There is no such thing as a project that goes off well without some level of planning. You’re just not the one doing it. You can keep complaining, or you can change it. You’re a designer, which means you’re capable of imagining a better version of the world than the one you’re living in. And yet there you are, stuck at the back. In this article, Robert Hoekman Jr. will share some of the reasons it happens. And how to stop being an afterthought.
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Competition in the App Store is fierce, and if an indie app developer wants to get noticed, having an amazing product is no longer enough. As the number of mobile users grows, new apps pop up daily. To make yours a success, be strategic about how you design the “shop window” for your app — the app’s page. A/B testing and optimization of the icon, screenshots and video preview will give you a better chance of higher conversions, a higher volume of organic downloads and a better return on your investment in user acquisition.
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It’s no secret that the crowdfunding industry is booming. It seems like every day you hear about an exciting new startup crushing their campaign goals and launching their company via Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Up to this point most software startups have failed to take advantage of this growing movement. In this article Matt Ward will cover the highs and lows of app-based crowdfunding, the purpose being to shed light on common software flaws seen in crowdfunding to ideally help your campaigns prosper. And whether you choose to use crowdfunding to jump-start your startup or not, many of the following concepts go well beyond initial launch-stage success.
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Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two highly regarded academics in the field of economics are responsible for much of what we know about heuristics. In psychology, a heuristic is simply a fancy word meaning mental shortcut. We have so many decisions to make on a daily basis; there is no way we could think about all of the pros and cons of each option. Our minds would be overloaded and we would stop functioning. People frequently use heuristics to make decisions; you should use them to your advantage in your design. Here, we’ll discuss four common heuristics that researchers have identified, with examples of how to address them in digital design.
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Publishing is cheap. This seduces you, encouraging you to put more and more content online. But you will soon discover hidden costs. Costs that are crippling larger organizations. Dealing with ROT can feel intimidating on a large site. In fact, it can feel impossible. But it isn’t. Often it is just a matter of putting some processes in place to deal with it. If you create a prototype that gives people a sense of how much better the site could be, they are often more amenable than you think. Now is not the time to be timid. Now is the time to confront the ROT.
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The “learn to code” movement is gaining momentum among designers, but you’d be hard pressed to find a similarly strong movement for other disciplines within a team. Perhaps there should be. We should all be striving to learn, but… what exactly should we learn? Maybe it it’s about learning to communicate and collaborate, to respect the nuances of each other’s craft — and the artistry and reason that they both demand in equal measure — without attempting to master it for oneself.
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No matter your status or situation, whether director or loner, you are in a position to lead, to raise the bar in a place where it consistently sits lower than you think it should. As an in-house UX professional, Robert Hoekman Jr has formed and run UX teams for multiple companies. As a consultant, he has worked with dozens of clients on hundreds of projects. In this article, he will share what he learned about how to get what you want. Most of these things can be applied whether you’re inside of a company or consulting for one, whether you’re a fledgling designer or a veteran leader.
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The diffusion of innovations is a complex process; design teams can use their knowledge of the theory to create a road map for how they will address critical factors in the design and marketing of their product. In this second part, Victor Yocco presents the five characteristics of an innovation that determine its use. According to the diffusion of innovations theory, how well an innovation addresses these characteristics will determine people’s long-term adoption of an innovation. Design teams can address many components of these characteristics.
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Producing creative, fresh projects is the key to standing out. Unique side projects are the best place to innovate, but balancing commercially and creatively lucrative work is tricky. In this article, Danny Bluestone will look at how to make side projects work and why they’re worthwhile, drawing on lessons learned from our development of the UX Companion app. Many of the tips covered in this article share some common ground — if you manage your side projects with as much professionalism as you manage client projects, then you’re likely to succeed. Achieving the perfect balance with client work isn’t easy, but we’re confident that following these lessons will be great for your next project, and hopefully they’ll help you on your way.
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Users don’t automatically or simultaneously accept even the best ideas and most useful technologies. Acceptance and adoption happens in stages, and in order to stick, it has to happen the right way. In this two-part series of articles, Victor Yocco will explore the application of the diffusion of innovations to digital design and will provide examples of how design teams can account for these principles. In this part, he will give a basic overview of the theory and then discuss two main components of the theory: the different types of adopters, and the key steps in the process of adoption.
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