What is the most designer-friendly and intuitive wireframing and/or UX app?
Check out Lucidchart. They have pre-defined wireframe and mockup (iPad, iPhone, Android) shape libraries, so it’s easy to drag and drop elements into my mockup. It’s easy to import pictures, so sometimes if I want a really sophisticated mockup in the final stages of the design, I’ll import designs I’ve create in Photoshop as images, and use them as drag and drop elements.
Some of the unique things about Lucidchart are:
· Works on any operating system, which is great when developers and designers need to interact (Mac, Windows, Linux, etc.)
· Real-time collaboration. This means that anyone you share your design with can always see the most recent version, and that you can work together with others simultaneously.
· Interaction and Demo mode. There are “hot spots” or linking areas within Lucidchart that allow you to add interactivity to your designs.
What is the best software for doing mobile interaction/UX design for native apps?
I would recommend Lucidchart. It’s really easy to do mock-ups of the following:
1. iOS devices: iPhone and iPad
2. Android devices (drag and drop) shapes and templates
3. Any website (wireframing).
You can also add interaction with “hot spots”, which are basically areas that link to other parts of the mockup (pop-ups, other screens, etc.).
Lucidchart has a free 14 day trial so it’s a low risk program to try, and it is web-based, so you can access your files anytime on any device. It also allows you to collaborate in real-time — more than one designer/developer can be working on the design at the same time. I work for Lucidchart, and we are currently using it to mock up our own mobile apps.
Has anyone taken the UX immersive 8 week program at General Assembly in NYC? Did it help you get a job as a UX professional? I’m thinking about taking the class and transitioning from marketing to UX.
Short answer for me is yes it did.
I’ve also taken the UXDi SF immersive class and am currently a User Experience Designer at CloudOn through the apprentice program.
I think the bigger question of whether you should attend is more mixed though.I personally had a good experience from GA’s UXDi program, but I think a lot of it had to do with expectations and effort. I’d figure I could best answer this with my personal experience.
Summary:
I quit my job at a non-profit to do the program, some freelance web-design experience, sales in startups experience, psychology background. Some front end skills. (HTML, CSS, JS)
Expectations:
My expectations for the UXDi program was to help me create a UX focused portfolio, learn the terminology of the UX field, and give me an opportunity to network with designers in the field.
Effort:
I worked my ass off. Day in day out. Occasional all nighters, frequent 12-14 hour days and regular work on the weekends. In this program everything will feel very rushed, and it is very tempting to finish portfolio pieces after the class is finished. I tried my best to finish the pieces throughout the course.
Note: I think Wesley Haines made a good point with ” The curriculum as it stands today is focused on giving you just enough skills to allow you to call yourself a UX Designer.” IMO UX Design is a methodology that helps inform decisions in various facets of the design process. Knowing the methodology alone will likely not get you hired somewhere. Seems pretty crucial to be able to rapid prototype, usability test, wireframe, photoshop, illustrator etc. (at least that’s what a lot of job postings ask for)
What are the best practices for mobile UX?
Fall in love with the pain — no one actually wants to use your app because it’s fun (unless you are a game obviously), so figure out what need you are solving and then relentlessly focus on eliminating that ONE pain. The only other exception to this is if you have a complex pain or series of pains that naturally fall into a workflow–it might be better to support them all in one app vs. several separate apps.
Take a closer look at apps you respect and use everyday. Integrate award-winning apps into your daily life. Study them and figure out what they are doing that makes them so awesome. Then apply that learning to your app.
Use pattern sites like Mobile User Interface Patterns, Mobile Patterns, Android Patterns for inspiration and so you are not reinventing the wheel.
What are some UX “sins” commonly made by beginner designers that should be avoided?
Here are 5 I have seen:
- Focusing too heavily on running with solutions without identifying the real problems to solve.
- Seeing the Designer’s role as one in which they “work for product managers,” instead of “with” them
- Debating minor visual design details when the big picture is wrong or off.
- Going for consistency for consistency’s sake.
- Giving users what they asked for instead of what they need (or letting a Stakeholder do the same) in the name of “research”
Which companies have the best product management or UX design practices?
Here are some companies and posts that show product and product management thinking that is exemplary of various aspects of product development. I’m biased by what people have shared publicly about company culture and product development. I’ll add more as they come to mind.
- Facebook / Relationships Between Product Disciplines, e.g. How to Work with Engineers
- Spotify / Scaling Agile: Here’s How Spotify Scales Up And Stays Agile: It Runs ‘Squads’ Like Lean Startups
- Etsy / Product Experimentation and A/B Tests: Design for Continuous Experimentation: Talk and Slides, Why did infinite scroll fail at Etsy? – danwin.com
- Medium / Ensuring Non-Urgent, Important Goals Get Done – To Do to Done: Jank ‘n’ Drank
Certainly, there are other companies that excel in PM / design practices. I’ll add those as they come up.
What should I do, if I am continuously dissatisfied with my graphic and web design work?
This is completely normal. I have ran my own design studio for five years and have been designing for ten years.
What you describe is exactly how I feel about most of my work. I like it as I work on it, but a couple of months after delivering I start getting bored by the designs and spot flaws, etcetera.
This is due to the fact that design is an ongoing process. A design, whether it’s a typeface, a website or an identity, is never finished. There is no end to it. Every time you look at something, you spot different aspects of it, and your mind automatically comes up with solutions and improvements.
I believe this is inherent to a creative mind, and thus something you’ll have to learn to live with.
As for the portfolio: get over it. Put the projects you are really satisfied with upon delivery in it and accept that everything *could* be improved. Most importantly; when you present your work, don’t mention the flaws you see in it. You’re the only person aware of them because no one on earth sees your work more than you do. Instead, talk about the process, the choices you made and how you got to where you are. Also mention how your design fills in the wishes the client had and what you were briefed in the first place.
And last but not least: cherish your creative, opinionated and critical mind. It might seem a burden at times, but it really is a blessing.
How effective are carousels as a way of showcasing website content?
Carousels, especially the auto-forwarding type you seem to refer to, are not an effective way of showcasing website content according to Jakob Nielsen’s studies, explained on this alertbox post: Auto-Forwarding Carousels and Accordions Annoy Users and Reduce Visibility
They require a learned behavior of sitting still and viewing the carousel contents, and nobody these days actually want to do that. Or then they need to bother to actually manually flip through the carousel, and that isn’t even always possible. People connect this type of content to commercials and advertisements: you can’t do anything about them, you don’t know what’s coming next, they are not likely to have important information. In a word, it’s a form of banner-blindness.
IMHO, if carousels relate to any kind of TV experience, it’s the commercial. Do you want to go there?
People land on your page for a purpose. Your auto-forwarding carousel is just as likely to hide the information the user is searching for, as it is to showcase it. People don’t first wait to see if there is an interesting carousel to scan the page, they start scanning the instant the page loads. Watching a carousel is the kind of passive behavior that people usually do not like to indulge in on a site, they want to actively scan the page. If what they are looking for does not show up, they will then leave. You need to know WHY people are landing on your page, and give them the things that they are looking for.
That said, if you are trying to do something that bridges the gap between TV and Web, you might indeed have a case for carousels. If people are landing on your site to check out whether you have the newest shows or movies or other cool content there, you might do well with a carousel that showcases all of your most popular / newest content.
But note that the carousel should not be showcasing features of your site, but rather content, and the content needs to be of a certain kind and of the same kind. So you might have a carousel that showcases the coolest hotels, or a carousel of the best movies, or whatever. So then the user can go: “Oh, they have hotels / movies / whatever on this site”, based on whichever of the items they see, and not miss any vital feature through not watching the whole carousel.
But still, wouldn’t there be a more modern way of achieving the showcase effect? What’s the most important reason a person would be on that page? Make that stand out and keep the other things secondary. People always scan your page – the thing is that they do this in a very very short time. If your page manages to catch their attention with what they are looking for (or something else that is REALLY interesting), they will stay. If it doesn’t, they will leave. 🙂
What should be my first steps as Director of User Experience?
I’d be thinking about doing all of these things.
- Meet everybody – not just the designers. Pay especial attention to any person or group who touches customers – sales, customer support, technical authors, etc. – or who drives product direction – CEO, product managers, etc.
- Get everybody to tell you stories. About how the company started and how the product got to its current state. Almost nothing about the company culture gets written down – especially in early stage startups. The quickest way to get a handle on the company and its politics are to listen to peoples stories about how the company got to where it is now. They may not be true – but they will be useful.
- Who are you replacing and why? You might not be replacing somebody with your job title – but people will have been trying to do the work. Find out who those people are. Listen to the stories they have to tell. The company didn’t promote from the inside. Figure out why.
- More leading. Less doing. Remember as a director your job is not to do all of the UX work – it’s to lead all of the UX work. Designers seem more susceptible than most to the sin of micro-management.
- Figure out what the company believes their product vision(s) are. What do people think they are building? Do not be surprised if different parts of the company have different ideas of what this is.
- Figure out what the company believes their customer(s) are. Who do people think they are building for? Do not be surprised if different parts of the company have different ideas of who these are.
- Figure out who the company’s customers really are, and what they think the product vision is. Do not be surprised if these differ from (5) and (6).
- Look before you leap. The temptation to immediately jump in and start fixing things is worth resisting. Watch how things normally run for a week or two first. Figure out what the biggest problems are – not the most obvious ones.
- Get alignment as a first step. Get everybody on the same page on the direction of the product and the customers it serves. This doesn’t have to be final. It doesn’t even have to be vaguely correct. But it’s much easier to move everybody once they’re in a group heading in the same direction.
What should be my first steps as Director of User Experience?
If there are other designers who report to you, set up regular 1-on-1 meetings. They’ll tell you where the problem spots are.
Arrange interviews with users. They too will tell you what the problems are.
Meet with the executives. What’s their vision for the product?
Armed with this knowledge, map out where the product needs improvement and then pick something small to get an easy win right off the bat. if there’s been no one in your position, it’ll be good to demonstrate value quickly.