3 Women of UX Influencing How Businesses View Website Design
Websites have come a long way since 90s atrocities like arngren.net**. Today, user experience applied to web design keeps developers and designers from repeating the crimes of internet history. A few brilliant minds steering UX as a force for good are these 3 women of UX who will change how you view your website in terms of what is doing right (or wrong) to serve its purpose, for you and for your target customers.
(we promise to never post 90s websites again).
Women of UX: Kim GoodWin
By the time we’ve listed the companies and seed-level startups who’ve benefited from Kim’s 25+ years of experience in UX and UX research, the list will likely have grown.
What’s Kim Most Known For?
Her most influential talk: ‘Organization as Designed System’ (inUseExp, 2019)
Her most influential book: Designing for the Digital Age.
In her book, Kim brings together topics sweeping the entire UX spectrum and brings to life the theory with intuitive real-life examples.
What Does Kim’s Work Teach You About Your Website?
What word would you put after ‘UX’? If the first word you hear in your head was ‘design’ then there’s a valuable lesson in Kim’s work.
UX is ‘Research’ First, ‘Design’ Second. Without research, there is no UX design.
Your website — and the marketing activities that feed into it — will continually miss the mark, waste budget and fail to meet objectives.
‘Personas’ Are Models, Not People.
Let’s say you’re running, building new landing pages, website copy, or email sequences. Defining buyer personas is often a marketer’s go-to as one of the early steps.
Some marketers will make this mistake: Creating buyer personas as the people they want to buy their product or service, or the people they assume will.
This simple slide from Kim Goodwin’s 2011 presentations at London UX (now UX Fest) offers a little insight marketers can use when creating personas.
Source: LinkedIn Slideshare
It’s a small, but important, lesson:
1. ‘Personas’ are a model of current human behaviour
NOT a remit or job title picked out of thin air.
2. Personas are derived from contextual research data
NOT through assumptions made about your audience during a Monday meeting.
Many marketers will shy away from spending a little budget on right UX research to pin down detail-rich personas that guide marketing and website projects.
Without the research, the long-term outcomes are often more expensive.
Women of UX: Patricia Reiners
Berliner Patricia Reiners focuses her UX energy in ‘offline’ innovation design and ‘thinking beyond the screen’. Follow her Twitter feed and you’ll be treated to all sorts of exotic real-world UX ideas using augmented reality.
What’s Patricia Most Known For?
Her work at Adobe: As Creative Resident in 2019
Her love of: Future cities, future UX, and ‘offline’ UX innovation
In her Medium roundup of Top 10 UX Trends for 2021, Patricia forecasts that in 2021 (and beyond) web design will start stepping outside of its comfort zone of designing website experiences user expect.
Patricia writes on her Medium channel:
What Can Patricia Teach You About Your Website?
Although Patricia’s work in UX is in exotic future concepts like the internet of things (IoT) and augmented reality, many of the lessons are relevant for how businesses think about today’s website design.
The Safe Design Option Isn’t Always the Best Option
Patricia’s UX thinking would tell website owners not to be afraid of stepping away from the website design centre gravity in their space.
But…
Those that do decide to take the ‘scenic’ design route and depart from traditional website customer journeys, should always keep functionality and intuitive experiences at the heart of designs.
Ultimately, great website design isn’t beautiful because it looks nice, it’s beautiful because it functions beautifully.
But always keep the customer’s priorities and usability at the heart of your website’s customer journey.
Women of UX: Katie Dill
Katie’s experience spans industrial, service, and digital design, as well as user research and business strategy. Follow her on Medium and you’ll learn from her intimate writing about the challenges she’s dealt with leading UX teams at notable brands.
What’s Katie Most Known For?
Her past work at: Airbnb as Director of Design.
Also, her current work at payment platform, Stripe
Her stage presentations: Balancing Order and Chaos in UX
What Can Katie Teach You About Your Website?
Katie’s work at Airbnb focused strongly on helping build user trust in relationships between strangers, while also helping travellers find the right travel destination.
We all know how well that went, with Airbnb becoming a byword for holiday stays around the world. How did Katie’s work build that trust, and what can other businesses learn?
Consistency in Brand Coherence and User Experience is Key
Part of the reason we’re so used to finding holiday accommodation via Airbnb today (besides their rock solid policies and fraud checks) is thanks to Katie’s work creating brand touch points and customer experiences that conveyed trust through design across all channels.
Brands that emulate Katie’s approach across their website (and other channels) will consistently score higher website metrics and improve customer lifetime value figures.
Thanks for reading.
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