UI/UX Articles and Interesting Tidbits of the Week
March//22//2019
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.https://company.myshopify.com/blogs/blog/business-plan
How to Build a Business Plan. Fantastic article hailing from Shopify’s blog, detailing the needs and execution processes for the edification of a meaningful and pertinent business plan. It’s a topic that at first glance may seem outside of the scope of Design, but that’s a misguided assessment — Design as a disciple is an collation of different factors, and being able to digest, understand and potentiate the information from a Business Plan is fundamental. Highlight of the article includes:
“Potential market is an estimate of how many people potentially could buy your product. While it’s exciting to imagine sky-high sales figures, you’ll want to use as much relevant independent data as possible to validate your estimated potential market. Since this can be a daunting process, here are some general tips to help you begin your research: Understand your ideal customer profile, especially as it relates to demographics. If you’re targeting millennial consumers in the US, you first can look for government data about the size of that group. You also could look at projected changes to the number of people in your target age range over the next few years; Research relevant industry trends and trajectory. If your product serves retirees, try to find data about how many people will be retiring in the next five years, as well as any information you can find about consumption patterns among that group. If you’re selling fitness equipment, you could look at trends in gym memberships and overall health and fitness among your target audience or the population at large. Finally, look for information on whether your general industry is projected to grow or decline over the next few years.”
2.https://www.catswhocode.com/blog/eight-tips-for-improving-contact-form-conversions
Contact Form Conversions. Concise and relevant article focused on tips on how to make forms more effective and produce conversions from the users/consumers that go through it. In the past I’ve highlighted quite a few articles on Forms, their different states (default/focus/feedback), providing error messages, but this article provides insightful guidelines on how to improve the effectiveness of these “funneling” experiences (namely on topics such as form length, transparency, UI copy, to name but a few). Highlight of the article includes:
“What are you going to do with the information you collect? How will you be using emails, phone numbers, addresses or any other personal data? Tell your audience exactly what you intend to do and how that’s going to affect them. Furthermore, stick to what you say and only use the details for what you’ve outlined. Don’t sign them up for a weekly email newsletter, for example, if you told them a sales rep is going to reach out. Another point to make here is that you should have your privacy policy available and accessible — through a hyperlink — right below a form.”
3.https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/03/conducting-brainstorming-workshops/
Brainstorming Workshops. Great article hailing from Smashing Magazine on how to effectively prepare, organize, and deliver activities to make a brainstorming workshop effective and productive. It’s a thoroughly detailed article, with techniques, recommendations, principles/guidelines, on how to run a session of this kind, and well worth extrapolating some lessons from it, for any type of workshops (ideation, revision/iteration, reviews) that a team sets up to do. Highlight of the article includes:
“The more, the better — Brainstorming aims at the quantity, which later turns into quality. The more ideas a team generates the wider choice it gains. It’s normal when two or more participants say the same thing. It’s normal if some ideas are funny. A facilitator’s task is encouraging people to share what is hidden in their mind; No criticism — The goal of brainstorming is to generate a pool of ideas. All ideas are welcome. A boss has no right to silence a subordinate. An analyst shouldn’t make fun of a colleague’s “fantastic” vision. A designer shouldn’t challenge the usability of a teammates’ suggestion.”