All posts by Vishal Jadhav

About Vishal Jadhav

Co-Founder of Prismic Reflections® India - a design studio that focuses on User Experience & Brand Communication Design. More than 20+ experience in strategic design, Vishal heads the experience design and strategy in the studio. He has helped many large scale enterprises as well as startups in creating an impact by design & achieve desired business outcome. His main focus area also include building high performing teams and setting up creative culture in the company.

All, UX Based Design

Design & tech terms every UX UI designer needs to know part II

In the previous article, we talked about the commonly used design terms in “Research and Ideation” category. You can check the first article of this series here if you have missed out.

Here are the next set of design terms, those you will find useful to keep handy when you study foundation as well as deeper in this area.

User-Centered Design

user-centred-design

This iterative design process aims at understanding the user perspective (their thoughts, beliefs, motivations, etc.) for creating highly accessible and usable products for them. Wide variety of design and research techniques are used in this procedure. Also, it involves a mix and match of generative ideas (rigorous brainstorming sessions) and investigative tools ( surveys and interviews ) for a deep understanding of the needs of the users.

Human-Computer Interaction

Human-computer interaction is a systematic study which aims at improvising the overall experience for smooth communication between humans and computers.

Interaction between human and computer should be as friendly as conversations between two humans. Specialized design process, emotional design, and human psychology are its three major integral parts.
Ultimate goals of Human Computer-Interaction are :

  • Understanding the ways of improving user experience
  • Understanding user behavior in order to determine as to how people can use technology

UX Design

ux design

User Experience includes everything that contributes to physical & mental experiences of the user while using the product or service. It may include the user’s journey, information flow, content text, videos, images, graphics, interfaces, colors, interactions with the products/services. It is a step-by-step process which aims at creating meaningful & engaging products & platforms for the end users. User experience design follows a multidisciplinary approach that covers the entire process from branding, analysis, research, design, interaction, accessibility, usability, functional development & frequent upgradation.
We have discussed more in detail about UX Design, elements of UX design & different career options in our article which you can read here.

Lean UX

lean ux

As an Agile development in software development, Lean UX is about creating the design in rapid way, mostly depending on assumptions, to get maximum feedback as early as possible. Unlike traditional or comprehensive UX Design process, Lean UX eliminates in depth activities to arrive at something tangible quick

Some of the major benefits of using this technique are :

  • Cost Effectiveness: Don’t waste your resources in working on a product which isn’t needed in the market. You can easily test your hypothesis by validating every decision.
  • Save your precious time: Due to its collaborative nature, getting rapid and quick solutions becomes easier.
  • User-centric: Focus is on the user and their requirements at every stage of the designing process.

Responsive Design

responsive design

It is a holistic approach which makes use of cascading style sheets, flexible layouts, and images to enhance user experience across all devices. Its ultimate purpose is to refine the appearance of the website according to the orientation and the screen size of the device which the user is using.
This technology is adept at adapting automatically according to user preferences and needs. This helps to get rid of a different design for every new gadget in the market.

Interaction Design

The process of interaction design takes into account like how users will interact and use the product or particular interface or even a particular piece of content. Five major dimensions in interaction design include words, visual representations, time, physical objects and behavior.

Wireframe

Wireframe

Wireframe refers to designing a website at a very nascent stage. A wireframe is used for laying out content and functionality on a page which takes into account the preferences and requirements of the users. Wireframes are used in the initial design process to set the basic structure of a page before visual design can be added. There are two phases in wireframing activity Low Fidelity & High Fidelity Wireframing.

Low Fidelity Wireframes

low fedility wireframes

Low Fidelity Wireframes are an easy and quick way to translate high-level design concepts into testable artifacts. The aspects of visual designing for the final product include basic visual hierarchy, shapes of elements and more. Typically they are in black white (or any two contrast colors)

High Fidelity Wireframes

high fedility

High Fidelity Wireframes are more effective than low fidelity wireframes as they reveal what content & functions will go where and how, using guidelines of layout as well. Apart from that, high fidelity wireframes are refined and consist of various elements like images, graphics, color scheme, logo and more. They are created using digital tools and hence the process is more time consuming.

Prototype

A prototype is basically a primitive version of something that is iterated upon until it is a final product. It is a simple & easy version of the product or website. It helps to understand the simple workings of a product and its interaction with the user on creation of the final product. Prototype can have static interface (series) or in the form of clickable simulations of interfaces

UI (User Interface) Design

UI Design

UI Design is a process of creating an interface between human (user), software and machine/hardware. This interface is actually a virtual (sometimes physical) layer where interaction between user, software and hardware takes place.

UI Design is a phase when designer converts the wireframe into final visual design with appropriate fonts, colors, graphics and, icons by focusing more on visual design aesthetics. UI design must follow some guidelines for usability like font sizes, usage of color shades, content hierarchy, consistency, accessibility guideline, etc.

Use Cases

Use Case is a brief of how the system will respond to the user against the action the user is performing. Use cases take into account all the possibilities where different options or tasks with a combination of other possible options or tasks in the application/website. Use Cases are to be considered and recorded while planning & designing an application. Apart from that, use cases also provides a list of comprehensive goals as to how the system should behave in certain processes.

Affordance

affordance

Affordances are nothing but visual clues in a design. They help the users to understand your UI efficiently and effectively. Improving the clarity of interface is vital to getting more visibility from the users.
For e.g. a door handle can indicate whether it can afford to push or pull.

Service Blueprints

Service blueprints are simple and clear diagrammatic representation of the services of a business as a whole. Their end goal is to understand the pain points of the customers and discover the internal shortcomings in their workings so as to improvise their working process. It aims at visualizing the organizational processes to optimize how a business can aim at delivering a great user experience.

Navigation Design

navigation-design

Navigation design is a discipline to design the ways for helping users to navigate through the platform (website or app or product or even physical space)
Navigation design plays an important role in creating a full-proof system that allows the users to interact and use the products in the most effective way. It is how your user can get from point A to point B or point C in an easy and hassle-free way.

Some of the advantages of a good navigation design are enhanced credibility and visibility of product, increased conversions due to more traffic, enhanced user experience and more.

MVP

mvp-final

Minimum Viable Product is the process of developing or designing a product with the least but its core features so that it can be quickly deployed for testing the market viability and acceptance amongst product’s potential customers.

Several benefits of carrying out MVP Process are understanding your customer preferences and needs, getting insights into whether the product is needed by users or not and checking the viability in the market by launching the product with minimal features.

I hope you enjoyed reading. Please feel free to share your comments and thought or any other terms if you wish to include in this list. Soon we will come up with the next part of this article with a few more interesting terms.

All, UX Based Design,

Design & tech terms every UX UI designer needs to know – part I

Glossary of the must-know common words in UX/UI

Half the battle is already won if you don’t have to juggle through your dictionary to search for the meanings of technical jargons. Isn’t it? If you are new to the world of user experience, understanding the terminology in a super-easy way can make things a cakewalk for you.

You no longer have to scratch your head to get everything you might be looking for. All you need to do is start using these terms frequently so that you can understand their meaning in a better way.

We will keep it simple so that it becomes easy for you to understand and comprehend. If you have been struggling to interpret the technical terms correctly, then you are at the right place.

Why Do You Need To Know the UX/UI Terminology?

You might be familiarized with hearing a lot of new terms and acronyms in UX/UI design space. But, have you ever wondered as to why you need to be thorough with your list of most commonly used words?

Well, the reason is simple. You are bound to feel disconnected while discussing the project with the client if half the terms during the discussion are greek to you. The twisted terms can make you grow crazy if you will fail to understand its proper usability. Treading into a new industry without knowing its basics can turn out to be a nightmare. Don’t worry; you will sail through if you are willing to invest your energy in understanding these important UX/UI words.

This compiled easy-to-understand list will extensively cover all that falls under

“Research & Idealization”.
Gear up before you decide to choose this promising career path!!!!

Research + Ideate: User Groups, User Research, User Scenarios, User Stories, Task Analysis, Card Sorting, Stakeholders, UX Strategy, KWHL Chart, User Journey Mapping, Problem Statement, Empathy Map, User Persona, Pain-Points, User Flows, KPI, ROI, Site Map, Information Architecture, Metaphor.

User Group

User Group

User Group is defined as a group of individuals who possess similar psychological traits. To understand the nuances in your industry, you need to closely study the behavior, tastes, motivations and pain points of a set of people who would be keen to use your product. Hence, innovative designing solutions are crafted keeping this user group in mind. It plays a crucial role in helping the company understanding its target audience’s psyche.

Supposedly, you wish to outweigh your competitors in terms of selling a product. But, you cannot be successful unless you know your target audience well. Therefore, to stay ahead in the competition, you need to be willing to do your research part well. This would include monitoring the preferences and interests of your target audience.

User Research / UX Research

User Research

UX research involves carrying out a systematic investigation in order to understand the users perspective for the design process. Gathering valuable information from users can be done using various qualitative and quantitative methods by employing varied techniques, methodologies, tools and more.

Interpreting collected data can become easy with this organized study which would involve using various methods like Focus Group Interview, Personal Interview, Persona, Task Analysis, Ethnographic research and more.

Card sorting

Cards Sorting

Card Sorting is a unique and inexpensive method which helps you to design website navigation paths, menu structure, workflow and information architecture in an organized manner. In order to ensure a user-friendly experience, this tool is used to predict emerging trends of customer preferences and interests.Supposedly, you decide to create a website to sell your products and services. But, it won’t work out until you are familiar with what your users might be looking for. You cannot shoot an arrow into the air without knowing your users. Isn’t it? In such a scenario, the

card sorting technique can come to your rescue. Its simple approach revolves around conducting a thorough research through pieces of cards or online tools to understand as to how your users structure the content on the website. This can give you a peep into your users’ expectations. Some other benefits include quick and easy execution without much investment of time.

User Persona

User Persona

Personas are fictional characters which are created based upon the user research to represent different user types to target a particular product, service or site. They are well analyzed and well-defined archetypes which are replicas of users.

They play an instrumental role in helping you make informed decisions based on user preferences. Building effective personas can ensure an interactive user experience. Adding a human touch to these model characters will thus allow you to market the products or services.

Now, let us take a simple example to understand this concept. You desire to launch a new product in the market. But, you are not sure about strategies which you can adopt to reach your target audience. In such a scenario, you can create a persona which can be used as a communication tool to pitch your product or service in an effective way. In this way, you can use the persona to leverage your business.

User Scenario

User Scenario Analysis

User scenarios can give a peep into the minds of the users by predicting the patterns of how they will interact with your mobile application or website. Ensuring excellent user experience should be the priority and it can only be achieved if you are willing to walk an extra mile to understand the end goal of your target audience.

User scenarios can help the designers understand the psyche of users interacting with a design on the website. Various scenarios can help you find the best solution for the user’s problems. Chart out various scenario possibilities to ensure a hassle-free experience for the users.

Stakeholders

stakeholders

Stakeholders play an instrumental role in planning when it comes to UX design.

Stakeholders are a set of individuals who have a vested interest in a certain product. They are also the key decision-makers and help in the proper implementation of ideas. They can be divided into three main categories :

  1. Business: This category includes upper management, product managers, salespeople, etc.
  2. Engineer: This category includes developers, technical support and quality assurance people.
  3. UX People: This category includes researchers, designers and technical writers.

Ux strategy

UX strategy

UX strategy is an approach or plan of action to achieve the end goal for the product. It aims at solving the problems of the end-user efficiently and accurately. Several effective approaches include planning, validating ideas, testing and researching.

With the change in user behavior and preferences, the adoption of new features and tools is essential to keep pace with changing technological trends. Hence, a rigorous and full proof UX strategy can help you stay ahead of your competitors by predicting your user’s needs.

KWHL Chart

kwhl chart

It is one of the initial steps which involves organizing the research data in four major categories. Extensive research is important to understand what your users might be looking for.

K – stands for what you already KNOW about the product.

It includes as to what prior knowledge you have regarding the product.

W – stands for what you WANT to learn.

It includes what is the intention and goal of the user while interacting with a product.

H – stands for figuring out HOW you can learn more about the product.

L – stands for figuring out HOW you can learn more about the product.

User Journey Mapping

user journey mapping

User Journey Mapping captures the experience of a user’s interaction with a product.

It also gives an insight into the emotions of the users based on their end goals and motivations. Following a user-centric approach is important to ensure excellent customer experience. Hence,

user journey map bridges the gap between a brand and individual across different channels.

The main steps involved in user journey mapping are :

  1. Choosing a scope
  2. Creating an interactive user persona
  3. Defining user expectations and scenario
  4. Creating an elaborate list of touch-points
  5. Paying attention to user intention
    – Motivation
    – Channels
    – Actions
    – Pain Points
  6. Sketching the journey
  7. Evaluating the user’s emotional state during the interaction process
  8. Validating user journey

Problem Statement

problem statement

Problem statement is an integral part of UX Design.

Problem statement makes room for brainstorming ideas and channeling them in a single direction. It aims at giving a precise description of the problem and guides the team to focus on the key areas.

Problem statement requires you to synthesize your user observation from the very beginning. It also gives the idealization process a head start in the right direction. It is a combination of certain processes including empathizing, analyzing, synthesizing, prototyping and testing. Creating a

problem statement is thus a non-linear process.

Empathy Maps

empathy mapping

Empathy map is a collaborative tool which is used to gain deeper insights about the customers. It involves using various techniques to evaluate the attitude and behavior of the target user. It bridges the gap between what customers really want and what you think they want. Hence, crafting specific user experiences becomes easy for designers. It revolves around four basic key traits which include what the user says, does, thinks and feels.

It is one of the initial steps of the designing process which relies on “customer first” philosophy. It will allow you to understand the following about the user:

  • Feelings: How is the overall experience of the user?
  • Tasks: What type of tasks is the user trying to accomplish?
  • Influences: What are the things or people governing the decisions of the user?
  • Pain Points: What are the pain points which user wishes to overcome? What are their hidden fears and anxieties?
  • Goals: What is the ultimate goal of the user and what is he trying to achieve?

User flows

userflow

User flow refers to a series of steps which are performed by a user to complete a task efficiently on a website or app. Simplifying the overall process for the users can give an edge to your business. Delivering what the user wants most effectively is what can help websites get the best results.

Now, let us understand this with an example. Supposedly, the end goal of the user is to buy a product on a website. Now, this can be done using various methods. The simplest of the ways would be adding the item on the cart and complete the purchase from the checkout screen. There could be other permutations and combinations to buy a product on the website. Hence, user flow aims at improvising the navigational flow for hassle-free user experience.

KPI

kpi

KPI is a key indicator which can be used for tracking the progress towards user experience related goals. Measuring human behavior related metrics can be a tough task as it involves checking the overall satisfaction levels of the users. Some of these important quantitative and qualitative metrics include :

Quantitative:

  • Task success rate: Percentage of tasks completed by the target user accurately
  • Time on task: Amount of time taken to complete the task
  • Use of search vs. navigation: Tracking the number of users who accomplished the task using search vs the number of users who completed the task using the navigation
  • User error rate : Errors can be essentially useful for scrutinizing user performance
  • System Usability Scale (SUS): It assesses the usability of an app or product by the user

Qualitative :

  • These factors take into account overall satisfaction and reported expectation and performance of the product

ROI

Return On Investment is an essential metric for product owners at the time of design and development of a product. It helps an investor to calculate profit on the investment made on product designing. Some of the great UX indicators include higher sales, customer engagements and better customer loyalty. ROI for user experience has certain main elements that must be taken into account. They can be categorized into two categories:

  1. Hard Elements: These elements include lead generations, conversion or acquisition, viral referrals, channel migration, retention, targeted traffic, cost savings and employee productivity.
  2. Soft Elements: Customer engagement, satisfaction, engagement, awareness, ethics, loyalty to brand, utilization and product adoption are considered while calculating ROI for UX Design.

Sitemap

Sitemap acts as a guiding document for users and helps them to navigate through the website easily. It basically depicts how various sections on the website will be linked together. It shows how different pages, subsections and sections will be represented on the website.

Having an initial sitemap is important to ease out the navigation process for the users. There are innumerable ways of creating sitemaps though the approach can vary according to your preferences and requirements.

Let us understand this with the help of an example. Supposedly, you wish to build an e-commerce website. Its ultimate aim will be to sell products. In this scenario, your sitemap should be displaying pages and product indices on the top of the hierarchy. This would ensure easy navigation for visitors and they will be able to see where they need to go immediately without any hassles.

Sitemap

Information Architecture

Information Architecture is the science used by the experts for structuring content on the website. A user must be able to find out the required information with minimum interventions and clicks.

It is essential to arrange the parts on the website or application properly to ensure a great user experience. Several important aspects of information architecture include functionality, interaction, visual elements, navigation and more.

Metaphor

Metaphor

Metaphors in UX design are used for solving certain issues creatively by using real-world terms. It goes beyond the literal meaning of the word to communicate certain actions.

Let us understand this with the help of an example. Trash Can image is delegated to “delete” option and is named as “recycle bin” in windows. Such metaphors make technological designs more relatable and easy to use.

User Stories

user stories

User Stories are used in design processes to enable a designer to understand the psyche of the user. It involves conducting qualitative research to get information about what users might be looking for. Creating engaging stories is thus an important part of the research process.

Interesting stories can play an instrumental role in creating effective solutions according to the user’s daily activities. They can also be integrated with personas. They can be represented in the form of visualized storyboards, short stories, written stories and more.

Stay tuned for the next article which would give you a peep into another set of curated acronyms. Feel free to reach out to us for any doubts and queries. We will be happy to help!!!

Thanks to Ashay, Amar, Laksha and Prismic Team for contributing their efforts & Special thanks to Vigisha for enhancing the reading experience of this article.

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Prismic Reflections Recognized as a Top UX/UI Agency in India by Clutch

B2B Market Research Firm, Clutch Releases 2018 Report – Prismic Reflections Recognized as a Top UX/UI Agency in India

At Prismic Reflections®, we just don’t build products and websites – we design experiences. In order to develop the best user experiences for our customers, we begin with user first. Prismic Reflections® embraces human-centered design, a creative approach to problem-solving that starts with user and ends with solutions that tailor to their needs.

The UX/UI field is rapidly growing, and the number of agencies that are competing in the marketplace seems to increase by the day. Though we’re intent on letting our products, and the experiences we craft speak for themselves, we’re excited to partner with Clutch in order to display our work and demonstrate our skills to an even wider audience. In their report on the top agencies and developers in India, Prismic Reflections® has been named a leading firm in the UX/UI!

Clutch is a B2B market research firm that uses a proprietary research methodology to evaluate various companies in the technology space– from agencies to web developers and software companies. Their platform is a useful resource for a buyer, who overwhelmed with the number of choices, can identify a service provider that best suits their needs according to Clutch’s independent evaluation.

At the crux of their process are client reviews, and who better than our clients to speak to our business acumen and technical skill set. We’ve had a number of ambitious partners over the years, and their willingness to take the time to leave a review on Clutch is a testament to their dedication to our firm.

Feelings are very important in design, and Prismic Reflections® can combine professionalism with a personal touch.

Senior Manager, HDFC Credila

Dedication and experience are what sets Prismic Reflections® apart from others.

CEO and Founder, Beyond

I loved working with them. It was a very transparent process throughout.

Senior Product Manager, ProKarma

While the clients that we serve cover many different industries – from education to finance and IT, our mission is always the same– to achieve their business goals with elegant UI and UX solutions. From idealization to Iteration, you can trust that Prismic Reflections® will create an impactful and innovative user experience. You can also read more about our achievements on Clutch’s sister website, The Manifest. In all, we’re grateful to have Clutch reviews as well as this award to show our continued leadership in this field.

This achievement is significant for us. Especially for clients, it’s a reliable source for reviews on past projects & clients. Clutch’s independently takes and validates client feedback, making them more trustworthy to future clients.

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Typography basics and yips for User Interface (UI) design – Part 2

In the previous part, we learned about typography and how it is useful for a UI designer. Now, in the concluding part, we will learn about typography principles and their useful tips.

Expected Readers:

Those who are interested in learning more about typography, aspiring designers, typography enthusiast, graphic and user interface designer. Continuing with the last part, we will learn some principles and their tips that you can use in your UI design practices. Learning and mastering them is not easy but you can go ahead gradually.

Font Selection

Making a right font selection is like choosing a right outfit as it speaks a lot about your taste and style. Font selection varies for different projects. Boldness, size, and spacing determine which areas will attract most of the attention.

Tips

Think about position and alignment of your font.

Check which font is suitable for your brand and style that way.

Play with different font sizes and make sure that the text is easy to read.

Font Pairing

Font pairing means usage of two different fonts and combining them into a typeface. There are basically three types in which font pairing can be included.

  • Concordance: Using a single typeface
  • Contrasting: Using two or more typeface that is different but goes well together.
  • Conflicting: Two typefaces which are similar to one another to work.
Tips
  • Try to establish a visual hierarchy
  • The mixture of serif and sans serif is always eye pleasing.
  • Avoid pairing too similar fonts.
  • Make content important while ensuring user’s
  • readability and simplicity of the content.

Legibility

Legibility is the pattern wherein a reader can recognize individual characters in a text. It is a measure to distinguish one letter from another in a particular typeface. Legibility is different than readability.

Tips

Fonts with taller X Height are easy to read. Fonts like Dejavu sans book, Libre Baskerwille Regular, Merriweather san s Light have a taller X Height.

  • Avoid using all caps and always be creative with your design.
  • Always remember to choose text with proper contrast.

Readability

Readability is the ease with which a reader can understand a written text. There are some important points that should be taken into consideration.

  • The minimum type size for readability should be 16 points.
  • The paragraphs should be no longer than 5-6 Lines.
  • Black type on a white background has the best readability.
  • Use serif fonts content and sans-serif for headlines.

Height (X height)

Being equal to the height of the lower-case letter ‘x’, X height is the distance between the baseline and mid line in a typeface in typography. This height is a relative unit of measuring the proportion of lowercase letters.
Tips for X-Height

Always choose different line spacing for different typefaces.

Software’s like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign are the best software to adjust leading or X-Height

Letter Spacing

A uniform adjustment to the spacing of a word or block affecting its density and texture is called letter spacing. In other words, adjustment applied to a block of text or paragraph to increase or decrease the average distance between line.

Tips for Letter Spacing
  • The most important thing for letter spacing is typeface as every typeface requires its own adjustments and spacing.
  • Also remember that Word Spacing is also important in typography to increase readability.
  • By choosing right corning your design will improve

Alignment

Alignment means how text is placed on the screen in relation to margin. It’s also a process that allows the user to align text on a page or document.

For example: Left-aligned text aligns text to the left side.

Tips for Alignment
  • Always or mostly align your paragraphs from left to right as it is the standard way in which our eye’s read.
  • Avoid widow and orphans in the paragraph by using or adjusting type size, word or letter spacing etc.

Colours and Contrast

Colours and contrast also play an important role in typography. Colours can help to set the mood for your design and helps the text to stand out. The three integral components of the colour are:

  • Hue: The shade of colour.
  • Saturation: The intensity of colour in an image.
  • Value: Lightness and Darkness of colour.
Tips for colour and contrast
  • We need to remember that
    ” Sharp contrast is easy to read, pure contrast is hard to read”
  • Choose font colour and background properly to make your design standout.
  • For example, use white text on the red or black background to increase readability.

Block Width

One of the important factor in typography is Block Width . Due to wide text blocks it hard for the reader to find the next line . If lines are too narrow the eye will need to jump from line to line breaking the reading rhythm. Your text line should only have 50 to 75 characters.

Tips for Block Width
  • First, all of the paragraphs should be aligned left as its the standard practice to read.
  • Block width should be not extended more than 700px as the user is not fond of reading the whole sentence, the sentence needs to be broken.
  • Maximum 14 words should come under 1 line in a paragraph

Hierarchy

The main role of hierarchy to create a hierarchical division that can show users where to look for specific kinds of information. For this we can use size ,fonts and different pieces of text for creating hierarchy. Using them we can direct the users attention to that information which is important.

Tips for hierarchy
  • Always set rules for bold and italic in typography to maintain the visual hierarchy. For example, the heading should be bold and bigger as compared to paragraph to make it highlight.
  • For maintaining hierarchy, always create a Z pattern as it is the common reading pattern.
  • Font weight also helps in maintaining visual hierarchy in typography
  • 4. Don’t use too many typefaces in a single design as the visual hierarchy gets disturbed.

Consistency

Consistency refers to the constant use of visual design elements discussed such as colour, type, spatial layout etc. Using consistency in typography means using right font and font sizes for heading and body text style. There should be consistent use of typeface, kerning, leading and colour etc.
Consistency makes the work look beautiful and pleasing to the users’ eye. It helps in minimizing styling and reduces user memory. It also helps HTML developers to make the website optimized.

Tips for consistency

Do not use too many typefaces due to which the consistency will get hampered.

Use one or two typefaces which makes design consistent and minimal.

Accessibility related to font size

After understanding the principles of typography, you need to know about the varied age group of users. You will have to keep in mind the following points of principles and design.

There are mainly some limitations of human eyesight after a specific age that is 45-60 and further,

Loss of light

Human vision declines and pupil shrinks as the age advances, allowing less light to enter the eye. Due to this the human faces problem in the low light environment.

Loss of Focus

Loss of focus refers to the loss of elasticity of eye lenses making it less able to focus while reading. The amount of loss of focus differs from individual and can range from slight to severe.

Vision Field Loss

Eye diseases such as macular degeneration, which is the loss of vision in the center of the visual field. It can cause blurred vision and faded colour.

Here are the principles of Typography while designing for senior or aged people.
Typestyle

Use simple and easy to read font. You must avoid decorative or script fonts as it will be hard to read for aged people.

Type or Font Size

Use text size generously with extra leading to improve readability. For example, a minimum leading of 16 on 14 Pt text is a good rule of thumb. Your sizes can vary as per your typeface.

Text Length

The text length or block width should be divided into small parts as it will be easy for aged people to read and understand. Always use highlighter or bullet points to increase the readability.

White Space

Use lots of white space which will reduce eye strain.

Colour

Black text on white background or on a very light background is better for aged people as using other colour will be a trouble for them.

Guidelines of Bootstrap for Typography

Bootstrap global size font size is 16 px and line height of 1.5

Bootstrap 4 styles HTML headings with a bolder font and increased font size:

h1 Bootstrap Heading 36 pixels

h2 Bootstrap Heading 30 pixels

h3 Bootstrap Heading 24 pixels

h4 Bootstrap Heading 18 pixels

h5 Bootstrap Heading 14 pixels

h6 Bootstrap heading 12 pixels

The Default font family is “Helvetica neue”, Helvetica, Arial , Sans – Serif

Display headings are used to stand out more than normal headings with larger font size and font weight

Display 1 – Font Size 96

Font Weight 300

Display 2 – Font Size 88

Font Weight 300

Display 3 – Font Size 72

Font Weight 300

Display 4 – Font Size 56

Font Weight 300

Here are the resources you can use to update your knowledge

https://blog.prototypr.io/how-to-use-typography-in-ui-design-ce045fa4ff2e

https://uxplanet.org/typography-in-ui-guide-for-beginners-7ee9bdbc4833

https://medium.muz.li/typography-in-mobile-design-15-best-practices-to-excellent-ui-5eaf18280ad

https://medium.muz.li/5-requirements-of-ui-ux-designer-be5cec493228

https://medium.com/gravitdesigner/typography-elements-everyone-needs-to-understand-5fdea82f470d

https://www.marketing-partners.com/conversations2/vision-changes-typography-for-aging-audiences

https://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fyti/situational-typography/designing-for-seniors

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Typography basics and tips for User Interface (UI) design – Part 1

The art of writing in India has been admired over the ages. The invention of various languages resulted in artistic scripts on the paper. Gradually, the writings were enhanced with distinguished things used for writing over the period. With the introduction of typewriter and computer, the art of printing became popular.
Typing became one of the vital media of communication for major official work. While we talk about typing, typography has become one of the essential tools in a user interface. Beginners are not much aware of the term and think that it is all about choosing some fonts and tricking them. However, typography is much more.

In this series of two articles, the first part I am covering the basics of Typography in UI design and the second part will share some tips on the same based on my working and reading experience.

What is typography?


Typography is actually the art of technically arranging letters and characters in a layout. It is a technique to make the text readable and legible to the user when displayed.

Apart from its creativity in user interface, typography helps in portraying your business in a right way by making it appealing to the users.
In this article, we will find relevant basics about typography, its use in a User Interface and what beginners should keep in mind while practicing typography.

Typography has a lot of excessive impact on communicating process that includes designing a communicative User Interface. After the introduction of typography, we will learn about the term Typeface. Typeface means “FONT-FAMILY” that includes one or more fonts. Each font is composed of glyphs (meaning an elemental symbol with an agreed set of symbols) that share common design features. Each font of a typeface has a specific weight, style, and condensation.

Why is typography important?

Why is Typography important?

Typography plays an important role in User Interface as it involves thoughtful and scrupulous selection of typeface, point size, line length, Kerning, Leading or any element that will leave an impact on User Interface.

70 % of User Interface depends on typography as it is the best source of communicating with anyone.

What are fonts?

What are fonts?

A font is a set of a presentable or printable text character in a specific style and size. It is a graphical representation of text that may include a different typeface, weight, size, point, color or design. Open Sans is an example of typeface family, Open Sans bold is a typeface and Open Sans bold 10 is a font.There are various types of fonts for user. Most of the typefaces can be classified into four basic group that includes Serifs, Sans- Serif, Decorative and Script.

Serif

Serif typeface is the oldest form of type. Serif fonts have little decorative strokes called “Feets” that extend from the tip of letters. They appear on all letters, uppercase, and lowercase within a font family. Merriweather, Roboto Slab, Josefin Slab, Gentium Basic among others are serif fonts which are used for retro theme, posters or fashion site etc.

Sans-Serif

“Sans” means “without”, hence sans-serif font does not include any extra strokes or feet at the end of the letters. Being a modern form, this typeface makes it more legible and easier to read in small sizes on screen.
Roboto, Open sans, Poppins, Oswald etc are some of the sans-serif fonts. They are used for simple and classy websites, business websites, and also as a logo due to its good readability.

Sans-Serif

Decorative

Decorative fonts are also known as ornamental or display fonts. They became popular in the 19th century and were mostly used on posters or advertisements. The main aim of a decorative font is to serve decorative, elaborate and beautiful text. Decorative fonts quickly catch attention and makes text easier to perceive and fascinating. Debby, Arcadia, Bellico etc are decorative fonts which are basically used for posters and advertisements.

Script

Script typeface is basically fluid stroke created by handwriting which is generally used for display or trade printing. They are perfect for invitations, greeting cards or expressive texts. They are classified into two types; formal scripts and casual scripts.

1. Formal scripts

Formal Scripts connects to each other in fluid format. They look graceful so you will find them on greeting cards , invitation headers and similar . To find out more about scripts , refer this article
https://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fyti/typefaces/scripts

2. Casual scripts

Casual Scripts are mainly made to look friendly and engaging. Their strokes can be connected and their mood tends to be warm, personal and relaxed.

Casual scripts

Technical terms in typography

Technical terms in Typography

Kerning:

When you adjust the space between individual characters, in proportional to the font technically its called Kerning .

Leading:

Leading determines that how text is spaced in lines . I have created reference image below in order to visually understand the leading better . Content which has multiple lines to read there we need to take care of Leading.

Line length:

Line length is the width of a block of the text, usually measured in units of lengths like inches, points or in characters per line. A block of text or paragraph has a maximum line length that fits a determined design.

Tracking:

Tracking is generally used to fill a space that’s larger or smaller than the current one. It should suit the type’s parameters or to make a single word seeming airy and impressive. Changing the tracking can hamper the readability, and can be difficult for the user to read.

Tracking

Though basic typography is interesting, you need to know the proper usage of the fonts and its shades to make it more appealing and enchanting to the reader or the user. You can learn advanced typography later so that you can strike a good deal for your business by impressing your clients through typography.

In my next article I will be covering some tips and tricks regarding usage of typography in UI . I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on my article.

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New to UX Design? Quick guide to start a career as a UX Designer

Still confused with UX? Where to start? What to refer? This article can guide you to know UX learning sources, will help in some basic UX Design concepts, and a quick guide to begin your journey with UX Design.

Of late, I have been observing that I spent a majority of my mentoring time to guide newcomers/freshers in UX. I tried my best to answer on social media, one on one communication and also when I was hiring UX Designer for my design studio.

Though there is lot information available about UX on the internet, it still lacks the clear, quick & focused guidance especially for newcomers. So, I decided to make a short article on this. This article can be useful for people who are looking to start or shift their career to UX.

Let’s start with some basic & typical questions.

What is UX design?

This term is discussed & explained several times. In recent years, this is one of the most searched keyword on the internet by businesses. For UX – there are various definitions available on the internet. Let me share what I think is easy to understand and also gives a clear idea about the term UX.

“User Experience” encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.

~by NN Group

usability.gov says,

“User experience (UX) focuses on having a deep understanding of users, what they need, what they value, their abilities, and also their limitations. It also takes into account the business goals and objectives of the group managing the project. Best practices of UX promote improving the quality of the user’s interaction with and perceptions of your product and any related services”

Peter Morville represents User Experience beautifully through honeycomb below

Image by Semantic Studios

As for me, I would define UX in following way..

User Experience includes everything that contributes to physical & mental experiences of the user while using the product or service. It may include user’s journey, information flow, content text, videos, images, graphics, interfaces, colors, interactions with the products/services.

How can we create good User Experience?

Elements of Good User Experience Design

Building a good user experience is neither a linear nor a one time process. As a continuous activity, successful UX design requires the involvement of different departments in business with the design team. At some point in time, these different departments and people directly or indirectly come in contact with users through their product or services.

Following are the step by step practices that are involved while creating a good user experience.

Every step requires different expertise, but a most of the times, one person may cover several steps depending on the expertise & experience they have.

  1. Collaboration and Information gathering
  2. Analysis: Business, Product and Competition
  3. User Research
  4. Solution planning and Strategy
  5. Sketches, Wire-frames and Prototyping
  6. Early Testing
  7. Iteration & Refinement
  8. Visual Design
  9. Code Development
  10. Monitor and Evolve
  11. Project Management
UX, UI & CX – What’s the difference?

Mostly people opt UX, because they love designing. We need to understand that UX starts with research followed by analysis and strategy. UX Designers invest their majority of time in finding solutions, documentation, dealing with wire-frames, decision making & more logical stuff.

CX, UX & UI — from bird’s eye view

UI design on the other hand focuses on visual design or skinning the wire-frames, where the creative designer plays with colors, shapes, layouts, typography and more.

Customer Experience (CX) includes almost everything : UX + Advertising + Branding + Sales process + business strategy + pricing + after sales service + support and other things as well. So scope of CX is much wider than UX, but both are interconnected to each other. Its becomes essential to have a seamless experience for users when they use the product, before they buy it or after they buy it.

Who can get into UX design?
  • Do you love to solve problems through research, analysis & design?
  • Are you passionate enough about your UX career?

If there is a positive response to the above, then YES, UX is for you!

Your enthusiasm could be the first step for you, but you need to understand that there is a bigger responsibility on your shoulders when you position yourself for UX.

I have seen a lot of people shifting and positioning themselves successfully in UX design, like Web designers, Graphic designers, Consultants, Architects, Interior designers, Industrial designers, User researcher etc.

For UX, moreover to skills, attitude and mindset is very important. There are certain qualities that UX designer must develop within. Maybe in future I will share more about the qualities of UX Designer.

What’s the career path in UX?

UX as a career has two tracks –

1) Technical

2) Managerial

Career path in UX Design

Managerial track is more about managing the people and getting the work done. Whereas technical track is more about handling nitty-gritty of the work. Both tracks are important and require equal potential.

Technical track would be the best choice to start with. As experience increases here, focus can be moved to the managerial track based on management skills.

What are the different roles in UX design?

There are some defined standard roles and responsibilities like UX Designers, User researcher, UX Strategists, Usability Professionals, UX Engineer, UI Designer, Interaction Designer, Visual Designer, Project Manager and so on. It varies depending on the organization structure.

How to start UX design?

The easiest & simplest way is to start as a UX Intern or Design intern, and then become Junior UX Designer. Or start as a graphic or visual designer. If I have make a choice, then more of practical experience will be my first option.

Apart from practical experience, you can please start reading knowledge resources, books, and articles. As a domain, understanding the depth of the UX domain is very much important. And what’s happening in the domain can keep you on track with market trends too.

If you can hire a working professional as a UX Designer (preferably senior), who can reserve some time to teach, nothing is better than that.

There are a lots of good resources you can refer to update your knowledge. Few of them below are as below for your convenience :

Few popular online free resources
Courses & Certification Programs (Paid)
Institutions: where you can enroll for formal UX education

How to prepare UI/UX design portfolio as a fresher?

UX Portfolio: A journey from Problem to Opportunity and Solution

Demonstrative skills are very important for an employer when they hire UX professionals. As a beginner, you will face the problem of not having real work to showcase. As a solution, you can initiative redesigning the existing applications. Or you can start a project that addresses the particular real time issues.

It’s good, if your UX portfolio case studies cover the following sections :

  • Project Brief
  • Problem or Opportunity Statement
  • Background Research & Analysis
  • Solution Statement
  • Proposed Solution Sketch with Description – Flow diagram, Sketches & wireframes
  • Interface designs: Coloured UI with interaction explained
  • Conclusion & results: Outcome of testing that you conducted with real users.

Hope I have addressed most of the basic important questions you have, if you want to choose UX as a career. I encourage you to start and grow in this interesting field of UX. I wish all the best to beginners and hope that you enjoy this amazing journey of becoming a User Experience Designer.

If you have further questions, please connect with me via Twitter or Linked-In or Quora. You can visit our design studio website at Prismic Reflections®

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Discovery in User Experience (UX) Design- Why & How (Part II)

Steps to conduct research at different level to make informed decisions

This article is continuation of series and first part of this article can be found here

In the first part of this article, we addressed the need of a requirement gathering, analysis in the discovery phase. This article will focus on different steps involved in discovery and how they impact on the UX projects.

As a part of Discovery Phase, a typical UX UI Project involves the following steps.

1. Talking with stakeholders & gathering information

Any design exercise (rather any project) should start with talking to the people who are responsible & involved in different areas of the product. Primary stakeholders are C level executives who are responsible for the business side, the product manager, marketing managers, support team lead/manager, developers, client servicing manager etc.

Photo by Nik MacMillan on Unsplash
Photo by Nik MacMillan on Unsplash

A quick introduction & project requirement brief is a good start for this step. In my practice, I always believe in knowing the stakeholders personally i.e. understanding from where they are coming in the context of project need. Your understanding of the business requirement, knowing the stakeholder little on a personal level & synergy with them, sets a comfortable environment. A typical set of primary questions helps us to understand the multifaceted structure of a requirement or problem. It’s a very important step and your first chance to understand the business side, their problems, expectations & goals from their perspective.

2. Understanding the organization structure

In every product, there is an involvement of employees in production & in servicing areas. Businesses have their own hierarchies, roles & responsibility assigned to each with the relevance of the product. Knowing the organization structure and how the tasks (in the context of product development or usage) are distributed in different roles, reveals the operational challenges, pain points & missing connecting dots.

Organisation Structure Map
Organization Structure Map

Form design perspective, the design team should know how a business is linked to the product or application. If design team is designing administrator side (like member management), they must understand the support department structure & challenges. Sometimes, in my experience, I noticed that businesses found some basic issues in their structure and how its linked to the products. Like few roles are missing, few roles combined irrespective of their context of use etc.

3. Business & competitive analysis

Business has some very critical challenges & limitations those needs consideration before planning for solution and strategy. Knowing the client’s business helps design team to get the business vision and empathize all the challenges with its limitation.

Competitors research and study gives design team fast forward approach. To know, understand what others (in the same line of business) are doing & how they are doing. It’s always good to learn from examples those are readily available. It also helps the team to identify and figure out what & how we can differentiate our experience from competitors. Depending on the need and time available, one can dive deeper in this analysis & research method as identified.

4. User research: identifying user types, personas & profile

“Empathy” you will hear this word frequently from designers or design school students. User Research is very important part of the discovery phase. It provides a right perspective designer with precise context.

The design team can only design better if they really know who is going to use it, how and when. Identifying the real users & their types, narrow down the focus of designing activity. The outcome of this step is we know the priority of users & their types. Also, we can easily allocate the functions & task between them.

Persona Document (Sample) Created in User Research
Persona Document (Sample) Created in User Research

Personas with the profile details add further clarity. Like understanding their Geography, Background, Culture, Profession, Goals, Environment, his/her typical daily routine activity etc. Once we identify different personas it helps us to draft user stories, document & use cases to bring more contextual clarity to the project.

5. Task analysis

This step could be fairly time taking depending on the complexity & depth of usage of the product or application. Task analysis is a step where project team gets to know all the touch points where the user interacts with the product/application. It’s basically users needs & expectation which are converted into functions. Understanding the importance & priority of every function from a different user point of view is crucial. It acts a foundational activity in laying out the information architecture and navigation system.

User Based Task Exploration & Allocation by Prismic Reflections®
User Based Task Exploration & Allocation by Prismic Reflections®

Task analysis not only helps designing team but also the product owners to get the deep insight into the reality of usage of functional features & their importance. At the end of the task analysis, both design team and businesses can see somewhat blur picture of project scope, approximate volume of work and there by an approximate timeline. The assumptions in this phase what one can make are more accurate than one who does it without performing this. The drawback of avoiding this step can lead to spending more time on the less important part of the product or not paying enough attention to important things for its users.

The drawback of avoiding this step can lead to spending more time on the less important part of the product or not paying enough attention to important things for its users.

6. UX audit & heuristic evaluation: reviewing the existing application

In many cases, design team often perform this step much earlier, before analysis of business competition, user & tasks. However, based on my experience, without getting into real context and empathy, audit or heuristic evaluation can not be effective. In some general or common applications, it’s ok to do it earlier. However complex enterprise applications which have its own breadth &

In some general or common applications, it’s ok to do it earlier. However complex enterprise applications which have its own breadth & depth can be only audited precisely when an auditor has the fair knowledge of the domain, application, different users and use case scenarios. For e.g. Energy management, internal applications of banks, share market, medical research, Security & Defense (government) etc.

Complete UX Audit could be a lengthy process depending on how one needs to perform it. Heuristic evaluation is the step where an expert in user experience quickly evaluates the usability & other issues in the application. In the same step, UX expert may prepare a list of seen problems & possible solutions or enhancements.

Heuristic evaluation is a fast, quick and comparatively less expensive method as compared to the detailed discovery phase. (charges of UX experts are high as they are seniors in most cases)

Note: UX Audit or heuristic evaluation could be a part of detailed discovery process or can be performed as a stand alone activity. Again it’s a business call how to identify the need of the situation & selection of appropriate choice. UX expert can contribute in making decision making about

7. Brainstorming: UX team & different departments in the organization

Brainstorm for more questions & more ideas
Brainstorm for more questions & more ideas

Brainstorm should not be a noise, it’s an opportunity to think through the findings team got so far. It also helps entire team to absorb the important information to gain further clarity. Different issues & options are inspected by different people from a different angle. And then gather to figure common point before they move ahead. Finalizing the strategy and approach for the design project need solid inputs. How we are planning the activities, what we are prioritizing and why we are doing it — these are all which forms the Strategy document. Sometimes strategy prepared separately or can be part of other master documents. In some cases requirement analysis, strategy & solution documents are more time to consume & expensive than the project execution itself.

Sometimes strategy prepared separately or can be part of other master documents. In some cases requirement analysis, strategy & solution documents are more time to consume & expensive than the project execution itself.

8. Information architecture & navigation system

Organizing & structuring the content in an effective way, labeling to make them easily findable. Information architecture matters and its one of the primary strength (or could be a weakness) of any product or website.

Screen & Information Flow Diagram by by Prismic Reflections®
Screen & Information Flow Diagram by by Prismic Reflections®

Once the context is set with business information, priorities, users, profiles, tasks etc. Its the time to think about IA (Information Architecture)

Good information architecture not only enable user to find the appropriate information quickly
but also make them feel empowered while performing a particular task in the application in a much smoother way.

9. Strategy

If you notice, by following the above steps, the big picture is already getting in shape. A product design team can now figure out the strategy if they understand the business goals, users persona’s & stories, technological constraint, critical success factors, competition, priorities etc.

A method or plan to achieve the desired result by performing a specific action at a particular time is what we can define as a strategy.

The strategy consists of all these points which are especially focused on “What” we are going to do and “How” should it be approached & measured.

10. Document finalizing & sign off

Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash
Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash

Any meeting or exercise is complete if we do not have a solid action plan. And a solid action plan should not get into execution unless it is agreed by decision makers. Getting an agreement on what and how the further execution will be handled with a delivery schedule is important to avoid future conflicts. In this steps along with the project scope, strategy, solutions, timelines, deliverables, commercials & other terms to be documented and agreed in black and white. It is always best to face any type of conflicts or gaps earlier than the later stage.

Note: In depth research & analysis in discovery phase are the right fit for mid size, big & complex applications. Here the challenges are critical & expectations are very high. Expecting high & accurate results without in depth discovery is not a realistic expectation. The shallow approach in discovery has its pitfalls. However simpler and smaller products may adapt it depending on the time constraint.
In the above article, I have tried to mention all those points what I have experienced and remember in my design career. Of course, there is no specific step or method that is fit for every project. As we know it’s an iterative exercise.

More we DO, more we LEARN. More we are AWARE while doing, there we achieve the balance!

I would love to hear your experiences, feedback & comments. If you have any question or think we need a quick talk about your ideas, I am eager to get connected. You can contact me via Twitter or LinkedIn or through our company website Prismic Reflections®

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Discovery in User Experience (UX) Design - Why & How? (Part I)

Finding small details in the big picture: analysis & research in UX design projects

In the first part of this article, we will address the need of a requirement gathering, analysis, and discovery phase in UX projects. This article will more focus on different steps in the discovery and how they impact on the UX activities.

A couple of weeks before I went to a mobile shop with my friend for buying a new smart phone for him. Well, yes, we didn’t choose to do it online. My friend wanted to actually feel & experience the phone before he actually takes the decision.

To summarise this story, we tried two shops one after another. And the biggest difference between two different shops was the shopping experience. The 1st shop was having more varieties & staff to attend us, whereas 2nd shop was having very few people but with the right approach. One of them (from the 2nd shop) started with asking right questions to us. Which actually helped us to know our own requirement & expectations clearly. He also helped us to weigh appropriately in between (smart phone) features, configuration & prices. Finally, the quick talk with smart sales person led us to get the product which was much closer to our needs, expectations & demand.

No doubt, sales person in the 2nd shop was smart, however, a quick process he followed was important. He did a quick a Discovery before he actually starts offering or selling.

Life is too short to build that nobody wants!

We can easily map the above very common & simple experience to the world of User Experience (UX) Design. Lack of discovery there are greater chances of reaching the conclusion or point where project team realizes that they have built something that is either “Not Enough” or “Too Much” for the users.

“Achieving a perfect balance between what user needs what business intending to provide with their goals aligned, is an Art!”

This article will quickly address the need of Requirement Gathering & Analysis, which is typically part of our discovery phase. The next series of this article will be focusing on different steps involved in the discovery.

What is requirement analysis, research & why it’s needed?

Discovery phase includes requirement gathering, analysis & research.

As the term itself explains, RA (Requirement Analysis) includes various type of information collection, research, analysis and streamlining it by different methods.

Analysis means breaking down complex structure of information into smaller pieces those are easy to understand.

It becomes an essential part of UX project for the following reasons,

Goals

Identifying definite goal in UX project is really crucial and project without a definite goal can go into an infinite loop of iterations & revisions. Analysis & Research can be used to identify & define the definite goal of the project. Goals can be of two types i.e. User Goals and Business Goals. Defining some measurable metrics to both the goals can add great clarity to them.

Scope of work

Though user experience can be continuously evolving, one must draw the boundaries to the efforts, team involvement and finally timeline & commercials. Research helps to bring some important facts into the light so we can prioritize the goals to execute them as per the management agreement. It gives a clear idea about the efforts & timeline upfront before we begin the activity.

Strategy

This information not only helps us to identify & scope but also gives solid and logical reason to adopt a particular approach or strategy for the design process.

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash
Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

Knowing the basics

Information & Research data answers very basic and important questions to the UX team, like Why are we doing it? Whom are we doing for? What supposes to be done and at what point in time?

The success of any UX project depends on solid understanding & identification of the right “Wh” questions. We may find multiple questions under each category, picking up the most appropriate & important question is important here.

Documentation

All the documents & files produced in RA process helps entire team across the lifecycle of the project to stay aligned & focused with an ultimate goal of the project.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

It really saves the time, cost and effort since team knows what are the findings from the user, business, and competitive research. Having a goal, work scope & strategy in place helps the team to work on the precise set of deliverables that is going to really matter in the project success.

As a part of Discovery Phase, a typical UX UI Project involves the number of steps. We will look into them in the next part (II) of this article which will be released soon.

I would love to hear your experiences, feedback & comments. If you have any question or think we need a quick talk about your ideas, I am eager to get connected. You can contact me via Twitter or LinkedIn or through our company website Prismic Reflections®

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Designing Experiences (UX/UI) for Enterprise Applications

If it’s not growing, it’s not a business!

Despite the size of the business, small or large enterprises, every business strives for growth & betterment. It could be in revenue, client satisfaction, market value, brand image, employee satisfaction or in any other area.

This blog post will focus on the power of strategic design and the need for designing complex systems those plays a pivotal role in speeding up business processes. Also, to make this article more focused towards enterprise applications specifically, we will for now, keep the consumer applications excluded.
This is not for those who want to learn UX/UI Design but interested to know how to use design expertise to make the business process more efficient and profitable.

What is an Enterprise Application?

Enterprise Application (or software), in simple words, are those applications, utilities or tools which are made for a specific set of users within the organization or for another organization/businesses to solve problems and complete the specified tasks in their operations. (business to business and or within the business)
For example, you can consider, back-end system for call centre staff, HR Management, Billing & Accounting software, Patient record tracking & management in hospitals (CRM), Trading software in financial technologies, LMS for corporates, email marketing systems, project management tool, ERP, Messaging & Collaboration system etc are all enterprise applications.

Need for design/redesigning the UX/UI for enterprise applications. A big why?

There is no more secret that high-performing companies from Fortune100 have put users & their experience on top in their priorities. There must be a good reason why these big brands came to this conclusion after investing a lot of time, money & efforts in research.
Just not to follow this conclusion blindly, we will look into the WHY there is need to design/redesign overall user experience through strategic thinking.

1. Feature/System Centric Vs User Centric platform

There was a time when tasks were performed by humans. Information technology and e-commerce boom excited businesses to automate all possible manual work through software systems.
In today’s world, for almost everything, there is an app or software system to accomplish. Automation, as a basic need, is already met. All the systems & software are coded and available either in the repository of codes, just to plug and play. So what’s the challenge now?
I believe its the experience – User/Customer experience. And there are we and market leaders are focusing. It’s a big shift of any software application from being feature rich or system centric to experience rich. Finally, everything is boiling down to user experience, how usable, effective, satisfactory, delightful & unique it is than other 10 similar options available in the market.

2. Efficiency matters

How businesses use their human resources efficiently? And how efficiently human resources use their time? In today’s competitive world, the efficiency of every employee, when he/she perform a particular task within the organization affects the whole business process. Design for efficiency is the technique can remarkably improve the efficiency of the user.

3. Productivity improvement

Productivity improvement UX

All businesses are investing in different programs, training sessions and methodologies to improve the productivity of employees. The tool that they use, (in the context of this article, a software application) can affect productivity ratio a lot. If its designed for maximum productivity (for e.g. minimum steps with more logical mapping to use cases to complete the task) more production or processing can happen in much lesser time. And that finally save the total number of resource engagement cost remarkably on a monthly or yearly basis.

In our observation, where we have consulted or redesigned the software applications, reported the improvement in productivity of users from 10% to 30%.

4. Sense of satisfaction

Satisfaction_UXUI

I get that when I swipe to the right on a task on my to-do list. Yes, its done when I wanted it! Studies have proven that satisfaction from small things leads to reduce the mental pressure and keep people away from depression. If an application designed in such way, to present the whole bunch of long task cue, broken into a small task that can be easily doable. Every completion will generate a sense of satisfaction in the team. More satisfied people with the work, more serenity in business place and culture – its a straight connection.

5. Employees are humans

If employees love what they do, they deserve to love the way they are doing it. Love is at the core of our existence and basic need of every human being. The more easy, simple, joyful and humanized systems are, more people will fall in love with that. Imagine if your teams like the way they perform their task and the way the application is communicating with them in between? Isn’t it just awesome?

6. Cost of iterations & revisions

It is often observed that when people start using software they have some feedback. One cannot build software, within the budget, that is just perfect for every use case. However, with the systematic user-centered analysis and design approach we can assess the requirement upfront, prioritize them and build something which will be much closer to user’s expectation & the way they are comfortable to use it. Thereby cost of possible iterations and revision in later phases can be reduced significantly. So your upfront investment in user-centered design can significantly save later recurring expenses in maintaining or refining it.

7. Cost of training & support

Providing detailed training for complicated software is a costly affair. The complicated software can also lead more customer queries that put the load on customer support team.
No one ever required detailed formal training for using Facebook, Whats app or YouTube (of course these are consumer app & not an enterprise app) These social platforms are best examples of intuitive, easy to use & highly engaging applications. Teenager to senior citizen performs many complex tasks with these social applications flawlessly just by using a couple of times.
The secret of the success of such applications is overall engaging user experience and importantly very simple & well-informed design.

8. Balancing is an Art!

UX Balances User Goal & Business Goals

Feature rich or system centric platforms are often built by taking business needs into account. During the phase of development, its very rare that development team focus on real users, user research & their feedback’s. Everyone rushes to the functional testing, code optimization, and other development/technology centric decisions, On the other hand, design-centric process, focuses on User goals in line with Business goals and draw a solution by balancing them. Technology & Features comes in later stages if it has been identified in the research based on real usage by the user in the business process. One can really control the complexity & depth of the feature while taking user tasks, their priorities & other related factors.

The solution that only focuses on the business side and ignores the user’s concern, fails to achieve business goals due to friction in operations & production.

9. Design for error: avoiding high risk in critical actions

Design for errors

Good design & bad design is just not connected to more conversion, ease of use or customer delight but in some cases, it draws a line in between life and death. A very well known incident of B 17 Aircraft in World War Two. The landing gear and flaps control knows are identical and very close to each other. Here there was the high risk of accidentally operating wrong control.
In such cases, significant importance, time & effort should be put to consider all the possible errors and solutions to avoid or recover from these errors. If you observed your business and operations carefully, you can find very critical actions that invite huge risk in case of wrong selection by a user. A good design will be always backed up with necessary recovery options.

10. Profit by DESIGN

As reported by Design Council UK, according to research, design directly and significantly improve sales, profit, turnover, and growth.

“Every £100 a design alert business spends on design increases turnover by £225.”
~ Design Council UK

Design-led businesses who use and value design can have a competitive edge over the rest. So design is not just related to aesthetic uplift or cosmetic surgery anymore.

( Source: Page Number 4, The Value of Design Factfinder report © Design Council 2007 )

11. Benefit of multidisciplinary design

UX Multidisciplinary design

A strategic & user-centered design approach begins with taking inputs from various departments within the organization. It is a multidisciplinary design approach where Marketing & Sales, Business Development, Product Managers, Brand Managers, Executives, Customer Relationship Head, Business Strategist all these people contribute in defining the design strategy and critical success factors of the project. So the outcome ensures that it is not missing the 360-degree overview and consideration from every perspective before going live.

Great products come from great ideas, ideas are born out of the passion for solving the problems. And one can only identify a problem by looking at who is facing it (problem) i.e. the user. Design thinking is a proven way of solving user problems effectively.

I hope you enjoyed reading & find this article clarifying your doubts why one should rethink about designing an enterprise application. I have covered only a few important factors those are crucial from the business perspective. If you have any suggestions, those are welcome. Don’t forget to place your feedback.

In my next article, I will try to focus on the process (HOW) for designing an enterprise application. It will be a broader overview which will address steps, milestones and important factors that business should consider when they are undergoing design/redesign exercise.

If you have further question or need assistance from an expert, please Contact Us or get connected with me on my Twitter account

All, Events, Inspiration, UX Based Design

Meeting global visionaries from leading companies at GiTex 2015 (Dubai), to improve user experience of their product

Prismic Reflections® team is just returned back from their fantastic trip to Dubai.

We visited GiTex 2015 at world Trade Center Dubai, last week.


gitex_logo

Future of technology on display was at Gitex 2015, 35th?Technology week at Dubai. Its a gateway to the Middle East, Africa & South Asia’s ICT Industry. Innovative UAV, Robotics, 3D printing, business automation & autonomous vehicles. GiTex is the place where all business leaders, global visionaries from world’s leading companies come together. Its the place where you can explore business opportunities, ideas, your future business partners & customers. You can demonstrate your ideas & business to different people coming from all across the globe.

Me & My Partner Swarup visited GiTex last week to meet entrepreneurs, brands, businesses & leaders to explore the possibilities how Prismic Reflections® can contribute?to?improve their?digital product’s user experiences and take them to the next level.

During our 5 day trip to GiTex, we met lot of businesses leaders from different domains like software, IT, Banking & finance, Healthcare, Agriculture, Food, Education, Government and so on. It was quite exciting to see the value that these businesses are bringing together to contribute into the ecosystem of UAE and there by Global Economy. It was also inspiring to see businesses are openly collaborating with each other to explore the partnership opportunities to achieve high pace & sustainable growth.


sacle

?In my visit, I met few aspiring brands & business leaders like Saycle, Anazana, Devision, Firecart, 3D Printer, Xilopix, SOTI, and many more.?I was amazed by the revolutionary solutions these companies?are bringing to the society.
India’s contribution to the Software & technology domain was always been huge. No wonder I saw many of software & tech companies from India here in GiTex, which made me feel at home 🙂

However, I saw most of the companies brought inspiring & innovative ideas in form of products along with their services. Its fantastic that product mindset in evolved drastically in service based companies.

All the ideas, solutions & values brought by businesses & innovators surely seems to shift whole customer experience to the next level. Lot of different & complex challenges can be met with the use of technology based solutions where technology does the all the heavy lifting work and humans can enjoy?to the next level of experience by giving more comfort, ease and sophistication in day to day life.

Our meeting with business leaders & decision makers for transforming their software & platforms into better user experiences was great learning experience at both the end. Few of our meetings were turned successful and gone to the next level where Prismic Reflections® will be engaged in crafting UX for their digital products. We are quite excited to begin with these opportunities and hoping to create big difference in the digital space?with highly usable, engaging & customer user products.


Dubai Smart CityUI UX DesignOpening of GiTexView from Dubai World Trade Center

Overall it was great experience at GiTex to observe different business, ideas & importantly people coming together under one roof. Yes, its all about the people ? Humans. Technology can not rather should not replace Human interactions with each other. Instead, technology should compliment and bring more awareness, sophistication and improve the real life experiences. This is exactly what happened at GiTex where we met & interacted people face to face,?though it was a tech event- such a good experience.

One, who is in the technology space, should not miss the event. Like every year, GiTex was a great initiative from UAE’s government, held in Dubai, which will surely take UAE’s & Gobal Economy to the next level.