Figma tips, Can’t Unsee, common accessibility issues to fix, the truth about UX design, refactoring UI, and more!
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[ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS]
Goodreads UX: indispensable, but unsatisfying
This article made me chuckle at how coincidental it lined up with my Goodreads usage habits. During 2020, I was using it to track my COVID-19 accomplished readings which was at an all-time high for the number of books read in the year due to the lack of leaving the house. I apparently only read 4 books in 2021 and now in 2022, I’m also at 4 books read.
I’ve never really thought too much about Goodreads and its UX because I just used it as a to-do list to record and categorize the books that I wanted to read. The queue of books on my lists were most likely books that I saw at a bookstore or online with glowing reviews that I wanted to read next. I didn’t write many reviews and I was not meticulous about recording when I read a book.
For those reasons alone, I didn’t suffer the pain that other users might have when it came to the lackluster interface. That being said, I’ve created a Notion page to record my books so perhaps I subconsciously was aware that I didn’t enjoy using Goodreads.
[FIGMA TIPS]
11 Steps to keep Figma Clean
- Figma variants
- Thumbnails / Cover Photos
- Auto-layout
- Process description and screen flow
- Proper naming for the artboards
- Name your pages!
- UX Specification for developers
- Link between projects and pages
- Notes on team
- Divide your projects
- Create a pitch deck
[SOMETHING FUN]
Can’t Unsee
A small game where you select the most correct design. Let us know what your scores are in a reply or comment!
[UX QUOTE]
“Love blinds us. Don’t love anything; an idea, a tool, a technique, a client, or a colleague too much.”
[ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS]
Common accessibility issues that you can fix today
Developers and designers hold the responsibility of making products accessible. Between designing things to have high contrast and adding alternative text to images, we’re already tackling some of the basics of accessibility. But of course, there’s more to the problem and it really does take a team effort to implement these best practices and check to make sure that they’re done right.
Links and buttons should have unique names, labels should be included in form fields, and language should be specified at the top of the HTML document. Want to learn more about accessibility? Read UXB’s Accessibility is Beautiful article.
[WATCH THIS]
The TRUTH about UX design
If you are here for spicy, controversial topics in UX, mimi michi gives her perspective on some touchy topics in under 5 minutes.
[BOOK RECO]
Refactoring UI
Funny enough this book is actually primarily targeted to frontend developers but designers can learn a lot from this book as well. Especially, if you find yourself as the sole designer on a project and are seeking ways to improve your UI designs.
Colors, hierarchy, and layout are all things covered in this book and you’ll find yourself getting some good tips on making your design consistent. This is an excellent primer on how to make simple design decisions but keep in mind that it’s not targeted at designers.
[DESIGN CASE STUDY SPOTLIGHT]
goodboi: a dog-walking app case study
Designer: Tiffany Yeh
Case Study: goodboi aims to improve the dog walker search experience by connecting dog owners to walkers who are friends of a friend
Why this case study is awesome:
- Explaining how to solve the problem: there were 2 clear objectives — connecting dog owners to trusted walkers based on shared Facebook connections and making the search experience more seamless
- Comparative research and other analyses: this product is obviously similar to Rover and Wag but distinguishing features were clearly written to convey how goodboi provides a different and maybe better solution
- Plenty of visuals to look at: there are many clean and polished artifacts throughout this case study whether it is final screens, wireframe flows, or user flows.
This was a thorough case study to look at because Tiffany sets the table with data points and quotes. Using that information, she presents her primary and secondary objectives for the project before diving into further competitive analysis and fleshing out user as well as wireframe flows. She includes great mid-fi wireframes before transforming them into hi-fi screens for us to see the progress. At the end of the case study, you are able to visit the prototype in Figma. Satisfying!
