ux, ui, wtf

Dustin Williams (wcfay, session, @relmone, slides, all presentations)

Let’s learn how to seduce users with ux and ui with a design-veloper.

Great UX/UI is about…

Killing or cutting out ‘chrome’.

Remove the meaningless stuff while still maintaining visual appeal.

Engaging users.

Provide an ‘ego UI’: display completeness, it’s about showing off (even to yourself).

Feedback.

Gamification. Why? Because the UI is giving you feedback about you, not just about what’s wrong (error messages), but notifying you about what’s new, and what you’ve done. Notifications should encourage you to want to get the list to disappear or down to zero (see iOS ‘new message’ design). Use conversational speech — UI is a conversation.

Acknowledging a unified digital ecosystem.

The things you learned in one UI prepare you for other mediums/devices in the same ecosystem.

Building for content, and is made from content.

Don’t design a UI then find content to put in it (lorem-ipsum). How well is your UI putting content forward?

Designing for motivation.

“As long as the motivation is bigger than the friction, the user will keep moving forward.”

Observing your users.

Your UI will stagnate unless you are observing your users via analytics, usability testing, metric measurements, and user testing. The output shouldn’t drive your design, but they should inform it. Testing is a tool, not a decision-maker. (UserTesting.com, Optimizely, Google Content Experiments)

Tools

  • post-it notes
  • whiteboards
  • balsamiq mockups
  • axure
  • master suite (adobe)