UI/UX Articles and Interesting Tidbits of the Week
May//11//2018
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.https://www.nngroup.com/articles/annoying-ads-cost-business/
Ads and their Business Cost. Another great article from the Nielsen Norman Group, focused on the impact that ads have on the overall Product Experience, and how users maintain a relationship with that same product. It’s an interesting read, further detailed with a case study focused on music streaming service Pandora. Highlight of the article includes:
“Online advertising is bad for UX. Yet it persists because it drives revenue, and thus is good for business. But is that really true? We have long argued that the degradation of the user experience caused by too many ads can have an adverse impact on the business value of a website. Basically, if you annoy users too much, they’ll stop using the site, or at least visit it less. (Conversely, there’s extensive evidence that better usability leads to increased use — and also to increased sales for those websites following ecommerce UX guidelines. If better UX equals more use, it seems reasonable to expect lower UX to decrease use.)”
2.https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/05/fast-ux-research/
Fast UX Research. Impeccable article from Smashing Magazine, detailing the importance of UX Research and the relationship that is established with stakeholders and the time constraints that surround this process. It details the process by harnessing a streamlined process, anchored on Focus, Attendance, Summarization and Translation. Highlight of the article includes:
“Contrary to what you might think, reducing the time it takes to do UX research does not mean that you need to soldier on by yourself. I have done this and it only works in the short term. It does not matter how amazing the findings are — there is not enough PowerPoint slides in the world to convince a team of the urgency to take action if they have not been on the research journey themselves. In the long term, the more actively engaged your team and stakeholders are in the research, the more empowered they will feel and the more willing they will be to take action. Productive collaboration also means that you can move together at a quicker pace and speed up the whole research process.”
3.https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/04/8-ways-to-emotionally-reward-your-users/
Emotionally Rewarding Users. Article hailing from WebDesignerDepot, which details ways in how users can be rewarded on the journey they take with the products being designed. It’s an interesting article since it provides insight into ways how to create further user engagement and retention. Highlight:
“Closely related to progress is achievement: the emotion you get when you actually finish something. A sense of achievement can come from completing just about any task in this hectic day and age, with so many distractions all around. Still, the emotion is made stronger by the recognition of one’s achievements. Even offering a quick “Hurray, you did it” after completing something annoying like a long form is a nice touch. It lets your users know that you recognize the time and effort they put into their interaction with your site, and that they could have just as easily spent that time and effort elsewhere.”
