Design to Redesign—Weekly Links
Every week, we compile a list of 5 great articles — one for every work day of the week. Want to suggest a post for this series? Let us know!
Let’s talk about redesigns. Most design work is actually redesign work. It’s changing and improving existing products. Sometimes that’s just adding another item to a menu, other times it’s a full-on revamp of an entire product.
Monday: Angry Birds
Unfortunately, change is often hard for our users. Twitter recently experienced this. When they rolled out their latest design refresh, they were quickly swarmed with critical tweets. In this article, Maria Panagiotidi digs into some of the reasons why people might dislike a redesign, regardless of the design itself.
Tuesday: Lowering the (Address) Bar
But of course, not all redesigns are created equal. Another prominent and recent example is Apple’s redesign of Safari, which is currently in beta. This isn’t just a facelift. Apple changed some of the fundamental interaction paradigms of their browser. When attempting such a feat, it is important to know why you are doing a redesign and what you are optimizing for, as Jonas Downey points out in this witty analysis.
Wednesday: Looking for Freedom
In a way, a redesign makes users feel like they have lost some freedom, which — surprise! — is not a very nice feeling. The negative reaction to this perceived loss of freedom is called “reactance” and it can be triggered in many situations beyond redesigns. Cognitive Lode takes a deeper look at this phenomenon and ways to avoid it in this guide.
Thursday: All Aboard!
One way to get users on board with your changes is, well, onboarding. In the past decade, designing for onboarding has become a distinct specialization within UX. What sets it apart (among other things) is that it depends even more heavily on storytelling and writing than some other parts of our products. Ewa Jozefkowicz shares some valuable best practices in this article.
Friday: Wisdom of the Ancients
Finally let’s end the week by looking back at some of the basics. Jakob Nielsen first published his “Heuristics for User Interface Design” in 1994 and unlike many other pieces of UX advice, they have aged very, very well. While knowing these rules won’t guarantee that a design is great, it will likely prevent it from being terrible.
That’s it for this week! I hope you enjoy this collection. If you’re looking for more inspiration and knowledge without having to read any articles, I hope you will join me at PUSH UX this October! The last early bird tickets are on sale now.
