Tag / experience
The Intuitive and the Unlearnable
Why some designs won’t ever stop sucking Again, it starts on ze twitters
I have a phrase, "Unlearnable design," for when something is so counter-intuitive you keep making the same mistake over and over.
My example: I always click the comment icon on twitter to read comments. Does not work (if it did, might improve dialog.)
Do you have one?
— ~c (@cwodtke) May 26, 2018
Intuitive is one of the most used terms in tech. Everyone wants their app to be intuitive. It’s worth asking what intuitive means, really? Working Knowledge offers this definition
Intuition is compressed experience.
Which means for an app to be intuitive (or more correctly, intuitable) it must be consistent with the end-user’s experience. Some product folks think that means if Apple or Facebook does it, they can too. For example, the unusable hamburger menu. But your user’s world is bigger than the hottest bro-co, and even the big guys make mistakes.
To make interfaces truly intuitable, we have to understand metaph..
Taking Risks, Earning Trust and Including Co-Workers: User-Centred Design at Deutsche Bahn Operations
In 2016, Andreas Bürgler heard the term “design thinking” being tossed around left and right. “There was a lot of discussion about design thinking, everybody used it as a buzzword, and I felt that few people really knew what it actually meant. I saw some charts, but that was too little for me. I wanted to really learn it myself.” During a three-day Open Course in design thinking at the HPI Academy with Katrin Lütkemöller-Shaw, he realised that this way of user-centred working inspired his “mind and heart”: “This was my thing: to work on topics that are interesting for the users and help them. To build a prototype quickly, and to learn what fits and doesn’t fit immediately.” At the same time, interviewing real users came as an unusual experience: “Having this direct, immediate contact with the user was a challenge”, Bürgler says, and adds with a smile: “You are suddenly talking to the customer – alert!”
The Need to Innovate Topics of disruptive innovation have already become central un..
What a Design Sprint CAN’T Do (for Enterprise Teams)
Editors Note: This is an excerpt from InVision’s Enterprise Design Sprints Handbook, which highlights the methodology behind successful design operations.
The original design-sprint format popularized by the Google Ventures team has been interpreted by some as a one-size-fits-all model. This was never the intention, and it’s definitely not the case for enterprise-level projects. Although UX, design and product teams have adapted sprints to find new applications for its prototyping value, it can’t be used in every situation.
Below are some situations in which a design sprint is not useful for enterprises. (It’s worth noting that this list is specific to enterprises. In some startups or small innovation groups, a design sprint might be the appropriate tool in these situations.)
For small iterative changes to an existing feature(s) If you have an established product and you’re making small iterative updates, a design sprint is going to be too much tool. Rather, use one of the many exer..
Scott Belsky: How to Navigate the Messy Middle of a Creative Venture
The middle stretch of a journey is when the exciting moment of idea conception gives way to the long, slow, trying slog to the finish line. The promise of a fresh start is behind you, and the end far, far away. Volatility feels like the only constant. Each high—Yes! Champagne! $$$!—seems to be met by a heart-breaking low—Ouch! Rough! What happened?!
It’s this part of the journey where investor, entrepreneur, and co-founder of 99U and Behance, Scott Belsky, has directed his new book, The Messy Middle. Belsky’s insights are meant for people embarking on a creative project, whether they are founders, entrepreneurs, designers, or artists. The Messy Middle is a guidebook for navigating the time when you start to lose hope and become overwhelmed with self doubt.
Belsky, now Adobe’s Chief Product Officer, sat down with 99U to discuss what we misjudge about the middle part of a journey, the two most important characteristics for building something, and to share his lessons from The Messy Mid..
Government’s Content Strategy is the Linchpin of Citizen Experience
The future of good government hinges on content strategy.
This is important for everyone to understand because not just government employees and consultants who work with dot-gov websites are affected by the way agencies deliver content. Ultimately, content planning, organization, usability, and governance for online systems — and the human-to-human interactions they facilitate — affect the lives of people who use them every day. If the content strategy is bad, so goes the citizen experience.
We all can relate to the need for governments to deliver a better customer experience, whether it’s getting the right envelopes in your mailbox or connecting veterans with healthcare commensurate to their selfless sacrifices.
And while content strategy alone can’t fix broken business processes or improve the quality of healthcare, it’s absolutely critical to helping citizens locate, understand, and connect with public services. It’s a tool to help government employees better deliver the right i..
These UX Designers are Rethinking the Voter Ballot
I was five the first time I went to vote, excited for a field trip with my dad that conflicted with bed time. The polling place was a school gym. The room echoed with the clunk of machine levers as each vote was cast, and I munched on brownies from the bake sale set up in the lobby. That visit, which was repeated each election throughout my childhood, made it statistically far more likely that I would become a regular voter myself. Many people aren’t exposed to the voting process at a young age, and millions never make it to the polls.
Whitney Quesenbery and Dana Chisnell, co-founders of The Center for Civic Design, are focused on those people: where they fall off the voter journey, and how to get them back on. So they’ve set out to bring UX strategies to the myriad systems of local, state, and federal election offices, using human centered design thinking to shepherd citizens through the registration process to the moment they mark their choice on the ballot.
Chisnell and Quesenber..
Median UX Salary $95k and More from the UXPA Salary Survey
The median salary for UX professionals is $95,000, according to the just-released UXPA Salary Survey. The survey is conducted every few years and shows both the progress and evolution of UX industry careers.
Results of the 2018 survey indicate:
A greater number of professionals entering the field. More representation outside of the U.S. An increase in jobs in the Southeast and Pacific Northwest. More UX professionals holding senior-level, supervisory roles. A closing of gender-based salary gaps. UX salaries by role A variety of different UX professions were represented, and respondents were able to select multiple titles. “User researcher” was the most popular job title: it was selected by more than half of respondents (56%).
Overall, job titles that include “manager” (department or team) appear to have the highest median salary ($130,500).
This is followed closely by instructional designers. Product managers, technical writers, and technical analysts follow, after a significant de..
The First Five Years: Should I Try to Negotiate the Salary of My First Job?
Getting started in your creative career is tough. You’ve got boatloads of ambition and energy, but you lack experience, the kind of knowledge that feels like you can see into the future because you’ve been there before. So we’ve introduced a new column that will allow you to get the benefit of hindsight before you’ve actually gone through the experience. Welcome to “The First Five Years” where Mitch Goldstein, a professor of design at Rochester Institute of Technology, answers reader questions related to the unchartered waters of beginning a career. This month, Mitch answers a question about how to determine, and maximize, your first salary.
Q. Should I try to negotiate the salary of my first job? Knowing what your first job should pay is challenging: this number will vary wildly depending on geography, industry, studio size, studio clientele, and so on. Make sure to do some online research first (a good start is searching for “junior designer salary” in the city you are looking at)...
Be Frugal with Everything Except Your Bed, Your Chair, Your Space, and Your Team
In the process of building a business—and in life, generally—you should manage expenses carefully. But sometimes frugality backfires.
For example, given that you spend 30 percent of your life in bed and that sleep has such a great impact on how you feel awake, you should not skimp on your bed. Same goes with your office chair: In this modern age, we often even spend more time sitting at our desks than lying in our beds! So go buy the best damn chair you can find. Beyond your chair, the overall work space matters. While I am certainly not a proponent of expensive offices, the thought you put into the tools and environment you use to build things influences the quality of what you make.
Most companies classify their spaces the same way they do office supplies: negligible. Facilities planners tend to focus on the cost per square foot and logistical efficiencies rather than how space impacts the psychology of its inhabitants. But how you locate and design your space is as important as yo..