This article was written in collaboration with Senior UX researcher Caitria O’Neill, currently at Google, previously at Airbnb and Facebook.
The human brain is lazy, biased, and prone to shortcuts.
The user experience study of human cognition can be mushy, unscientific, and filled with false assumptions—perhaps it’s the fault of a lazy brain.
Cognition is complex, and many factors play into gut reactions or an instant impression. When you ask someone, “Why’d you do that?” there’s a high chance they won’t be able to answer or that you’ll misinterpret their response.
Enter neuroscience.
While research methods like observation and interviewing often require the UX researcher and participant to make guesses, modern technology like eye tracking allows researchers to study nearly imperceptible reactions and preferences.
In the case of products with…
A designer’s aim is to clinch the next job with their portfolio. Yet, most fail to create one that intrigues, engages, and sells the designer effectively. Following recommendations and best practices from industry professionals empowers designers to craft an ideal portfolio that perfectly showcases their talent and skill.
A design portfolio needs to impress and make an impact. Regrettably, only a few succeed. A designer may be highly skilled and talented, but if the presentation is underwhelming, it will lead to a yawn instead of a wow and clients clicking away to the next portfolio.
Design portfolios need to focus…
Experimental product design techniques deployed rigorously during the design process are crucial for optimizing user experiences. Instead of converging on a single solution and implementing it in the final phase, experimentation enables product teams to test out ideas earlier in the process with real-world users at scale.
Following up on our previous collaboration, Evolving UX — Experimental Product Design with a CXO, I joined forces with Chris Gibbins, a chief experience officer (CXO) at Creative CX, an insight-led, advanced experimentation consultancy based in London. We discuss how experimentation fits into the design thinking process, and how designers can use it to “prototype with live data” to optimize digital products for better user experiences.
Aligning Design Better With Business Strategy
Businesses need to show a return on their investments and ensure responsible use of company resources. Various teams are under pressure to be more accountable — analyze KPIs, improve them, and deliver on company…
Involve your customers and collaborate with them from the start. Otherwise, you are designing without understanding the whole picture.
What Is Human-centered Design (HCD)?
“ When you understand the people you’re trying to reach-and then design from their perspective-not only will you arrive at unexpected answers, but you’ll come up with ideas that they’ll embrace.” —IDEO, Field Guide to Human-centered Design
Sometimes called “participatory design,” human-centered design focuses on people’s everyday thinking, emotions, and behavior. It is a creative approach to problem-solving that involves the end-user from the very beginning and places them at the center of the digital design process.
Most mobile experiences suffer from poor UX because their creators failed to observe mobile UX design principles and best practices. These fundamental tenets of mobile usability have been developed over time through meticulous research and user testing. Applying them with rigor will enable designers to create better mobile user experiences.
With nearly 9 million apps at people’s fingertips, it’s tough out there for a mobile app designer. At least a thousand new apps pour into the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store each day. Yet, more than 75% of them are downloaded, opened once, and never used again. Most of this can be attributed to poor usability.
Take just one industry: eCommerce. With 3.5 billion smartphones globally, it’s losing hundreds of billions of dollars every year by not following UX design best practices. …
The best UX trends speed up interactions, improve usability, and reduce friction. 2020 has reinforced some trends from the previous year, including AI-assisted voice interactions, hyper-personalization, and hand-drawn content; and produced a handful of new UX trends that will endure through the coming years.
2020 proved to be a cataclysmic year with many companies going into hibernation. Thousands of designers lost their jobs and the design field experienced a significant decline in activity. Homebound during lockdowns, most designers caught up on design books, scoured blogs for inspiration, and brushed up on design skills. In keeping their fingers on the pulse of design trends, designers demonstrated that 2020 was a year for reinforcing and evolving current UX trends and evaluating new ones.
Dark UI designs are seen far and wide, from mobile screens to massive TVs. A dark theme can express power, luxury, sophistication, and elegance. However, designing for dark UIs presents multiple challenges and won’t meet expectations if implemented poorly. Before diving into the “dark side,” designers should look before they leap.
Physicists say black isn’t really a color; it is the absence of light. In his experiments shining sunlight through prisms, Sir Isaac Newton didn’t even include it on the spectrum of colors.
In color psychology, most colors represent different things for different people. In Western cultures, black is often…
Integrating a culture of continuous experimentation into the product design process is essential for elevating user experiences and boosting a company’s bottom line. Instead of converging on one solution, implementing it, and later evaluating it, experimental product design builds a variety of solutions to quickly determine which one works best.
To explore how to improve user experiences through experimental product design, I spoke to Chris Gibbins, a chief experience officer (CXO) at Creative CX, an insight-led, advanced experimentation consultancy based in London. …
One of the benefits of the remote work lifestyle is the freedom to travel. For some, it’s about solo adventures. For others, it’s about sharing experiences and resources with like-minded people. Catering to planet-roaming remote workers, a spate of new coworking and coliving locations began to emerge during the last decade across the globe.
Ask any remote worker about their quality of life, and you can be pretty much assured they will happily regale you with the many benefits of location-independent work. …
Peripheral messages in digital products, collectively known as notifications, should never harm the user experience. Instead, they must contribute to an experience that helps people accomplish a goal. Addressing notification design early in the product design process will produce better results.
Imagine a group of architects designing a three-story house, laboring over the blueprints for months. It’s impressive! It’s beautiful! But just as they get close to finishing the diagram, one of them exclaims, “ Wait! How do people get from the first to the third floor? “ They forgot about the staircase!
Similarly, product designers tend to think of…
Miklos Philips
User Experience
