The founding principles of the World Wide Web have been warped by years of over-reliance on advertising. Fixing that imbalance and moving toward a more ethical, open web means relaying the foundations, with sites showing other ways are possible. Incorporate sustainability into your designs. Communicate what you do and how you survive and what people can do to help. Progress does not happen on its own!
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Progressive web applications are proven to raise user engagement and keep the costs down effectively. Building a modern PWA requires more than just the core setup to keep up with the user’s expectations. Today, Gert Svaiko will take a first-hand look at adding contemporary characteristics to PWAs, from functioning offline to user-friendly permission requests.
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When you’re working on a new project, what is more crucial than choosing the right features to develop? However, the exercise often turns into a spectacle of team voting. As a result, decisions change many times down the road. In thi article, Slava Shestopalov will talk about the pitfalls of popular prioritization techniques and approaches to reducing bias and disagreement.
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Software and apps often solve very complex problems for businesses and consumers in the way of sales, marketing, finances, and so on. But offering a product that solves your users’ problems isn’t enough. If the UI is just as complex as the original problem, user churn is going to be high. Today, we’re going to look at some tips for designing a simple UI regardless of your solution’s complexity.
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Modern websites aren’t inseparable from screens any more. Between phone assistants, home speakers, and screen readers, more and more people are using the web without even looking at it. Websites need to evolve in kind. In the article, Frederickk O’Brien will try to break down what that means for websites going forward, what designers can do about it, and why this might finally be a leap forward to accessibility. More than two thirds of the web is inaccessible to those with visual impairments, after all. It’s time to make websites easy to talk to.
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Research is an essential part of creating good UX. We are often in roles where we interact with our users in order to collect data to inform our UX. We need to ensure our UX research is compliant with ethical standards of research conducted with humans. To do this, we need to have an awareness of potential ethical issues in research, training on how to conduct ethical research, and a systematic review of our research protocols to avoid potential ethical pitfalls.
In this article, Victor Yocco discusses some areas of ethical consideration for UX practitioners when conducting UX research, and explores potential solutions to preventing research from venturing into unethical territory.
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Do you like building relationships and exploring creative options? At Smashing, we are looking for a team member who’ll take good care of advertising and sponsorships across the range of everything we do at Smashing — from the magazine to our conferences. Interested? We’d love you to join us.
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Even though the development of a data importer is a complex matter, you don’t want your users’ experience with it to be just as complex or complicated. The second they experience any friction or fault in data onboarding, the chances of them bailing from the software will skyrocket. So, in this post, we’re going to focus on how best to present your data importer to users.
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You can provide access to people with visual impairments without involving them in the product development lifecycle, by formally adopting web accessibility standards… but does that mean the end product is usable? In this article, Uri Paz explains how a site complying with accessibility guidelines may still present usability issues when testing with real users. Find out how weaving accessibility best practices with usability testing, can help as many people as possible to fully use your site.
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Robin Christopherson MBE, Head of Digital Inclusion at UK tech experts AbilityNet, has been hosting a series of monthly webinars with senior accessibility guests from global brands such as Microsoft and ATOS, and UK giants like Barclays and Sainsbury’s. They’re talking COVID, the challenges and opportunities the crisis brings, agile adjustments, digital inclusion and much, much more. Want food for thought from global experts in inclusion? Key takeaways to help plan ahead? Read on.
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