Here’s what we are looking for in our front-end developer

We’re looking for an experienced front-end/JavaScript developer.

Solid experience with and understanding of JavaScript is mandatory. Candidates who are experienced with AngularJS are preferred since you will be instrumental in maintaining our existing AngularJS codebase while also helping us create new products and solutions.

Good understanding of HTML and CSS is required. Bonus points if you have any experience with other JS frameworks, Node.js, Go, Python, and WordPress.

Your responsibilities

You will act as a key expert for our new products, and that’s why we will prefer candidates who have an interest in software architecture and who are not afraid to contribute and exchange their ideas and be active members of product planning teams and processes.

You will work with our most important clients, but your primary role will be the development of our products and services. We just recently launched Wallery, and we have some bold ideas for the future, so we hope you will help us shape it with your knowledge and personality.

Our clients and projects

Our clients are located worldwide – literally on all continents, including Antarctica. We work with various clients like World Economic Forum, Microsoft, and IBM; but also with exciting startups and teams.

We don’t divide clients into big and small ones; we decide to work with them based on their ideas and projects. We’ve learned to say no to projects that we didn’t think will bring us enough challenges and excitement.

About us & what you can look forward to

While we did start as a user experience agency back in 2009, in the meantime we’ve grown into a hybrid company where you’ll be able to work in close collaboration with other developers, designers, usability specialists…

We believe in a business model where we don’t rely exclusively on the client and services work, but rather we develop our products and services for global markets. This way, we get to learn from both worlds – one being the agency and client work and the other being the product development with a flair of startup culture and mindset.

We have flat, project-based teams with little to none administrative burden. Your future colleagues are smart, passionate and driven individuals. They hail from different backgrounds and bring their uniqueness to our team.

We offer all the usual perks you’d expect and then some. You will pe paid based on your experience and knowledge. While the possibility for remote work is not excluded, for this particular role and because of its importance for our team, we will give the advantage to people who can come and work from our beautiful and cozy office located in Zagreb.

If you have pets, you are more than welcomed to bring them to the office if you’d like to do so!

Next steps?

Send us your CV and email saying why would you like to work with UX Passion and our team will then invite the best candidates for an interview. You will be interviewed by your peers – other developers in the team and our CEO.

We will be expecting your emails at work@uxpassion.com.

P.S. If you have any personal or hobby projects dealing with AI, ML or IoT, that’s a big plus. Also, having an active GitHub account helps!

The post We are hiring! Looking for a Front-End Developer (m/f) appeared first on UX Passion.

You can’t have the UX industry, or user testing, without the users. After all, they are exactly why UX testing exists. Through their individual needs and experiences, you learn how to shape a design or a product.

Since most products, services or designs have a particular purpose, they also have an ideal demographic. This would lend credence to the idea that you need to stick with that demographic during testing. After all, they are the audience you’re trying to appease, so they know what strengths and weaknesses are important.

But this is the wrong line of thinking. By being too granular about the users you recruit for testing, you are eliminating the potential to reach a greater audience. Yes, there’s always an ideal demographic, but that doesn’t mean you should forget everyone else at the same time. Your products and services should be efficient and easy to use for everyone.

That is the primary reason why you should conduct usability tests outside the targeted field or demographic. Of course, you won’t adopt this strategy on faith alone, so we’re also going to explore some other reasons for doing this.

What are the benefits of doing UX testing outside the targeted field?

Career Foundry defines usability as “the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object”, which means it’s all about the experience and flow of a design and not the users themselves. Conducting UX testing outside the targeted field ensures your product or service is convenient for a wider audience.

Did you know just a 10% improvement in a company’s customer experience score can translate into a $1 billion revenue difference? That’s insane, and it’s exactly why reaching a wider audience should always be in the back of your mind.

You may not understand your target audience

It’s tough to admit it when this is true, but it does happen. You think you know your ideal demographic, so you set up a screener or filter to find the right folks for your UX testing, only to realize you were wrong. Since usability testing is often expensive, targeting the wrong audience can be a costly mistake.

Even if you know who your target audience is, you may not fully understand what they want or need.

The solution is to expand your test to include users outside your targeted field. The extra users may give you insights into other demographics or even reveal more about your target demographic.

The product or service can be tested quickly

If your product or service can be tested fairly quickly — about 15 minutes or less — then you’re much better off targeting a general demographic. Why?

Because if your product can be tested that quickly, it’s clearly something everyone can use. Regardless of whether that’s what you intend for your product or if it’s accessible to everyone, that’s the group that’s going to use it.

So, in this case, you’ll want to plan accordingly and test a broader spectrum of users.

Your product requires minimal instruction or prior experience

If your product already requires minimal instruction to use, there’s no need to run a niche usability testing campaign. The same is true if prior experience or knowledge is unnecessary when using the product.

As with the point above, this is because it’s accessible to everyone by default. So, you’ll want to plan accordingly and test a general user base instead of a specific one.

You don’t have any direct competitors

If you don’t have direct competition or products to compare yours to, there’s little need to focus on a targeted demographic.

The point of usability testing is to find and fix experience and design problems, not to find out more about your audience. When you’re entering a market with little to no competition, you’re probably not going to know much about your audience besides who they are.

If you confine your UX testing sessions to that particular audience, you’re missing out on insights big time, especially when you’re not under any competitive constraints.

You need to offer cross-platform support

Did you know mobile users are five times more likely to abandon a task or site if it’s not optimized for mobile? So, if you focus your usability testing on desktop users, for instance, you’re eliminating most of your audience right away.

Simply put, the same people who browse a portal via desktop may not always be the same folks browsing via mobile. Mobile users are generally on the go and live hyperactive lives. But the funny thing about that is some mobile users prefer to stick with their mobile device even when they’re at home. In fact, 77% of mobile search is done at home or work even when there’s a computer nearby.

This can make it extremely confusing for anyone trying to target a specific platform, especially if there’s no need to do that in the first place.

By opening up your UX testing sessions to a greater audience, you’re also opening up your product for testing across many platforms.

Your product is niche

Niche product owners operate under the assumption that they need to focus on a target demographic because their product is niche. This is not only detrimental to the design of your product or service but also to your future customers.

To market a niche product, you must persuade potential customers that they need what you have. Sadly, you cannot persuade anyone to do anything if they don’t understand what you have to offer. You can learn this by opening up your UX testing to a greater audience and watching how users interact with your product.

This is also a great way to find kinks or problems with your product that need to be ironed out before you go to market — exactly what UX testing is for, right?

Your product’s social impact is questionable

If you’re not sure how your product will fare via social media or word of mouth, you should consider testing with a greater demographic. Outside users will be able to tell you the features and details of their experience as someone not familiar with your product.

You can then use this information and apply it for things other than to improve usability. In other words, you get more value out of your testing.

For example, let’s say a potential customer — outside of your target field — comes in and identifies an intuitive and new way to use your product other than what was intended. You’re probably not going to build an entire marketing campaign on this type of thing, but it is worth mentioning at some point. When you do, that will also expand your target audience more. It’s a win-win situation, really.

You learn more with a bigger audience

A whooping 84% of companies plan to increase their focus on customer experience measurements and metrics. The most obvious way to do that is to conduct UX tests and track everything that’s happening.

It’s no secret that when you’re taking measurements and recording metric data, you want to be as thorough as possible. And that is exactly why you want to include a wider audience when testing. You’ll learn much more from them and their experiences than if you confine the sessions to just a small group or demographic.

You can take this information and apply it in a lot of ways, again getting more value out of your testing.

About the author

Lexie Lu is a designer and blogger. She continuously researches trends in the web and graphic design industry. She writes weekly on Design Roast and can be followed on Twitter @lexieludesigner.

The post Here is why you should do UX testing outside the target field appeared first on UX Passion.

There are various aspects of mobile design that need to be considered by designers when developing a new mobile application. As of recently, typography has become quite a significant tool in mobile app design. It is considered one of the major instruments that shape up the visual communication of a mobile application.

Certainly, communication plays a crucial role in the design of mobile applications and mobile apps need to communicate their purpose well. The main reason behind focusing on the aspect of typography is that, right off the bat, mobile app developers and designers strive to create a transparent relationship between the mobile application and the user. This is because providing the user with a highly interactive mobile app helps them achieve their specific goals.

However, finding or choosing the right sort of typography for a particular app or website is also necessary. It is needless to say that each and every designer works differently and has different opinions about the choice of typefaces as there are no particular set of rules that work in all the cases. Therefore, it becomes critical for mobile app development companies, designers, and business owners to infuse their mobile applications with highly intuitive typography.

Here are few reasons why typography is crucial for enhancing the app’s user experience.

Good typography supports visual hierarchy

Typographic hierarchy across different sections of a mobile application is important. Typographic hierarchy is a type of visual hierarchy in the aspect of designing. The lettering is designed in such a hierarchical manner that the most significant words are presented with the best effect to guide users.

If you do not maintain typographic hierarchy, then the entire content will fall flat. Its absence will distract the users and prevent them from determining the most relevant section of information as it develops contrasting differences between the parts. Designers vary sizes, colors, fonts, and typefaces to bring these differences into different layers.

One of the prime objectives of any design is to subliminally hold the users’ interest and keep their attention on the subject of the app. This is where typography plays a vital role, as typography supports a certain form of visual hierarchy that guides users for a responsive navigation.

With the help of good typography, we can make it incredibly easy for end users to follow the analogical flow of data and the arrangement of visuals in terms of size, style, alignment, font face, and colors.

Typography speaks to end users

With good use of typography, it is easy to enhance the graphics of a mobile application, but there is much more to it than that. Typography impacts the human psychology in a significant manner. Effective typography affects consumer behavior positively and enhances the responsiveness levels.

Visual language and typography, together, play a tremendous role in influencing people’s emotions. There is a vast range of typography types that achieve subtle alterations in volume and texture of voice. Graphic designers use typography to convey mood, age, personality, and gender. The role of typography is significant enough to change user perception with subtle diversities between typefaces.

Good looking typography with suitable fonts and sizes will lead to increasing and retaining user attention, as it helps in connecting with the user and enhances app efficiency.

Typography is sharply associated with the end user’s way of relating to a particular design. The primary focus of any app is engaging end users, and through the use of the written word we can do just that- interact with our users via good design.

One bad choice leads to another hassle

Many mobile applications are made with the purpose of being used by a large number of people to indulge in purchasing activities such as buying products and services online. They serve as a catalyst in the process of creating a brand identity. Therefore, one wrong choice in the course of selecting typography could lead to hassle and severe problems for the brand later on.

During the selection of typography for an app design, even a small mistake might lead to a domino-effect of sorts. This is why it is important to avoid making decisions you are unsure of. There are some common errors the designers tend to commit, such as misjudged text line lengths, wrongly paired typefaces, poor body font choices, bad color choices, and the wrongly chosen line height between two lines of text. All of these should be given utmost attention as they are prominent parts of helping users read fluently. If you are using well-designed typeface it’s designer has made type cells especially for each letter, and kerning pairs for every pair of letters in that family. Sometimes playing with kerning breaks text flow considerably and destroys legibility.

Don’t forget to pay attention to the space between the letters. This detail should be given utmost attention as it is a prominent part of helping your users read fluently. The spacing can be regulated by the letter-spacing CSS feature. Moreover, it is a valuable consideration always to commence with 140% of the font size to avoid leading issues. Having said this, ‘leading’ defines the vertical distance amongst the two uninterrupted lines of the text. When designers forget to pay attention to this it ultimately results in descenders of a line overlapping with the ascenders of a lower one. But again, putting too much of space in the middle of the rows will result in loose, tough to read text.

Improper spacing, instability, and rare alignments in the selection of font families, sizes, and colors can ruin the overall brand image.

A properly developed mobile application is the mix of usability, content, speed, convenience, design, and usefulness. End users view a mobile application as a unit. Typography, as well as all the other parts of design, should be as invisible as possible. Meaning, content is and should be king.

Good typography conveys a message with transparency

It is important for mobile designers to ensure that typography complements the app design and suits it so that customers’ loyalty can be achieved through presenting your app with credibility.

The look of the message you want to convey affects the reader’s way of reacting to it, and if it is subtly visually attractive, the reaction is usually on the positive side. However, if the message is not easily to read and grasp, it loses its value. So, it is important to choose a nicely paired set of type families and, to avoid tracking and leading issues, make sure there are no mistakes in the typeface such as incorrect ellipses and bad practices such as underlining text which is not hyperlinked.

The selection of typography is majorly dependent on the surrounding elements which shaped up the user interface. It enables them to showcase the relevant details with the use of good typography, which in turn, drives end users’ actions through as few words as neccassery. This will retain their interest in the mobile application and motivate them to keep coming back.

Good typographic choices will compliment your app design

The primary role of typography is not just to deliver the information to your user, but to also compliment the overall design of a mobile application or a website. This will not only improve the user experience of your app but also maintain the interest of end users in the app or website you are developing.

A great app design with bad looking typography does not enhance the success of business. In fact, it only means wasting a given chance to utilize space properly. This makes it important for designers to determine what type families and sizes would be most suitable for the app they are working on. When needed, a highly unique typography can be created just to accompany the overall app design.

There are plenty of type families to choose from, but the four basic type families that help you understand what is right for your project and what sizes are suitable are Serif, Sans Serif, Script, and Decorative.

Choosing the right fonts matters a lot as font choices can decide the tone for the entire design and affect viewers’ interest and their reactions. The four different aspects you should pay attention to when deciding on the right font for your project are its readability, size, versatility, and color. It is always advisable to find fonts that share a common trait and compliment each other.

In order to do that, it is best to pick fonts made by the same typeface designer. This is because every designer has their own unique aesthetic. Each and every font should be given a unique and different purpose in the overall design so that the design guides readers in each and every section.

As of late, we are witnessing more and more designers starting to pay closer attention to the high valaue of text and typography. This is because of today’s modern retina screens and browsers that can finally render typography properly. This new practice improves the holistic outlook of a mobile application and enhances its user experience to a big extent. Indeed, a mobile application with bad typography leads to dissatisfied UX.

About the author

Shahid Abbasi is a big time tech geek working with the best mobile app development company, Peerbits. He is an experienced UX designer, designing enhanced UI/UX for websites and mobile apps. He likes to share his knowledge in technical blogs. Over the weekends, he transforms himself into an awesome cook!

The post Why typography is crucial for enhancing user experience appeared first on UX Passion.

A CEO on support can help your business

A couple of days ago we were proud partners of Ladies of New Business event in Zagreb, Croatia. We were a platform sponsor and the event used our Wall of Tweets – world’s most loved Twitter and social media wall solution. Somewhere in the second half of the conference we got a support request from the client on-site. I answered the call and talked to our customer. I quickly realized the issue was not with our service – but that doesn’t change the essence of this story.

Several days earlier, a similar thing had happened.

You should also know that apart from answering support calls, I do my best to respond to all business inquiries we get through our form on UXPassion.com and try to do so within an hour or even quicker than that.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that I have plenty of time on my hands and that I’m manning the support just to fill in the time. This is a deliberate decision from my end. Being in constant touch with our customers, experiencing their expectations, learning about their needs and desires gives me an ultimate reality and sanity check.

The Big picture vs the details

While working as a CEO and founder, you need to be the leader of your team. You are expected to set the vision, drive the engagement and paint the big picture. It’s incredibly important to understand each and every bit and piece of your business. Chances are you are constantly dealing with people and with customers. The best way to serve them and understand their needs is to be on the front-line and support them. Yes – it does take time. Yes – it does mean that sometimes you answer emails at 2 am. But it also brings in new business, new opportunities, happy customers – and most importantly – you get valuable learnings.

Be prepared to face some skepticism, however. More often than not, I get a reply back from our potential customer asking – is this really the CEO of the company answering emails? Or are we just using my name and title to try and leave an impression that here, at UX Passion, the CEO will answer their emails? This could mean one thing: A practice of CEOs answering support emails and client inquiries, is (still) not an everyday thing – it is more of an exception. And while I don’t have any trouble convincing people that I do personally answer their emails, I have this feeling that, as founders and executives, we are missing a great opportunity to connect with our current and potential customers and to get the direct and brutally honest reality check.

One of my first jobs, where I earned my money for college and to pay rent after I moved from my parent’s home, was at the customer support call center at one of the largest ISP in Croatia. My parents were not what you would call “men (parents?) of means” so I needed to earn my money and still had to manage my classes and other obligations. I was often working late and taking up night shifts so that I could go to classes in the morning and during the day. While all of this was intense and exhausting at moments (and, honestly, the salary was not the greatest – which was perfectly fine since it was my first real job!) it provided me with a valuable life lesson. I learned to be patient and, most importantly, I learned to listen. Back then, more than a decade ago, I knew that this experience will be helpful to me whatever I decide to do later in my job. At that time, I was working towards my degree in physics and expected to become an astrophysicist. Today I am an entrepreneur and a guy who loves researching and developing stuff, and what I learned back then is even more important to me than I had ever thought it would be.

As founders and executives, we are missing a great opportunity to connect with our current and potential customers and get the direct and brutally honest reality check.

Just do it!

If you are a CEO or manager and executive of any kind, do dedicate an hour or so a week to man the support emails or calls. You will learn a lot; you will gain strategic insights and get the opportunity to connect and build a relationship with your current or potential future customers.

As a disclaimer, I need to say that I am not answering each and every email we get. I simply can’t do that due to the sheer volume of emails I receive daily. But if you ever get a reply from us signed by my name – it was me answering it. Same on the phone. With UX Passion, you get the CEO on support. :)

The post CEO on support: A greatest business reality check appeared first on UX Passion.

What do your friend’s startup, your small local business and a large company such as Google have in common? No, this isn’t a trick question.
The answer is actually fairly simple and intuitive. All of the aforementioned businesses depend on users enjoying their products and services in order to continue doing business successfully.

In the recent years many have noticed the importance of UX design and are investing more and more into its research and development.

Be it physical or digital, a product is bound to rouse both an emotional and intellectual response in its consumer based not only on the way it works but also how it looks and feels. Whether that experience is going to be a good one or a bad one is going to make an effect on your sales, and this is exactly where a good UX design team proves itself to be absolutely crucial.

Why “X” marks the spot

UX is about two things only – the User and the Experience. Give your users a positive experience and they will reward you with their trust and their business. Companies with highly effective UX have increased their revenue by 37%, and top 10 UX leaders in America outperform the S&P with close to triple the returns – a significant lead. This clearly shows the ROI of UX design.

When experiencing your product leaves the user with a foul taste in their mouth, they will quickly take their business elsewhere. 90% of users reported they stopped using an app due to poor performance, and 86% deleted or uninstalled an app as a result of encountering problems with it’s functionality or design. Meanwhile, studies show that 86% of users believe an exceptional customer experience is worth paying extra. With these figures in mind, it is not difficult to understand why User Experience focused companies like Apple, Google, Adobe, Dropbox and Amazon are year after year leaders in their respective fields.

While having a great product is paramount, in today’s market it often is not enough to keep you ahead of the curve.

This is why investing into UX design has proved to be a game-changing strategy. A pleasing UX has been proven to earn the users’ interest, business, and most of all – their loyalty. 48% of users say that arriving on a business site that isn’t working well on mobile will be seen as an indication of the business simply not caring, and 52% said that a bad mobile experience made them less likely to engage with a company in the future.

The principle extends beyond just mobile devices; 40% of users will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load, while 79% will search for another site to complete their task.

Designing experiences

But what about design? How important is the actual aesthetic property of your website (or a product) when it comes to user experience?

An experiment conducted by M. Tractinsky tested relationships between users’ perceptions of a computerized system’s beauty and its usability.
Its outcome showed that, undeniably, the role the aesthetics play in HCI design is a major one, and should be kept in mind at all times when catering to the users’ needs.

It seems safe to conclude that the business value of UX design is so colossal, one can simply not afford to ignore the importance of a highly skilled team of UX designers putting their expertise into crafting the experience your users are going to undergo and enjoy while engaged with your service or product.

With design focused on user experience, a company is forced to create for their customer. A relationship is formed and it grows, bonding the customer with the product. At UX Passion, this is exactly what we do; we help you put the customer in focus, and we do it with passion!

The post The business value of User Experience (UX) Design appeared first on UX Passion.

In our first ever guest post, Ava Garcia who works as a designer at OSSMedia Ltd. is going to discuss the importance of Visual Consistency in UI design, and give you a few tips on how to easily achieve said consistency. If you’re curious to know more about Ava and her work, you will find her bio at the bottom of this page. Enjoy!

There is no disputing the fact that UI design is the most vital component of web development. Users appreciate interesting and useful websites and apps, and user interface design helps us to produce a UI which makes it easy and enjoyable for users to interact with good products.

A good user interface design aims to foretell the users what they need to do when approaching an interface. In simple words, a great user interface design is one that helps users accomplish any task in the most efficient way possible.

Without a doubt, the look and feel of a website’s design is important. However, how well the UI functions plays a crucial role in the success of a web page.

There are different factors that make a UI design successful, and the most important one is maintaining visual consistency in how the elements are placed in a web design’s UI. That’s because the lack of consistency in your user interface design can make your application or website design look chaotic and confusing to the viewer. On the other hand, maintaining visual consistency can help users to easily communicate with your system.

In this article, I will present you with a couple of techniques that will help you achieve visual consistency in designing UI.

Let’s have a quick look at a few benefits of having a visually consistent user interface design:

Benefits of Visual Consistency in User Interface Design

Increased Usability

A web design that’s more usable attracts more traffic towards it, and visual consistency is a great way to increase usability of your UI design. This is because it helps in arranging and publishing content in a structured manner.

Eliminates Flawless Communication

An excellent UI design is one that makes it easy for users to access the most important content quickly and with ease. To do so, it is important that your user interface design prioritizes the content that you would like to show your users in a particular manner. Achieving visual consistency between design elements on your web page can help you in highlighting the most important part of your website data in a clear and concise manner.

Evokes a Strong Emotional Response

An impeccably designed UI has the ability to evoke an emotional response. A user interface that conveys emotion can easily make a connection with your audience and hold them on your site for longer. Emotions can drive the decisions we make, and you can create an emotional impact via your user interface design by maintaining visual consistency.

Techniques of Creating Visually Consistent User Interface Design

Use Heat Maps to Understand User’s Behavior

Often when making web design decisions, most of the designers (if not all) rely on Google Analytics. However, using this kind of traditional method lets you know about the number of users who visited your web page and clicked on things within that page, but it doesn’t tell you why the users landed on your page.

Of course, getting to know about “why” instead of “how” can help you create a user interface design that ensures better usability. This is where the ‘Heat Maps’ come in handy. They help you know about the points in your website design that received maximum attention from your visitors. For instance, you can know if users are clicking on the checkout button or not by conducting a heat map study. Bing Ads, for example, performed an eye tracking study which resulted in a heat map and found that the more mobile extensions an ad contains, the more attention it gets.

Once you get to know about the pattern users follow to access information on your site, you can place elements in your UI design in a manner that ensures visual consistency.

Making the Proper Use of White Spaces

Whitespace is one of the most undervalued parameters in web design – seen by users as empty, or a waste of space. However, it is one of the most viable means to maintaining visual consistency between the elements of a UI design.

Whitespace is referred to as the spacing between the different elements of a website. Most importantly, whitespace help in making the content easier to read. Additionally, it helps scan the elements of a web page quickly. For example, let’s say you visit a store. Obviously, you won’t be able to move throughout that store comfortably if there isn’t enough space. Likewise, not adding proper whitespace into UI design makes the layout of the site incomprehensible for your site visitors.

In fact, according to an online study, it has been concluded that using whitespace strategically helps improve readability by almost 20%. In a nutshell, whitespace can play a crucial role in improving the overall user experience.

Nobody wants to navigate a web page that makes them put a lot of effort into viewing and interacting with things within that page. Good use of whitespace makes the website look less cluttered and helps make the content and other elements easier to read. As a great example, Dropbox makes excellent use of whitespace:

Using the Right Contrast for all Elements of UI Design

The third technique that can be used to create visual consistency in UI design is to make use of the right contrast for elements like shapes, sizes, colors, etc. For example, using a light color for the main navigation menu such as white, while using a bright color background like yellow makes the menu items visually inconsistent and difficult to read. The same is the case with font size and other design elements. Using the wrong contrast for elements results in making the visual hierarchy for your site unclear to the users.

And so, try to use the suitable contrast between design elements. Using a CSS helps in maintaining consistency between those elements. For example, the Red Hat website features several elements with a uniform contrast, presenting the content in a consistent manner throughout the website. As you can see in the below image of the Red Hat website, the primary and the secondary navigation using uniform contrasting colors is immediately identifiable.

Conclusion

Prioritizing how your UI elements are visually displayed is something that you shouldn’t ignore when building a website or application. Having visually consistent UI elements helps in making the design more creative without leading to any confusion.

About the author

Ava Garcia is a professional WordPress developer and has been working with OSSMedia Ltd – a WordPress Outsourcing and PSD to WordPress services company for the past 5 years. She loves to share information regarding web technology.

The post The importance of Visual Consistency in UI Design appeared first on UX Passion.

I find it amazing how often very similar problems require notably different approaches in order to be solved successfully. So far I’ve found this holds true for just about anything in life and, by extension, usability research as well.

Usability research is all about observing and understanding user behaviors, needs and methodologies. Mike Kuniaysky says that it is “the process of understanding the impact of design on an audience.”

It follows that Usability specialists are problem solvers with many tools (research techniques) at their disposal. I bring you a breakdown of some of the most commonly used user research approaches;

Usability Testing

Usability Testing is a research technique which helps us evaluate a product or service by testing it on its representative users. In order to eliminate outside disturbances and allow the researcher to better take notes of the entire process, it is preferably done in a controlled environment such as a lab, but can also be done remotely or in a room where we can ensure no disturbances or distractions. Often it is filmed or videotaped, but doing so is not a requirement as long as someone is closely observing the user and taking notes.

The goal of Usability Testing is to identify any usability problems, collect qualitative and quantitative data and to determine the participants’ satisfaction level with the product or service we are testing.

In order to achieve that, we measure various factors such as time needed to perform tasks, error and success rates, preference for alternative solutions and, of course, users’ subjective level of satisfaction.

A/B Testing

Sometimes also called “multivariate testing,” “live testing,” or “bucket testing”, it is perhaps the most straightforward form of testing.
A/B Testing is merely comparing the effectiveness of two different versions of the same design or product by launching them both under similar circumstances.

In the context of web pages, A/B Testing would mean launching two different versions of the same web site at the same time. The goal here is to see which version of the web page (A or B, with A being the control version and B being the variation) ends up giving us a higher conversion rate.

Quantitative Survey

A Quantitative Survey is a survey or a questionnaire distributed to a large number of participants; usually a representative sample of our target market, in order to hear their opinions strictly on a subject we are testing and need input on.

It is important that the questions in this type of a survey are closed, meaning that the respondents are choosing from a specific selection of answers and are not given an opportunity to expand or elaborate on their responses.

Web Analytics

Used as tools for business and market research, Web Analytics help us assess and improve the effectiveness of a website.

Web Analytics are done by collecting, measuring, analysing and reporting on various web data obtained by web servers, tracking cookies and so on.

By obtaining data from a large number of users, we can highlight patterns in navigation and user types as well as focus on answering specific questions such as “How many people visited the site?”, “How many of these visits were unique visitors?”, “How did they come to the site?”, “How long did they stay and how much time did they spend on each particular part of our site?”, “Which keywords did they use in their search which brought them to the site?”, “What keywords did they search with on the sites’ search engine?”, “How does the day of the week or a time of a day affect user habits?” and many, many more.

When performing web analytics we use various software to collect a large amount of data, but it is up to a Usability Specialist to interpret the data and come to concrete conclusions and ideas on how to utilize the data we’ve collected in order to improve the UX.

Focus Groups

Using a Focus Group, a Usability Specialist will lead a moderated discussion with 4 to 12 participants. This discussion will be conducted in a controlled environment- just like a Usability Testing session.

The goal of a Focus Group is to gain verbal and written feedback through discussion and exercises and to explore preferences (and reasons for those preferences) among different solutions.

Although Focus Groups are definitely a powerful tool when it comes to system development they are never used as an only source of usability data.

This is because the feedback we receive from Focus Groups is subjective, and, therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt- especially in cases where the users are asked to describe how they perform activities which span many days or weeks.

Hence, we do not use Focus Groups to assess interaction styles or design usability, but to discover what the users want from the system they are using.

Sometimes what we, the developers, want to give the users isn’t what the users actually need from our websites and apps and this is why Focus Groups are a valuable source of information; they help us align our views with the views and needs of our average user.

Central Location Test

A Central Location Test (or interview) employs both quantitative and qualitative research techniques, as well as visual techniques such as monitoring the respondents’ eye movements and testing for degree of recall of particular elements of a website, app or a product.

In a controlled environment, groups of 15 to 50 people are shown demos or allowed to use products before being interviewed or taking a survey to measure their grasp of the concept, the appeal of various features and the desirability of the product.

CLT is the most suitable method for testing concepts, new or modified products or packaging, advertising effectiveness and sensory research.

In closing…

I hope this little rundown through the user research approaches was useful to you. If there is anything in the realm of UX and UI you’d like to read more about, feel free to shoot me your ideas or questions at ines@uxpassion.com. I’ll be happy to hear from you!

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Participatory Design (in its origins also called co-operative design) is a relatively new approach to designing products. It successfully involves the stakeholders, designers, researchers and end-users in the design process in order to help ensure that the end product meets the needs of its intended user base.

Participatory Design exercises are used in a variety of fields, such as software and product design, urban design, architecture, graphic design and even medicine.

Up until recently, the majority of consumers believed they were not being designed “for” by the companies they bought their products from, but rather designed “at” and forced to adapt to the ideas and principles that weren’t intuitive to them. In order to fix this, Participatory Design was a creative invention which aimed to actively include the end users into the design process.

As opposed to empathic design, in which researchers and developers move into the world the world of end-users, Participatory Design can be seen as relocating end-users into the world of research and development.

It is important to note that, while the users are a valuable source of information and ideas in Participatory Design, they are not allowed to make end decisions and are never empowered with the tools that the experts use. Participatory Design sessions are simple exercises in which we give our users the tools to create and design mockups of software or products they would love to use in the “perfect world” scenario while also asking them to explain why they built their perfect software or a product in that particular way.

From observing their building process and listening to their explanations on why they built something in this or that way, we learn a lot of the things we wouldn’t through a mere interview with the user.

When should you run a Participatory Design session?

• When you want to better understand how people think about a given problem, discipline or a technology, run a Participatory Design session.
• When you have a feeling that what the users say they do and what they actually do are not the same, run a Participatory Design session.
• When you feel like there is, or could be, any cultural or political disconnect between you and the end user, a technique such as this might be the best way for you to observe and learn from the user.

The tools

At this point, you might be thinking to yourself, “A Participatory Design session sounds great! I want to conduct one, but which tools do I need?”
You will be happy to find that nothing is set in stone when it comes to the tools you should use in Participatory Design sessions.
…Unless you want to provide your participants with stone blocks and rocks, which is totally fine, and sounds like a great idea!

Depending on what you are designing, tools for the session can be anything. If you are working on designing a product or an environment, you might want to use wooden bricks, Legos, plasticine, pieces of rope, maps and so on. Even post-it notes can be used successfully and in a variety of different ways.

One of the great things about Participatory Design exercises is that the only limitation when it comes to the tools used is your imagination.

If you are designing software, you might decide to stick to pen and paper. (Or a whiteboard!) You could create blank versions of different device screens and ask participants to draw out the UI. You could provide the participants with cut out icons and boxes which they could arrange to their liking and according to their needs, explaining why they put something in one place instead of the other.

By letting the participants show us what matters to them, as opposed to telling us, we are getting more specific and more honest data out of the session.

In conclusion

A Participatory Design Session is a great opportunity for designers and researchers to meet and identify with the end-user. The user is invited to enter the creative process and by listening to them, we can avoid making mistakes we are often tempted to make as a result of designing for ourselves instead of designing for the user.

It is important to try and keep the tools used as simplistic as possible. Don’t let the tools you use overshadow the message your participants are trying to get across. Ask a lot of questions, and as with any usability research technique, make sure to spend the most of the session closely observing your participants.

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The Internet is no longer a rational space driven by facts and reality. With the emergence of social media and constant connectivity, the Internet is quickly taking on a character of its own, but fluxing and changing daily. In order to keep up with the constantly changing worldwide web, business owners need their websites to quickly and efficiently bring customers in. The use of user experience (UX) designing for emotions enables businesses to take their websites to the next level in today’s growing Internet world.

The Importance: Why even think about designing for emotions?

Human beings are emotional creatures. We are drawn to things that make our hearts beat faster, our eyes tear over, and our hands clench in fear. We are driven to images that we view as cool, interesting, and beautiful. UX designing for emotions takes these natural human characteristics and uses them for the advantage of website design or app design.

The product is then a website that users view not as a machine, but more as a person who wants to have a relationship with them.

Techniques to Follow

So, what can you do to make sure you create an enjoyable and emotional connections with your website or product users? Here are some quick wins for you.

Make Them Laugh

The use of written and visual humor, such as cartoons, has been proven to connect users to various companies. When you’re watching TV, most of the time you remember the humorous commercials, the commercials that made you laugh, more than the more serious ones. The same principle applies to websites. You’ve probably noticed bunch of hand-drawn sketches around our website too.

Give Them Something to Recognize

As humans, we are drawn to things that we can relate to. We also find beauty in proportions that are regularly used and recognized. For instance, many web developers are experimenting with the use of the golden ratio in website design. Think Fibonacci’s sequence and the shape of a seashell.

Provide an Expectation

We as humans are pretty predictable creatures, and we like things that we can easily follow and predict. In UX design for the emotions, providing a pattern for users to follow is very important. But just as important is the realization that humans sometimes like a little surprise thrown in to keep us on our toes. So, while you might go ahead and apply principle of the least surprise you might also go for a little element of surprise

Engage Them

Visitors to your site are more likely to return again if you engage them in some way whether through some sort of visual stimulation (video, graphics), customization, or interactive tool.

Talk to Them

Finally, in today’s social world, we are connected to each other more than ever. As a result of this connectivity, we value authentic, relational communication. So, use UX design and rely on the emotions to communicate with your users in a way that tells them that you want to be their friend. Or business partner. Or both. In any case – it’s the relationship built on emotions that matter. Tone of voice and word selection go a long way in accomplishing this goal.

Did we make you curious?

All these characteristics of UX designing for emotions may seem pretty lofty to reach to, but let us reach them for you! Here at UX Passion, we can provide the services that you need in order engage your users and keep bringing them back for more. Remember, it’s about building authentic and trustworthy relationships.

Additionally, if you want to learn more – you can take a look at Arron Walter’s book: Designing for emotion – it’s a good read and we recommend it!

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