They are everywhere. Confusing and frustrating design patterns that seem to be chasing you everywhere you go, from one website to another. Perhaps it’s a disabled submit button that never communicates what’s actually wrong, or tooltips that — once opened — cover the input field just when you need to correct a mistake. In this new series of articles on UX, we take a closer look at some frustrating design patterns and explore better alternatives, along with plenty of examples to keep in mind when building or designing one. Don’t miss the next ones: subscribe to our newsletter to get updates.
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UX practitioners can play an important role in growing the UX maturity of the organizations and product teams they work with. This final article in a three-part series presents two additional tactics that are critical for achieving and maintaining higher levels of UX maturity: education of UX staff and education of non-UX staff on UX principles and processes.
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Quick, constant change is a given on the web. It is often one of its greatest strengths. As ever, though, there is a balance to find. Although longevity takes a different form online, its value is immeasurable.
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UX practitioners can play an important role in growing the UX maturity of the organizations and products they work with. This article, the second in a three-part series, presents two additional tactics that can be helpful for those working in organizations that have started engaging in UX, but are still at the lower to middle stages of maturity: knowledge sharing and mentorship. You can use these tactics stand alone, together, or in tandem with the ones covered previously.
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How do we know which patterns are good, better, best when it comes to accessibility? Is it better to use an established pattern/library or create new ones? With the myriad of choices available, we can quickly become caught up in a web of confusion on this topic. In this article, Carie Fisher will attempt to untangle the complex world of accessible patterns — one step at a time. She will kick things off by reviewing current accessible patterns and libraries, then you will consider your general pattern needs and potential restrictions, and lastly, she will walk you through a series of critical thinking exercises to learn how to better evaluate patterns for accessibility.
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We all benefit when we work to increase the overall UX maturity of our organizations. If we wish to meaningfully improve our UX practice, it is critical we look for opportunities to help grow the maturity of UX across our organization. We face a larger challenge when it comes to growing UX in a way that has impact across an organization than we do with growing our own UX skills. In this article, Victor Yocco explores the concept of UX maturity, and focuses on finding and utilizing UX champions, and demonstrating the return on investment or value of UX.
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To inspire mobile designers, let’s look at how some clever design solutions tackle mobile navigation, confirmation dialogs, animations, and gamifying the waiting experience. While these solutions are mostly unconventional, the point isn’t to highlight them for their own sake. Design solutions have to be built with the pillars of accessibility and usability, but they can be refined according to your ultimate goals for user interaction and experience. So, let’s bring these elegant off-the-beaten-path design solutions into the spotlight.
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Trust is at the heart of a long-term strategy of any product. There are many ways to earn it, and even more ways to lose it. In this article, Adam Fard will go through how you, as a product designer, can make sure your product nurtures and retains trust throughout every touchpoint. To do that, we’ll be borrowing some of the tricks marketers and product people have up their sleeves.
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Where to put the label in a web form? In the early days, we talked about left-aligned labels versus top-aligned labels. These days we talk about floating labels. Let’s explore why they aren’t a very good idea, and what to use instead. Some people assume float labels are best because Google’s Material Design uses them. But in this case, Adam Silver recommends using conventional text fields which have the label outside the input (to tell the user what to type), and a distinct border all the way around (to make it obvious where the answer goes).
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Saul Bass is a graphic design legend. Responsible for title sequences in films like North by Northwest and Anatomy of a Murder, as well as a number of iconic posters and brand logos over the years. His work, in the words of Martin Scorsese, “distilled the poetry of the modern, industrialized world.” Film credits, brand logos, posters… Saul did it all, and the principles that informed his work are just as valuable now as they were 50 years ago.
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