#UX Archives - anteelo

UX MESS-UPS THAT CAN RUIN YOUR PROJECT

Posted on 28/03/202124/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Designing isn’t merely about following fancy trends. It is about creating stunning visuals, thoughtful user experience and mind-blowing content! There goes a lot of work in creating a fully competent and workable design.

Creating a great UX is all about learning, observing, analysing, interpreting and testing. It’s the process of making good experiences for the users. Although every designer is aware of the UX core principles, but, there are a few mess-ups that can be troublesome for their projects.

LOREM IPSUM < REAL CONTENT-

Internet usage ultimately boils down to content consumption. What users consume on the internet is what affects them and their thoughts. In the majority of the cases, the consumed content manipulates the users’ decision, which may or not lead to the right conclusion. As designers, you can easily fall into the trap of using ‘lorem ipsum to wrap up your design as quickly as possible. Reality is that, using placeholder copy makes your design look like a half cooked product and so it becomes hard to relate to. Our aim is to create design experiences, not templates. And this is possible only if real content is used in your design. It helps you to create a finely tuned experience tailored specially for your target-audience (TA).

The way to solve this? Is research:

Research your domain thoroughly. From methodologies to terminologies, everything. Use real content that will catch your end-users attention. Start with writing a provisional copy to set a tone and strategy and then later it can be revised again if required. A content writers’ team can do that for you. They can separate the content that matters and the ones with flaws. This ultimately helps experience what the live page would feel like and in return discussions and reviews would be made much easier.

NOT HAVING A DEFINED TA-

Generally what users find on the internet is universally generic content. They find that content, take time to process what they are looking for and then understand it. All of this creates a certain distastefulness in the users. A very common mistake is that designers writing content like it is for them and not for the users. Now, this can land as an issue.

Answer to this mistake? Create Personas:

Persona is the users’ voice. Research your users, their behavioural aspects, preferences and requirements. Now filter out your research and throw your focus on what needs to be done. Create various groups according to the condensed information and then create realistic personas, based on their experiences, needs and behaviours.

IGNORING DIFFERENT LAYOUTS-

You might easily love the ideas and designs that you come up with, but they might not always work. Sometimes they will fail and hence leave your goals incomplete. Even the good ideas fail. And this happens to the best of us.

Want your goals achieved? Answer is testing:

Merely creating designs is not enough. Conduct user experience tests with different variants, so that there’s something to compare your main design with. Such testing techniques will lead you to know, whether or not the intended effect on your users is working.

PLACING IRRELEVANT INFORMATION-

Every user is on a different user phase when they are at your product and hence they might be looking to seek different information. So if you bombard them with truck loads of data, they will get confused and their needs would remain unfulfilled. It is critical to provide your users with only relevant information. The users also might be using your product in a different context, according to their own needs.

Analyse your user(s) journeys to solve this:

The easier it gets for the users to find their required information, the more better acquired your product gets. Based on the realistic personas that you created, further create user journeys. Consider the scenarios your user might be in, the experiences they felt and so the information that would make sense to them. Think of, (a) the users geographical position; (b) what they did before and what they want to do now; (c) and what they want to do next.

UNORGANISED INFORMATION-

When there is a massive amount of information available on the platform, the users might find it hard to find. Now in this situation, unstructured information is just like cherry on top. A user can find it hard to navigate through the product and will end up having a bad experience.

Solution? Become an architect for the information:

Prioritize the most significant features and then create the required navigation. The goal should be to make it easy for the users to navigate through the product. Consider, predict and make it clear as to what their possible actions and scenarios might be. Sort through the information and structure it the right way. remember , it is not for you. It’s for the users. Information hierarchy is very significant for the product to be successful.

Ask yourself the relevant questions and then you will be able to find the answers to solve the said problems. Research, analyse and imply the refined ideas.

Android: Applying Shared Element Transitions

Posted on 18/01/202121/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Doesn’t it look cool when one view appears to move across screens without breaking the continuity of motion? It just adds to the flair of your app, thus improving the app’s UX.Now, this can be achieved using Shared Element Transitions; but here is the catch. This transition effect is available only on devices running on Lollipop (Android 5.0 – API level 21) and higher.Shared elements transitions were introduced in Android 5.0 to make view transitions across screens more seamless and easy to implement. Using this transition, the switch between Activities or Fragments seems more natural and unforced.

Before Android 5.0, transition effects across Activities were available, but they would animate the entire root view of our screen. Using shared element transitions, we can animate any number of views, regardless of their view hierarchies.

Now, let’s see how we can implement shared element transitions in our Android apps-

Step 1 : Enable Window Content Transitions in styles.xml

Step 2: Set a Common Transition Name for Respective Views on Both Screens

For the transition to work across screens, you have to assign a common transition name to the shared elements (views) in both layouts. The views don’t have to be of the same type or have the same id, only the transition name must be same.

The transition name can be set using the android:transitionName attribute in xml or using the setTransitionName() method in Java.

Step 3: Open Activity with Element Transition

In order to get the transition effect, you have to specify a bundle of the shared elements and view from the source activity while starting the target activity.

When we specify the source view along with its corresponding transition name, it ensures that even if multiple views exist in the the source view hierarchy with the same transition name, it picks the correct view to start the animation from.

While specifying multiple shared elements transitions, make sure that you import android.support.v4.util.Pair. Please ensure that you do not overdo the transitions, as that can distract the user and degrade the user experience.

Step 4: Close Activity with Reverse Element Transition

In order to get the reverse element transition effect while finishing the second activity, you need to call the Activity.supportFinishAfterTransition() method instead of the Activity.finish() method. Also, you need to make sure that you override the Activity finish behavior everywhere in your activity, for example if you have a back button in your Toolbar or if the user presses device’s back button.

Shared Elements Transitions with Fragments

We can achieve shared elements transitions with Fragments as well.

Step 1: Set a Common Transition Name for Respective Views on Both Screens

Step 2: Define a Custom Transition:

Step 3: Specify the Shared Elements Transition in FragmentTransaction:

Custom Shared Elements Transitions:

In Android Lollipop (Android 5.0), the default shared elements transition is a combination of 4 transitions:

Change Bounds – It captures the layout bounds of target views before and after the scene change and animates those changes during the transition.
Change Transform – It captures scale and rotation for Views before and after the scene change and animates those changes during the transition.
Change Image Transform – It captures an ImageView’s matrix before and after the scene change and animates it during the transition.
Change Clip Bounds – It captures the getClipBounds() before and after the scene change and animates those changes during the transition.

In most cases, the default transition is sufficient. However, there might be cases in which you might want to customize the default behavior and define your own custom transitions.

You can set the window content transitions at runtime by calling the Window.requestFeature() method.

Exclude Elements from Window Content Transitions

Sometimes you might want to exclude the use of the status bar, ActionBar and navigation bar from the animation sequence. This might be particularly required when your shared elements are drawn on top of these views.

You can achieve this by excluding these elements from the transitions. This can be done by adding a <target> tag and specifying the ID of the element you want to exclude.

Shared Elements Transitions with Asynchronous Data Loading

There might be cases when the shared elements require data that might be loaded from a web API or URL. The most common example is when a URL needs to be loaded into an ImageView which also happens to be the shared element we want to animate. However, the shared element transition might get started by the framework before that data is received and rendered.

We can overcome this by temporarily delaying the transition until we know that the shared elements have been rendered with the fetched data.

We can delay the shared element transition by calling postponeEnterTransition() (For API >= 21) or supportPostponeEnterTransition() (For API < 21) in your second Activity’s onCreate() method.

Once you know that the shared elements have been rendered with the data, you can call startPostponedEnterTransition() (For API >= 21) or supportStartPostponedEnterTransition() (For API < 21) to resume the paused transition.

We can start the paused transition in an onPreDrawListener which is called after the view layout and before the view is about to be drawn.

Results

You can expect to see something like this once you are done with all of the steps above.

AI Chatbots in Healthcare: UX Research

Posted on 21/12/202014/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Designing conversational UI is a challenging task. I say this from my experience of designing a conversational AI chatbot in healthcare. From the moment I began working on it, I knew it wouldn’t be an easy feat. Questions like what kind of visual elements would I use, how can I reduce the user’s cognitive load in effort-intensive activities, were always on my mind. Prior to this, I had worked on UI design of many web and mobile apps. But none of them was as challenging as this one.

The most challenging part for me was designing to handle the human-machine interaction. Each user is different. Unlike in websites/apps, where users can simply browse and leave, the chatbot users open the chat window to interact. They come with all sorts of questions- vague /smart /genuine /rogue /irrelevant and (sometimes) absurd. When they type a query, they expect the conversational UI to adapt to their needs–digest questions and construct intelligent answers/follow up questions.

The uncertainty of the usage makes the design process complex. Unlike websites/applications, there are no specific UI design principles for designing conversational interfaces. It might appear as a small thing but the limited knowledge on the UI design patterns for healthcare chatbots ultimately affects the customer experience.

So, what can a designer do to make sure that the conversational AI solution caters to most, if not every, user persona? I can share a few suggestions. Since I worked on a healthcare chatbot, most of my suggestions would be about best design practices for healthcare conversational user interface.

Chatbots are now making their way into healthcare solutions like patient engagement solutions, handling emergency situations or first aid, medication management, and so on. To create a great user experience, it’s crucial to pay attention to the process of designing the chatbot. One of the ways to do this is streamlining the process of UI design through UX research.

When I started working on UX research, I borrowed a few tried-and-tested methods applied in web and mobile apps. However, healthcare is a complex domain where data security is a major concern. Therefore, I modified a few of them to suit my needs.

Let’s talk about a few UX research methods which are important to conduct before deep-diving into UI design of a healthcare chatbot.

Discover users’ pain points

To discover users’ pain points, you must first know who your users are. So, the first step to any good UX research is defining your user persona. Your user persona should include demographics profiles, health profiles and task profiles.

The persona diagram must include needs, difficulties, frustrations, motivations, aspirations of your end users. For instance, a 56-year old woman’s persona should include pain points like– “I’m an old woman, I don’t have the patience to repeat the same thing over and over again” or “I am ageing towards dyslexia, I forget conversations I had 15 minutes ago.”

After you’ve defined your user persona, the next step is to figure out how they will interact with the chatbot. For that you can invest in any of the below attitudinal approaches-

Gather inputs by rolling out surveys to your target audience and asking them related questions.
Conduct interviews and listen to what users say.

Depending on the kind of healthcare chatbot, your choice of the method will change.

For example- if you’re doing UX research for a chatbot that guides people towards better mental health, then you can do anonymous email surveys as people don’t openly talk about issues like depression and anxiety.

Observe users in their natural environment

Direct observation (a primary research method) is the key to understanding user needs and preferences for a new product. During observations, record verbal comments and the time spent on various tasks.

For example, if you’re designing a chatbot for surgeons, then observe them when they plan the pre and post surgical procedure. If the patient has a lot of complications, what dietary guidance do they offer? How do they perform the surgery? What instruments they use and how its usage differs from surgery to surgery?

By conducting interviews with people while they perform tasks, you can collect valuable inputs from them and use it to recreate a similar experience in a conversational chatbot.

You can also create interactive mock-ups to show artificial interactions. This gives sufficient scope to test the chatbot with users without requiring the engineers to actually build it. This helps in quick iterations with the users after validating the user experience and understanding their perception of the chatbot.

Research through complementary data gathering techniques

A quick and rewarding UX research method is secondary research. This is done by doing competitor analysis to see how others are solving the same problem. This approach isn’t useful if you’re developing something unique. But, if it’s something you are trying to improve, this method is easy and gives quick results.

You can experience real conversations, access failure threads and use data to improve your chatbot’s experience. Secondary research also includes searching through customer service logs, FAQs, online reviews or comments on blogs.

For example- if you’re building a patient registration chatbot, look at other chatbots available in the market. What is the tone and personality of chatbot? How much time does it take to book an appointment on the chatbot? What are the demographics that the chatbot covers?

Study the chatbot as a user and find out things that they are doing right or things where the experience could be improved. You will find some unsolved problems that could become a major feature in your chatbot.

Get help from stakeholders

There may be situations where you wouldn’t get time to do surveys and interviews with end users. In such cases, ask for help from people who want to build this chatbot. Get to the behind-the-scenes of the problem. Go to their sales and marketing calls. Understand the ‘why’ behind building a chatbot and what problems they are trying to solve.

Talk to the sales team to understand what kind of customer support calls/tickets they receive frequently. Interview their marketing team to understand what vision they have for their end users. What motivates their users? What do they need in order to be happy? What’s their idea of a good chatbot?

Gather real quotes/statements from the end users and use them to draw an empathy map and user journeys. This will help you identify major pitfalls and crucial moments.

The UX research phase is a crucial part of developing a great customer experience. When it’s given its fair share of time and effort, UX research helps discover important insights and reduces the number of iterations required to build the chatbot.

However, there’s no surety that your research findings will translate into a flawless user experience. All the research findings must be implemented and tested in real-time for you to discover if your research was right or not. Sometimes, a wrong method of research or the timing of the research may give you erroneous information.

I hope you figure out the right UX research method for your chatbot. If you have worked on a healthcare chatbot, I would love to hear the UX research methods you used.

UX Design of data-intensive applications

Posted on 07/12/202014/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

We’re living in an age where data is the most precious thing. Data has the power to distort or empower people’s perception and individual decision making capabilities. As a UX designer, it’s on us to design applications that convey the right kind of data in the right way to help make correct decisions.The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte is a book that talks about the same thing. Jeff Hale shared an interesting story in his book review.“A good chart can inspire action. Early epidemiologist John Snow’s 1854 map with data appears to have saved many lives. Snow showed the location of London’s 13 public wells and 578 cholera deaths by stacked bars perpendicular to their location. His graphic, in part, appears to have helped convince the city to shut down the infected well.”

We’re in the 21st century now and I feel we still have a long way to go when it comes to designing data-intensive applications. A data-intensive application is driven by the huge amount of data it consumes. Working with this overwhelmingly huge amount of data has just one problem. It creates various problems for the application because now one has to take care of various aspects such as consistency/standards, usability, scalability and maintainability of the application.

Scalability and maintainability are something that require good application architecture and quality code. But for the scope of this blog, let’s skip that part and talk only about the design.

As designers, we first need to understand that data visualization plays an important role in defining the user experience. The way data is represented on the UI defines how the users are going to interpret and use it. Only when we understand the ‘why’, we’ll be in a position to empower the end users of the application in making informed decisions.

How to design compelling data-intensive applications?

The first step in designing data-intensive applications is determining the mode of representation of data. One can represent data through charts, tables, maps or a combination of these. One of the most common ways to represent data is through dashboards which give a bird’s eye overview of data and share insights that allow users to quickly make decisions or iterate on their current implementation.

For now, let’s talk just about these dashboards and how designers can pay attention to the little details of designing dashboards. Although, different products demand different approach to designing dashboards, but I feel that one can keep a check on the below points to make sure that whatever you design is useful and reliable.

Choose the right visualization method

One of my friends recently recommended me an app for managing my finances. She raved about the mobile app so much that I had to download it. I realized it later why she was all praises. The app gave me so much information just at one glance. I could look at my monthly expenditure as well the breakdown of money spent on food, movies, travel etc.

Looking at it from a designer’s perspective, I now know why it clicked for me. For different data sets, they have used an appropriate visualization method.

For example, the monthly report used the line graph so that user can easily identify spikes in expenditure at one glance. Similarly, expense categories are shown in a pie-chart and color coded, so that it’s easier to identify in which category the person spent the most.

So, just before you begin the design of the dashboard, start with an initial understanding of what kind of data you have and what’s the most suitable data visualization method that you can use.

Here are a few data visualizations methods that you can frequently use in dashboards of digital apps-

Line Chart– Line chart is great for showing data trends.

Bar Chart– Bar chart helps in comparing data values of related categories quickly.

Pie Chart– It divides a circle into proportional segments to show percentages between categories.

Gauge Diagram– It’s not a very popular choice, but it can be used in situations where you want to take a different spin on data visualization. For example, in showing the voter’s opinion during the elections, or a client’s opinion on product’s feedback.

Plan your layout keeping in mind your end users

A good layout keeps things in place and makes navigation easier for users. Think in terms of the physical space in your house. How do you know which utensils are kept where in the kitchen? How do you wade through the pile of clothes in your closet? It’s because of the layout and the place you’ve fixed for everything.

In the same way, for websites and mobile apps, layout plays an important role. It takes a greater precedence if the application is data-intensive. This is because when you have lots of data, understanding and deriving insights from it is time-consuming.

Therefore, it’s a good practice to keep below practices in mind-

Cut down on extra options

The more choices you give people, the more confused they’ll be. And the more time they’ll take in picking their choice. By the way, that’s not my personal opinion, it’s what the Hick’s law states.

No wonder, why do we take so much time in shopping malls.

But, as a designer, you can be the change you wish to see in the world. All we have to do is resist the temptation to show everything in one single interaction. Not every piece of information can be useful as well as critical. Even if it is, show only that information which is urgent and important for them and which motivates them to take action.

Use progressive disclosure technique to reveal the rest of the information. This way, the users can digest the information quicker and accomplish tasks faster.

An example could be from a news reading website. Showing the entire news could be a little straining for readers. On the other hand, if you just show them the snippets, the readers feel far less cognitively strained.

Do more with less

Some people think that simplicity ruins creativity. But it’s the other way round. Simplicity empowers you to do more with less. It reduces the cognitive load on the users and helps attract attention on the most relevant details.

Be consistent

Consistency is important to help users retain and understand information. We see consistency in almost every aspect of our life.

Consider this as an example- Imagine the chaos in your life if you discovered that the state/country you are visiting has different signals at traffic intersections. In that fictional state, Red no more means stop, Green no more means GO, and yellow is replaced by purple. Now, you have to learn these conventions all over again. Wouldn’t that be messy?

Similarly, in web and mobile applications, it becomes difficult for the user if you keep changing icons, colors, layout, CTAs, etc. An ideal approach that you can take is to make users learn once, use anywhere.

Select an appropriate color palette

Every color tells a story and that’s why finding the right color palette for data visualization is probably the most crucial step. Choosing appropriate colors also impacts the accessibility of your applications as people who are visually impaired can benefit from your color selection.

There are a few things that you need to remember while choosing your color palette-

Be consistent with colors

If you are using two color variables in a chart, don’t confuse your users with different representation of colors for the same variable.

Use desaturated colors for visualization

Desaturated colors like white, black and shades of grey work the best as they do not attract unnecessary attention from the user, rather they convey the information subtly. The more colors you use in your visual representation, the more difficult it becomes for the user to decode the information.

Use saturated colors only to draw attention to changes (state)

If you want to highlight the most important aspects of your chart, use a saturated color instead of throwing all colors together. Make grey your best friend and use it as a base to make sure you neither miss showing the important data points, nor do you overdo with too many colors.

The reason why data-intensive applications deserve more attention while designing is because these applications are complex. Moreover, there are multiple touch-points in such applications which need a touch of innovation so that users interactions become smooth and useful.

Wonders of CSS3

Posted on 28/10/202014/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Wonders of CSS3

How your site feels and looks to its visitors is a huge determinant of the user experience (UX) offered on it. Site developers and designers leave no stones unturned to make their website’s style and design line up with its utility and functionality to give it a comprehensive look and make it practical. The most crucial decision amongst this is the successful utilization of CSS and its features.

Since its previous version, CSS3 has taken a giant leap and emerged as one of the most brilliant technological advances in the web design industry. With CSS3, internet browsers locally produce plenty of styling effects that were once just feasible through inventive HTML hacks and editing software like Photoshop. What’s extraordinary about CSS3 is that it’s exceptionally amazing at lessening the requirement of pictures and code that you previously had to put on your site as a significant aspect of your structure. This implies decreased server requests and loading time for your website. This article talks about some of the most striking CSS3 features, which will help you to augment the feel and aesthetics of your project effortlessly

Features of CSS3

1. Advanced Animations

We can utilize both Transition and Animation when it is required to change a component starting with one state moving/transitioning onto the next. The thing that matters is that animation can be comprised of numerous states, giving command over its animation. These animations are now available and compatible with all browsers. There are two different ways to make CSS animations. The first is simple; it is done through animating the progressions of CSS properties with the transition assertion. With transitions, you can make float or mouse down effects, or you can trigger the animation by changing the style of a component with JavaScript.

The second route for characterizing animations is more complex- it includes the portrayal of specific moments of the animation along with the code. This enables you to have recurring animations that don’t rely upon user activities or JavaScript to get activated.

2. Multiple Backgrounds & Gradient

With multiple backgrounds, creators can accomplish extremely intriguing impacts. They can stack various pictures as backgrounds of a component. Each picture (or layer) can be moved and animated effortlessly. CSS3 features also include the provision of having gradients in the background. Gradients enable website specialists to make smooth advances between hues without turning to pictures. CSS gradients likewise look extraordinary on retina displays, since they are created the moment the page loads. They can be straight or outspread and can be set to repeat.

3. Multiple Column layout

This CSS3 feature incorporates properties to enable web designers to display their content in multiple sections with alternatives like column-width, column-gap, and column-count. Column-based formats were previously hard to pull off in CSS. It normally included utilizing JavaScript or server-side processing that parts the content into various components. This is superfluously convoluted and wastes valuable development time. Luckily, presently there is a route around this by utilizing the CSS columns rule.

4. Opacity

This property can make components more transparent. You could approach setting the opacity of a picture in a picture manager or photo editing software, and afterward, save it as a .png or .gif document with opacity enabled. Or on the other hand, you could simply get this done with a single line of code in CSS. It’s up to you. The opacity ranges from 0 (totally transparent) to 1 (totally opaque).

5. Rounded Corner:

Greatly utilized by the social media giant Twitter, this CSS3 feature is already very renowned on the web. Rounded corner components can tidy up a site, however, making a rounded corner requires a web designer to compose a great deal of code. Modifying the stature, width, and location of these components is an endless task in light of the fact that any adjustment in content can break them. CSS 3 tends to simplify this issue by presenting the rounded corner property, which gives you the equivalent rounded corner impact, and you don’t need to compose all the code. Truly, rounded corners simply look more appealing and easy to use than square boxes. The best part currently is, you can apply this effect to HTML components with CSS3. That is the reason why you’ll discover rounded corners all over the web.

6. Selectors

Selectors enable the web designer to choose on increasingly precise degrees of the website page. They are basic pseudo-classes that perform halfway-matches to assist in coordinating with crediting and trait esteems. New selectors focus on a pseudo-class to style the components focused on the URL. Selectors likewise incorporate a checked pseudo-class to style checked components, for example, checkboxes and radio buttons.

CONCLUSION

Cascading Style Sheets Level 3 (CSS3) is a version of the CSS standard utilized in the styling and designing of Web pages. CSS3 features fuse the CSS2 standard with certain progressions and upgrades. CSS3 is a fantastic asset for Web creators. From the time CSS3 has been presented, there has been a superior control over the exhibition of content on a site. Regardless of where we choose to utilize our programming capacities, it will be seen that web advances are really basic and important to take advantage of on each stage. Give CSS3 a try and utilize it in case you’re making a site. Mess around with it. You’ll find it very intriguing to work with its cutting edge features while also sparing yourself a great deal of time that you would have otherwise spent to make precisely the same thing in a photo editing software.

With a new feature of CSS3’s modularized specification, it has further eased out the process for browser developers as it permits them to support incremental modules without doing any heavy modifications or refactoring of the browsers’ codebases. This concept of modularization makes it much simpler and faster to implement individual CSS3 modules.

Lean UX – The Evolution of User Experience in the Lean Methodology

Posted on 17/08/202009/06/2021 by Anteelo Master

You’ve landed your first UX job. Now what? You’re probably excited about what’s in store for you in this career path – and a tad overwhelmed. I’ve written this article as an attempt to ease your nerves. Some of what you read, you may already be aware of. And if you feel some of them sound more like life hacks than design tips – it’s probably because they are.

Show Initiatives

If you’re new to the workplace, chances are the heavy-lifting hasn’t started yet. You’re relatively free, and it’s a great time for you to say yes yes to doing any and all kinds of work – even if it wasn’t part of the job description; even if you don’t think you’re good at it

Being forthcoming and approachable about the kind of work you’re open to doing signifies that you’re open to learning everything there is to the job. Say yes. Make mistakes. It’s all good. Most UX designer jobs are entry-level positions, hence having a host of ancillary skills will help you grow in the organisation faster. Opening yourself up to new kinds of work will only help you holistically as a designer.

Forget the job description; be a generalist

It’s easy to get caught up in the rat race, so here’s a protip- don’t!

It’s typical of the most design professional to get trapped in the title race that we forget to think about what eventually matters – our overall growth as a designer. An exceptional UX designer is almost always a generalist and being one involves proficiency not only in design but also in subjects like empathy, communication, content writing, business and strategy, just to name a few.

Find real users to test ideas on

One of the most neglected steps in the design process is testing your product on real users before launching it. Don’t get us wrong- having a revolutionary concept is great. But until you get feedback from someone who is going to use it every day, it will remain just – a novel concept! And no, your teammates aren’t your real users, their feedback isn’t going to help much.

Look for a mentor

Differing opinions can sometimes be key to new insights. You need to blend with the people and find someone who can speak to you candidly and help you navigate life in the organisation and profession alike. Scan your workplace or industry and find a mentor with the skills and professional drive that you wish to emulate. A good mentor can impart nuggets of wisdom that you may not find in self-help manual or guide.

Sketch first

No matter how far we get with technology there is no alternative for putting pen to paper. Since it’s still early days in your design career, refrain from designing directly on the screen. Even if you are a master at visualizing an idea down to the last pixel in your head, we end up losing many details by the time we reach the final product. Sketching is the quickest way to translate an idea in your mind into the real world. You can come up with multiple iterations of your idea quickly. No time is wasted figuring out which font size or color to use, or what kind of roundness a button should have.

Get into the habit of writing

Writing – stories, blogs, journaling – helps in bringing about clarity to your thoughts, which is difficult to achieve if it’s all just locked inside our head. In addition to sketching disparate blueprints, consider fleshing out concept notes that you can develop into products later. When you make writing a habit, you start to notice that it translates to your designs as well. Writing microcopy is an essential skill for UX designers, which can make or break their design. A product’s true value is almost always conveyed through the copy used. Creativity in the spoken word will help you refine your UX designer portfolio.

Get design inspirations, but do not copy

By habit, designs of most designers tend to get heavily influenced by sites such as Dribbble, Behance or by apps with “cool” interfaces. What they miss out to understand is that each design is created to solve a specific problem. It’s obtuse to mindlessly copy these designs without understanding the reasoning behind them. Try to adopt a problem-solving attitude to design; look at each product from a customer’s viewpoint and build experiences to keep them coming back for more. This methodology will give you a definite edge in the industry.

Seek and respect feedbacks

In your career as a designer, your thoughts and ideas will be challenged by your clients, peers, and sometimes by yourself (which I highly recommend doing). Defending the designs we make is almost a knee-jerk reaction we’re all guilty of, and while it is your job to communicate to the client why you did what you did, don’t get too attached to your designs. Instead, learn to love the feedback you receive and probe deeper to understand the underlying reason for the feedback. Being receptive to feedback will also help people around you feel more forthcoming in sharing their honest views.

Don’t stick to a single process

The traditional design process that we are used to struggles to keep up with the changing needs of stakeholders. Every new project comes with its own set of challenges – the client wants the product yesterday, they don’t have time for user research, and, likely, the design process you’ve sworn by all this time doesn’t fit in with the project plan. The only way to adapt to these changing needs is by adopting newer design processes that can positively impact the project. Read up about processes like Lean UX and Design Sprints. Read up about design strategy from the greats. They’ve changed the way we work and collaborate with teams and clients (and users) on a project. Understanding these processes and identifying when to apply them is key to becoming a master of your craft.

Attend workshops

Design workshops expose you to influential thought-leaders from the industry. They teach you firsthand about real-world problems and solutions. Also workshops are a good way to find a mentor from your field and speak of your interests to a wide variety of people interested in the design discipline.

Conclusion

One last thing, but it’s necessary. The first project you work on won’t be perfect – a lot of them won’t be. The first article you write won’t be perfect either. And neither will the workshops you conduct. And that’s okay. Perfection shouldn’t be your end goal. Design is an iterative process. And we’re all still figuring it out. Might as well enjoy the process while you’re at it.