Developers make a lot of decisions about the user experience, whether they want to or not. And, yes, some developers have UX skills. But it’s not the norm. So, should developers learn UX?

Card sorting is a low cost, effective user experience research method used to understand how users would group information on your website, app, or other digital product.

Breadcrumbs allow users to see their current location relative to the rest of the site. They are particularly helpful on websites with large menus and many layers.

Heidi spoke with Drew about what agencies need to know about optimizing the customer digital experience on the Build a Better Agency podcast.

On mobile devices, target sizes should be at least 48 CSS pixels by 48 CSS pixels (approximately 9mm by 9mm) and tappable elements should be spaced at least 10 CSS pixels apart.

Prepare for what will inevitably go wrong and use error messages to help the user complete the task successfully and provide helpful information about how to prevent the issue from happening again.

In most cases, include labels with icons, even when your team considers an icon to be “universal.” Providing a label name on hover isn’t enough.

As people who create digital products, we make an awful lot of assumptions about what our users want and why they do—or don’t do—certain things. Sometimes an assumption is right. But in too many cases, those assumptions lead us to build or make changes to products that result in features people don’t want or can’t use.

As a user experience (UX) research tool, surveys can be an effective starting point for UX research—especially if your resources are limited and your stakeholders are skeptical. But, because surveys are cheap and easy to administer to get lots of results, product teams sometimes use them in place of conducting more extensive UX research.

Don’t waste money designing a new marketing website if you haven’t gotten these basics right.

In order for calls-to-action to be effective, your team must first map out what you want users to do (ensuring that aligns with what goals they want to accomplish) and what steps they must take as part of that process. Without this clarity, even the most effective call-to-action won’t help you achieve your business goals.

Voice may be the opportunity to provide better customer service or solve challenges in contexts when being hands-free is essential, such as when driving or preparing meals. Voice may also be annoying and intrusive.

A diary study is a longitudinal user experience (UX) research method that allows your team to explore how users use your digital product over time. Diary studies often include a combination of videos, photos, and survey questions, in addition to product analytics, which provides your team with a rich mix of qualitative and quantitative data.

Because lack of trust is beginning to change customers’ behaviors in the digital space, it’s a leading indicator of an institution’s overall health—especially if your digital product is your business. That means measuring and optimizing this customer experience metric is more important than ever.

QA (quality assurance) and usability studies are often confused because they are both a process of evaluating digital products. But they are not the same.

A usability study is a user experience research method that evaluates how well representative users can perform tasks using a digital product. The process of conducting a usability study involves recruiting representative users, giving them realistic tasks to perform, and observing where and why they encounter difficulties.

The user experience (UX) refers to a users’ perspective, thoughts, and feelings using a digital product. User Experience design (UXD or sometimes just UX) is a process of creating digital products that revolves around constantly validating assumptions through user research.

We outline five tips we have developed at Voice+Code after talking to hundreds of companies who either succeeded or failed in hiring the right UX firm.

Website visitors don’t read every single word on a website. Instead, they jump around content and pages, looking for clues that indicate they are getting closer to their goal. Because of this, it’s important to craft copy that will ensure website visitors understand your message and see a clear path forward to accomplishing their goals. 

Join us for a FREE condensed version of our UX Strategy for Successful Digital Products workshop on March 6, 2019 at Noble Desktop. If you’re currently designing and building products but are missing a key aspect of any UX strategy—the user—this seminar is for you!