Ux on Afroleft

Look around: Costs are everywhere

Fri, 20 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

It’s easy to rest on the assumption that costs are only monetary. In product design, this misses an important point — costs are everywhere:

Waiting for a webpage to load is a cost.
Typing in your card details is a cost.
Figuring out whether to trust a company you’ve never heard of before is a cost.
Learning how a product works is a cost.
Signing-up is a cost.
Waiting to find something out (yes, uncertainty) is a cost.
Having to print out, sign and post a form is a cost.
Handing over your personal information is a cost.

Identifying costs [and] what they might equate to for your users is an insightful way to inform how you think about the products you make.

We used Intercom to add £100,000s of marketplace investments at Fruitful—here’s how

Fri, 20 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Onboarding customers to your new product is tricky.

Onboarding customers to a new financial product is really tricky.

For a mountain of security and regulatory reasons you’re required to collect and validate a towering number of data points.

Of course, for each additional data point that we had to collect = additional cost to the customer = increased risk that they might drop-off and watch videos of otters eating lettuce instead.

Fruitful’s onboarding steps

In Fruitful 1.0 (more about the pivot here ) these were the steps for onboarding new users:

Keep peddling until you find the right problem

Mon, 16 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Back in August 1972, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority introduced the late Massimo Vignelli’s new map of the subway system.

New Yorkers were furious.

Complaints came flooding in:

“Stations seemed to be in the wrong places. The water surrounding the city was coloured beige, not blue. As for Central Park, it appeared to be almost square, rather than an elongated rectangle.”

To Vignelli’s mind, that was the entire point (emphasis added):

Questions to ask your design work

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 12:47:33 +0000

Last month I spent some time updating my portfolio. As a product / user experience / web designer, it can be quite tricky to present your work to others.

The rock star visual designers of this world can get away with presenting screenshots of their stunning visual work — job done, money due.

But if your day-to-day consists of making user flows, interaction designs, napkin wireframes, trade-offs, A/B tests, and minimum viable products, then you — like me — need to do a bit more groundwork to do the show and tell properly.

Same Same. But Different.

Fri, 01 May 2015 08:57:00 +0000

It’s Sunday, late morning, and I’m right in the middle of cleaning the bathroom. In the other room I hear a frustrated girlfriend struggling to find accommodation on - lets say - website X, for our trip to the Amalfi Coast.

Complaints flying left, right and centre, vented in a tone that kind of suggests that this is all my fault:

“Why won’t this?”
“It won’t let me!”
“I keep loosing my tab when I go to trip advisor for reviews!”
“I hate this”
“Why can’t it show me what’s available on the dates that we’re going”
“Oh FFS!”

…

This is How You Automate

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 08:39:00 +0000

Just received a wonderfully engaging / automated / interesting / human / polite / funny / direct / personal upgrade message (there’s an oxymoron there, I know) from the folk at TeuxDeux. This is how automated marketing should be:

Dearest Tom,

It’s been six months since the launch of the new TeuxDeux and we very much hope you’ve enjoyed it. Given how much you’ve been using it, it’s our guess that you have. In fact, with 1846 items done since you’ve been with us, you are certainly among the most productive people on the planet!

Notes from Mobile First

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 19:37:00 +0000

I read Luke Wroblewski’s Mobile First over the weekend. Here are my (unedited) notes:

Usage

Mobile opens up new opportunities & introduces new constraints
Forces you to focus products & interfaces
Desktop users = deep sea diving
Mobile users = snorkelling

Advantages of Native Mobile Experience:

Better access to system resources
Robust access to hardware capabilities
Core features like access to address book / photos / camera / audio / notifications etc.
In-app sales

Advantages of Mobile Web Experience:

No updates to download
Less expensive
Can be used by all mobiles
Improved share-ability. [Marco Arment wrote an interesting piece about this.]
Easier to A/B test

Constraints

Reduced screen size
Means a reduction in interface debris, complimentary content, ads and unnecessary calls to action
Forces us to focus

Performance is V.Important

Google research shows an additional 200ms can disrupt engagement and effect bounce rates [more so, on mobile]