UX IRL Ep. 40: Exploring UX Headlines

Hello! Here are our show notes for episode 40 of UX IRL: Exploring UX Headlines. We hit the highlights in this article, but get the full context by listening to the episode:

We’re bringing back something we used to do during Studio Friday at Citrix — where we’d share UX/tech-related news that was interesting to us. Learning about new things and discussing their meaning from a UX perspective was fun. What have you been reading lately? Talk to us on the zeroheight Slack community! (bit.ly/zheroes-signup), comment below or reply on Twitter @uxinreallife or Instagram @ux.inreallife.

zeroheight’s How We Document Report

Michelle wanted to share this report on the design community’s state of design systems and documentation. She worked on the report (which involved so much number crunching she saw calculations in her sleep!).

The report had over 500 respondents and covers information about roles, demographics, teams, design systems, documentation, tools, and more. While it’s geared more toward the design systems community, she thought it’s still helpful for those not directly involved with design systems. Design systems are foundational to products, and even if you’re not working on them now, you might be doing some work with them or on them in the future.

A few things that Michelle thought were interesting and newsworthy to share include:

• Despite design systems being around for a long time, most respondents are just starting their design systems.
• More people are starting their documentation sooner. Before, people would work in a more waterfall capacity — getting their UI kit for their design tool, then working on getting UI components coded, then eventually getting around to documentation. But documentation is a fast follow.
• Many people are just starting to work on design systems. Even though there are experts in the field, many people, regardless of their career stage, are new to design systems. So if you feel you’ve missed out, you haven’t. Tools and methods are constantly changing, so everyone is always learning somehow, and you can jump in quickly.
• New design systems are adopting design tokens and maybe more quickly than established design systems. But it makes sense because new design systems can be more nimble. Established ones have much to consider when reevaluating structures, tech debt, etc.

Michelle notes that everyone needs some sort of design system, but to what extent depends on the product you work on, your resources, and your teams. The report gives teams in any situation many hints and insights about how you might want to approach things. For example, we learned that most people are creating tokens for 5–7 aspects of their system. So if you’re looking at tokens, the investment in 1–2 might not be worth it, and maybe over seven is too much.

There is a lot of information in the report, but an excellent way to start looking at the data is to see if you and your team are on the right track. It can help guide how you might want to approach things, too. You can use the report to make business decisions or support any business value discussions because there are answers that come from a significant data source.

Let Michelle know if you read the report and leverage it to improve your or your team’s situation. She’d love to share success stories with others. Design system teams face so many challenges that any time we can share and inspire is a win!

If you have any questions about the report, feel free to contact Michelle directly. She’s happy to nerd out about things with you!

UX IRL Takeaway: Design systems are challenging, but you don’t have to go it alone. Use the report to see how you and your team are doing. Also, leverage the data to help build a stronger case for buy-in.

Board game UX: a study on error prevention

Mary Fran loves board games, and we eventually want to do a deeper dive into UX and board games. But she saw an article from UX Collective called “Board game UX: a study on error prevention” by Michael Molen.

This article explores error prevention techniques on board games. Today’s board games are much more complex than the ones from previous generations. There are a lot more rules, mechanics, and layers. So preventing errors is super crucial for a good experience when playing.

Signposting

The article talks about “signposting,” a method used in board games to provide hints to players about complex rules or infrequent actions. When players reach that area, the signpost reminds them of what happens next if they enter a specific scenario. In some ways, it’s a little like progressive disclosure and a great way to reduce cognitive load.

As digital designers, we have it easier than board game designers. We have more flexibility when we surface information to the user, how we do it, and what it looks like. With a physical board game, all the information must be there, and you must balance the aesthetics with helpful information.

Phasing

The author also talks about phases and helping the player know the game’s stage. Mary Fran played games where a player’s move can involve several steps. It’s easy to lose your place within those steps, and sometimes it’s difficult to remember who’s next. Games with good error prevention use cheat sheets to help guide players through a multi-step turn or provide tokens to signal who’s actively playing.

From a digital design perspective, it’s important to remember that users get interrupted frequently. So it is helpful to show them their progress through a form or remind them where they last left off.

Multiple players for data validation

The author mentions playing with others allows everyone to collectively remind each other of game mechanics, rules, and other essential things. This is especially helpful when there are so many rules to remember.

Michelle can relate to this being super helpful. She’s played “assassin” style games where one person is the assassin, and the others must identify who it is. When she had just learned how to play, she ended up being the assassin and had a hard time playing the role because she couldn’t get help from others or shadow how that role worked.

Mary Fran mentions how some games outside of Dungeons and Dragons also have a “Dungeon Master” to help guide the group through the phases and be available to answer players’ questions privately.

For Mary Fran, a big takeaway from this article is how appreciative we (as digital designers) should be of the conveniences the digital space offers. She’d be excited and terrified if she had to design a board game. It’d be a fun challenge to figure out how to work with physical constraints, a lot of information, and managing to make it easy for players.

We love board games, and so do many of our friends. We look forward to discussing UX and board games in a future episode!

UX IRL Takeaway: Play some board games and think of the UX involved. Consider getting inspiration for your work projects from other sources.

We want to go on a road trip!

Sarrah Vesselov, who co-wrote Building Design Systems, also runs a board game cafe in Florida. So we’re talking about going on a road trip to visit, playing many board games, and evaluating their UX. We’ll let you know how it turns out.

UX IRL Takeaway: Maybe you can join us!

We’d love to hear from you!

What’s been some news that’s interested you lately? How does it apply to UX? Let us know, and say “hi” to us here or on LinkedIn. We’d love to hear what’s on your mind and inspiring you lately.