UX/UI Links of August 2018
This month's round-up is focused on common UI controls and patterns that are easy to get wrong, product market/fit and turning mistakes into opportunities.
Hopefully, these five articles will shed some light on the day to day challenges you may encounter at work.
Simple Rules for Designing Web & Mobile Forms
"Enable a clear path to completion by enabling smart defaults."
- Thomas Drach, Independent Designer and Engineer.
Forms constitute the quintessential way of gathering information and enable businesses around the web, and yet they remain the hardest elements to get right in our designs.
Fortunately, the web is full of great resources, and Simple Rules for Designing Web & Mobile Forms is a perfect example. Follow the link to uncover 22 maxims for better forms.
Checkbox vs. Toggle Switch
"It is better to focus on the usage context instead of their function."
- Saadia Minhas, UX Designer.
Asking our users to choose between two possible states is a pretty straightforward task to design. But what if there's more than one option available? And, what happens when we have to ask our users to make two or more decisions at once?
Checkbox vs. Toggle Switch offers all the right answers by examining case by case what's the appropriate UI controls to use in every situation for optimal user experience.
To further your understanding of these exciting components make sure to checkout Toggle-switch Guidelines by the Nielsen Norman Group and Radio Buttons and Checkboxes, an article from our learning portal.
Carousels on Mobile Devices
"A hurried mobile user looking for specific content may never notice a carousel."
- Raluca Budiu, Director of Research at Nielsen Norman Group.
Carousels (also called slideshows, sliders, or galleries) were first introduced to solve a space problem. These are a typical method for sequentially displaying many pieces of content in the same place. The thing is, the ubiquitous solution to the space problem comes with important usability issues, especially on small screens.
On Carousels on Mobile Devices, you can learn about the main issues caused by carousels and how to alleviate them.
Mastering the Problem Space for Product/Market Fit
"If we don't understand the problem, what are the chances that we're going to get the solution right?"
- Dan Olsen, Product Management & Lean Startup Consultant
All the fun of the product creation process seems to be in the solution space. There's where all our ideas and expertise come to play, so we skip ahead. But more often than not, jumping in too early without understanding the problem will lead us into a product/market fit dilemma.
In Mastering the Problem Space for Product/Market Fit, Dan will guide us on how to think of the problem space and how to use that knowledge to reach product/market fit with our solution.
Customer Recovery: Turn Bad Experiences into Unforgettable Good Moments
"Acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to twenty-five times more expensive than retaining an existing one."
- Usabilla Team
Chances are we put more effort into converting as many leads as we can than in helping our existing customer base be more awesome. However, it's by making our customers happy that we'll bring the best results for our business.
Customer Recovery: Turn Bad Experiences into Unforgettable Good Moments describes a process to handle a pivotal moment in our relationship with our customers: the moment in which we drop the ball.
There you go! Five links full of neat tips and advice.
If you'd like to keep reading try our previous selections.
If you have another great article you'd like to recommend, let me know in the comments below.
Until next month!
- Jess for The Balsamiq Team
Jessica for the Balsamiq Team
