Tag: #karenmcgrane

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UX Mobile Immersion Conference 2014 – Day 3

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.

Creating apps that are ‘usable’ are the equivalent to food being ‘edible’ ” – Jared Spool

Jason Grigsby: When Responsive Design Meets the Real World

  • Jason Grisgby has led us all down a responsive workflow, now he is going to tell us how wrong we all are.
  • “I now use progressive JPEGs, the algorithms have gotten better”
  • “Answer to responsive tables: “What are you using the table for?” Then plan #RWD around that.”
  • “To do responsive web design correctly, you are probably going to need more than responsive web design”

Nate Schutta: Coding Prototypes, Even if You’ve Never Tried

  • “If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many meetings is a prototype worth?”
  • “Friends don’t let friends use IE 6.”
  • “jQuery Mobile is a HTML5-based user interface system designed to make responsive web sites and apps that are accessible on all smartphone, tablet and desktop devices.”

Karen McGrane: Adapting Your content for Mobile

  • “Print is awesome. You put the words on the paper and they stay there!”
  • “Whatever the next big thing is going to be, we are going to have to get our content onto it.”
  • “Thinking about where content will ‘live’ on a ‘web page’ is pretty 1999.” – Lisa Welchman via Karen McGrane
  • “Imitating paper on a computer screen is like tearing the wings off a 737 & using it as a bus on the highway” Ted Nelson via Karen McGrane
  • “We need systems that allow us to create content hierarchy programmatically to better translate into other platforms.”
  • “Truncation is not a content strata…”
  • “We have to treat content management as UX. Content creators often want to crawl back to Word & a simple WYSIWYG.”
  • “The purpose of doing the inventory is not so you have an inventory, it is so you can make decisions about the content.”
  • “The user’s goal is not to look at a table. It is to give them the info they need in order to complete a task.”
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UX Mobile Immersion Conference 2014 – Day 2

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…

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  • “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