Tag / platform
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..
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..
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..
8 Universal Design Necessities for E-commerce
Great web design is an art, and in the increasingly accessible digital world, it has become ever more important to ensure that your design decisions are focused on an accessible user experience. This not only facilitates more positive engagements with a business’ audience, but is also an important step in establishing a brand’s reputation, visibility, and authority.
The principles of universal design arose from a recognition of the need to overcome obstacles to accessibility, particularly in the case of individuals with physical or cognitive difficulties. However, as the name suggests, universal design extends beyond these challenges to encompass the barriers faced by individuals in all walks of life, for myriad different reasons.
Accounting for all users’ needs is no minor feat, yet there are a few fundamental tenets to use to make your work better and transform the customer journey into an experience that is accessible and enjoyable for all.
1. Provide Choice Customizability enabl..
With the Continental GT, Bentley proves it’s still working on a different scale to everyone else
The Bentley Continental GT is a modern classic. This is the car that turned Bentley from a niche builder of brutish, old school gentleman’s conveyances into a honed, modern luxury goods manufacturer, able to build anything from a GT car to a royal limousine. This transformation was brokered by Bentley’s then-new owners, the Volkswagen Group, and the GT embodied the shift from traditional methods to modern, platform-engineered production. Like all the best brand rebirths, the original design team behind the Continental GT adeptly fused the marque’s best qualities with modern materials and technologies. The original GT arrived in 2003 and was substantially overhauled in 2011. Never, however, has the car been given a complete ground-up makeover.
Despite the masterful synthesis of old ideals and thoroughly new underpinnings, VW’s might and muscle was never far away, however, Detractors pointed out the various shared components – everything from engines to in-car entertainment – and lament..
Ship shape: nautical modernism takes to the trees in a Highgate house
In the conservation area of north London’s leafy Highgate, a glass egg can be seen high up in the canopy. The egg is an indoor conservatory that perches upon a vessel, which is balanced on a brick base. This layered architectural structure is 6 Wood Lane, the eccentric location for Wallpaper’s October fashion shoot (W*223), where a platter of denim – with pieces by Tommy Jeans, G-Star Raw, Levi’s and Diesel Black Gold – was served up among the transparent room’s hanging succulents, and photographed by Ivan Ruberto.
Completed in 2012, 6 Wood Lane was designed as a home for Mike Russum, who was both client and – with the Birds Portchmouth Russum Architects practice, of which he is a director – the project’s architect. Russum describes the upper volume as a ‘vessel’ because of its aerodynamic and nautical references.
Russum initially wanted to build the conservatory out of aluminium, but it turned out to be more efficient to use boat-building technology. Thus, the vessel was made of ben..
Meet XRespond Testing Tool: Let’s Make Building Responsive Websites Simpler
The way people consume information is constantly evolving. As web designers and developers, we keep up with all of the different screen shapes and sizes, learning to create beautiful, flexible software. Yet most of the available tools still don’t reflect the nature and diversity of the platform we’re building for: the browser.
When I was making my first responsive website in 2012, I quickly realized how inefficient and time-consuming the constant browser window resizing was. I had just moved from Estonia to Australia, and with a newborn, time was very much a precious resource.
The post Meet XRespond Testing Tool: Let’s Make Building Responsive Websites Simpler appeared first on Smashing Magazine.
Just for kicks: Nike and Virgil Abloh get in step
Like most American teenagers, Virgil Abloh, the multi-dexterous creative behind cult fashion label Off-White, grew up coveting Nike trainers. In his younger days, Abloh and his friends would sketch shoe ideas and send them to Nike (they were politely rejected). This week, Abloh’s highly anticipated reimagining of ten iconic Nike styles is being unveiled in all its glory. Simply known as ‘The Ten’, the collection teams Off-White’s irreverent styling with Nike’s iconic heritage for a fresh design perspective.
In Abloh’s hands, the ten Nike silhouettes – Air Jordan I, Air Max 90, Air Presto, Nike Air VaporMax, Blazer Mid, Converse Chuck Taylor, Nike Air Max 97, Nike Air Force 1 Low, including two new styles: Nike React Hyperdunk and NikeLab Zoom Fly SP – have been revamped with deconstructed and material interventions.
An installation at the Nike Off Campus pop-up
Shoes have been cut by hand and reconstructed, remade with translucent uppers and reversed materials, and emblazoned with ..
Find the Right Metrics for Your Sales Team
“What gets measured gets managed” is a longstanding business aphorism. But today’s sales technologies enable companies to measure almost anything, which leads many managers to try to measure everything. As a consequence, managers don’t have a clear sense of what is really driving sales in their business, while salespeople, who are inundated with dozens of metrics, get lost in the day-to-day noise. The result is poor management of what matters.
The challenge, of course, is to decide on the right metrics. Consider the results of a survey of key performance indicators (KPIs) being used by more than 800 sales teams across industries. Wins are the most common metric used across sales roles and industries. On average, firms measure closed deals and rep production against quota monthly, which isn’t surprising. Selling is a performance art, and “making the number” should be the goal of any sales organization, but a closed deal is an outcome and a lagging indicator; it can’t be used by the sal..