Author: Alessandro Zulberti

I recently watched a video of a pianist performing John Cage's 4'33”. It is quite an inspiring performance, especially when we consider the pianist's use of silence and how this also has relevance for usability moderated tests. In the video, we see the pianist first sit at the piano, then, he places a score on the stand, sets a stopwatch, and...

What happens when users have no prior experience with the product or tool we are designing for? How can we help them build a mental model of how it works and make informed predictions about what will happen when they interact with it? One approach to this problem is to draw on psychological and cognitive theories of learning and problem-solving. In...