What we’re reading

To help us remain up to date on goings on in the digital design and technology industry we read A LOT here at Every Interaction. We tweet most of the articles we read, but we also keep a log of the interesting posts we find in this blog – What we‘re reading.

We also write our own posts where we share news and opinions on topics closer to home. View the Every Interaction blog.

Dropdown fields are taking over

• July 16th 2021•

It’s become a very normal way to access menu items, but dropdown fields are getting so complex that they’ve stopped working for many websites. Here’s an article that explains brilliantly why we need to start working on alternatives when building…

Automating the Boring Parts of Product Design

• July 9th 2020•

We started building the GitHub mobile apps last May, around the same time that Figma Plugins were released. I remember feeling so relieved, because I suddenly had access to tools that would speed up my design process, simplify tedious workflows,…

We’re not designing for screens

• July 9th 2020•

As a digital product designer, I spend most of my time looking at and creating things for screens. Even if you’re not a designer, odds are you spend much of your time doing the same.

How to design delightful dark themes

• June 10th 2020•

When done well, dark themes have many benefits. They reduce eyestrain. They are easier to read in low light. And, depending on the screen, they can greatly reduce battery consumption.

Why we built Maze Discovery

• June 10th 2020•

Building the right product starts with a deep understanding of the problem. If you go into the design and delivery process without validating the solution, it will most certainly backfire.

Measuring User Experience with Usability Metrics

• June 10th 2020•

Usability is a user experience attribute that indicates how intuitive and easy to use a website or product is. Measuring usability allows you to learn if users can accomplish their goals with your product or if they encounter issues that…

Digging deep in layout grids in mobile app design

• March 23rd 2020•

Grids are one of the main tools of the designer, which helps them to achieve the consistency of elements, establish connections between them and build a visual system that would look harmonious and help users navigate.

The problem with dropdown fields

• March 23rd 2020•

Dropdowns are one of the default fields in the form design toolkit. But far too often, the dropdown is used in a way that makes user input more difficult. In this article, I’m going to talk about the advantages and…

Writing Error Messages

• February 21st 2020•

Once you understand what your users are going through, you’ll start to see what error messages are needed and when they’ll appear. But how should you write them?

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Product Design

The ‘Product’ is the website, service, application, interactive thing being worked on by the business. The practice of Product Design is similar in a lot of ways to UX Design. It involves the coming together of many specific design disciplines...

Call to action (CTA)

A call to action is a marketing term that refers to a prompt that invokes a response leading to a sale. When referring to a call to action (CTA) in the digital design world we usually mean the interactive element that leads to the next step in the experience - something that needs to be clicked or tapped.

User testing

User testing refers to a technique used in the design process to evaluate a product, feature or prototype with real users. There are several reasons why you might want to undergo usability testing, the most common is that it allows the design team to identify friction in a user experience they are designing, so that it can be addressed before being built or deployed.

WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG (pronounced WIZ-ee-wig) is an acronym for "What You See Is What You Get". It helps identify an an interface that allows user input resulting in an output that is rendered in a similar way. For example; a word processor application interface might resemble a piece of paper,so when printed the user can see how the output will appear.

Content Management System

A content management system (CMS) is an tool that allows a website editor/administrator to manage the content that is displayed. Websites are made of HTML and CSS to create pages. Pages can be hard-coded but would require technical development skills to make changes. A CMS usually allows a person without coding knowledge to amend existing and add new content to a website using a WYSIWYG interface.

Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design refers to a web page that dynamically adapts its layout to fit the size and orientation of the device on which it is viewed. A responsive design allows for a more optimised user experience across desktop and laptop computers as well as smartphones and tablets of varying sizes.

User Stories

User stories allow the functionality of a product or service to be expressed as written descriptions of an experience as seen from the users perspective. The writing of user stories creates a list of design and development tasks to complete in order to create any required functionality.

User Interface

A user interface (UI) is a conduit between human and computer interaction - the space where a user will interact with a computer or machine to complete tasks. The purpose of a UI is to enable a user to effectively control a computer or machine they are interacting with, and for feedback to be received in order to communicate effective completion of tasks.

Personas

A persona in UX Design is the characterisation of a user who represents a segment of your target audience. On a project you might create any number of personas to be representative of a range of user needs and desires. The solutions you design must answer these needs in order to deliver value to your target audience.

Card sorting

A great, reliable, inexpensive method for discovering patterns in how users would expect to find content or functionality. Card sorting is used to test the taxonomy of data with a group of subjects, usually to help inform the creation of the information architecture, user flow, or menu structure on a project.

Brainstorming

A technique used to generate ideas around a specific topic. Often done in groups, but can be done individuals. The process usually involves writing down all ideas around a topic onto paper, a whiteboard or stickies often implying some kind of association.

Minimum Viable Product

An MVP is a product that has the minimum set of features to prove the most essential hypothesis for a product. Businesses building a new product can create a Minimum Viable Product to prove that an idea is viable and warrants further investment. A further benefit being that the next stage of development can be informed by feedback obtained from testing that MVP.

Sitemap

A sitemap is a diagrammatic representation of a hierarchical system. It usually depicts the parent-sibling relationship between pages in a website, showing how sub pages might be arranged underneath their parent groupings. This arrangement forms a map of the site.

User journey

A user journey represents a sequence of events or experiences a user might encounter while using a product or service. A user journey can be mapped or designed to show the steps and choices presented as interactions, and the resulting actions.

Prototype

A prototype is draft representation built to test ideas for layout, behaviour and flow in a system. Prototypes are an indispensable tool for resolving a large number of potential issues in a concept or business before too many resources are deployed to put a design into production.

Wireframes

A Wireframe is a visual schematic that conveys a basic level of communication, structure and behaviour during the design of a system. Wireframes are low-fidelity designs that bypass including a detailed user interface or visual design, conveying just enough to get across the core idea.

Usability

To say something is usable is a qualitative statement about how easy that thing is to use. Usability is an assessment of how learnable a system is and how easy a user finds it to use. The usability of a system or product is a key factor in determining whether the user experience is a good one.

Information Architecture

Information architecture is the design and organisation of content, pages and data into a structure that aids users understanding of a system. A more organised system enables users to more easily find the information they require and complete the intended tasks.

UI Design

User Interface Design is the discipline of designing software interfaces for devices, ideally with a focus on maximising efficiency, responsiveness and aesthetics to foster a good user experience.

UX Design

The practice of User Experience (UX) Design is the coming together of many specific design related disciplines to improve the usability, responsiveness, uptake and aesthetics of a product or service.

User Experience

A general term that covers all aspects of a user's participation while engaging with something that has been designed. Usually when talking about User Experience in the digital design field it refers to the interactions, reactions, emotions and perceptions while using an app, service, website or product.