Articles

Secrets Management

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Today’s digital businesses are expected to innovate, execute, and release products at a lightning-fast pace. The widespread adoption of automation tools, when coupled with DevOps and DevSecOps tools, is instrumental to these businesses achieving increased developer velocity and faster feedback loops. This eventually helps in shortening release cycles and improving the product quality in an iterative manner.

Though the shift to microservices and containerized applications and the adoption of open source are helping developers ship faster, they also pose challenges related to compliance and security. As per the Hidden In Plain Sight report from 1Password, DevOps and IT teams in enterprises continually face challenges posed by leakage of secrets, insecure sharing of secrets, and manual secrets management, amongst others.

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Why Web Design Still Matters in 2023

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As we move into 2023, there are an increasing number of ways companies can engage with their customers. And as the number of apps, browser extensions, social media feeds, newsletters, vlogs, and podcasts grows, you can be forgiven for thinking that websites are a little less essential than they were in say, 2021.

However, the truth is that websites remain an irreplaceable part of the digital landscape and they will continue to be into 2023 and beyond.

Websites, as the keystone of a centralized, privately run digital experience couldn’t be more relevant. Unlike competing technologies, websites allow almost total control of their source code, and that provides an opportunity for skilled designers and developers to compete against the biggest names in their clients’ industries in a way that simply isn’t possible in tightly governed systems like social media.

Not only does quality web design help businesses increase their traffic, but it can increase the quality of that traffic; an attractive and user-friendly web page will encourage web users to stay on the page longer, and explore more of the content it links to.

Websites vs. Social Media

For many brands, the option they turn to for connecting with customers is social media. Particularly platforms like Facebook and Instagram. While billions of us are happy to while away our free time on social media, it’s not a great platform for informed decision-making or task fulfillment. For any form of productivity, websites are superior:

  • Flexibility: Websites can be customized to suit a company’s vision and values, whereas social media tends to magnify accounts that reflect its own values.
  • Ownership: When you publish on your website you own your content, when you post to social media the platform tends to own your content.
  • Investment: As we’ve seen recently with a certain bird-themed social network, you can spend years investing time in your social media channel only to have it canceled by an individual with his own agenda.
  • Findability: Websites are discoverable on search engines, and although algorithms govern these search engines, competition across different search engines keeps search algorithms honest. Social media networks each use a single algorithm making them free to skew browsing any way they choose.
  • Scaleability: Websites can take advantage of the latest technologies to improve user experience, on social media user experience is governed by the network’s decisions.

Websites vs. Apps

When it comes to owning a piece of the internet, a connected app feels like ownership. However, websites have a number of benefits over an app, from a superior user experience to lower development costs. And ultimately, apps are also controlled by 3rd parties.

  • Accessibility: Websites are universally accessible, while apps are usually limited to certain operating systems or platforms. If you want to distribute to devices, you’ll need to be approved by the store owner who can (and will) change the terms and conditions of store distribution without consulting you.
  • Flexibility: Websites provide a greater level of flexibility and scalability than apps.
  • Cost-effective: A simple website can be created and launched in a weekend, they are considerably more cost-effective to develop and maintain than apps.
  • Findability: Search engines have evolved around website technologies, and it is far easier to create a discoverable website than an app that ranks high in an app store.
  • Universality: Websites have lower entry costs for users, and there aren’t any downloads or purchases required.
  • 3rd-party features: Websites can integrate 3rd-party content like chatbots, payment gateways, and forms, that generally require licensing to include in an app.

Websites vs. Podcasts and Vlogs

There’s no question that podcasts and vlogs are engaging types of content. However, they are very limited when it comes to different kinds of experience. These tend to be passive, linear experiences. Even if your podcast opens itself up to listener interaction, your customers are still passive consumers.

  • Cost-effective: Websites can be set up very cheaply, podcasts and vlogs on the other hand require high-production values to compete.
  • Longevity: Well-written website content can remain relevant for years, the lifespan of a vlog or podcast is often just a few months.
  • Flexibility: Websites can embed podcasts and vlogs, as well as virtually any other content; podcasts and vlogs can only ever be podcasts and vlogs. Websites will continue to evolve long after podcasts are obsolete.
  • Simple: There is now a range of no-code options for creating a reliable website, meaning it can be done with little to no skills or experience. Podcasts and vlogs require a great deal of technical knowledge to produce.
  • Findability: As with other technologies, podcasts and vlogs can’t compete with websites when it comes to search engine optimization.
  • Faster: A well-designed website is much smaller than a podcast or vlog, making it cheaper and easier to access, especially on a cellular network.

Websites in 2023 and Beyond

In 2023 websites will still be a critical part of a successful business strategy and web designers will continue to be essential members of any team.

Websites continue to offer numerous benefits over other technologies including increased flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and superior search engine opportunities.

Unlike social media platforms that allow you to customize a few assets like avatars and colors, websites can be completely customized to fit the tone and style of a brand. Additionally, websites have a far lower barrier to entry than podcasts, vlogs, or apps. While apps may offer a richer set of features than a website, that is offset by the restrictions on platform and device capabilities that apps impose.

Websites will continue to evolve as the tech landscape changes. New ideas for consuming digital media will appear over time, offering unique new experiences — for example, mass adoption of AR (Augmented Reality) is just around the corner. However, the website is perfectly evolved for the types of simple customer interaction that businesses rely on, and will continue to matter in 2023 and beyond.

 

Featured image by fullvector on Freepik

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SAP accompagne Quipment grâce à RISE S/4HANA Public Cloud

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Dans un marché très concurrencé et post Covid, la gestion et la distribution de matériel médical est en pleine transformation. Les ambitions de Quipment, premier fournisseur d’équipements médicaux pour les laboratoires du monde entier, s’incarnent sur plusieurs aspects dont celui de faire évoluer ses processus métiers ainsi que ses outils.

Paris, le 15 décembre 2022. SAP, leader du marché des logiciels d’application d’entreprise, accompagne Quipment, acteur mondial de la fourniture de matériel médical pour les essais cliniques, dans le choix de leur nouvel ERP.

Avec des processus et des normes internationales de plus en plus complexes et exigeantes, mais aussi face à des volumes industriels, Quipment pourra désormais s’appuyer sur RISE S/4HANA Public Cloud pour automatiser tous ses processus métiers, de la Finance à la comptabilité, en passant par la gestion des stocks, la maintenance et la configuration de ces matériels, et ce dans plusieurs pays.

L’adoption de la solution permettra une digitalisation du Système d’Information pour anticiper les changements de business model – Quipment souhaitant aller toujours plus loin dans l’économie circulaire. Elle permettra également d’assurer un accompagnement adapté à la croissance de Quipment. La startup pourra enfin bénéficier de la simplicité d’usage grâce aux processus standardisés du dispositif SAP.

Ce partenariat a été rendu possible par la capacité des équipes Grow by SAP – un programme d’accélération pour les entreprises à forte croissance – à répondre à l’ensemble des besoins de Quipment, de leur proposer un accompagnement sur-mesure pour assurer aux équipes une adoption optimale et leur permettre de répondre à la demande croissante du marché. La proposition de valeur de Grow by SAP permet d’accélérer l’activité de Quipment de la manière la plus durable et efficace qui soit grâce à une solution SaaS et à un ensemble de mesures couvrant notamment le Marketing, la Finance, le Growth hacking, etc.

Aussi, l’association de SAP et WYNSYS, l’un des partenaires les plus performants de SAP, permet à la startup de restructurer ses processus et de profiter pleinement des avantages de la solution dans le Cloud.

Pierre Malingrey, Président et cofondateur de Quipment précise :  « La robustesse de la solution Rise S/4HANA nous a convaincu pour venir répondre à nos objectifs d’automatisation. Cela va permettre à Quipment de réaliser les gains d’efficacité significatifs et nous permettre de maintenir notre avance sur ce marché en phase d’industrialisation. Au-delà de cette efficience, la solution RISE S/4HANA va doter Quipment de gains capacitaires très importants pour absorber les volumes croissants de notre marché.

Lahcen Binoumar, Head of Middle Market chez SAP France déclare : « Collaborer avec une startup comme Quipment est une opportunité exceptionnelle pour SAP de démontrer les capacités et la flexibilité de ses solutions. Le secteur de l’approvisionnement des produits médicaux et de laboratoire répond à une exigence intrinsèque à Quipment que SAP et WYNSYS ont à cœur de soutenir. Notre solution permettra ainsi à Quipment de conforter sa position de leader sur son marché et de continuer à se développer à l’international, tout en modernisant ses processus. »

 

A propos de Quipment

Quipment est une entreprise française qui fournit et déploie du matériel médical dans le monde entier pour permettre à l’industrie pharmaceutique de valider des nouvelles thérapies en développement. Le matériel, déployé dans plus de 40 000 hôpitaux et plus de 110 pays, permet de suivre l’évolution de la santé de cohortes de patients sous traitement, et ainsi de valider et quantifier les bénéfices thérapeutiques des nouveaux traitements en cours de développement. Quipment permet de déployer des études cliniques de manière plus rapide, plus fiable, plus flexible et moins coûteuse, permettant ainsi à la recherche d’apporter plus rapidement et à moindre coût des nouveaux traitements aux patients. Avec 150 salariés et des centres logistiques aux Etats Unis, en Europe et au Japon, Quipment est le leader mondial de ce marché. Quipment est particulièrement sensible aux enjeux de responsabilité d’entreprise et agit avec une conscience très forte de ses impacts dans ses choix et sa gouvernance.

Pour plus d’informations, visitez : https://www.quipment.fr/

The post SAP accompagne Quipment grâce à RISE S/4HANA Public Cloud appeared first on SAP France News.

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A Deep Dive Into Distributed Tracing

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This is an article from DZone’s 2022 Performance and Site Reliability Trend Report.

For more:

Read the Report

Distributed tracing, as the name suggests, is a method of tracking requests as it flows through distributed applications. Along with logs and metrics, distributed tracing makes up the three pillars of observability. While all three signals are important to determine the health of the overall system, distributed tracing has seen significant growth and adoption in recent years. 

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delaware delaware accompagne SCM dans son adoption de l’ERP intelligent SAP S/4HANA en mode cloud

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SCM est un industriel indépendant né de la cession de la filiale oil and gas du groupe américain TE Connectivity. Suite à cette transaction, l’entreprise sarthoise avait un an pour basculer vers son propre ERP. Elle a opté pour une offre cloud SAP S/4HANA aux fonctionnalités resserrées sur l’essentiel, afin de tenir des délais de mise en place particulièrement courts. Avec l’aide des équipes de delaware, SCM a atteint ses objectifs en à peine 6 mois.

Une société presque centenaire, qui retrouve son indépendance

Systèmes et Connectique du Mans – SCM – conçoit, produit, teste, livre et installe des connecteurs électriques de puissance et optiques adaptés à des environnements extrêmes de corrosion, température et pression. La société travaille principalement pour des acteurs du secteur pétrolier et gazier (elle équipe notamment des plates-formes d’extraction en mer), mais également des clients des secteurs de la défense, du transport ferroviaire et de l’aéronautique. Elle s’appuie sur un site industriel moderne de 14.400 m². SCM emploie aujourd’hui environ 140 personnes pour un chiffre d’affaires annuel de 20 millions d’euros.

L’histoire de SCM est intimement liée à celle de CKB (Carier Kheops Bac), entreprise reprise en 2012 par TE Connectivity. Lorsque le groupe américain annonce la délocalisation des activités de sa filiale, les salariés reprennent la main, avec le lancement de SCM en avril 2021. La filiale oil and gas de TE Connectivity utilisait l’ERP SAP ECC 6 du groupe. Suite à la cession d’actif, SCM disposait d’une année pour mettre en place son propre ERP.

Autre contrainte, la nécessité de basculer d’un système SAP conçu pour une multinationale et massivement customisé vers une solution plus simple, adaptée à une ETI française. Le tout dans un contexte de fin de vie programmée de SAP ECC.

Un projet mené à bien dans des délais records

Sur les conseils de SAP et de l’intégrateur delaware, SCM opte pour une migration vers une solution SAP cloud de dernière génération, au travers de l’offre RISE with SAP S/4HANA. Le projet démarre le 22 septembre 2021. Afin de limiter la conduite du changement, l’entreprise choisit de rester dans un premier temps en SAP GUI, comme le permet l’offre RISE with SAP S/4HANA. Les impacts du changement d’ERP sont ainsi minimisés. Un important travail de nettoyage des données a également été mené, afin de se concentrer sur les seules informations nécessaires au fonctionnement de la nouvelle structure.

Le démarrage du nouveau système a été effectif le 26 mars 2022, après seulement 6 mois de travaux. SCM a pu commencer à utiliser immédiatement son ERP SAP S/4HANA : émission des premières factures, enregistrement des réceptions de produits et des mouvements de stock, saisie des validations de qualité, etc. Aucun incident majeur n’a été remonté depuis ce lancement express de la solution SAP S/4HANA en mode cloud.

Satisfait de l’accompagnement proposé par delaware tout au long du projet, SCM a décidé de lui confier la tierce maintenance applicative de son ERP pour les 15 prochains mois. Dans un premier temps, la société s’appuiera sur cette TMA pour stabiliser son système d’information SAP et lui apporter quelques premières améliorations.

« Nous sommes passés d’un groupe international disposant de 90 sites dans le monde à une entreprise industrielle sarthoise d’un peu plus de 100 personnes. Il nous fallait un ERP adapté à ce nouveau contexte : une solution plus simple, capable d’aller à l’essentiel. Au cours du projet, nous avons pris le temps de déterminer quelles fonctionnalités nous étaient vraiment utiles et lesquelles étaient de l’ordre du confort (des sujets que nous étudierons ultérieurement) ce qui nous a permis de mettre en place notre nouvel ERP dans des délais particulièrement courts, » témoigne Frédéric Kleindienst, président de SCM.

« SCM est l’exemple d’une entreprise qui souhaite bénéficier de la force d’un ERP tel que celui de SAP sans y ajouter les contraintes. La nouvelle version S/4HANA Cloud de SAP est adaptée aux PME/ETI car elle allie une couverture fonctionnelle standard riche et une simplicité de gestion et d’utilisation de par son prisme SAAS. La binôme SAP – delaware permet de faire bénéficier à SCM d’un système reconnu partout dans le monde tout en y ajoutant la flexibilité et la réactivité attendues par une PME/ETI. C’est le modèle SAP tel que nous le définissons pour les 15 prochaines années à venir » déclare Lahcen Binoumar, Head of General Business, SAP France.

« Ce projet était un énorme challenge. Nous avons réussi à basculer vers l’ERP SAP S/4HANA en seulement 6 mois, alors qu’il faut habituellement entre 10 et 12 mois. Nous avons pu compter sur les équipes de delaware, qui nous ont accompagnés tout au long de ce projet, mais aussi sur nos équipes internes et nos utilisateurs, particulièrement matures sur l’environnement SAP. Afin de tenir les délais, nous avons opté pour un ERP resserré, que nous améliorerons par la suite, en lui ajoutant des fonctionnalités qui nous permettront de travailler encore plus confortablement, » détaille Mickaël Medard, directeur de programme, et supply chain Management, SCM

« Nous avons su mettre en place une solution de pointe, dans des délais particulièrement courts. Nous entretenons des relations étroites avec nos clients, afin de mieux comprendre leurs besoins et de leur apporter un service de qualité. La symbiose a ici été parfaite entre nos équipes, celles de SAP et de SCM. En optant pour l’offre RISE with SAP S/4HANA, la bascule vers le cloud a par ailleurs été grandement simplifiée, SAP devenant le point de contact unique pour la contractualisation, la mise à disposition et le maintien en conditions opérationnelles des infrastructures cloud, » résume Fatsah Nasri, chef de projet et Aymeric Fosset, Partner, delaware France.

The post delaware delaware accompagne SCM dans son adoption de l’ERP intelligent SAP S/4HANA en mode cloud appeared first on SAP France News.

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Exciting New Features in Safari 16

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Apple has released an OS update. Packaged in with it is the latest version of Safari, 16.

Expected to be released ahead of next month’s macOS 13, Safari 16 is packed with updates, making it one of the most capable browsers available.

For web designers, the significance is the forward momentum in web technologies that enable freer design work and fewer hacks to achieve complex layouts. Little by little, CSS recommendations are being implemented to the point that using JavaScript for layout is rapidly becoming as unnecessary as it is disliked.

Some of this was announced in June in the Safari 16 beta. But a lot has been added in the last couple of months. So here’s what’s new in Safari 16 today.

CSS Container Queries

The most exciting addition to Safari 16 is CSS Container Queries.

It is hard to understate how in-demand this feature has been; if you imagine an edit button on Twitter that gifted you crypto every time you corrected a typo, you’d be getting close to how popular this feature is.

Until now, media queries have detected the whole viewport. And so, if you have an element like a card, for example, that needs to change at smaller viewports, you need to calculate the available space and adapt the element’s design accordingly. Unfortunately, this frequently gets out of sync with edge cases causing more than a few headaches for front-end developers.

Media queries are severely restrictive to modern layout methods like Grid that wrap elements automatically because there is no way to detect how the elements are laid out.

Container Queries solve this by allowing you to define styles based on the size of the actual containing element; if a div is 300px wide, the contents can have one design, and if it’s 400px wide, they can have a different design—all without caring what size the whole viewport is.

This is dangerously close to OOP (Object Orientated Programming) principles and almost elevates CSS to an actual programming language. (All we need is conditional logic, and we’re there.)

The latest versions of Chrome, Edge, and now Safari (including mobile) support CSS Grid. Even discounting the rapid decline of Twitter, this is way more exciting than any edit button.

CSS Subgrid

Speaking of Grid, if you’ve built a site with it (and if you haven’t, where have you been?), you’ll know that matching elements in complex HTML structures often results in nesting grids. Matching those grids requires careful management, CSS variables, or both. With CSS Subgrid, grids can inherit grid definitions from a grid defined higher up the hierarchy.

CSS Subgrid has been supported by Firefox for a while but is not yet part of Chrome or Edge. Until there’s wider support, it’s not a practical solution, and using a fallback negates any benefit of using Subgrid. However, its introduction in Safari will surely herald rapid adoption by Google and Microsoft and moves the web forward considerably.

CSS Subgrid is likely to be a practical solution within 18 months.

AVIF Support

AVIF is an exceptionally compact image format that beats even WebP in many instances. It even allows for sequences, creating what is essentially an animated GIF but smaller, and for bitmaps.

AVIF is already supported by Chrome, with partial support in Firefox. Safari now joins them.

AVIF support is one of the more valuable additions to Safari 16 because you’re probably already serving different images inside a picture element. If so, your Safari 16 users will begin receiving a smaller payload automatically, speeding up your site and boosting UX and SEO.

Enhanced Animation

Safari 16 introduces some significant improvements in animation, but the one that catches the eye is that you can now animate CSS Grid.

Yes, let that sink in. Combine Container Queries and animation. The possibilities for hover states on elements are tantalizing.

Safari 16 also supports CSS Offset Path — known initially as CSS Motion Path — which allows you to animate elements along any defined path. This enables the kind of animated effect that previously needed JavaScript (or Flash!) to accomplish.

Chrome, Edge, and Firefox all support CSS Offset Path; the addition of Safari means it’s now a practical solution that can be deployed in the wild.

Web Inspector Extensions

Announced as part of the beta release, Web Inspector Extensions allow web developers to create extensions for Safari, just as they would for Chrome.

Web Inspector Extensions — or Safari Extensions as they’re destined to be known — can be built in HTML, CSS, and JS, so the learning curve is shallow. It’s a good route into app development for web designers.

Because the underlying technology is the same as other browser extensions, anyone who has made a Chrome, Edge, or Firefox extension will be able to port it to Safari 16+ relatively easily. As a result, there should be a rapid expansion of the available extensions.

Improved Accessibility

Accessibility is key to an effective and inclusive web. Be like Bosch: everybody counts, or nobody counts.

When testing a design for accessibility, emulators don’t cut it. In my experience, Safari has some of the most reliable accessibility settings, especially when it comes to Media Queries like prefers-reduced-movement.

Further gains in this field mean that Safari continues to be an essential tool for QA tests.

Reduced Resets

Finally, I want to throw up my hands to celebrate the reduced number of non-standard CSS appearance settings.

For years we’ve been prefacing our style sheets with elaborate resets like Normalize, designed to undo all the assumptions browser developers make about design and the UI preferences of their engineers.

Safari 16 has reportedly “Removed most non-standard CSS appearance values.” How effective this is and how much we can rely on it given the other browsers on the market remains to be seen. However, like many of Safari 16’s changes, it’s a step towards a browser that’s on the developers’ side instead of an obstacle to overcome.

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Le nouveau Recognition System de SAP améliore la visibilité de ses partenaires pour attirer de nouveaux clients

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SAP NEWSBYTE – 2 septembre 2022 – SAP SE (NYSE : SAP) a annoncé aujourd’hui le lancement d’un nouveau système de reconnaissance des partenaires utilisant leurs compétences ainsi que les résultats des clients comme principales mesures de la performance. Competency Framework du programme SAP® PartnerEdge® met en valeur l’expérience et les compétences des partenaires afin d’améliorer la satisfaction des fournisseurs, des partenaires et des clients.

“Les partenaires SAP jouent un rôle déterminant dans la réussite de la transformation numérique de nos clients”, a déclaré Karl Fahrbach, Chief Partner Officer, SAP SE. “C’est pourquoi nous voulons faciliter au maximum l’identification des partenaires les mieux adaptés aux besoins des clients. De plus, cela permettra à SAP de récompenser et de reconnaître les investissements des partenaires dans des pratiques de livraison de haute qualité, favorisant l’adoption et la réussite des clients.”

Ce cadre, qui constitue une évolution du programme SAP® PartnerEdge®, aidera les partenaires à différencier et à mettre en valeur leurs compétences et expérience – en fonction de leur connaissance des solutions, des consultants et de leur succès auprès des clients – afin de générer de la visibilité et mettre en valeur ce qu’ils font le mieux.

Plus précisément, le lancement du nouveau cadre de compétences permettra :

  • de reconnaître les partenaires pour la maturité de leurs pratiques et la priorité qu’ils accordent à la valeur des clients sur le long terme, en fonction de leur expertise et spécialisation dans les domaines de solutions et les zones géographiques.
  • d’aider les partenaires à rester en avance sur les besoins des clients grâce à un processus de désignation automatisé qui leur permet d’identifier les désignations atteintes à risque en fonction de leurs réalisations et de leurs performances quotidiennes, qui seront visibles dans le portail SAP for Me, que les partenaires utilisent pour gérer leurs relations avec les clients et SAP.
  • les nouveaux logos de marque des partenaires SAP sont intégrés à l’outil SAP Partner Finder qui affiche toutes les compétences des partenaires afin que les clients puissent les rechercher et les faire correspondre à leurs objectifs de transformation.

 

“Le cadre de compétences de SAP® PartnerEdge® permet aux partenaires de mettre en avant leur expertise et aide les clients à identifier les partenaires ayant les compétences adéquates pour répondre à leurs besoins commerciaux“, a déclaré Paul Edwards, directeur, Software Channels & Ecosystems, IDC, un cabinet d’analystes industriels. “En lançant ce nouveau modèle, SAP donne la priorité aux partenaires et au travail qu’ils accomplissent pour favoriser la réussite des clients.”

Dans ce cadre, les partenaires seront classés selon deux aspects : la compétence et la spécialisation.

Pour commencer, il y aura sept compétences qui s’aligneront sur la solution ou les secteurs d’activité, comme la gestion du capital humain, qui auront trois niveaux progressifs : essentiel, avancé et expert. Au sein de chaque compétence, les partenaires peuvent avoir des spécialisations au niveau du produit ou du processus, comme la gestion des talents. La performance des partenaires dans chaque compétence sera mesurée et atteinte dans trois domaines, y compris les connaissances d’expert, la réussite du client et la compétence.

Ce changement assurera les bases de meilleurs résultats pour les partenaires et les clients qui seront assurés que le partenaire choisi possède à la fois les connaissances nécessaires et une expertise éprouvée pour fournir la solution spécifique dont ils ont besoin.

Découvrez ce que nos partenaires ont à dire ici.

 

The post Le nouveau Recognition System de SAP améliore la visibilité de ses partenaires pour attirer de nouveaux clients appeared first on SAP France News.

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7 UX Laws You’Re Probably Getting Wrong

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UX laws are an invaluable tool, providing guidelines for designers that ensure we don’t have to continually reinvent the wheel when crafting experiences for the web.

However, UX laws tend to be devised by scientists and psychologists — people who are more than comfortable with the exceptions and allowances of academic language. By the time they filter down to us in the trenches, the language has invariably been over-simplified, and the wisdom behind the idea diluted.

Today we’re going to look at seven well-known and commonly cited rules of UX design that too many designers get wrong.

1. Jakob’s Law

Jakob’s Law, named for the UX researcher Jakob Nielsen, states that users spend most of their time on other sites and as a result prefer sites that work the same way as the sites they already know.

Jakob’s Law has often been used to limit experimentation and encourage the adoption of common design patterns in the name of usability.

However, the word ‘prefer’ is hugely loaded. While it’s true that a user will more easily understand a familiar design pattern, they do not necessarily prefer familiar experiences.

It has been widely proved that new experiences boost our mood and that new experiences improve our memory. If your goal is a memorable site that leaves users with a positive impression, introducing novelty is a sound decision.

2. Goal Gradient Hypothesis

The Goal Gradient Hypothesis assumes that the closer users are to their goal, the more likely they are to complete it.

It’s an attractive theory, especially in e-commerce, where it is often used to justify simplifying the initial purchase process and postponing complexity to move users along the funnel — a typical example is leaving shipping charges until the final step.

However, anyone who has studied e-commerce analytics will know that cart abandonment is a huge issue. In North America, shopping cart abandonment is as high as 74%.

We don’t always know what the user’s goals are, and they may not match ours. It may be that users are treating your shopping cart as a bookmark feature, it may be that they have a last-minute change of heart, or they may be horrified by the shipping charges.

While providing a user with an indication of their progress is demonstrably helpful, artificially inflating their proximity to your preferred goal may actually hinder conversions.

3. Miller’s Law

Never in the whole of human history has any scientific statement been as misunderstood as Miller’s Law.

Miller’s Law states that an average person can only hold seven, plus or minus two (i.e., 5–9) items in their working memory. This has frequently been used to restrict UI navigation to no more than five items.

However, Miller’s Law does not apply to items being displayed. While it’s true that too many options can lead to choice paralysis, a human being is capable of considering more than nine different items.

Miller’s Law only applies to UI elements like carousels, which have been widely discredited for other reasons.

4. Aesthetic-Usability Effect

Edmund Burke once said, “Beauty is the promise of happiness.” That belief is central to the Aesthetic-Usability Effect, which posits that users expect aesthetically pleasing designs to be more usable.

Designers often use this as a justification for grey-on-grey text, slick animations, and minimal navigation.

Critical to understanding this is that just because users expect a design to be usable does not mean that it is or that they will find it so. Expectations can quickly be dashed, and disappointment often compounds negative experiences.

5. Peak-End Rule

The Peak-End Rule states that users judge an experience based on how they felt at the peak and the end, rather than an average of the experience.

Designers commonly use the Peak-End Rule to focus design resources on the primary goal of each experience (e.g. adding an item to a cart) and the closing experience (e.g. paying for the item).

However, while the Peak-End Law is perfectly valid, it cannot apply to open experiences like websites when it is impossible to identify a user’s starting or ending point.

Additionally, it is easy to see every interaction on a website as a peak and even easier to make assumptions as to which peak is most important. As such, while designing for peaks is attractive, it’s more important to design for exceptions.

6. Fitts’ Law

In the 1950s, Paul Fitts demonstrated that the distance to, and size of a target, affect the error rate of selecting that target. In other words, it’s harder to tap a small button and exponentially harder to tap a small button that is further away.

UX designers commonly apply this law when considering mobile breakpoints due to the relatively small viewport. However, mobile viewports tend not to be large enough for any distance to affect tap accuracy.

Fitts’ Law can be applied to desktop breakpoints, as the distances on a large monitor can be enough to have an impact. However, the majority of large viewports use a mouse, which allows for positional corrections before tapping.

Tappable targets should be large enough to be easily selected, spaced sufficiently, and tab-selection should be enabled. But distance has minimal impact on web design.

7. Occam’s Razor

No collection of UX laws would be complete without Occam’s Razor; unfortunately, this is another law that is commonly misapplied.

Occam’s Razor states that given any choice, the option with the least assumptions (note: not necessarily the simplest, as it is often misquoted) is the correct choice.

In an industry in which we have numerous options to test, measure, and analyze our user interfaces, you shouldn’t need to make assumptions. Even when we don’t need extensive UX testing, we can make decisions based on other designers’ findings.

Occam’s Razor is a classic design trap: the key to avoiding it is to recognize that it’s not your assumptions that matter, it’s the users’. As such, Occam’s Razor applies to a user’s experience, not a design process.

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A Brief History of Responsive Web Design

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Websites haven’t always been as adaptable as they are today. For modern designers, “responsivity” is one of the most significant defining factors of a good design. After all, we’re now catering to a host of users who frequently jump between mobile and desktop devices with varying screen sizes. 

However, the shift to responsive design didn’t happen overnight. For years, we’ve been tweaking the concept of “responsive web design” to eventually reach the stage we’re at today. 

Today, we’re going to take a closer look at the history of responsive web design.

Where Did Web Design Begin?

When the first websites were initially created, no one was worried about responsivity across a range of screens. All sites were designed to fit the same templates, and developers didn’t spend a lot of time on concepts like design, layout, and typography.  

Even when the wider adoption of CSS technology began, most developers didn’t have to worry much about adapting content to different screen sizes. However, they still found a few ways to work with different monitor and browser sizes.

Liquid Layouts

The main two layout options available to developers in the early days were fixed-width, or liquid layout. 

With fixed-width layouts, the design was more likely to break if your monitor wasn’t the exact same resolution as the one the site was designed on. You can see an example here. 

Alternatively, liquid layouts, coined by Glenn Davis, were considered one of the first revolutionary examples of responsive web design. 

Liquid layouts could adapt to different monitor resolutions and browser sizes. However, content could also overflow, and text would frequently break on smaller screens. 

Resolution-Dependent Layouts

In 2004, a blog post by Cameron Adams introduced a new method of using JavaScript to swap out stylesheets based on a browser window size. This technique became known as “resolution-dependent layouts”. Even though they required more work from developers, resolution-dependent layouts allowed for more fine-grained control over the site’s design. 

The resolution-dependent layout basically functioned as an early version of CSS breakpoints, before they were a thing. The downside was developers had to create different stylesheets for each target resolution and ensure JavaScript worked across all browsers.

With so many browsers to consider at the time, jQuery became increasingly popular as a way to abstract the differences between browser options away.

The Rise of Mobile Subdomains

The introduction of concepts like resolution-dependent designs was happening at about the same time when many mobile devices were becoming more internet-enabled. Companies were creating browsers for their smartphones, and developers suddenly needed to account for these too.

Though mobile subdomains aimed to offer users the exact same functions they’d get from a desktop site on a smartphone, they were entirely separate applications. 

Having a mobile subdomain, though complex, did have some benefits, such as allowing developers to specifically target SEO to mobile devices, and drive more traffic to mobile site variations. However, at the same time, developers then needed to manage two variations of the same website.

Back at the time when Apple had only just introduced its first iPad, countless web designers were still reliant on this old-fashioned and clunky strategy for enabling access to a website on every device. In the late 2000s, developers were often reliant on a number of tricks to make mobile sites more accessible. For instance, even simple layouts used the max-width: 100% trick for flexible images.

Fortunately, everything began to change when Ethan Marcotte coined the term “Responsive Web Design” on A List Apart. This article drew attention to John Allsopp’s exploration of web design architectural principles, and paved the way for all-in-one websites, capable of performing just as well on any device. 

A New Age of Responsive Web Design

Marcotte’s article introduced three crucial components developers would need to consider when creating a responsive website: fluid grids, media queries, and flexible images. 

Fluid Grids

The concept of fluid grids introduced the idea that websites should be able to adopt a variety of flexible columns that grow or shrink depending on the current size of the screen. 

On mobile devices, this meant introducing one or two flexible content columns, while desktop devices could usually show more columns (due to greater space). 

Flexible Images

Flexible images introduced the idea that, like content, images should be able to grow or shrink alongside the fluid grid they’re located in. As mentioned above, previously, developers used something called the “max-width” trick to enable this. 

If you were holding an image in a container, then it could easily overflow, particularly if the container was responsive. However, if you set the “max-width” to 100%, the image just resizes with its parent container. 

Media Queries

The idea of “media queries” referred to the CSS media queries, introduced in 2010 but not widely adopted until officially released as a W3 recommendation 2 years later. Media queries are essentially CSS rules triggered based on options like media type (print, screen, etc), and media features (height, width, etc). 

Though they were simpler at the time, these queries allowed developers to essentially implement a simple kind of breakpoint – the kind of tools used in responsive design today.  Breakpoints refer to when websites change their layout or style based on the browser window or device width.

Viewport Meta tags need to be used in most cases to ensure media queries work in the way today’s developers expect. 

The Rise of Mobile-First Design

Since Marcotte’s introduction of Responsive Web Design, developers have been working on new ways to implement the idea as effectively as possible. Most developers now split into two categories, based on whether they consider the needs of the desktop device user first, or the needs of the mobile device user. The trend is increasingly accelerating towards the latter. 

When designing a website from scratch in an age of mobile-first browsing, most developers believe that mobile-first is the best option. Mobile designs are often much simpler, and more minimalist, which matches a lot of the trends of current web design.

Taking the mobile first route means assessing the needs of the website from a mobile perspective first. You’d write your styles normally, using breakpoints once you start creating desktop and tablet layouts. Alternatively, if you took the desktop-first approach, you would need to constantly adapt it to smaller devices with your breakpoint choices.

Exploring the Future of Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design still isn’t perfect. There are countless sites out there that still fail to deliver the same incredible experience across all devices. What’s more, new challenges continue to emerge all the time, like figuring out how to design for new devices like AR headsets and smartwatches. 

However, it’s fair to say we’ve come a long way since the early days of web design. 

 

Featured image via Pexels.

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The 5 Healthcare AI Trends Technologists Need to Know

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Healthcare has been at the epicenter of everything we do for two years. While the pandemic has been a significant driver of the conversation, healthcare technology—artificial intelligence (AI) specifically—has been experiencing explosive growth. One only needs to look at the funding landscape: more than 40 startups have raised at least $20 million in funding specifically to build AI solutions for healthcare applications.

But what’s driving this growth? The venture capital trail alone won’t help us understand the trends contributing to AI adoption in healthcare. But the “2022 AI in Healthcare Survey” will. For the second year, Gradient Flow and John Snow Labs asked 300 global respondents what they’re experiencing in their AI programs—from the individuals using them to the challenges and the criteria used to build solutions and validate models. These are the top five trends that emerged from the research. 

Source de l’article sur DZONE

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