UX/UI Links, December 2017
In 2017 we enjoyed some fantastic reading material to stay sharp and on top of our industry news.
If you'd like to look back, try these 2017 Highlights by UX Design Collective, which shared an exceptional selection of curated and original posts throughout the year, and prepared an interesting report on what to expect for UX in 2018.
For a handpicked selection of posts from December only, take a look at the following links.
Let’s Bury the Hustle
Almost anything in the Signal vs. Noise Blog could make it to this list, but David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)'s article Let’s Bury the Hustle was an outstanding candidate to close (or start) the year with the right foot.
Think of all those long hours of exhausting extra work and anxiety you put on and how much you got from them. Not much, right? As the Co-Founder & CTO at Basecamp says "You’re not very likely to find that key insight or breakthrough idea north of the 14th hour."
In Let’s Bury the Hustle you'll find five uncomplicated actions you can take towards a productive and balanced life, avoiding the daily grind. Here's a sneak peek:
- Get a great night’s sleep.
- Get plenty of fresh air.
- Get regular exercise.
- Read some classics.
- Say no to more dumb shit.
"And for God’s sake, relax."
Designing Better Design Documentation
Communicating our design ideas depends heavily on our presentation skills, even when we're not there. Hence, proper documentation is critical, and "the how is as important as the what."
In Designing Better Design Documentation, Slava Shestopalov, Experience Designer at EPAM, brings together practical techniques for presenting our work better, and helping our busy audience "read less but get more."
How We Design Enterprise Software
Inspired by other product teams, Lee Munroe, Product Design Manager at Mesosphere, decided to pay it forward by documenting and sharing their creative process.
How We Design Enterprise Software takes us inside the Mesosphere Product Team to learn about their organization and process, but more importantly, about the clarifying exercise of documenting your own workflow to enrich you as creators and as a team.
Software UX Hacks That Get Users There Faster
"Your users aren’t trying to use your app. They’re trying to get to the result." That's the premise behind great software products, those that feel intuitive and succeed in satisfying their user's needs.
In Software UX Hacks That Get Users There Faster, Brian Casel, Entrepreneur and Designer, shares seven go-to tips that can transform any software into a useful tool for its users by helping them "leapfrog past that frustrating 'onboarding' phase and skip right to the 'using' phase."
Net Promoter Score Considered Harmful (and What UX Professionals Can Do About It)
We're all interested in understanding our customers and getting insights about our performance. Metrics can provide part of the answer. But in the end "there’s no one number that represents a company’s customer experience." (Which is one of the reasons we value having conversations with customers over relying on metrics.)
So, if you want to measure your success with numbers, be cautious.
Net Promoter Score Considered Harmful (and What UX Professionals Can Do About It), a post by Jared Spool, does a beautiful job at explaining the promises and pitfalls of a popular but hard-to-trust business metric, the NPS.
I hope these are useful.
For more curated links check our previous posts or follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Remember you can share your favorite links (or any feedback) here on the comments.
Happy 2018!
- Jess for the Balsamiq Team
Jessica for the Balsamiq Team
