UI/UX Articles and Interesting Tidbits of the Week
June//14//2024
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.
Experience Quality in Large Language Models. Very interesting article from Adobe Design’s blog and authors Mei Av & Rachana Rele. The article details the efforts the Adobe team performed when it came to integrating AI driven solutions into Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Acrobat Reader (those solutions that have become the AI Assistant, which is also supported by the Generative Summary, a feature from that assistant). It’s a great case study which details how the team went about researching the functionality necessary from users, as they parse through the data contained in sizable PDF documents. It’s a fascinating case study and once again it illustrates the importance of research in driving pertinent solutions. Highlight of the article includes:
“Adobe Design Research & Strategy began external concept testing to collect early feedback about how people were using the features and the value they saw in them, and to gather insights on key design elements. Then, through an internal beta, we turned to our employees who were using AI Assistant to read and navigate information in long PDFs and to synthesize and generate insights from documents to use in other types of communication like reports and email. Generative summary was being used to quickly understand a document and decide if reading further was necessary. As an internal audience helped us test our theories, they also helped us shape the features for Acrobat’s hundreds of millions of monthly active users.”
2.
https://www.glassdoor.com/research/glassdoor-employee-confidence-index-may-2024
Employee Confidence Index. Very interesting article from Glassdoor and author Daniel Zhao, reporting on the Employee Confidence Index in May of 2024. That reporting highlights the declining of confidence in senior leadership across multiple organizations. That is related in particular to the topic of Transparency, which has gained more and more relevance since the pandemic. The article also indicates confidence by industry, and it’s worth noting Technology, Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology in particular are going through a particular challenging moment. Worth reading through and reflecting on this data. Highlight of the article includes:
“One factor behind declining employee confidence over the last two years may be diminishing satisfaction with how senior leaders approach transparency and communication in the post-pandemic era. At the height of the pandemic, employees praised leaders for their transparency amidst a time of enormous uncertainty. In Glassdoor reviews, 63% of mentions of “transparency” were positive in April 2020, the highest at any point since 2016. However, employee satisfaction with transparency has been steadily declining since then with only 40% of mentions of “transparency” being positive as of May 2024, even lower than the pre-pandemic period. After a period when leaders were more willing to be transparent, employees are even more dissatisfied with the return to pre-pandemic norms.”
3.
Demonstrating the Value of Research. Another article from the Dovetail blog, this one documents the presentation of Eniola Abioye, Lead UX Researcher at Meta, who spoke during Dovetail’s Insight Out event. It’s a very pertinent and relevant presentation on the value of Research, and how Researchers themselves can impart profound value on Business Strategy, Roadmap shaping and overall direction of Solutioning endeavors. It’s not enough to passively share the outcomes of research: where the narrative becomes a powerful statement, is how Product Teams leverage these insights to deliver more meaningful strategies and eventually outcomes. Worth reading through. Highlight of the article includes:
“As storytellers, we must tie in our objectives and how those impact the business’s bottom line. A lot of times, there’s a different timeline for when our impact will land. And so it’s our job to continue building on those insights and maintain a body of work that keeps them relevant and tells the story. We can have a short attention span on product teams with so much reorganization and movement. So, we need to remind our product teams often — and in spaces where they’re paying attention already — what kind of impact our insights have had and how it’s directed — the direction we’re going as a product.”
