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.

User Research: What it is and why you should do it

• June 30th 2017•

When thinking about user research, many people primarily think of classic usability testing. While usability testing to ensure that your design is easy to use is certainly an important part of user research, there are many other types of user…

10 Tips for Writing Good User Stories

• June 16th 2017•

1 Users Come First As its name suggests, a user story describes how a customer or user employs the product; it is written from the user’s perspective. What’s more, user stories are particularly helpful to capture a specific functionality, such as,…

Measure the ROI of your social media activity

• June 16th 2017•

This article was inspired by two events that happened recently. Firstly, I was involved in a panel session looking at how marketers can better tie their social media activity back to business goals and prove commercial value. Reading around the…

Usability tips for designing efficient web forms

• June 16th 2017•

Someone who uses your app or website has a particular goal. Often, the one thing standing between the user and their goal is a form. Forms remain one of the most important types of interactions for users on the web…

Best practice for Sign up form UX

• June 7th 2017•

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

Why Testing with Real Content Is Better Than Lorem Ipsum

• June 7th 2017•

Testing is a critical part of building usable digital products. A testing environment with relevant content encourages more thoughtful feedback, that can then be used to craft a more tailored user experience. What is Lorem Ipsum? Lorem Ipsum is dummy text…

Are there any ultimate answers in UX design?

• June 7th 2017•

Apparently, UX people love to argue. There are always topics that end up in endless debates. Just try one of the following questions as a conversation starter when meeting a designer: “Is material design good or bad?” “What is the…

How to Become a Better Product Storyteller

• June 7th 2017•

If you want to learn how to deliver winning presentations, then one of the best resources out there is Nancy Duarte’s book Resonate. One of the ideas outlined by Duarte is that a successful presenter persuades the audience to believe…

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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.