UX News

Hover Effect in UI Design: Tips & Tricks

Hover effect is a powerful tool in UI design that adds interactivity and feedback to user actions. Similar to a loading spinner, hover offers users a sense of control, reinforcing a sense of direct manipulation with the UI.This article reviews when and how to use hover effect.When to useHover effect is primarily used on desktop:To highlight interactive elementsHover effect can clearly indicate that a certain UI element is interactive. It can be used for buttons, links and cards.https://medium.co

5 Reasons every design leader should be at Leading Design London

As summer draws to a close and there’s that ‘back to school’ feeling in the air, I’ve been thinking about what it is that makes Leading Design London 2024 (6–7 November) the must-attend conference for design leaders. We are all on a journey of self-discovery and self-betterment, and with each year of leading a design team, new challenges and opportunities emerge. These are the reasons why I believe our attendees return to Leading Desi

Hot Potato Process As Replacement for Design Handoff

Design handoff is by far the most stressful part of the design process. In many organizations, design handoff causes a lot of friction and back and forth. All too often, it happens because the design team thinks about design handoff as a one-directional exchange (“We’ve just sent them our design, all they need to do is code it”). But in reality, there can be a lot of factors that impact design, from tech feasibility to business requirements.But there is a solution to this problem — The Hot Potat

Picture Perfect: How to Use Visuals to Elevate Your UX/UI Design Portfolio Case Studies

Visuals are one of the most essential and exciting parts of your UX/UI design case study—they’re fun to create and boost engagement. Your hard work and ingenious designs will take center stage and show off your capabilities as a designer. But your final designs are not the only visuals that get their opportunity in the spotlight. Anything visual you create throughout the design process will enrich your portfolio and give more profound insights into your design skills. Find out what visuals you c

Loading Spinner UI Design Tips and Tricks

Design by Laura M.When people interact with a digital system, they expect the system to acknowledge their commands. Well-designed system feedback is one of the things that make interaction comfortable. While there are many ways to acknowledge user input, loading animation is one of the most common. A loading spinner is by far the most common type of loading animation.This article discusses when to use and how to make the most of this simple animation.Loading spinner example. Image by Nick Babich

Design systems should do less

Why design systems should cover less scope, not moreIllustration by Alexandra Francis for this articleI’ve been part of several design systems teams, working on some pretty cool projects like Fluent at Microsoft, Workbench at Gusto, and Pantry at Albertsons. One thing that consistently comes up is scope creep. Design systems often get treated like a catch-all—after all, they are just a bunch of components, right?I recently wrote about governance models in design systems. But, this article dives

Design System Contribution Models

Image by Dmitry KozhemyakinContribution models allow product teams to add new features to existing designs based on their product requirements without breaking the quality of existing designs.This article reviews 3 popular contribution models:1. Nord and its hybrid modelNordhealth is a medical company that aims to redefine digital healthcare. It uses the hybrid model of contribution where the central design system team is responsible for the overall direction. This hybrid model helps the design

Mastering qualitative user research: The gateway to exceptional usability

IntroductionIn today’s fast-paced digital world, creating a product that not only functions well but also delights its users is a significant challenge. Achieving this requires a deep understanding of user experiences, motivations, and emotions. Qualitative user research is a powerful approach for uncovering these deeper insights, focusing on the “why” and “how” behind user behaviours.Unlike quantitative research, which deals with numerical data and statistics, qualitative research delves into n

Your guide to becoming a content designer

Tips, tricks and insights. Stories from content designers who’ve made the leapPhoto by Thought Catalog on UnsplashOur meet-ups are always buzzing with wonderful conversations. Recently, one topic has been coming up more often: transitioning into content design.It’s clear that many of us are curious about making this shift — and for good reason. After all, who wouldn’t want to become a content designer? Content design offers a blend of creativity and strategy, allowing us to make a real impact.Wh

You can’t systematize creativity

Efficiency and creativity run on different operating systems and require different software.Growing up in the ’90s, I always thought of creativity as something exclusive to artists and those working in advertising. If you were a lawyer, doctor, or accountant, creativity just wasn’t part of your world.That was until I met a developer who challenged that belief. We were discussing creativity, and I still remember feeling attacked when he said, “Everyone can be creative. How could this code monkey

Elevate team’s UX maturity level

Where it startedAs a product-led spirit startup, we spent a significant amount of time and effort creating a user experience that would delight our users. Despite our obsession, I quickly realized that we were missing key mindsets and methodologies in place.The design was being iterated through many crazy cycles and frustrating meetings which took so much effort. However, it was purely based on stakeholder feedback rather than actual user understanding. This led to numerous avoidable mistakes th

Furniture & Home Decor: New UX Benchmark with 5,000+ Performance Scores and 5,400+ Best Practice Examples

(Note: Unfortunately, e-mail and RSS don’t support advanced layouts and features. If the graphics in this article look strange, you may want to read the article in your web browser.) At Baymard we’ve just released a new UX benchmark of 10 furniture and home decor sites. This follows from our large-scale user testing research on furniture and home decor sites, and adds to our existing e-commerce UX benchmark. 10 Furniture & Home Decor UX Case Studies The 10 sites have been manu

4 Tips to Amplify the Potential of Your UX/UI Design Portfolio

You may never have a more important design project than your UX/UI design portfolio. So, how do you ensure you make the most of all your hard work and determination? Your UX portfolio is like any other iterative design process. As you evolve as a designer, it must evolve along with you. Look after your portfolio—it will become your greatest advocate and cheerleader. But it doesn’t stop there. Your portfolio extends beyond its role as a job-hunting tool—it can build your recognition and reach as

Voice and Tone in Product Design

Choosing the tone of voice for a digital product’s copy is crucial to creating a consistent and engaging user experience. Product teams come in all shapes and forms, but they often don’t have a dedicated UX writer. As a result, writing the UI texts might happen on the fly, and the final result does not always support users best.Our product is an extension of our brand. We use visual design to shape how our brand looks like, and voice & tone to shape how it sounds.VoiceVoice is the consistent

NASA’s Warning for Banks: Is Your Banking UX Ready for the Digital Space?

What do bank customers have in common with two NASA astronauts who were recently stuck in space for 8 months instead of 8 days? At first glance, not much. But if we dig deeper, the issue goes beyond a malfunction in Boeing’s Starliner capsule.Story by Alex Kreger and the team of UXDANASA made a tough call on August 24, 2024: it was too risky to bring two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, back from the International Space Station (ISS) in Boeing’s troubled new capsule. Instead, the ast

Kill Cognitive Overload before it kills your UX

Let’s start with a quick interactive question, shall we?Below are 2 images, can you tell which image is harder to consume and is putting more stress on your eyes/brain?Obviously option 2 is killing the eyes and brain.Interesting trend is, most of the companies are actually creeping towards becoming Option 2 because of business demands and no proper attention on how to design UX for presenting large number of options to their users.Pushing everything on homepage leads to monstrous Cognitive Load

10 Best Practices for Designing with AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) transforms web design by simplifying complex activities, enhancing user interface, and improving overall…Continue reading on UX Planet »

Pie Chart UI Design Tips & Tricks

Pie chart animation. Image by Sarah JohnsonPie chart is a circular graphic that is divided into slices to illustrate numerical proportions. Pie charts work best when the data points are simple, and comparisons between different percentages are dramatic (i.e., you are trying to compare parts of a whole — x% out of 100%).Here are essential recommendations for designing effective pie charts.Before creating a pie chartDesigners tend to use pie charts because they’re familiar with this chart type, bu

Smart Properties: Harnessing AI in Real Estate

Written by Mary Moore, copywriter at ShakuroIn real estate, where every decision can make or break a deal, the pressure to stay ahead of the curve is daunting. The data amount for analysis is enormous, the legal requirements are strict, and users are picky — in these conditions, a simple real estate app is no contender on the market.However, with cutting-edge technology like AI, you have a chance to strengthen your realtor services and win a place under the sun. Tedious task automation, personal

Bar Chart UI Design Tips & Tricks

Image by Isaac KuulaBar chart is a popular chart type that presents categorical data with rectangular bars with heights or lengths proportional to the values that they represent. It is typically used to show categorical or discrete data for side-by-side comparison or ranking.Below are key practical recommendations for designing bar charts.Anatomy & layout grid designBar chart anatomy. Image by Uber.Bar chart layout design. Image by Dell.ColorUse a single color when you display a single data