UX Central

Why User Experience Design is so Hard to Get Right

Ravneet Singh — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 06:20:15 +0000

User Experience Design is hard to get right. Good designers begin by attempting to understand the genuine difficulties rather than trying to fix the problem presented to them. As a result, instead of converging on a solution, they diverge, researching people and their goals to provide concept after idea after idea. It takes skill to be able to use data and qualitative feedback to highlight the significance of user experience issues and to use this information to craft a compelling argument that persuades stakeholders.

And like any art, it is hard.

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The Benefits of a Design System: Making Better Products, Faster

Molham Bakir — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 11:08:28 +0000

Staying in tune with what users want means more loyal customers—and more revenue for companies. Seminal research by Fred Reichheld, creator of the all-important NPS score, found that a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a 25% to 95% increase in profits. Keeping the customers you have is all the more important when you consider the cost of acquiring new ones: Sixty-one percent of retailers in one 2022 study cited rising customer acquisition costs as one of their greatest obstacles in meeting e-commerce goals. One of the best ways to keep the customers you already have? Make sure your product does what your users want it to.

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Democratizing User Research to Innovate and Refine Digital Products

Mariia Borysova — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 11:02:15 +0000

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Voice of the Customer: How to Leverage User Insights for Better UX

Atishay Goyal — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 10:48:48 +0000

Many of us have had the experience of feeling like we’re shouting into an online void, and even for the most stoic among us, it’s aggravating. Will that contact submission form ever reach a real human? Why is it taking me so long to complete this checkout process? These all-too-familiar experiences are often symptomatic of a product team’s failure to listen to “the voice of the customer” (VoC).

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The Danger of Dark Patterns

Michael Craig — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 10:42:22 +0000

Dark patterns are a popular design topic but defining them can be difficult. That’s because they’ve become so prevalent that many have been adopted as design conventions. It’s crucial to understand these manipulative techniques in order to create ethical products that enhance customer trust.

As designers we use our expertise to create user experiences that are practical and intuitive. This often means using persuasive design patterns to encourage customers toward decisions that benefit our clients, such as completing purchases or upgrading services. Persuasive patterns may include creating a sense of scarcity, using social proof to amplify trustworthiness, and rewarding customers to instil a feeling of accomplishment.

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More resources on dark patterns

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Your First Design is Wrong

Rob Cowie — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 13:51:17 +0000

Designing better and delivering faster is the dream of all designers, but it need not be a just a dream. Iterative design is a methodology that can both fast track your delivery and drastically improve the effectiveness of your designs. And best of all it’s not that difficult to implement.

I recently did a talk covering fifty things all designers must know¹, and the one theme that stood out was the importance of iteration. An iterative design practice in which we work on smaller pieces and iterate them continuously, making rapid changes, almost always leads to better solutions.

Great design comes from iterations of good design, and the iterative design process is a powerful way of enabling our teams to design and deliver better products faster.

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2023 UX South Africa Conference

Rob Cowie — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 18:54:35 +0000

Delivered a keynote address on Effective Data Visualisation Design at the 2023 UX South Africa Conference in Johannesburg.

Effective Data Visualisation Presentation (4mb | PDF)Download

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2023 Absa Design Masterclass

Rob Cowie — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 14:27:18 +0000

Presented a talk on 50 Things Every Designer Must Know.

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Eight Concepts from Behavioural Economics for Designers

Rob Cowie — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 09:13:28 +0000

As a designer, I’m interested in bringing concepts and learnings from a wide range of disciplines into the world of design to help create better solutions. One field that has had a massive influence on my design approach has been behavioural economics.

I’ve been fascinated with it ever since picking up a copy of Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational at an airport many years ago. Having previously studied traditional economics with its assumptions of rationality, behavioural economics was a breath of fresh air with its premise that people are in fact irrational creatures.

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Effective Data Visualisation Design

Rob Cowie — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 16:36:57 +0000

I’m currently part of a project to create a design framework for data visualisation across the organisation. This has been a lot more interesting than it has any right to be, and has led me down the rabbit hole of all things data visualisation. In the process I’ve learned how to produce visualisations that have an impact, and it has reinforced my view that effective communication with data has become an essential design skill. Designing with data can be fun — you just need to embrace your inner data analyst.

Today, data communication is everywhere. Just think of how much data you’re exposed to every day, whether it’s on your smart watch, fitness tracker, news shows, banking app, investment platform or even your gaming system. With so much data, it’s become essential for us as designers to use techniques like visualisation design to communicate data effectively.

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