UI/UX Articles and Interesting Tidbits of the Week
July//9//2021
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.
Legacy Companies & Innovation from Within. Very interesting article hailing from The Fast Company on the topic of Innovation and a Startup frame of mind within legacy organizations. Having personally been a part of an Innovation Studio within a legacy organization, it’s always admirable when organizations recognize the need to be limber, devoted to better user experiences and generally adhere to the qualities which shape long lasting brand statements — self awareness, principles, deliberateness, adaptability, focus. However, it’s not enough to just plant the seed of innovation — it’s just as equally important to keep nourishing these initiatives, providing resources and generally leveraging what is created from these incubation centers, to power up effective endeavors. Well worth reading. Highlight of the article includes:
“The annals of business history are filled with the stories of once-dominant players that failed to embrace change and saw themselves displaced by nimbler competitors. Still, many companies are setting themselves up to follow in the footsteps of their ill-fated predecessors. For example, 70% of legacy companies have moved less than a fifth of their key systems to the cloud, with two-thirds planning to maintain at least some of their legacy systems, despite the digital transformation unfolding across industries. Companies hoping to avoid the fates of Kodak or Blockbuster would do well to pay attention to their scrappier counterparts — and with more than 700 unicorns globally boasting a cumulative valuation of nearly $2.4 trillion, there are plenty of successful examples to heed.”
2.
Email Testing Flow. Very interesting article from Smashing Magazine and author Andriy Zapisotskyi, focused on how to effectively test email flows. The author highlights the three main obstacles of email distribution, which includes Deliverability issues, Display and Engagement challenges. The article also sheds light on topics such as Open Rates, Bounce Rates, Click-Through and Unsubscribe Rates, all part of the email life cycle and ecosystem. It’s a thorough and engaging article, worth reading through, in order to understand all the obstacles which can occur when sending out email communications (and in some cases, how that can have a profound impact on the product experience of your application). Highlight of the article includes:
“With transactional emails, it’s a bit trickier, because the open rate you should strive for depends on the type of email you send. For example, reset password emails should be opened by the majority of your recipients, let’s say up to 90%. Order confirmation emails won’t have such a high open-rate but will receive much more interest than a marketing campaign, even with an exclusive offer. The other side of the coin for transactional emails is that they should be opened by the right people at the right time. Otherwise, such emails are useless or even harmful. Imagine that John has just signed up for a financial service to create a tax report. To proceed, he needs to click a button in the confirmation email. After three hours, when John’s working day has already finished, he receives an email welcoming someone named Jack. Will he move on with that service? It’s doubtful.”
3.
Leading with Trust. Fascinating article from The Fast Company, on the topic of Leadership and Trust. The article specifically refers the paradox of team members who get to positions of power, in the process lose the trust of their team members, since essentially the connection & empathy they had established with those teams is somewhat lost. This article ties itself with a few others from prior weeks on the topic of emotional intelligence, including qualities such as respect, candor and humanity (the article on Design Leadership can be found here, while the article on Emotional Intelligence can be found here). Highlight of the article includes:
“Let’s start with Keltner’s description of the behaviors that lead others to trust you with a position of power. In this view, the road to earning and maintaining power and ultimately trust is paved by actions that show care for others. They “give power to those who advance the greater good, construct reputations that determine the capacity to influence, reward those who advance the greater good with status and esteem and punish those who undermine the greater good with gossip.” Leaders demonstrate empathy, they give to others, and they show gratitude.”
