UI/UX Articles And Interesting Tidbits Of The Week
December//25//2020
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.
Designing Effective UIs in the Presence of Complex Solutions. Another arresting article from Smashing Magazine and author Suzanne Scacca, this time around focused on building clear and understandable UIs, even if the solutions which power them are complex. The author focuses on points such as Figuring Out User’s Goals, Competitive Analysis and Progressive Disclosure of Complexity within the product, in tandem with user testing and feeddback. As usual there are plenty of examples peppered throughout the article, which provide further context to what is being canvased, including a review of the updated Instagram UI. Highlight of the article includes:
“Understanding your users’ objectives and expectations is valuable when you’re first starting out. But don’t assume to understand everything that’s going through your users’ minds once you have a live app or software that’s out there. Unless you’re in your users’ shoes, experiencing it exactly as they are, you really have no idea what new layers of complexity will do to the usability as they perceive it. So, it’s incredibly important to formulate working hypotheses related to what will happen when you introduce more complexity to the UI or when you remove something you believe to be too complex. Once you have a data-backed idea, you can start soliciting feedback from your users and refining your product.”
2.
Building Trust in Virtual Environments. Interesting article hailing from Inc. focused on tactics of building trust in virtual environments. With teams currently being built virtually, employers and employees (and potential employees), have a responsibility to be thorough in their research, understanding who they’re interacting with, with the ultimate goal of building trusting relationships within the umbrella of teams . This article focuses on aspects such as “Delivering on Promises”, “Sharing Credentials” and “Consistency”. Highlight of the article includes:
“When you hire virtual workers and get a new virtual team member, there is the question of whether someone has the background and experience they claim to have. Someone might be far less likely to lie about having a PhD in a very specialized area if they have to see you in the break room every day than if you only hear from them via email. That means we all need to lean on tools and techniques to help verify someone’s background. One example could be conducting a thorough search of an employee’s background on LinkedIn — a place where people might be unlikely to stretch the truth. Some companies have built talent databases in which people can search their teammates and verify their impressive backgrounds. Knowing that you are working with a certified superstar builds trust.”
3.
How Designers Responded to a Pandemic. Another relevant article from The Fast Company, documenting a series of initiatives shepherded by Design teams, across the world, prompted by the rampant spread and occurrence of Covid 19. It’s a testament to the ability of these teams to simultaneously be innovative and adaptive to the circumstances, by witnessing the roll of tools, devices, and processes that have been released to the world, to help it best deal with this dramatic situation. Highlight of the article includes:
“Contact tracing via our phones helped countries like South Korea quash new COVID-19 outbreaks quickly. In Israel, health officials have gone a step further: A company called Kando ran pilot tests to track COVID-19 outbreaks from an unexpected source — sewage. Here in the States, while the national government failed to share transparent data, the COVID Tracking Project collected nationwide infection rates to offer citizens and journalists a snapshot of the pandemic.”
