I begged the powers-that-be to send me to the UX Mobile Immersion Conference (#UXIM) in Denver, Colorado this year. I started submitting requests and rationale in November 2013. Since I got a passive aggressive “nope,” I’m living vicariously through Twitter right now, following #UXIM. There are some amazingly fun and informative tweets coming from the conference right now, my favorites listed below.
Luke W:
- Hotel Tonight – 4 taps/swipes and 8 seconds to book a room. So easy babies and cats were booking rooms…
- Hotels.com – 40 taps/109sec b/c they couldn’t let go of desktop method…
- “If it’s important, it should be visible.”
- “The evil lord fold, who is a tyrant… Controls the scroll.”
- “The problem isn’t is it visible above the fold, it’s about having it visible when the user needs it.”
- “When the hamburger icon is paired with the word ‘menu’, it’s 7.2% better. When made to look like a button it’s 22.4%” (Facebook)
- “Long pages, in mobile, create a flat hierarchy, heavy download and lack context generally.”
- “We’ve been at it for 30 years designing for personal computers and ~6 years designing for mobile.”
Karen McGrane:
- “You don’t get to decide which device people use to go on the internet. They do.”
- “Responsive design won’t fix your content problem.”
- “It’s not a strategy if you can’t maintain it.”
- “Theres no such thing as how to write for mobile, there’s just good writing.”
- “88% of Americans without a high school diploma don’t have internet access at home.”
Jason Grigsby:
- “Resolution does not define the optimal experience.”
- “We can no longer make assumptions about input based on screen size or form factor…and we probably never should have.”
- “The web never had a fixed canvas.”
- “Any attempt to draw a line around a device class has as much permanence as a literal line in the sand.”
- “Phone, tablet and desktop interfaces are fundamentally different platforms with different usability considerations.”
- Design for a user need not for a specific form factor or input.
Jared Spool:
- We are not creating designers fast enough to meet the demand for user experience. Big companies are building out an army of user experience designers.
- Experience designer (also known as a design unicorn) → information architecture, user research practices, visual design, interaction design, editing and curating, copywriting, design process management, information design.
- Specialist → having more expertise in one area over others (really good designers, having specialization in an area outside of design)
- Generalist→ having equal expertise in most areas
- Compartmentalist → having expertise in only one area (a career-limit decision)
- How to become a design unicorn:
1. Train yourself (absorb everything)
2. Practice your new skills
3. Deconstruct as many designs as you can (learn from others)
4. Seek out feedback (and listen to it)
5. Teach others
ittybittyusability 