Redesigns are often expensive, time-consuming and incredibly risky. Of course sometimes big-bang-redesigns are necessary, yet more often than not they can be avoided with a series of strategic incremental changes. Here are a few things to keep in mind before launching a big-...
So you want to conduct UX research, yet you find yourself constrained — by wrong assumptions and wrong expectations about what UX research actually entails. Research doesn’t have to be time-consuming. It doesn’t have to be expensive. And it doesn’t have to be disruptive. Let...
Every screen you interact with has multiple personalities: blank state, loading state, partial state, error state and ideal state. How To Fix a Bad User Interface highlights strategies to avoid awkward and confusing UIs with the UI Stack, carefully designing personalities fo...
Good research is always rooted in the past, not in the future. Net Promotion Score has many flaws: in how it asks users to predict their future behavior, the Likert scale and the statistically unreliable score calculation. There are better alternatives.
1. How Net Promoter S...
Often misunderstandings don’t just cause confusion. They bring team members apart, erode trust and produce waste. They often come from wrong assumptions and unrealistic expectations.
Of course every UX task is different. But every task requires a shared understanding about t...
Design decisions are often seen as a matter of opinion or preference. But design solves problems, and so good design decisions shouldn’t be based on hunches or opinions. They have good reasons, they address the problem effectively, and as such, they impact business goals.
We...
Where would you find inclusive, free-to-use photos of diverse people? There aren’t many resources out there, but the ones that do exist are absolutely fantastic. Here are some useful pointers that you might use in your work.
Beautiful, Inclusive, Free-To-Use Photos of People...
Do you actually rely on the well-established Double Diamond process in your design work? Chances are high that you had to cut corners, make tough compromises and keep convincing stakeholders about the right approach to design.
Is there a single, universal, perfect design pro...
That’s a question that seems to fuel never-ending discussions year after year. Do we open external links in new tabs by default? Do we mark external links? How do we deal with links to PDFs, videos and audios? Let’s figure it out!
Below are some practical UX guidelines on ho...
Getting support for accessibility efforts isn’t easy. There are many accessibility myths, wrong assumptions and expectations that make accessibility look like a complex, expensive and time-consuming project. Let’s fix that!
Below are some practical techniques that has been w...
Nearly 1% of the global population is autistic. Yet often it’s not obvious how to consider the needs of autistic people in the design process. Let’s change that.
Below are some general UX guidelines, do’s and don’ts to design better UX — for autistic people and everybody els...
Design tokens represent small, repeatable design decisions. Instead of using exact HEX or px-values, we refer to a token which name describes how and where they are used. It makes it much easier to update the design by changing one value in one place and not breaking anythin...
These books have been kindly shared by the community, with lessons learned by authors for everybody to read and benefit from. A sincere, enormous thank-you to the authors for making their work available to everyone for free. Hopefully you and your friends will find them usef...
Poor color contrast is the most common problem on the web. Here are some useful guidelines for text and buttons, with minimum contrast recommendations for better legibility, a few color contrast tools and useful resources.
How Color Contrast Is Calculated #
In general, colo...
Things To Avoid as a Design Manager #
Most managers don’t give enough feedback.
Don’t “sandwich” feedback — critique with humility.
Never do your team’s work; help them do their best work.
Don’t mandate decisions from the top; explain them.
Don’t be a silent voice in the...
Avoid Wrong Assumptions #
Don’t assume that older adults struggle to use digital.
You don’t need to strip the design to bare minimum.
Avoid general stereotypes and assumptions about elderly people.
Most users are healthy, active and have a solid income.
How To Write...
Too often accessibility is seen as a checklist, but it’s much more complex than that. We might be using a good contrast for our colors, but then if these colors are perceived very differently by people, it can make interfaces extremely difficult to use.
Depending on our colo...
An example of anin-house ladder, ranging from junior designer to design director. From 10 Directions To Take Your Next Career.
There is no universal career path that works for everyone. In fact, the best path is the one that feels right to you. But there are some thing...
In some interfaces, navigation feels extremely slow and frustrating. Users seem to be running in circles, heading through multiple pages, sections and sub-sites, being re-routed and redirected multiple times — often without a clear path forward.
How can we boost the speed of...
Dyslexia can take different shapes. Different people are in a different place on a continuum, but for some dyslexic users reading might take longer, especially if text has many large uninterrupted blocks, italics, words written in uppercase and flashing images.
It’s difficul...
How do we write a great design case study? I’ve put together some practical guides, examples and do’s and don’ts on how to stand out.
Key Takeaways #
Think of a case study like a magazine feature.
Keep a case study digestible, thorough and a story.
Choose a customer that r...
Do your design initiatives clash against the company culture? Do you struggle to boost the role of UX in your organization? If you also struggle to convince your colleagues or stakeholders about the impact of UX, the action points below might help.
We’ll also dive into the i...
When talking about job interviews for a UX position, we often discuss how to leave a good impression and how to negotiate the right salary. But it’s only one part of the story. The other part is to ask questions and to listen carefully — to discover red flags early, and figu...
Design process is messy. You might be following a structured approach, but with all the last-minute changes and overlooked details, too often it takes a life of its own. And before you know it, you are designing in a chaotic environment, full of refinements, final-final-deli...
We often rely on sticky headers to point user's attention to critical features or calls to action. Think of sidebar navigation, CTAs, sticky headers and footers, “fixed” rows or columns in tables and floating buttons. We've already looked into mobile navigation patterns in S...
Rage taps are annoying and frustrating. These wonderful occurrences in our interface when we need to tap twice, or sometimes three times to continue our journeys. Of course sometimes they happen because the website is too slow, but sometimes it’s the target size of interacti...
Drag-and-drop is not a trivial user interaction. It’s messy, inaccurate and comes in plenty of flavors — from design states to interaction modes. Yet when we think of drag-and-drop, we typically think of a simple drag’n’drop file upload — which is only one of the many contex...
Many companies organize their workflows around projects and departments. Especially in large companies, work often travels from one place to another, often getting stuck between emails and Slack messages, and often “refined” on its never-ending journey between design and eng...
Recently I stumbled upon the article How To Avoid Bias in UX Research, with pointers on how to anticipate, identify and overcome biases in your research by being more strategic about how you ask questions and how you run the test. A concise write-up by Genís Frigola.
Here ar...
Red flags to check in your design interviews. Photo by Carson Masterson.
I’ve recently stumbled upon Red Flags To Check In Your Design Interviews, a quick guide on how to work out if a team is right for you, and what it's going to be like to work in that company, or wi...
