UI/UX Articles And Interesting Tidbits Of The Week
April//10//2020
Here are some interesting finds on UI/UX of the week!
1.
Leadership in times of Crisis. Interesting article hailing from Fast Company, on the topic of Leadership, and navigating times of uncertainty. The article looks to leaders of the past, cleverly displaying an array of qualities, behaviors and attitudes, which they demonstrated while bracing uncertainty and life challenging situations. The article focuses on the dramatic events experienced by Shackleton, Roosevelt, and Churchill to illustrate commendable behaviors exhibited by those same leaders. Worth a read. Highlight of the article includes:
“Strong leaders quickly get comfortable with widespread ambiguity and chaos, recognizing that they do not have a crisis playbook. Instead, they commit themselves and their followers to navigating point-to-point through the turbulence, adjusting, improvising, and redirecting as the situation changes and credible information emerges. Courageous leaders also understand they will make mistakes along the way and they will have to pivot quickly as this happens, acknowledging mistakes and learning as they go. Perceptive leaders address the fear of their followers without feeding it. Ernest Shackleton called this work of the leader “dispensing mental medicine,” and it was vital to the success of his against-all-odds mission. He knew that in a volatile and dangerous environment, collective determination, solidarity, and a shared purpose among his team were indispensable elements of success, partly because these aspects helped dial down fear.”
2.
Scaling E-Commerce Experiences. The future of e-commerce is always a rich topic worth devoting attention to. In the past I’ve listed articles where that future is built upon the following factors: Integration of AI Systems, Customization and Personalization, Hyperscale Computing, Decline of Monolithic Platforms and Measurement Across all Devices. This article goes into details pertaining to refinement of product experiences, tracking behaviors, measuring hits, and general tactics in building retention from clients. Highlight of the article includes:
“Once you have the foundation for a consistent and intuitive experience in place, you need to start capturing data so you can uncover opportunities to improve and optimize. Every person who visits your site leaves a trail of valuable clues into their intentions and experience with your brand. It’s up to you to capture and analyze those clues — and use them to your advantage. There are many data analytics tools available to help you track visitor behavior and leverage actionable insights, such as Acoustic Experience Analytics or even the free version of Google Analytics. These tools allow you to record user activity, capture purchase history, and see how they browse and interact with your site.”
3.
Wireframing. A topic always worth discussing and highlighting is Wireframes. As an artifact that permeates across the Design Thinking Process, it’s important to build context around its relevance, what distinguishes it, its benefits, and of course its downfalls. This article provides an in depth view of what Wireframes are, how they’re built, what distinguishes them, what tools to use, to name but a few topics, educating readers in a thoroughly engaging manner. Highlight of the article includes:
“Wireframe is a simplified and schematic visual representation of a layout for website pages or screens of an application interface. Wireframes are similar to architectural blueprints: they are usually black and white illustrations, sometimes with bright marks or spots to outline specific areas or points, that give a clear vision of the project structure and connections between different parts. Wireframing is effective at the beginning of design process when the main objective is to create product’s structure. Designers use wireframes to outline visual and typographic hierarchy on user interfaces, set the interactive zones and elements, plan transitions and interactions, organize the general interface clearly for the target audience. Since a wireframe is focused on the structure, not the visual and emotional perception of the details, designers try to keep it simple. They mostly limit it to monochromatic color schemes, with boxes and lines representing copy, pictures and all the interactive elements on the page.”
