The Case Against UX Testing

Picture a dark office, blinds drawn. Picture a UX designer smoking a cigar. See the light filtered through the smoke whipped to fog by a spinning ceiling fan. Watch as the UX designer sits at a desk and considers the website. The UX designer has devised a series of tests to determine if a green button is better than a red button. One of them involves tipping a tortoise onto its back. He looks the website over carefully and says, “Describe in single...

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site. The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s...

Walking into an initial meeting with a new client can be nerve-wracking. If you’re a freelancer, your income could depend on the outcome; if you’re part of an agency, then your colleagues’ incomes could rely on it too. More often than not, you’re meeting someone successful enough at negotiating to own a company. The time you spent learning code, or a design system, they spent brokering deals. So how do you know that you’re ready for...

There was a point at which I was very close to losing my business, and I didn’t realize how close. I wasn’t always a good planner, and I didn’t plan to start an agency. One day I was a freelance graphic designer, my job list grew, I hired some help, and suddenly I was managing a team. There isn’t a guidebook for new business owners, you have to learn on the job, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. We expanded rapidly from two to four...

Happy New Year, fabulous new website design trends! This month’s design trends are a collection of the somewhat unexpected – from NFT website design to large text to illustrations; you won’t see a single photo or video here. Here’s what’s trending in design this month. NFT Websites This website design trend has more to do with the greater trends in digital marketplaces and commerce but has value in the design space as well. NFT websites...

If you are a designer and have never dealt with designer’s block, you are probably a superhero. For us mortals, designer’s block is a pretty common problem. There are occasions when we sit in front of our screen, and our creativity just evaporates. I have spent many hours trying to get rid of this annoying wall. It took some time, but I have found some tactics that work best for me. So, do not panic! In this article, we will share five ways you can...

There are a lot of factors that contribute to a better user experience on a website. Pages need to load quickly to give users peace of mind and efficiency. Navigation must be clear and straightforward, with direct pathways for visitors to follow when finding your contact pages, blog posts, and products. Your colors need to work seamlessly together while providing just enough contrast in the areas that need it most. Excellent user experience...

Every year, at this time, blogs like this one like to try and predict what’s going to happen in the year ahead. It’s a way of drawing a line under the archive and starting afresh. A rejuvenation that, as humans, we find life-affirming. Ten years ago, I would have had high confidence in these predictions — after all I was eventually right about SVG adoption, even if it took a decade. But the last few years have shown that web design is tightly...

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site. The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s...

Many people believe that UX design is all about creating slick, engaging images and top-notch user flows. While those things have their merits, UX designers do much more than that. UX writing is an essential skill in developing an app or solving a UX problem for a client. UX writing is when we craft UI text to communicate with a product/service user. UX writing includes valuable text like instructions, buttons, menus, just-in-time warnings,...

Maps are a fascinating method for delivering content. At their best, they can create an intuitive way of presenting information and interacting with it. This is the advantage that digital maps, through mobile apps and websites, have over print maps and images where no interactivity is possible. But it’s important to understand that more data ≠ better experiences. We all now have so much data available to us through multiple services...

With a new year here, it’s time to try out some new fonts. Whether you’re designing a brand new website or redesigning an existing one, the following list of fonts has you covered. In addition to the dependable serifs and sans serifs we use to create attractive and readable content, this roundup also has some fun additions, including one you can use for websites advertising Valentine’s Day deals next month. Antona Antona is a geometric...

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site. The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s...

According to Klipfolio research, users spend on average 52 seconds on a webpage. With minimal time to impress, you must consider how to best help your consumers understand what your product or service does and why they should care about it. It’s not enough to describe your value – great landing pages will go the extra step and show this as well. One powerful method to do this is by providing a real-life, responsive teaser to show what your product...

The choice of typeface is one of the most critical factors in any design; it gives the text its voice. It can be desperately frustrating to find the right voice for your project, only to discover it’s outside your client’s budget. Who doesn’t love a free font? There’s no question that something for nothing is an attractive proposition. When it comes to fonts, the problem is that high-quality fonts require months, sometimes years of...

2021 has been both memorable and instantly forgettable. Pop stars were freed from modern-day servitude, some people tried to overthrow democracy, and we all vacationed at home. Despite the weirdness of the times, the web kept growing, kept changing, and kept on pushing boundaries. We saw a wealth of new sites launch or relaunch with significant updates. Here are the 50 best sites launched on the web this year. Enjoy! Crusta C In April, seafood...

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site. The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s...

Branding is a core skill for designers. Even designers who don’t work on brand design, work with it by following style guides and creating designs to complement a brand’s voice. How much do you really know about the process of branding, its history, and key terminology? Take our fun quiz to find out!    Featured image via Pexels....

AR (Augmented Reality) continues to build as one of the most exciting technology innovations to appear in recent years. More accessible than virtual reality experiences, since no specialist headset is required, AR has quickly emerged as a crucial tool for building unique experiences. Although interest in AR as a tool for customer interaction and experience has been growing, demand has skyrocketed in recent years. In addition, since the...

The year’s winding down as everyone segues into a much-needed holiday R&R. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some awesome new tools and resources for website design projects. Check them out, and hit the ground running in January. Here’s what’s new for designers this holiday period. Enjoy! Fancy Border Radius Generator Fancy Border Radius Generator is a fun tool that allows you to create exciting shapes for elements. Use...

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site. The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s...

At this time every year, Pantone announces its choice for Color of the Year for the coming 12 months. The last year has been uncertain, to say the least, and although a tentative optimism seems to be piercing the general gloom, it’s difficult to see how that can be expressed in color. On this occasion, for the first time, Pantone has elected to create a brand new color for its Color of the Year. Normally colors are chosen from Pantone’s extensive...

Websites as we know them are going to change very soon. The days of text, images, and basic interactions in a 2D browser window have served us well, but virtual, augmented, and mixed reality experiences are getting better all the time. Developers and designers need to think beyond the browser window and prepare for an immersive future. Many have been very skeptical about VR and AR in the past because despite grand promises about what they would...