Three Exercises to Teach Your Team Empathy
Part of what makes empathy such a powerful skill, especially for those in the UX field, is our ability to understand another’s situation. And a surprising way to train ourselves to do that, is by allowing our colleagues to be empathetic toward us, as well. (more…)
Why Content Experience Is Part of Experience Design
Content experience refers to the entirety of content and the context in which it lives. Not only does content experience include the content assets (articles, resources, videos, photography, social media and distribution channels), but it’s also the words that comprise navigation, the language that prompts users to take action, and the physical ways the content is displayed on a page. (more…)
Things I’ve Learned About Responsive Email Design
Navigation bars in email My personal recommendation is don’t do it. You’re already dealing with limited space and the user’s limited attention span. Lets not complicate things. I don’t have any stats to back up this opinion, so feel free to present some metrics to prove to me that it is worth it. (more…)
Product Vs. Marketing Illustration
In Product: For the most part, hero illustrations have no place in product. A product should be functional. It’s not about “making you want to come back every day” it’s about being so seamless to use that you look up and you’ve been using it every day for a year. Hero illustrations can get in the way of that. (more…)
Photoshop Etiquette For Responsive Web Design
Photoshop Etiquette was given a fresh coat of paint by Adjacent, a design studio in Syracuse, NY. For those new to the concept, Photoshop Etiquette is a best practices guide that promotes efficiency through clarity in web design. Though engineered for Photoshop, many of these principles apply to Sketch and similar, layer-based design tools. (more…)
We Made The Decision To Add Six More Steps To Our Onboarding — And It Worked. Here’s Why.
Don’t make me think. That’s was our approach with this new onboarding. We asked ourselves. “How can we make sure each step (no matter how many there are) have such a low threshold of effort that users will fly through it?” (more…)
When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps
Journey maps combine two powerful instruments—storytelling and visualization—in order to help teams understand and address customer needs. While maps take a wide variety of forms depending on context and business goals, certain elements are generally included, and there are underlying guidelines to follow that help them be the most successful. (more…)
Designing for gestures
Gestures are the very basis of how you interact with your mobile devices. Look at them as two-parters: the touch mechanics and the ensuing touch activities. Touch mechanics are what a user’s fingers do on his screen. For example, if you tap (one of the most basic gestures) on a menu item, you’ve performed a touch mechanic. (more…)
eCommerce usability: the ultimate guide
Besides all this, your product page, like your homepage, needs an excellent call-to-action. That will in most cases be the Add to Cart button. Limit all distractions, make the text actionable, use the right color. And if possible, add a review somewhere near that button. More on calls-to-action here, and more on button design here. (more…)
User Memory Design: How To Design For Experiences That Last
The lead researcher, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, saw confirmation of a psychological heuristic called the peak-end rule: people’s memories of an experience are based on a rough average of the most intense moment (the peak) and the final moment (the end). (more…)
Design is Valued. Now What?
Given the perceived value of design in today's software industry, many companies are putting it at the top of their agenda. They want designers to deliver the impact they see in design-centric organizations: higher margins, devoted customers, and an innovative product pipeline. It's an expectation of product leadership and significant impact. (more…)
How to Design a Walkthrough That Users Will Read
Make Walkthroughs a Walk in the Park A walkthrough that’s a pain to read and navigate is one that users will always want to skip. But if you make yours short and useful they’ll have no problem viewing it. (more…)
Learning on a Dime: 10 Great Psychology Courses You Can Take for Free
Are you looking to expand your knowledge in the field of Psychology, but don’t want to spend an arm and a leg? Several online teaching tools offer free psychology classes or portions of classes if you are interested in the subject but do not want to pursue a degree or certification. (more…)
Scrum In Modern Web Development
Scrum allows us to produce high-quality work, faster. It encourages cohesiveness among our various departments and makes it easier for us to identify issues, fostering continuous improvement that sustains and drives our process. (more…)