So much of the conversation around digital wellness involves user-based actions, but what responsibility does product design have? Explore why and how helping users establish healthier relationships with tech is becoming a design consideration.
Tag: user psychology
How to Improve Your 404 Page Design
As UX designers we work hard to understand where users tend to go wrong and why in order to prevent errors. But no one's perfect. Eventually someone’s going to make a typo, forget to input something, or hit the wrong button. Errors are part of the experience so UX design shouldn’t end with them. A bad error experience and all the work you’ve done up to that point may not matter. Your users get annoyed, confused, or frustrated and they’re gone. 404 pages are one of the more common culprits for this. Like every other page, they should have a design and content strategy that positively supports a good user experience. Check out some tips on how to create better 404 pages.
Burnout: The next challenge for UX design
Call it Zoom fatigue, pandemic fatigue, or simply hitting the wall, burnout has set in and its running rampant. Over half of workers report feeling burned out; from elementary school to college, students have had enough; and parents are at their wits ends. It seems like no one is immune. Chronic uncertainty, endless trauma, and the need to keep on keeping on no matter what have created a toxic problem. This is why it’s important for UX designers to understand burnout and identify how it may be factoring into our work right now.
Toward More Gender-Inclusive Form Design
Forms are like icebergs. They’re deceivingly more complicated and troublesome than they appear on the surface. Screw up a form’s design and you can stop users in their tracks, preventing them from meeting their intended goals, your business from collecting valuable data, or both. There are a lot of decisions that should go into determining how a form will be look. Since being inclusive and respectful of someone’s identity contributes to better UX, it's important to think through how even the smallest, design choices can be adjusted to help more people feel welcome using your product.
A UX Research Report: Connecticut Forest and Park Association
In the last 25 years, business websites have evolved into powerful interactive hubs where users go for far more than brochureware. And as COVID-19 has shown, they are also now the front doors to organizations. Along with social media, they are often the first or only means of interaction people have with a business so, your website's experience better be on point. If it's not, the good news is it's never been easier to learn what it takes to build a good experience for your users. I recently completed a UX research project on ctwoodlands.org, the website for the member-based conservation nonprofit Connecticut Forest and Park Association. Check it out to see one approach for quickly getting the insights and direction you need for a successful redesign.
Usability Testing for an Existing Product
Usability is the measure of how well a person can use a product to achieve an intended goal. In a previous post, I talked about how usability testing should be a key part of any iterative design process, preferably being implemented as early as possible to identify design problems. But usability testing is also an important tool to evaluate existing products before you ever sit down at the drawing board to devise a change or new design.
A/B Testing as a UX Research Technique
Redesigning a website is usually about making its experience better. But change doesn’t guarantee better, just different. This is why user experience (UX) designers focus so much on user research. The more you know about user needs, as well as business and other requirements, the more you can eliminate some of that uncertainty about the impact of a new design. However, you will never know for sure how a design choice will perform until it's used with real users in real life. This is a nerve-wracking reality. A UX designer nor most project stakeholders are comfortable taking the risk of just changing something and seeing how it goes. Enter A/B testing.
Web Design Essentials: Color Palettes
A key component in your website’s feel, and some might argue the most readily noticeable, is color. We all have a favorite and before we can even read, we’re taught names and cultural associations for each. But choosing a color palette for a website that inspires the right emotions and works well with existing branding or content can be a challenge.
7 Principles of UX Design
To be a UX designer is to understand the holistic picture of an experience while simultaneously paying attention to minute details in the pursuit of identifying and solving problems. Whew! Approaching this subject may seem overwhelming or intimidating at first, but good UX design is an invaluable asset for a product, service, or brand. That’s a tall order. No matter your project, to create a good user experience you must understand some of the key principles of UX design.
UX/UI Design and the Streaming Wars
When Disney Plus, the company’s streaming service, launched last November, I was intrigued by the possibility of adding some Disney magic to my life again, if only through the TV and movie content I’d loved as a kid. That content has proven as satisfying as I remember, but the Disney Plus experience has left a bad taste in my mouth. Learn how I used a feelings and needs website analyzation of UX and UI elements on Disney Plus and Netflix to find out if Disney's design is the root of my negative opinion.
Why Emotions Matter in Design Thinking
Feelings are the most powerful force in the decision-making process. In fact, research has found that people with injuries in the area of the brain responsible for emotion are incapable of making decisions. So, if you want to successfully use design thinking—a human-centered approach to problem-solving—then you must understand humans’ biggest motivator: emotion.