The reasons Scrum Masters violate the spirit of the Scrum Guide are multi-faceted. Typical Scrum Master anti-patterns run from ill-suited personal traits to complacency to pursuing individual agendas to frustration with the team itself.
Read on and learn in this post on Scrum anti-patterns how you can identify if your Scrum Master needs support from the team.
Designing for user experiences is what all designers do. UX is often thought of as the preserve of app or web designers; however, even a print designer laying out a magazine anticipates reader reaction to the scale of type, the placement of adverts, and the art direction of successive stories.
Because all designers design user experiences, the role of UX Designer has come to mean someone focused on creating a product or service utilizing research and testing to guide decision-making.
To research and test anything, you need metrics: a baseline and a target against which to measure. No one set of metrics is suitable for all projects, but because UX tends to be for financial profit, the Pirate Metrics Framework — Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue — is a good starting place.
You might seek out very different metrics in some cases. For instance, a museum might measure the success of its education program based on how many students go on to study paleontology. However, those types of metrics are notoriously difficult to quantify. Excepting a few niche cases, successful UX increases user productivity, decreases errors, reduces the cost of support, and increases sales.
So if it’s as easy as counting dollars, why does UX go bad?
To understand what UX is, you need to understand what UX is not.
One of the most straightforward design principles to understand is hierarchy: bigger is more important, i.e., a heading is visually stronger than a sub-heading, a sub-heading is visually stronger than the body text.
Design principles stem from one thing: human-centered design. At the most basic level, bigger is more important because the bigger a saber-toothed tiger appears, the more likely it intends to eat me.
The evolution of human beings is so slow that had a smartphone existed at the time, a neanderthal would have been able to tap a button with the same level of precision as me. Prehistoric man shares the same minimum button size as modern man: 48 x 48px. Design principles don’t change, don’t require research, and don’t need verifying with tests.
On the other hand, a neanderthal would not have understood a smartphone, let alone an app. You only need to step back by a single generation to find perfectly intelligent people baffled by a commonly employed design pattern.
Unlike design principles, user experience is a house built on sand. When the sand shifts, the walls crack. The bricks are still solid, but the rain gets in.
Because effective UX is temporary, so is the ROI.
Technology unfolds at a rapid pace. As technology develops, the user experience defined by that technology changes.
The classic example is the mobile revolution, but technological change does not necessarily mean hardware. One of the most significant shifts in UXD (User Experience Design) in my career has been the popularisation of AJAX — the process of using JavaScript to load new data without refreshing the page. This seamlessness has been around since the early 2000s, but it’s only in the last ten years, as the code to achieve it has simplified, that it’s been widely used.
Jakob’s Law states that users spend most of their time on other sites and, as a result, prefer your site to function like other sites by following familiar design patterns.
Even if your UX is rigorously tested and optimized, when other sites and services carry out their own research, they are testing against the background of younger technology, and the “other sites” Jakob Nielsen refers to begin to change. As a result, the UX of your site is gradually eroded.
The consequence of continual technological change is that user research is constantly invalidated. The UX of an app, site, or service begins to degrade as soon as it is created.
Human beings have two deep-seated motivations: survival and procreation. The most important, survival, depends on discovery — new food sources, new routes through dangerous territory, new ways to skin a mammoth. We are biologically programmed to seek out the new.
A typical user passes through three phases of a relationship with a site, app, or service: discovery > comfort > boredom. Churn, or drop-off, tends to occur in the discovery phase (if the comfort phase is too slow in developing) or the boredom phase. The sweet spot is the comfort phase. That’s the part of the business-customer relationship in which the customer requires minimal support and is least likely to drop off.
The most effective form of UX — meaning the one that satisfies most metrics — rapidly moves a user from discovery to comfort and then continually eases the user back to the start of the comfort phase without tipping back into discovery.
This can be achieved with numerous micro-discoveries, tiny chunks of new experience, from simple functionality tweaks to style revisions.
All UXD, regardless of the quality, level of investment, and skill of the practitioner, begins to degrade the moment it is created.
Design principles like simplicity are good indicators of successful UID (User Interface Design) and are timeless; comprehensive design systems, brand assets, and content offer good ROI.
The most effective UX is broadly familiar and continually refreshed in small ways, allowing users to enjoy the comfort of the familiar while also experiencing the excitement of discovery again and again.
Featured image uses photos by Wolfgang Hasselmann & Shainee Fernando.
The post When UX Goes Bad (and How to Fix It) first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
This week, we have details of compromised Google Cloud accounts being used to mine cryptocurrency (mainly with weak or no passwords on API connections), there’s an article on how GraphQL can be used as an API gateway (including security controls), a very comprehensive guide to all things relating to API security, and a new API security training course from AppSecEngineer.
The main story this week comes from HackerNews and describes how attackers are able to exploit improperly secured Google Cloud Platform (GCP) tenants. The impact on affected users included compromising their cloud resources, like uploading cryptocurrency mining software, and ransomware and phishing attacks.
Whether you are looking for comprehensive tutorials on UX design or professional courses on topics like logo design, video or photo editing, there’s the perfect YouTube channel for you as a designer.
The best thing about YouTube is that you do not have to be a professional to jump into a video tutorial and gain the knowledge you need. There are many people who have become experts in, say, Photoshop by watching many hours of YouTube videos.
In 2022, there are established and emerging channels that you, as a designer, can use to get inspired and fix problems in your workflow.
Let us take a look at our 14 favorite YouTube channels for designers:
Subject: Logo design, hand lettering, Illustrator tutorials
Subscribers: 608K
Creator: Will Paterson
Are you looking for a YouTube channel that will help you improve your logo designs and entertain you at the same time? If so, Will Paterson is the channel for you. Whether you are a professional designer or a beginner, this channel has everything you need: from logo design and Illustrator tutorials to product reviews and vlogs; nothing is left out.
Subject: Web design (UI, UX), Freelancing, Figma tutorials
Subscribers: 7.7K
Creator: Arnau Ros
In about a year, Arnau Ros has managed to become one of our favorite YouTube channels. In a few words, Arnau is a very talented freelance product designer. He has published numerous videos on how to use Figma, one of the most popular problem-solving platforms for designers.
And that’s not all. Arnau has created a series of videos that will help you get started in the world of freelancing from scratch as a new designer.
Subject: Photoshop tutorials
Subscribers: 618K
Creator: Adobe
Although there are numerous YouTube channels that offer top-notch Photoshop tutorials, the official Adobe Photoshop channel should not be underestimated. Adobe has created a quick start guide for most Photoshop features, toolboxes, etc. So if you need to quickly complete a task in Photoshop, this is the perfect channel for you.
Subject: Freelancing, Graphic design guides (fonts, plugins, techniques, etc.)
Subscribers: 884K
Creator: Tom Cargill
From career development videos to poster and type designs to workflow tutorials, Satori Graphics has it all. We highly recommend this channel for beginners and designers who want to master Illustrator and create a top-notch portfolio for their design work.
Subject: Freelancing, UX design, vlogs
Subscribers: 23K
Creator: Alexa Herasimchuk
Alexa’s YouTube channel is a great choice if you are a UX designer and want inspiration. What we love about Alexa is that her channel covers everything a UX and product designer needs to know. Be sure to check out the fascinating video discussions with other designers that she has uploaded.
Subject: 3D animation, motion graphics guides, Adobe After Effects
Subscribers: 277K
Creator: Mt. Mograph co.
For more than 3 years, Mt. Mograph has been one of the most popular YouTube channels for graphic designers. The channel is especially popular among creatives who want to learn more about 3D animation, geometric motion, and need the best After Effects tutorials.
Subject: Photo editing, motion graphics
Subscribers: 167K
Creator: Swerve
Swerve has created some of the most comprehensive how-to videos for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Motion Graphics. The channel’s speed art videos are extremely inspiring. Even though the channel is not constantly updated, it already contains many videos that you should definitely watch.
Subject: Graphic design software (Illustrator), Photo and video editing (Photoshop, Premiere, Lightroom)
Subscribers: 1.19M
Creator: Nathaniel Dodson
Tutvid needs no introduction. With more than 1 million subscribers, this has been one of the most popular YouTube channels for creatives for years. When it comes to tutorials about Adobe Creative Cloud software, nothing beats this channel.
If you are looking for comprehensive tutorials on Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, and Premiere, Nathaniel Dodson is your man.
Subject: Freelancing, web development, chats and vlogs
Subscribers: 209K
Creator: Charli Prangey
If you are not yet familiar with the digital nomad lifestyle, be sure to check out the CharliMarieTV channel. Charli is a freelance web designer and entrepreneur who has created some of the best videos on website design, coding, remote work, and more.
Subject: Canva tutorials
Subscribers: 126K
Creator: Canva
Canva is a popular web-based graphic design platform. Like the official Adobe Photoshop channel, this is the best way to quickly learn how to use Canva software. In addition to quick tutorials, this channel includes videos with all the important software updates and in-depth Canva workshops.
Subject: Graphic design guides for Procreate
Subscribers: 345K
Creator: Teela Cunningham
When it comes to Procreate tutorials, there’s nothing better than Every Tuesday. The channel has different playlists for beginners, intermediate and professional creatives. From hand lettering projects to watercolor flowers to digital gouache, you’ll find everything you need to master Procreate on Teela’s channel.
Subject: Logo design tutorials, vlogs, logo redesign
Subscribers: 437K
Creator: Zimri Mayfield
Those of you who love logo designs probably already know all about Zimri Mayfield’s channel. Professionalism and a great sense of humor are combined in one of the most inspiring YouTube channels for designers.
Subject: Adobe creative cloud tutorials
Subscribers: 517K
Creator: Martin Perhiniak
As a certified Adobe design master and instructor, Martin Perhiniak has created a must-follow channel on YouTube. From basic Photoshop and Illustrator tutorials to advanced masking tutorials, you’ll find it all at Yes I’m a Designer.
Subject: Adobe tutorials, brand/business development
Subscribers: 549K (as of March 2022)
Creator: Roberto Blake
If you are looking for something more than graphic design tutorials, our last suggestion is perfect. Roberto Blake has created numerous Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and Indesign tutorials, but also gives numerous talks and shares his knowledge on video marketing and brand development.
Although there are numerous YouTube channels for designers, these are our absolute favorites. Of course, that does not mean there are not more equally successful and inspiring designers on YouTube. Made by Mighty, Sketch Together and Ch-Ch-Check It are just a few more examples of great YouTube video creators if you search for a specific topic.
Featured image via Unsplash.
The post 14 Best YouTube Channels for Designers in 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
It’s not unfair to say that our online data is caught in a tug-of-war between continually updated security controls and hackers that relentlessly find new, inventive ways of breaching those controls.
Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site.
The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s a handy compilation of the top curated stories from the last seven days. Enjoy!”
The post Popular Design News of the Week: March 28, 2022 – April 3, 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
You might have noticed that resources comprising some Azure services such as Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) span multiple resource groups by default. In some cases, you might intentionally want to segregate resources such as disks and network interfaces from VMs by placing them in different resource groups for better management. A common problem arising from the resource spread is that you might find it challenging to delete multiple resources and resource groups to entirely remove a service from a subscription.
We can solve the problem by using resource tags to associate resources and resource groups to a service. Tags are key-value pairs that can be applied to your Azure resources, resource groups, and subscriptions. Of course, you can use tags for many other purposes apart from resource management. The Azure docs website has a detailed guide on the various resource naming and tagging strategies and patterns.
Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site.
The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s a handy compilation of the top curated stories from the last seven days. Enjoy!”
The post Popular Design News of the Week: March 7, 2022 – March 13, 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
Micro-interactions effectively communicate brand identity and ethos while strengthening ties with the customer. These habit-forming tools make for a fun and seamless user experience. Facebook’s ‘likes’ and Tinder’s ‘swipes’ are two classic examples.
Micro-interactions originated with the need to guide customers who had hit a snag while using a service or a product. The goal was to ease customers into being more product-savvy via subtle reassurance and feedback. Micro-interactions are now employed by everything from washing machines, to coffee makers.
Along with feedback, prompts, and recommendations, they can also present customers with an appealing visual reward upon finishing a task. When used optimally, micro-interactions drastically enhance the navigation and simplify how users interact with sites and apps.
Here are the four structural elements to a simple micro-interaction: triggers, rules, feedback, and loops. Every micro-interaction has a significant component to organize the operational cycle. It lets you control feedback and runs, so the users understand the consequences of their performance and feel motivated to follow through.
This feature begins micro-interactions of both the user-initiated (prompted by user) and system-initiated (driven by the system) kind. For example, a click, scroll, swipe, tap, and pull are common triggers that users carry out. So making a payment, booking a cab, and clicking or tapping on the hamburger menu all fall under this category. On the flip side, the user’s alert prompt upon entering a wrong password is a classic system-generated trigger.
This element determines what happens after the user sets a prompt into motion via tapping, clicking, scrolling, or swiping. Rules refer to the fact that apps decide the triggers that users employ — Tinder’s ‘swipe’ feature illustrates this point. These rules gradually become a habit-forming action that users get accustomed to while regularly engaging with an app.
During this process stage, the system informs the user via auditory, visual, or haptic cues. It engages the users and encourages them to proceed further in their process. For example, the progress bar of a download, the visual representation of steps cleared in a circle, or the visual, aural, and tactile indication upon the success or failure of payment are all a part of the feedback mechanism.
This final stage entails tiny meta-rules of the process and determines the frequency and duration. A classic example from an ecommerce app is the ‘Buy Now’ transformed to ‘Buy Another’ Before the user loses interest in the app, the app typically uses such a loop to get them to re-engage with the app.
We’ve established that micro-interactions are fabulous, but not every UX interaction on your app or site needs one throughout the wireframe. Overusing this tool could saturate the overall creative experience your design may want to offer. Worse, it might even end up confusing the information hierarchy. It undermines the design and unbalances the user experience of discomfort and irritability. So it’s crucial to know when exactly to use them.
Let’s find out how few quick tips on micro-interactions can elevate and humanize your mobile user experience:
Here are a few basic principles you should follow when you introduce a micro-interaction to the user experience.
KISS is a famous design principle that becomes even more important in the case of micro-interactions. The goal is to make the user journey delightful and not be a distraction.
It has ‘micro’ in the name itself. But, again, micro-interactions aren’t supposed to be show stars, and a lengthy micro-interaction only distracts the user.
You should always consider the options carefully before choosing the spot for any micro-interaction. The widely used user-interaction designs are popular for a reason. Many people have already approved them, so you can safely continue with them. The use of micro-interaction should also sit well with your brand image.
See also if the placement of a micro-interaction is reaching your ideal customer or not. And even consider whether you need a micro-interaction to begin with.
As UX designers, we can profoundly impact the overall design of sites and apps, the user’s journey, their interactions with our product/service, their connection with the brand, and the ease of doing a transaction.
We want customers to connect to our brand, love our products, and experience our exceptional customer service. But most of all, we want to earn their trust and loyalty.
Featured image via Pexels.
The post Using Micro-Interactions to Drive UX first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
If you want to know how well-dressed someone is, look at their shoes. Shoes tell you a lot about a person’s style, activities, and choices. We often choose clothes to deceive people about who we are — we want to be brighter, more successful, more relaxed, more adventurous than we actually are. But, our shoes paint an honest picture and offer endless insights into who the wearer is.
Like shoes, website footers help us see the core of the entity behind the site. A footer is both functional and brand-specific, and it often sets the tone for the entire site.
I’ve heard it argued that there are two types of designer: those who start with the footer and those who don’t. Regardless of how true you hold that statement, it’s undeniable that the footer is one of the most undervalued elements on any site — if you’ve ever run an eye-tracking test, you’ll know how frequently customers scroll straight to the bottom of your page.
Perhaps because it is undervalued and therefore under-designed by designers, the footer has developed some established design patterns: It is a consistent, site-wide catch-all bar; it tends to contain utility links; visually, it acts as a closure to the page information.
Your footer should be consistent, predictable, and, above all, not so small that it’s illegible.
Footers vary depending on the target audience and the goals of the site. What suits one project may not suit another, but there are common elements that you need to have a good reason to exclude.
A logo in your footer is an excellent way to tie the page together and remind users of the site they’re browsing. In addition, it can be a helpful link back to your homepage (for when the user is lost and wants to start over).
If your design warrants it, the logo can be smaller or a variation. Find some way to fit it in, even if you already have your logo in a sticky header — it’s a good baseline for mobile experiences.
Chivi Chivi uses a monogram in place of its primary logo and reserves the main logotype for its footer.
Next Big Thing repeats its logo in the footer in a decorative and engaging way.
Every page on your site should have some form of call to action (CTA) to guide the user through your site, preferably along your sales funnel. In addition to page-specific CTA, include a CTA in your footer.
Because your footer will be identical across multiple pages, the CTA needs to be an action that is relevant to every page (even the terms or privacy statement).
-99 has a nice big ‘Start a Project’ CTA to draw potential clients into a conversation.
The most common footer CTA is a newsletter sign-up, but if you’re running a site with a free trial or a subscription, adding a sign-up form for those services is also beneficial.
The Ocean Agency asks you to donate or sign up to its email list.
In many cases, you don’t need legal notices on your site; too often, published online terms just reiterate the statuary rights the law already grants a user. (The exception is if you’re operating internationally when statuary rights are variable.)
Fontsmith takes the opportunity to let us know its parent company.
If you’re collecting a user’s information, even via analytics, then you need a privacy policy, and the footer is a good catch-all place to link to it — just make sure you also link to it alongside any forms that gather information.
If you’re designing a site for a highly-regulated industry, like pharmaceuticals, or gambling, then a liability disclaimer may be advisable. If your client is certified or holds a professional membership, that should be included in the footer.
H&B Sensors includes an ISO certification in its footer.
Almost everyone includes a copyright notice in their footer, even though a website copyright notice is all but unenforceable.
The real value of these elements is to lend credibility to the company.
There is a tendency among some designers to treat the footer like a mega-menu and list every page on the site. If a user is confused enough by your main menu to need a footer link, dozens of links won’t clarify things for them, but a few carefully selected links can be beneficial.
Shantell Martin uses doormat navigation to help anyone who missed the main navigation.
Generally, sites have two kinds of links: sales and utility. Sales links point at content with a brand voice, like product pages and blog posts. Utility links point at informational content that is fact-based, such as your returns policy or details of your graduate program. Typically, sales links suit primary navigation, and utility links fit footers.
Envoy includes a link to current openings at the company.
Offering users a real-world point of contact has two benefits: your local SEO can be boosted; users feel an increased sense of trust.
Even if they never use them, customers like to see a phone number, opening hours, and even a map to a physical location. These things feel inherently more reliable because we assume that someone, somewhere, has vetted brick-and-mortar businesses.
Cahn Wilson includes a map to make it absolutely clear they have a physical location.
If possible, let users know how long it usually takes you to respond to queries — be honest, better to underpromise and over-deliver than the reverse.
If you’re maintaining social media accounts, then adding them to your footer is a great way to include them on your page without siphoning users off to other sites. (Only link to social media accounts you regularly update.)
Snohetta takes the contact information to the extreme by providing longitude and latitude.
The post 5 Must-Have Elements of a Successful Footer in 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
