User experience, especially today, is not a siloed practice. To collect knowledge, generate new ideas, and ideate on design solutions, it’s best to bring people together. This job often falls on UX and occurs in the form of workshops for ideation, prioritization of ideas, affinity diagramming, or creating empathy maps and numerous other design artifacts. All these team activities are usually facilitated by UX professionals.
The facilitator’s responsibility is to make sure that the time spent in activities or exercises is as productive as possible for participants — clients, stakeholders and other team members —and generates the insights needed to move your project forward.
However, on mobile devices, both navigation and search come at a price: they occupy screen space and grab users’ attention, both of which are at an even higher premium on mobile than on desktop. If the screen space is really scarce, a search box or navigation links at the top of the page can
While many UX professionals conduct ideation sessions, less than half employ structured ideation techniques (any of the techniques listed other than unstructured discussion) to aid the idea generation process. This lack of structure could be part of the reason why only 15% of respondents rated
Reducing redundancies with a bird’s-eye view. Mapping out the whole cycle of internal service processes gives companies a bird’s-eye view of its service ecosystem, whether within one large offering, or across multiple subofferings. This process helps pinpoint where duplicate efforts occur
A marketplace solution for IoT development through decentralized smart contract ledger
Smart contracts can alleviate skill shortage by enabling a contract based hiring through a platform where clients can access a number of developers across the world and with whom they can sign up a contract. As IoT development requires input from developers in different domains like cloud, edge and
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
5 Real Life Blockchain Implementations Outside of Cryptocurrency
Medicalchain aims to use blockchain technology to securely store medical records. Using a distributed ledger for healthcare is a godsend as it allows doctors, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacists, and health insurers to have more immediate access to health records, which could help save lives
5 Steps to Creating a UX-Design Portfolio
The “users” of your portfolio will be hiring managers, recruiters, or fellow UX professionals, so your portfolio must appeal to these different groups of people. Think about which capabilities you want to showcase and how each group will understand this information. Very rarely will hiring
a model for conducting ux workshops and exercises
Marking Required Fields in Forms
It is however dangerous to not mark the required fields in a registration form. Registration forms vary a lot across sites — different companies require different types of information when creating an account. If your registration form looks like a login form, it’s safe to leave the required
The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
This is what level-1 people can do: “Tasks typically require the use of widely available and familiar technology applications, such as email software or a web browser. There is little or no navigation required to access the information or commands required to solve the problem. The problem may be
Tooltip Guidelines
Tooltips are hard to discover because they often lack visual cues. If tooltips are erratically displayed throughout your site, people may never discover them. It’s important to be consistent and provide tooltips for all the elements in your design rather than just for some. If only some of the
Tooltip Guidelines
The Business Insider website used tooltips for 2 of 3 icons in its navigation menu. (Note: on the homepage of the Business Insider website, the globe icon did have a tooltip that read Globe Icon. However, the label was not helpful, nor indicative of its functionality: a language selector.) In
Assessing the Usability of a User Interface Standard
On the 1–5 scale, the developers only gave a rating of 1.9 to the suggestion that a set of recommendations would have been better than an actual standard, thus again expressing their favorable attitudes toward having standards. They did like the fact that the standard included some
The State of Transactional Email
Even though transactional messages are typically sent after the user has placed an order, these messages have substantial business value in improving customer satisfaction. They can increase the likelihood that the user will place another order in the future. Each email is another touchpoint on the
a model for conducting ux workshops and exercises
Communicating Ecommerce Discounts and Promotions
DSW did not set accurate expectations. Omitting important information about restrictions on the offers caused frustration and broke the participant’s trust in the brand. Instead, the offers should have read “Free Shipping; No other offers can be applied” or “Get $10 off with code MYSPRING
Creepiness–Convenience Tradeoff
For example, consider app permission requests or account registration. We’ve advocated for asking for user data gradually, rather than all-at-once, as you build a relationship with your users over time. The creepiness–convenience tradeoff explains why that works — when people feel their
Introducing Gutenberg Optimized Themes
In addition to all of the above, the Genesis Framework will be further upgraded for Gutenberg with the release of version 2.8 in Q1 2019. 2.8 will include built-in features that allow you to easily and efficiently style and control Gutenberg blocks as well as auto-load demo content, which can arm
Bringing Array Themes into the WP Engine Family
We’re excited about all of these developments—the new styles we’ll be incorporating into future Genesis themes, the added ease and functionality we’ll be able to provide for Gutenberg, and the addition of Mike and John to our team. But most of all, we’re looking forward to the
How to Recover Abandoned Shopping Carts for WooCommerce Stores
Many of those abandoned carts are probably lost for good because you don’t have any contact information from the shopper to try to win them back to checkout. But for a percentage of the carts, your shopper will have gotten far enough along in the process that you’ll have an email address (or
In Mark Zuckerberg We Trust? The State and Future of Facebook, User Data, Cambridge Analytica, Fake News, Elections, Russia and You
In response to economic actors, he explained, “These are folks like the Macedonian trolls. What these folks are doing, it’s just an economic game. It’s not ideological at all. They come up with the most sensational thing they can in order to get you to click on it so they can make money on
6 Emerging Cyber Threats to Lookout for in 2019
2018 showed us an accelerated growth in cyber threat activities. Data breaches, attacks using malicious software and insider threats were among the most familiar forms of attack. Many well-known organizations suffered from these cybersecurity disasters and compromised data of millions of users
Discovering the threats below the surface on the Dark Web
The Dark Web is inherently scary for those who are unfamiliar with it, which to be frank, is most of us. Even asking most regular internet users to define what the Dark Web is could be quite a stretch. Most will probably rattle off something about open-air drug markets, illicit pornography, and
How to File an International Trademark When You’re Ready to Take Your Business Global
For many businesses, their brand is their most valuable asset. Through a few judicious steps in seeking trademark protection you can ensure that your company brand is secured and flourishes with the international growth of your business in global markets. You can learn more about trademarks and
a model for conducting ux workshops and exercises
5 Misconceptions You Should Know About Before Launching Your Tech Startup
Bring together an advisory board that has built successful startups, study the lean startup methodology, secure an experienced product manager, find a lawyer who’s familiar with tech, or consider partnering with a startup accelerator. Most importantly, know exactly what you’re getting into
7 Essentials Your Online Startup Needs to Follow
Starting an online business requires you to be extremely smart because 9 out of 10 startups fail and just 10 percent are lucky to enjoy the sweet taste of success. But there are essentials your online startup needs to follow. There are certain things that most of the startups fail to recognize
A Model for Conducting UX Workshops and Exercises | Ensure High Contrast for Text Over Images
Ensure High Contrast for Text Over Images
There is no need to choose between creating a usable design and an aesthetically pleasing design—both can be achieved simultaneously if attention is put toward both goals. When combining emotion-provoking imagery with informational text, ensure that the text is readable by creating a
Customer-Service Information on Websites: The Hub-and-Spoke Model
We conducted one large-scale study to discover general behaviors and usability across all areas of ecommerce websites, including customer service. A second study was designed to specifically gather data for the fourth edition of our report on the customer-service user experience, which is part of
Best Practices for Homepage Links on websites
However, having logos link to the homepage is not foolproof. Although it is a well-established convention, it is not understood by all users, especially less technical audiences. In usability studies we still observe people struggling to find links to the homepage, especially when logos are not
