UI/UX Articles and Interesting Tidbits of the Week
February//10//2023
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.
UX Design Doesn’t End with the Website. This article from author Suzanne Scacca is from 2021, but is as relevant now as it was two years ago. Ultimately this article advocates for improving Customer Experiences, while simultaneously calling out attention for the need for Omnichannel Product Experiences (which are anchored in qualities such as: Consistency, Orchestration, Seamlessness, Optimization and Collaboration). The author looks at aspects such as SMS, Social Media, Packaging, Emails, among other aspects, since they all holistically tell a story that is consumed by the user. Highlight of the article includes:
“Social media is another channel that’s commonly connected to a website. While you can’t control the aesthetics of social media websites themselves, the visuals and messaging in posts need to be on-brand. That means that things like memes and emojis — which are popular means of communication on social — should only be used if they’re normally part of the brand identity. If not, you’ll need to find other ways to communicate engagingly. Another part of the user experience to think about is customer support. Social media is a lot like going into a store. If someone has an issue with what they bought or the service they received, there will be many people around to witness the complaint. Social media only amplifies that — so the quality of customer care needs to be consistent with how the brand handles it everywhere else.”
2.
Productivity in the US. This isn’t a typical highlight I’d place in the newsletter since it’s not so much Design or Technology focused, but also because on a surface level, it is very much attuned to the sole reality of a specific country (the US). However, I think it’s worth mentioning for a few reasons. Firstly, the quality of the data retrieved by McKinsey, secondly, the format of the report itself is equally commendable, and thirdly, some of the reflections that are documented when addressing Productivity includes considerations on societal impact (that goes beyond Economy, Inflation and Labor demands), wage and wealth creation, generational and demographical gaps, to name but a few. Well worth reading through. Highlight of the article includes:
“Rising prosperity — a higher standard of living — can come only from productivity growth. And in the long run, labor productivity and real wages are closely, if not perfectly, linked. Productivity growth will also be essential to address several looming challenges. As the US population ages and the ratio of nonworkers to workers grows, productivity growth in the remaining workforce will be essential to sustain output and meet the needs of the population. Productivity will also ameliorate inflation, by reducing the need for supply-constrained labor, capital, and raw materials to deliver a given output. And by delivering a larger economic base, productivity will increase the affordability of the coming energy transition as well as growing debt and entitlements.”
3.
Web Design History Timeline. This is chronological view of everything that has unfolded since Web Products started being delivered is well worth reading and parsing through. It starts in 1990 with the very first version of Adobe Photoshop and contains all sorts of different staples, including Yahoo’s debut (1994/1995), alongside the w3C Organization, which also made its debut in 1994. It’s truly fascinating and well worth browsing through. Highlight of the article includes:
“At CERN, a Swiss research center, a British physicist and internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee created the world’s first web browser, called WorldWideWeb. The browser was also a simple WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor for editing web pages. WorldWideWeb only worked with the NeXTStep operating system. Later, the browser was renamed Nexus to avoid confusion with the World Wide Web (WWW).”
