The human to computer interaction is heavily based on interacting with graphical UI elements, and color plays a critical role in this interaction. When designing a new app, it’s often difficult to decide on a color scheme that works well, as there are an infinite number of possible color combinations out there. In this article, Nick Babich will go over the most important points related to color in apps. He’ll cover traditional color scheme patterns, custom color combinations that aren’t based strictly on any one pattern, and he’ll also learn how to choose colors and contrasts for your app that support usability. If you’d like to hone your own color usage skills, you can download and test Adobe XD for free, and get started right away.
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Thinking about images in terms of their usability is important. All visual communication in your design leaves a cumulative impression on the user. Compelling images have a unique ability to inspire and engage your audience to provide useful information. Take the time to make every image in your app or site reinforce user experience. Human beings are highly visual creatures who are able to process visual information almost instantly; 90 percent of all information that we perceive and that gets transmitted to our brains is visual. In this article, Nick Babich will cover a good number of useful principles and best practices that will help you successfully integrate imagery into your designs.
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In this article, Nick Babich will talk about the role of functional animation in UX design and see when to incorporate motion into a design. If you’d like to follow along and spice up your designs with animations, Adobe introduced Adobe XD which you can download and test for free, and get started right away. Identifying the places where animation has utility is only half the story. If you’re going to use animations in your designs, they should be built well, and that is only possible when an animation is a natural part of the design process.
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You can facilitate kickoff meetings to improve shared understanding of a project’s goals and potential challenges. You can facilitate presentations to elicit more productive questions and feedback. Even impromptu discussions and group whiteboard sessions would benefit from better facilitation. In this article Brian Frank focuses on developing the soft skills to feel more comfortable facilitating UX design, research and strategy sessions. You don’t need to be a full-time facilitator or leader, or even a designer. These skills can be used by anyone in any role to inject more productive collaboration throughout their design process.
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Digital products are getting more and more complex. In this article, Yury Vetrov explains why we need to support more platforms, tweak usage scenarios for more user segments, and hypothesize more. Our industry has both high- and low-skilled designers, and it will be easy for algorithms to replace the latter. However, those who can follow and break rules when necessary will find magical new tools and possibilities.
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A 2014 study found that people with easier-to-pronounce names are deemed “more trustworthy”. Atif Azam built Vocalizer (a simple, lightweight JavaScript plugin that facilitates the accessibility of difficult to pronounce names) to solve a problem that has persisted all his life. Now, he hopes this will prove useful to others, helping them solve the same problem.
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The best way to convert a user on a mobile landing page is to provide a clear description of what you’re offering, along with obvious ways to contact you. Be clear in describing what your product does and how you’re solving your target customer’s problems. Get to the point of what you’re selling and show the user how to buy it or contact you. Creating landing pages with mobile users in mind will help you to focus on how best to convert people on smartphones. When building a landing page for any online campaign, take special care to consider the mobile experience. Review the presentation of content, as well as the prominence of contact information.
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Building a genuinely helpful and attractive chatbot is still a challenge from a UX standpoint. While chatbots can be a great tool for creating more personalized customer experience, conversational design still have certain limitations. There are clear cases when a conversation can help or hurt the UX. Before building a chatbot for your business, you should clearly define its purpose and the exact value it could bring to the user. Teach the bot to do one thing extremely good, such as delivering weather forecasts or introducing the company’s scope of service before experimenting further with more advanced features.
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Are you using progressive booting already? What about tree-shaking and code-splitting in React and Angular? Have you set up Brotli or Zopfli compression, OCSP stapling and HPACK compression? Also, how about resource hints, client hints and CSS containment — not to mention IPv6, HTTP/2 and service workers? A front-end performance checklist of things to keep in mind when optimizing for performance.
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In this article, Kyle Cassidy shares his thoughts and experiences on how lean thinking helped to instill efficiencies within his UX design process. For clients undertaking multiple projects, the lack of consistent wireframe deliverables was confusing and disorientating, with the client having to remember multiple URLs and logins while also learning how to navigate the various outputs. Many routine tasks were unnecessarily repeated across multiple projects. It was clear that they needed to establish some rules and guidelines to create a more cohesive approach. They needed to set a new direction, and now was the time to start.
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