Vitaly Friedman believes that blocking loyal readership isn’t a reasonable option for any website. Relying on donations for an “ad-free experience” is unlikely to work either. Publishers should figure out a way to initiate an honest, direct conversation with their readers and find a respectful and profitable way of dealing with the ad revenue gap. Fighting against ad-blocking extensions is a fight against windmills. Ad-blockers have the upper hand, and while advertising will evolve, and it will become less disturbing and annoying, it remains to see if the trust users lost in traditional display advertising can be regained.
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As our artifacts and everything around us become more connected, we run the risk as humans of becoming increasingly disconnected from each other. We have a responsibility as interaction designers and user experience researchers to consider the ways in which we create interfaces for everyday experiences in the home, at school, out and about, and with our trusted advisors such as financial planners, doctors and educators. In this article, Jes Koepfler & Kieran Evans will discuss the concept of shallow interaction design and show how we applied some basic principles of this approach to a learning game related to disaster resilience.
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Pagination is still the most popular way to load new items on a website. However, the usability test sessions found “Load more” buttons combined with lazy-loading to be a superior implementation, resulting in a more seamless user experience. In this article, Christian Holst will present Baymard Institute’s usability research findings for both “Load more” buttons, infinite scrolling and pagination, including for both mobile and desktop. He’ll see how search results need to be implemented differently from category navigation, along with several pitfalls with implementation and examples from leading e-commerce websites.
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We often want information on what users and potential users of our designs think and how they behave in the context of where they will use our design. Intercepts allow you to engage users in a variety of settings to collect data to inform your design. In this article, Victor Yocco shares a method to design and carry out effective intercepts as part of your user research. You can use the steps and information provided in this article in your own process for intercepting users!
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In this article, Tom Green will describe the methods he uses to get from content to responsive wireframe — and how you can, too. There is no big reveal or other excitement with the creation of content reference wireframes. You can practice content wireframing by deconstructing popular websites into their basic building blocks. Start with rough containers of information, add in the real content, and then start chiseling them into more finalized forms. In doing so, you’ll be better able to design around what users really care about: the content.
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There are many options for a designer to consider. Hopefully, after seeing Dr. Moore and Dr. Chen’s research applied to some modern examples, as well as some insights into what other businesses are doing, you will have enough juice to power your social proof. We can learn so much from the subject of reviews, especially now that experience design is emerging and becoming a force of its own. Through its ethos of bettering customer experiences, we can start to deliver experiences that make people smile. These happy users may then tell everyone else about those positive experiences. And when people talk about you or your products, listen carefully and manage those reviews to your advantage — from start to finish.
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Besides creating the best conditions for users to complete their tasks, it’s important to map their motivation to convert their good intentions into tangible outcomes. When UX combines motivation with users’ ability and triggers, it gets easier to persuade them to perform an action. In this article, we’ll explain from a psychological perspective what drives behaviour, and we’ll share three tips on how you can use these insights along with UX best practices to change your users’ behaviour — and count on the formal model Fogg’s to help you structure research and design processes to ensure that users’ needs are considered.
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Too complex and feature-driven products may not provide the users what they need or want. When designers reduce to the minimum the footprint of their product in the user’s life, they provide better actual usage for digital products. They should be focusing on processes, not screens, to get more results with less interactions. In this article, Goran Peuc will dive into a review of remarkable products and services that actually bring easy solutions through simpler processes. It’s up to you to remove complexity for the user and to minimize the footprint of your product in the user’s life. Yes, this requires a lot of work, but that is how you will differentiate your product from the competition’s.
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By focusing almost exclusively on the user insights that each test is designed to yield, prototype testing can be an impressively efficient method for product teams to run experiments. Regardless of which prototype tools you use or whether you test wireframes, clickable mockups or coded prototypes, what’s most important to focus on is what you want to test and what you want to learn from it. In this article, Michelle Chu gives six tips for designers to consider when creating prototypes specifically to generate user testing insight.
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The state of passwords today causes more headache than happiness. Nearly half of Americans have had their account hacked in the last year alone. Are web designers and developers taking enough measures to prevent these problems? Or do we need to rethink passwords? Passphrases are a better alternative because they are more secure and usable. A few websites out there enforce passphrases. No user should feel like they’ve lost their keys or had their house broken into. But switching to passphrases doesn’t require a technical overhaul. It’s as simple as introducing the concept to users and requiring a higher character length.
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