Draft clear content so users know how to take action
I wrote this story with assistance from Luke Easterwood, LeAnn Quasthoff, Jessica Caimi, and Erik Ninomiya, UX writers who have focused on the needs of the Next Billion Users.
John Steinbeck said that “Poetry is the mathematics of writing and closely kin to music.” The Nobel Prize winner in Literature understood the challenge of writing well. Writers must always consider the effect their word choice and grammar have on the meaning and flow of the text, as well as how those choices might make their readers feel.
It can be…
Design for trust by giving users more control over their data usage
I wrote this story with Ramprakash Ravichandran, an interaction designer on the Next Billion Users team, and Ted McCarthy, a user experience researcher on internet access projects.
Internet access and cost challenges are common and can cause frustration, anxiety, panic, and — worst of all — lack of trust in your products. Before exploring design options to alleviate these problems, it’s important to understand the different ways access and cost influence how users interact with apps and websites.
Internet access varies along the lines of Wi-Fi access and…
How user research reshaped the design of Google’s open-source text fields
This article was co-written with Michael Gilbert, Senior User Experience Researcher on the Material Design team. Dave Chiu , Staff Interaction Designer, and Sameer Bansal, User Experience Designer, collaborated with Michael on redesigning the text fields.
You might not always notice, but Material Design is constantly evolving and iterating based on research. We recently received an inquiry about why the style of Material text fields changed in 2017, and we’re taking this opportunity to share a behind-the-scenes glimpse into our research process. Here’s the story of how data improved Google’s text fields.
Design clear interactions instead of clever ones, and users will follow
Voltaire said, “le sens commun est fort rare”—common sense is very rare. Perhaps to realize that a certain decision is common sense, one has to have enough life experience to know the right path to take , at which point certain choices become common sense and don’t require much analysis.
When we talk about common sense with product design, what we now see as strikingly obvious may not have been so apparent to designers when they first started. For a long time, designers have endeavored to make products as easy to use and navigate as possible. …
Como desenvolver pensando em sistemas operacionais antigos, contraste variável, duração baixa da bateria e telas danificadas.
Este artigo foi originalmente escrito em inglês por Ramprakash Ravichandran (designer de interação do Google) e Susanna Zaraysky (estrategista de conteúdo do Google) para o site Medium do Google Design. Esta tradução foi publicada com a permissão do Google Design.
Depois de vários anos pesquisando a melhor forma de desenvolver para novos usuários de Internet na Índia, no Sudeste Asiático, na África, na América Latina e em outras regiões, as equipes de produto do Google descobriram importantes padrões de design de compatibilidade. Eles garantem que os produtos do Google tenham bom desempenho para novos usuários que usam smartphones de baixo…
How to design with old operating systems, varying contrast, low battery life, and damaged screens in mind.
I wrote this story with Ramprakash Ravichandran, an interaction designer on the Next Billion Users team.
For several years, Google product teams have been researching how best to design for new internet users in India, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, and beyond. Through that work we’ve discovered several important compatibility design patterns that allow our products to perform well for people using low cost phones with old operating systems, varying contrast, various screen sizes, low battery life, and damaged screens. …
How to convince your team to invest in more accessible design
You know accessibility is important. You want to dedicate the time to research and design a product that a wide variety of users can easily use. You want your products to make life easier for a person with a disability.
How do you convince your team to invest the time and resources for accessibility research and design?
Here are five tactics centered around empathy, flexibility, incremental changes, market share, and industry standards to convince your team to make accessibility a priority.
1. Make it personal, make it stick
Valuing the importance of accessibility in design can be hard for people to grasp unless they have personally experienced…
