Tag / user experience
Why the discovery phase is the most important web design step
The discovery phase in web design can help you create products and services that your users really need. Here’s why you need to take it seriouslyCreating websites that people want to use requires an intense amount of research. To truly understand the people who will be using your products and services is the main current of user experience design.
Oriol Beda quipped in UX Collective that “research is still seen as a magic wand that is only waved when problems arise”.
If you don’t know who your audience is, how can you ever expect to design something suited to their wants and needs? The answer is you won’t. You’ll end up with a half-baked product that nobody will want to use. For a better design process, research should be a primary tool for answering problems and not a fall back for when things go awry.
So, what steps can UX/UI designers take to ensure that they’re creating successful work? When it comes to web design, one of the most important steps is the discovery phase.
In this pos..
Who uses Service Design?
“A “service” sign in a room lit up at night” by Mike Wilson on UnsplashNetflix, Google, Spotify & iPhone are all highly aware of the importance of good Service Design. We can see this through their business models. Did you ever wonder why Netflix charges customers on a monthly basis instead of per movie or why Spotify also only offers monthly subscriptions? And why did Apple switch from iTunes to Apple Music? The reason is simple. All of these providers wanted to move away from selling products and into selling services. Through well-designed services, providers hope to build and maintain a relationship with you, the customer. This relationship means that they can predict their revenue better, re-invest in improving customer experiences, up-sell and introduce new products and services more effectively to their existing customer base.
The benefits of brand loyalty, which companies such as Nike developed and cherished in the eighties and nineties, are reaped with more certainty through s..
Lessons Learned from An Event Apart Denver
Editor’s Note: An Event Apart (AEA) just finished its first event of 2018 in Seattle. For the first time, the 2018 conference series has three Special Edition events, which feature 18 speakers over three-day.
Today we look back at the 2017 AEA Special Edition. UX Booth columnist Jess Vice highlights some of the biggest takeaways.
Use the discount code AEAUXBooth to save $100 on any AEA multi-day event.
From Research to Redesign Jeffrey Zeldman, founder and creative director at studio.zeldman and co-founder of An Event Apart, kicked the conference off with a reminder of why we design in the first place. We can only identify and solve problems when we know who our customers are, who our users are, and which markets we’re reaching. Research is an often overlooked (yet vital) stage of the design process. Research sets us up to not only know who we’re designing for now but helps us discover what we should be solving for next.
Research saves time and money and allows us to build the righ..
Website Personalization Planning
Users’ expectations are high, and attention spans are short. There’s a multitude of alternative destinations if a website doesn’t present messaging, content, or functionality that immediately connects with what a visitor wants and needs. If a company is lucky enough to get users to its website, it should do everything in its power to keep them there and content. Website personalization is a proven way to engage audiences more effectively. Not only does it create better experiences for users, it can increase conversion rates, generate more revenue, and build brand affinity. Organizations who fail to personalize experiences are missing out on opportunities to better connect with prospects, retain existing customers, and generate greater brand loyalty.
What is personalization and why does it matter? Website personalization is about creating a highly relevant, targeted, and individualized experience to suit a user’s needs. It is dynamically presenting something that might be helpful or mo..
Full-stack UXers: Who They Are and How to Find Them
Within the user experience community, there’s been an increasing push toward finding individuals whose skill sets extend beyond those of a typical UX designer. Specifically, businesses are looking for leaders who can carry a project from initial design to front-end development.
These leaders are called full-stack UXers.
But when it comes to filling this in-demand position, there’s not a lot of clarity about what qualifications a full-stack UXer should bring to the table – or how to find them.
What is a full-stack UXer? Perhaps the best entrypoint into understanding a full-stack UXer is to explain what they are not. Contrary to what the title might suggest – and what certain job postings may unrealistically demand – the role doesn’t call for someone with a deep mastery of every part of the design trajectory. In practice, there are very few UXers who are as skilled in programming languages as they are in pixel-perfect design.
While full-stack UXers don’t need to have in-depth experie..
The UX Designer’s Ultimate Compendium of Free Typography Resources
Be the type expert your users deserve with our ultimate list of free typography resources for UX designersIt was infamous typeface designer Eric Gill who opined in 1931 that “we are concerned with typography in England.” Fast forward 80 years and everybody is concerned with typography, everywhere.
That’s why the Justinmind UXers came up with this list of top font and typography resources.
Typography in design: A quick run-downTypography is entwined in our everyday lives and there is no avoiding its omnipresent power. Whether you’re in a bustling metropolis like New York City or secluded in the plains of Rwanda, you’re going to interact with type. It’s on street signs, buildings, movie posters and books to name but a few of its homes.
That’s why typography plays such a vital role within user experience design. It’s found all over the globe and can be used to define a brand, convey emotion, deliver information and even ignite fiery hatred among zealots.
Use typography to prototype awesom..
The Ultimate Guide to Launching a Mobile App Redesign
Each time you are launching a mobile app redesign, you are risking to make some users unhappy. But there may be so many reasons for an app redesign that it actually can be your number one priority. And it’s, of course, vital to identify your particular reason or reasons for redesigning an app. You need to be 100% sure about what you are getting into.
Redesigning has got many advantages. So, undoubtedly, a well-done redesign can move your business in a new direction and help increase ROI.
First off, you need to ask yourself why your app needs a redesign. So, you might want to launch a mobile app redesign because:
User experience trends have changedYou are about to launch a new featureYour competitor is providing a better app experienceYour current design is a mess and is not user-friendlyAs soon as you are sure about launching an app redesign, you need to start acting. Let’s discuss your moves one by one in more detail.
Talk to your usersEverything you do, you do for your users. So, it’..
Whats the deal with ideation
A handful of thoughts and ideas on how to improve ideation workshopshttps://dribbble.com/sexypepperboyExperimentation is the key to streamlining innovation. It’s as much about your team than it is you, that why you should look to experiment with different ways of ideating to optimise the methods and environments that suit you all the best. As creative as we do not think we are, everyone is. Each and every one of us just needs a different framework to let our creativity thrive in.
After countless ideation workshops over the last six months of my internship, I have started to reflect on this thought of everyone being creative and the different ways we have looked to improve our own ideation workshops.
This isn’t about a post so much about defining “creativity” because what does that even mean anymore… but a post about how we should keep adapting and reflecting our ideation sessions to utilise the skill sets of the people around us so that we can reach those great solutions. These are my ..
A Primer to Web Accessibility for Designers
Quick wins to make your designs more inclusiveWhat is Accessibility?When was the last time you visited a website and got frustrated because you had trouble using it? Maybe the site was using Web GL technology that your browser didn’t support, you couldn’t read it’s text due to it being so small, or the mobile experience simply wouldn’t load on your iPhone. If you think back to these annoying experiences where you functionally could not navigate a site, chances are you’ve experienced inaccessibility in one form or another.
This is not to say that all frustrating experiences are inaccessible, but there are definitely overlaps between bad UX and inaccessibility. An easy way to think of this is that a bad experience for the general public is usually much worse for a disabled or impaired individual.
If you find yourself squinting to read small text on a site, for example, chances are a visually impaired person wouldn’t be able to read it at all. If you make this small text size larger, you’..
IA Summit, Convergence, and Embracing Architecture
The IA Summit is a conference that ambitiously questions the architectural underpinnings of our digital interfaces. It has become a place where many attendees discover their home away from home and create unexpected bonds with other professionals who are eager to understand how the things in our world relate. The driving force behind this exchange of ideas is a compulsion to understand the experiential factors of human-computer interaction (HCI) and the informational relationships that give rise to their structure. As our world of digital experience and informational complexity expand, IAS18 seeks to raise awareness of the systemic impact of our UI and UX design decisions and the role we play to tame information environments at scale.
The End of Boundaries Digital engagement is pressing beyond the screen to provide an extension of our bodies and the augmentation of human experience. For instance, we used to only look at screens on a desktop. We advanced to persistently holding them in..