UX design Minor design changes, onboarding new designers, redundancies in design, and more UX this week

There’s no such thing as “minor design changes” →

At some point the Intercom team decided to limit the number of characters of their reviews to 140.

“We want to limit the length of a review in the product to 140 characters, because we may want to use SMS at some stage. That’s a small change, right?”

Oh well.

Here are some of the questions, discussions and decisions that had to be made immediately after they received that brief.

• Should we explain to users why there is a character limit when they are about to write a review?
• What happens if the review has more than 140 characters? Do we block typing, or do we display an error message to users?
• If we decide to show an error message, where would it go on the UI?
• What will the error message say?

Continue reading →

Beyond the win: accessing the long-term benefits of CX →

It is now accepted business wisdom that good Customer Experience (CX) provides competitive advantage. Let’s look at some long-term benefits of a CX-centric approach. By Jay Nicholl.

Onboarding new designers to your product team →

For a new employee, the onboarding experience at a new job can set the tone for months or years to come. Especially in design. By Craig Phillips.

Designed redundancies: UX patterns to unblock frustration →

The concept of redundancy started in the aircraft industry. Today, many digital and technology products rely on particular redundancies to improve their final user experience. By Juan J. Ramirez.

Hick’s law: making the choice easier for users →

Understanding Hick’s law means you can design so that more users will visit and stay on your website. By Mads Soegaard.

Measuring and quantifying user experience →

UX designers struggle to prove the value of their work when arguments like “user experience is hard to measure” start flying around. Here are 3 methods that can help us prove the value of UX. By Matej Latin.

The best request is no request, revisited →

Over the last decade, web performance optimization has been controlled by one indisputable guideline: the best request is no request. How has this concept evolved? By Stefan Baumgartner.

Strategic storytelling for designers →

Sharing ideas is part of the design process. Steering the ship and making changes based on customer needs is essential to great design. By Eli Silva Montgomery.

The first 15 seconds →

In the first 15 seconds of every new experience, people are lazy, vain, and selfish. This is not intended as cynical jibe at humanity; it is an essential insight for building great products. By Scott Belsky.

News & Ideas

• Wework buys Meetup to create real-world, face-to-face gatherings
• Snapchat has a new design
• Formula 1 unveils new identity by W+K London
• Finally, a plugin to save your face when sharing your screen
• Beats’ Above The Noise commercial is quite inspiring
• Google is facing legal action for its iPhone privacy violation
• YouTube announces Stories and Communities
• Interactive article: what Tech world did you grow up in?
• Google’s AI now knows when a stranger is looking at your phone
• Here’s a therapeutic device to substitute your smartphone
• This app helps you track the things you lend or borrow
• Facebook is using AI to spot users with suicidal thoughts
• Here are 100 cryptocurrencies described in 4 words or less
• This service lets you donate your website traffic for a cause

Tools & Resources

• Sketch Cleaner helps you get your design files as clean as a whistle
• Finch makes pixel pushing (and visual QA) way easier
• Bandwidth Hero: a browser extension that compresses images
• Diya: a plugin that lets you prototype right from Sketch
• Lona: Airbnb’s git repository for defining and sharing design systems
• MyRoundUp: receive email digests with major releases from git repos
• Better Placeholder makes it easier to generate placeholder images
• Sketch Flowkit: create flows and diagrams on Sketch
• Design Systems Handbook, by Invision
• Blockchain demo: a very thorough walkthrough on the topic
• Buttercal: another tool to help schedule meetings with large groups
• Headway app: keep your customers in the loop about your product

A year ago…

Alternatives to Placeholder Text →

Placeholder text can be used as an attribute for almost every HTML input type, and misguided designers and developers don’t hesitate. It is tempting to provide text help for complex forms, or omit input labels to improve aesthetics. However, employing placeholder text to do so causes many usability issues. This article illustrates common bad practices, and proposes alternatives. By Andrew Coyle.

Brought to you by Fabricio Teixeira and Caio Braga.