What we’re reading

To help us remain up to date on goings on in the digital design and technology industry we read A LOT here at Every Interaction. We tweet most of the articles we read, but we also keep a log of the interesting posts we find in this blog – What we‘re reading.

We also write our own posts where we share news and opinions on topics closer to home. View the Every Interaction blog.

Product teams must embed empathy into their workflow

• November 22nd 2017•

For product teams, empathy building activities such as observing research or doing customer support is often not considered “real work”. Assumptions are the kryptonite of product teams. However, product teams that consistently keep customer needs in mind are able to…

The Benefits of Creating a Design System

• November 22nd 2017•

Styleguides have been around for years and have always been important to the visual identity of a company, but the rebrand of the term has given a new dimension to the whole concept. In the olden days, a UI designer would…

What google autocomplete says about UX Design

• November 22nd 2017•

Google Search’s autocomplete functionality can tell us a lot about the zeitgeist around a certain topic. The suggestions it offers when you start typing your search query are based on what other people have been searching for — and the more you…

How to create and use personas as part of a UX process

• August 30th 2017•

Personas provide meaningful archetypes which you can use to assess your design development against. Constructing personas will help you ask the right questions and answer those questions in line with the users you are designing for. For example, “How would…

Integrating Animation into a Design System

• August 30th 2017•

Keeping animation choreography cohesive from the outset of a project can be challenging, especially for small companies. Without a dedicated motion specialist on the team, it can be difficult to prioritize guidelines and patterns early in the design process. What’s…

How to design a great UX for a signup form

• August 30th 2017•

How many people like filling out forms? I think, not many. It’s not what users want from the service — they just want to buy tickets, chat with friends and so forth. And signing up is somehow a unavoidable evil they have…

A Minimum Viable Product Is Not a Product, It’s a Process

• August 30th 2017•

“You know that old saw about a plane flying from California to Hawaii being off course 99% of the time—but constantly correcting? The same is true of successful startups—except they may start out heading toward Alaska.” —-Evan Williams It’s the…

Paper Prototyping: The 10-Minute Practical Guide

• August 30th 2017•

In the high tech world of digital design, sometimes the best method is still pen and paper. To this day, paper prototypes continue to be not only viable, but also widely used. In this article we’ll talk about when to use them, why…

How to handle changes in your UI without causing user backlash

• August 30th 2017•

Sometimes, revamping a website’s or a mobile app’s interface causes users to freak out. People may get disappointed with a new color scheme, the positioning of elements, or anything similar. Obviously, such a reaction isn’t what you’re expecting from your…

The myth of “above the fold”

• August 30th 2017•

What is the fold? A long time ago, “above the fold” was a term coined to describe the content that appeared above the newspaper fold, in the prime spot. This concept was adapted for web design, and the “above the…

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Product Design

The ‘Product’ is the website, service, application, interactive thing being worked on by the business. The practice of Product Design is similar in a lot of ways to UX Design. It involves the coming together of many specific design disciplines...

Call to action (CTA)

A call to action is a marketing term that refers to a prompt that invokes a response leading to a sale. When referring to a call to action (CTA) in the digital design world we usually mean the interactive element that leads to the next step in the experience - something that needs to be clicked or tapped.

User testing

User testing refers to a technique used in the design process to evaluate a product, feature or prototype with real users. There are several reasons why you might want to undergo usability testing, the most common is that it allows the design team to identify friction in a user experience they are designing, so that it can be addressed before being built or deployed.

WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG (pronounced WIZ-ee-wig) is an acronym for "What You See Is What You Get". It helps identify an an interface that allows user input resulting in an output that is rendered in a similar way. For example; a word processor application interface might resemble a piece of paper,so when printed the user can see how the output will appear.

Content Management System

A content management system (CMS) is an tool that allows a website editor/administrator to manage the content that is displayed. Websites are made of HTML and CSS to create pages. Pages can be hard-coded but would require technical development skills to make changes. A CMS usually allows a person without coding knowledge to amend existing and add new content to a website using a WYSIWYG interface.

Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design refers to a web page that dynamically adapts its layout to fit the size and orientation of the device on which it is viewed. A responsive design allows for a more optimised user experience across desktop and laptop computers as well as smartphones and tablets of varying sizes.

User Stories

User stories allow the functionality of a product or service to be expressed as written descriptions of an experience as seen from the users perspective. The writing of user stories creates a list of design and development tasks to complete in order to create any required functionality.

User Interface

A user interface (UI) is a conduit between human and computer interaction - the space where a user will interact with a computer or machine to complete tasks. The purpose of a UI is to enable a user to effectively control a computer or machine they are interacting with, and for feedback to be received in order to communicate effective completion of tasks.

Personas

A persona in UX Design is the characterisation of a user who represents a segment of your target audience. On a project you might create any number of personas to be representative of a range of user needs and desires. The solutions you design must answer these needs in order to deliver value to your target audience.

Card sorting

A great, reliable, inexpensive method for discovering patterns in how users would expect to find content or functionality. Card sorting is used to test the taxonomy of data with a group of subjects, usually to help inform the creation of the information architecture, user flow, or menu structure on a project.

Brainstorming

A technique used to generate ideas around a specific topic. Often done in groups, but can be done individuals. The process usually involves writing down all ideas around a topic onto paper, a whiteboard or stickies often implying some kind of association.

Minimum Viable Product

An MVP is a product that has the minimum set of features to prove the most essential hypothesis for a product. Businesses building a new product can create a Minimum Viable Product to prove that an idea is viable and warrants further investment. A further benefit being that the next stage of development can be informed by feedback obtained from testing that MVP.

Sitemap

A sitemap is a diagrammatic representation of a hierarchical system. It usually depicts the parent-sibling relationship between pages in a website, showing how sub pages might be arranged underneath their parent groupings. This arrangement forms a map of the site.

User journey

A user journey represents a sequence of events or experiences a user might encounter while using a product or service. A user journey can be mapped or designed to show the steps and choices presented as interactions, and the resulting actions.

Prototype

A prototype is draft representation built to test ideas for layout, behaviour and flow in a system. Prototypes are an indispensable tool for resolving a large number of potential issues in a concept or business before too many resources are deployed to put a design into production.

Wireframes

A Wireframe is a visual schematic that conveys a basic level of communication, structure and behaviour during the design of a system. Wireframes are low-fidelity designs that bypass including a detailed user interface or visual design, conveying just enough to get across the core idea.

Usability

To say something is usable is a qualitative statement about how easy that thing is to use. Usability is an assessment of how learnable a system is and how easy a user finds it to use. The usability of a system or product is a key factor in determining whether the user experience is a good one.

Information Architecture

Information architecture is the design and organisation of content, pages and data into a structure that aids users understanding of a system. A more organised system enables users to more easily find the information they require and complete the intended tasks.

UI Design

User Interface Design is the discipline of designing software interfaces for devices, ideally with a focus on maximising efficiency, responsiveness and aesthetics to foster a good user experience.

UX Design

The practice of User Experience (UX) Design is the coming together of many specific design related disciplines to improve the usability, responsiveness, uptake and aesthetics of a product or service.

User Experience

A general term that covers all aspects of a user's participation while engaging with something that has been designed. Usually when talking about User Experience in the digital design field it refers to the interactions, reactions, emotions and perceptions while using an app, service, website or product.