in unprecedented ways. It is important for business executives to plan for and reach consumers in pervasive and accessible ways. This article will help you improve your business’ mobile strategy by providing perspectives on approaches you should entertain and on which platforms you should consider developing.

Free article download

Avoiding the Mid-project Slump:
Practical Ways to Keep User Needs Alive Throughout the Software Development Process

Beth Koloski, EffectiveUI

Incorporating user feedback throughout the entire development process is an essential and overlooked part of creating successful products. This article outlines many small, easy user research techniques you can incorporate throughout your entire process to help ensure you make the right tradeoffs among timeline, budget and user experience.

Free article download

Rich Internet Applications that Build Brands

Ron Rogowski, Forrester Research

Firms looking to differentiate their brands through online functionality should start with a clear understanding of user goals, maintain a relentless focus on brand attributes, enlist expert help and test designs for compliance with brand positioning. This whitepaper includes examples of RIAs that provide top-notch user experiences and complement key brand attributes, including applications built by EffectiveUI.

Free Forrester Report download

eBay San Dimas Marks a New Era for RIAs:
Desktop RIAs Outgrow Browsers to Offer Immersive User Experiences

Ron Rogowski, Forrester Research

Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) applications like eBay San Dimas (now known as eBay Desktop) take RIAs out of the browser and put them on the desktop. These applications enable occasionally connected use, customized content views and a branded experie

Free Forrester Report download

Flex vs. AJAX: Friends or Foes?

Anthony Franco, EffectiveUI

This whitepaper identifies the commonalities and differentiators between Flex and AJAX, discusses the pros and cons for using each framework for various implementations and provides a comparison between Flex and AJAX in situations where they are both relevant options.

Free whitepaper download

The Business Case for Rich Internet Applications

Ron Rogowski, Forrester Research

RIAs attract site owners' attention because users like them, they enable interactions that HTML can't, and they get results. Our research and models show that well-designed RIAs can produce eye-popping results that can help prove the value of current investments and make the case for future RIA projects.

Purchase Forrester Report

How to Overcome Common Objections to RIAs

Ron Rogowski, Forrester Research

The business benefits of RIAs are clear and compelling. Yet many firms that could benefit greatly from RIAs talk themselves out of the investment because they believe the added complexity will be costly. Companies considering RIAs should consider all the costs and enlist help early in the planning process from companies like EffectiveUI.

Purchase Forrester Report

RIAs Bring People-centered Design to Information Workplaces

Erica Driver and Ron Rogowski, Forrester Research

RIAs are emerging as vehicles to enable the next generation of Information Workplaces that are best suited for decision-makers and task-oriented workers who engage in complex, multi-step processes. Information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals should analyze roles to decide when RIAs are appropriate.

Purchase Forrester Report

Securing Rich Internet Applications

Jeffrey S. Hammond, Forrester Research

Practical steps that developers can take to significantly lower the security risk exposure for RIAs. Sean Christmann, senior developer at EffectiveUI, comments on general design guidelines for RIAs.

Purchase Forrester Report

Rich Internet Applications:
Security Professionals Must Understand the Security Implications

Simon Yates, Forrester Research

The use of RIA frameworks has sharply increased in the past year as more application development professionals embrace rich Internet development technologies like AJAX or Adobe Flash. But what does this mean for security and risk professionals? It's important to understand the potential security risks associated with RIAs and how to best mitigate them.

Purchase Forrester Report

Books and Short Cuts

Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software

Jonathan Anderson, John McRee, Robb Wilson and the team at EffectiveUI

Demand for successful user experience strategy is on the rise as software users increasingly expect effortless, engaging interaction with desktop and Web applications. Effective UI will teach you how to drive business value and increase brand strength by creating software that generates superior user experiences, from concept to deployment.

Purchase O'Reilly book

JavaFX Special Effects:
Taking Java™ RIA to the Extreme with Animation, Multimedia and Game Elements

Lucas L. Jordan, EffectiveUI

Learn what the JavaFX platform can really do for Java desktop and mobile front ends. The book presents a number of excellent visual effects and techniques that will make any JavaFX application stand out—whether it’s animation, multimedia, or a game.

Purchase book

Flex on Rails: Building Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex 3 and Rails 2

Tony Hillerson, EffectiveUI; Danial Wanja

Written by developers with extensive experience using both frameworks, this book covers Adobe Flex 3 and Ruby on Rails 2 from the ground up. Even if you have minimal experience with Flex or Rails, you'll learn all you need to know to use them to build exceptional production applications.

Purchase O'Reilly book

Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0

Juan Sanchez and Andy McIntosh, EffectiveUI

Leading Flex developers show how to build stunning Flex and AIR applications. You'll learn how to take a design and translate it into Flex or AIR without sacrificing fidelity, and how to apply state-of-the-art branding that adds value to all your Flex applications.

Purchase O'Reilly book

Flex 3 Early Evaluation: Assessing Flex and your project needs

EffectiveUI

Evaluating any new technology can be a challenge. This Short Cut is designed to help Web application developers (and their team managers) understand if Flex is the right technology for their company or client.

Purchase O'Reilly Short Cut

Enterprise Application Development with Flex

Tony Hillerson, EffectiveUI

This Short Cut covers a set of tools and technologies that work together to allow developers to build RIAs quickly and easily on top of proven enterprise technologies that are traditionally associated with long, complex development efforts.

Purchase O'Reilly Short Cut