September 12, 2023 Smashing Newsletter: Issue #422
This newsletter issue was sent out to 209,314 subscribers on Tuesday, September 12, 2023.
Editorial
SmashingConf Antwerp is coming — it’s just a matter of weeks now! And as we are getting ready for our very first SmashingConf on design & UX on Oct 9–11, we’ve put together a few useful UX gems for product and interface designers, along with a free UX community event.
- SmashingConf Antwerp , our shiny new conference on design & UX (Oct 9–12),
- Friendly team tickets and workshops,
- Smashing Meets Magical UX, free online community event this Thursday, Sep 14
And in this newsletter issue, we’ll take a closer look at a few useful UX gems, techniques and resources for product designers and interface designers. There are some fantastic freebies waiting for you, too: UX books and inclusive stock photos that celebrate diversity. We hope you find them useful.
Can’t wait to see you soon!
— Vitaly (on LinkedIn)
1. Loading And Progress Indicators UX
Whether it’s loading a webpage, processing a transaction, or downloading content — often there’s no way around waiting. Of course, the primary focus should always be improving performance and responsiveness, but sometimes that’s not enough. To help you enhance the waiting experience, Taras Bakusevych shares valuable tips and best practices for loading and progress indicators.
In his post, Taras explores how loading and progress indicators can enhance usability, reduce user frustration, and create a positive perception of your page’s or system’s responsiveness. He dives deeper into the psychology of waiting and takes a closer look at the different types and variations of loaders. You’ll also learn how to select the right loader based on the anticipated waiting time and what else to keep in mind to make your users’ waiting experience seamless and engaging. (cm)
2. Rules Of Productive Brainstorming
Some people love brainstorming; for others, it’s just a fancy name for a usual discussion or, in the worst case, one that gets out of control. One thing is for sure, though: If done right, brainstorming can become a source of innovation. So how to get it right? Slava Shestopalov presents three methods for organizing productive brainstorming sessions.
Six Thinking Hats, Walt Disney’s Creative Strategy, and SCAMPER are the three methods that Slava explores in detail, with step-by-step guides, tips, tricks, examples of slides, and preparation checklists. Whether your subject is a process, service, product, feature, or something you’ve been postponing for a long time or couldn’t fulfill for unknown reasons, one of the three techniques will certainly help you and your team see things from different perspectives and develop new ideas. (cm)
3. Design System In 90 Days
When you’re starting to work on a design system, you do it with the intent to build something that lasts, a system that teams love to use and that saves them precious time in their day-to-day work. However, many attempts to build a design system end up in great libraries that don’t get used as much as their creators had hoped. Dan Mall’s Figma template “Design System in 90 Days” is here to change that.
The template takes you and your team from zero to a design system that is up and running and adopted in 90 days or less. It includes 26 prompts to help you identify important key points and, of course, to keep on track. Proven and tested, Dan used the template successfully with many enterprise clients. The template is also part of the “Design System in 90 Days” program at Design System University. (cm)
4. Free Information Architecture Books
Information architecture creates structure and meaning, helping your users find the answers to their questions. If you’re new to information architecture or want to brush up your skills, we came across two fantastic eBooks that the authors kindly offer for free.
Donna Spencer’s A Practical Guide to Information Architecture is one of them. It dives deep into information architecture and navigation design for internal and public projects and redesigns. The PDF is available for free download. A fantastic read to help you feel more confident about your process and decisions.
Abby Covert’s free HTML book How to Make Sense of Any Mess outlines a step-by-step process for making sense of messes made of information. With the help of practical frameworks, tools, and IA resources, you’ll learn how to break down and organize information.
If you’re looking for more, or in case you already know Donna’s and Abby’s books, Vitaly compiled some wonderful IA books to consider — they aren’t free, though. Happy reading! (cm)
5. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences
That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.
As always, here’s a quick overview:
- Accessible Components from Design to Development Dev
with Carie Fisher. Sep 14–22 - Typography Masterclass UX
with Elliot Jay Stocks. Oct 16–30 - Customer-Centric Product Strategy Workshop UX
with Debbie Levitt. Oct 18–26 - Design KPIs Masterclass UX
with Vitaly Friedman. Oct 31 – Nov 8 - Accessibility for Designers UX
with Stéphanie Walter. Nov 6–15 - Smart Interface Design Patterns (10h-video course) UX
10h-video + Live UX Training with Vitaly Friedman - Jump to all workshops →
6. The Monster List Of UX Books
Which UX books should you read? There are a lot of lists with recommended UX reads out there, but there is none that is as complete as The Monster List of UX Books. Created by Chris Oliver, you could even call it the master list of lists, as Chris created it by compiling every list of recommended UX books he could find and tallying the number of recommendations for each book.
You can sort and filter the books by the number of lists they are featured in, user ratings, publication date, author, and more. The list is continually updated, and you can help make it even better by rating or suggesting books or by submitting feedback. A great resource you might want to keep close. (cm)
7. How To Organize UX Research
The best UX research doesn’t serve anyone if it gathers dust in PDF reports or slide decks. Daniel Pidcock’s Atomic UX Research framework presents a slightly different approach to UX research, one that is open and accessible to the entire team.
To guide and inform evidence-based design decisions, Atomic UX Research breaks knowledge down into its constituent parts: experiments, facts, insights, and recommendations. Each of them is a building block on the road to larger discoveries, making it easier to discover patterns and synthesize insights in a reliable way.
Another interesting approach to structuring and applying UX insights comes from Tudor Teisanu. He recommends gathering data from existing products, internal knowledge, and previous research to kick-start your design process. The idea is to write down six summaries for each collection of screens to create a scannable analysis of existing solutions and make it easier to spot patterns. Two wonderful resources that will help you get more out of UX research. (cm)
8. Inclusive Stock Photos And Illustrations
Let’s celebrate diversity! Disabled And Here is a growing library of photos and illustrations that celebrate disabled Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) with different diagnoses, body types, sexual orientation, and gender identities. The series is disability-led and puts an end to the homogenous and one-dimensional portrayal of disability. Published under a Creative Commons attribution license, you can use and adapt the images for free with appropriate credit.
Looking for more? Then be sure to also check out the collection of inclusive stock photo resources that Vitaly compiled. There are some incredible photos in there, perfect for presentations, mock-ups, reports, and anything in between. An easy way to prompt and encourage more diverse and inclusive conversations and design decisions. (cm)
9. News From The Smashing Library
Promoting best practices and providing you with practical tips to master your daily coding and design challenges has always been at the core of everything we do at Smashing.
In the past few years, we were very lucky to have worked together with some talented, caring people from the web community to publish their wealth of experience as printed books. Have you checked them out already?
- Understanding Privacy by Heather Burns
- Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces by Steven Hoober
- Image Optimization by Addy Osmani
- Jump to all books →
That’s All, Folks!
Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!
This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).
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