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Evaluating how effectively you meet users' core needs
What's inside: Top tasks, inductive research, service blueprint hacking, PM templates, UI iOS design, contrast checker, AI Figma plugins, and more.
Newsletter • August 11, 2023 • 5 min read
Hey folks,
Here are the top 10 things I found worth sharing and your UX tip of the week:
UX tip of the week
It's always a good time to establish or refine your key UX/Design KPIs.
Start with top tasks. Determine the top tasks that your experience supports. Combine UX research, product/service quant data, and internal stakeholder input to define them.
Prioritize key measures on key tasks. Select the most important KPIs for the key top tasks to your experience (e.g. top tasks completion rates, completion times, error frequency, error recovery rate, etc.).
Do your measurements help you understand if you’re delivering value against the users’ primary needs?
How will you know when your users win?
Capture signal. Install and establish baseline measurement. Quantitative + qualitative is best. Remeasure these bi-annually to track the delta of change.
Prioritize improvements. Focus on influencing leaders to prioritize improving the biggest measured issues from a product and/or service perspective.
Top 10 things worth sharing this week
UX can use the following quote from The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky to advocate for key strategic initiatives: "Playing the long game requires moves that don’t map to traditional measures of productivity."
Sam Talbot shared an important UX research framing concept — inductive vs. deductive research. Jared Spool recently shared this while talking about behavioral UX metrics: "Turn your inferences into hypothesis, then go observe and see if you're right."
Service blueprints have some shortcomings and need to be evolved. Cameron Tonkinwise shared useful thoughts on hacking service blueprints.
Pawel Huryn compiled 70 useful PM templates for different processes for making decisions, many of which contrast and compliment UX processes nicely.
Anastasia Prokhorova shared a comprehensive guide for creating UI designs for iOS apps. Explore mobile grids, no-code custom transitions (lottiefiles, protopie, flow), and get started by working out your ideas in a mobile sketchbook.
Last week I shared one of my favorite UX ‘laws’ by Jon Yablonski. You can skim them all here, learn about applying them in practice, and get them as a handy card deck.
4 must-have Figma color management plugins: palette generator, contrast checker, colorblind simulator, and dark mode magic.
SVPG created a helpful list of existing product visions, strategy, and PRFAQs.
Helena Seo talked about strengthening a design leadership bench underneath yourself as your first team in an untold narrative as a Head of Design.
Have you test driven AI-powered Figma plugins? Try these: Genius, UI-AI, Magician, Automator, Ando, WireGen, Resonote, and Autoname.
Thanks for reading!
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Sincerely,
Gerren