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5 Creative Management Trends to Watch in 2022
Posted:Wed, 26 Jan 2022 14:45:58 +0000
Yesterday’s creativity won’t keep pace with tomorrow’s requirements; businesses need speed and agility without sacrificing creative quality.“The creativity that was needed in the past is not the creativity that is needed today,” according to Matthew Rayback, a creative director at Adobe. He’s not talking about the function of creativity but rather about the process of creative management in a marketing context.
What is needed today? Speed and agility without sacrificing quality.
Why? Because the pace of change has accelerated. As Rex Salisbury, a deal partner for the venture firm a16z noted early in the pandemic, “Businesses of all kinds are experiencing two years’ worth of digitization compressed into months.”
This accelerated digital transformation has put pressure on marketing teams to turn campaigns around faster. In turn, that places pressure on creative teams to generate the requisite creative for those campaigns. Leaders need to sharpen their awareness of the unfolding creative management trends to keep pace. To that end, below are five such trends to watch in 2022.
1. In-House Creative Teams Continue to Grow
Companies have been building in-house creative teams for the better part of a decade. A 2018 study by Forrester Research and the In-House Agency Forum (IHAF) found the number of in-house teams has grown 22% in the last ten years or so. As The Wall Street Journal reported, more than half of advertisers (64%) have shifted their creative organizations to an in-house team.
According to a more recent version of that same study, the in-housing movement didn’t stop throughout the pandemic. It revealed, “80% of respondents said they have brought more marketing assignments in-house since the onset of the pandemic, with 50% saying the increase was directly triggered by the events of the past two years.”
Businesses seem well-satisfied with the results because the urge to in-house is poised to grow beyond creative teams. For example, a recent survey by the customer intelligence company Axciom found about 50% of respondents believe the “in-housing is currently a top marketing objective, and 40% expect it will remain a top priority in the coming years.”
2. Outside Agencies Hired for Specialized Skills
Despite the in-housing trend, there is still opportunity for agencies, consultants, and freelancers, particularly those with specialized skills. Even the consumer-packaged goods giant Proctor & Gamble, a leading example of brands bringing marketing and creative teams in-house, still needs outside service providers.
Indeed, while in-house creative teams produce the lion’s share of creative work, the vast majority (86%) also continue to partner with agencies and freelancers; according to our own research, published in our 2021 Creative Management Report, which was facilitated by Lytho (formerly inMotionNow) and based on a survey of 400 creatives and marketers.
When the survey asked creatives why they hire outside resources, the top reason was access to specialized skills (60%). That was followed in a distant second by a need for increased capacity (44%), help with developing strategy (24%), and, lastly, to get work done faster (20%).
“It is very unusual for an in-house team to have no outside resources that they lean on,” wrote Alex Blum of Blum Consulting Partners, Inc. in a written assessment of the survey results.
He says there are two primary ways to partner with agencies. “First, for overflow capacity. There is always a need for more creative resources, and agencies can offer that flexibility without the cost of maintaining larger teams,” he wrote. “Second, in-house teams can divide areas of ownership with an agency based on the skill sets they have in-house.”
3. The Creative Process Evolves
Marketing today is dominated by an insatiable thirst for fresh content, produced and polished by creative teams. The demand for that content continues to explode.
What does this portend for creative teams? Despite adding headcount, creative requests exceed the creative team’s capacity to produce it – even as lead times shrink. Matthew Rayback, the creative director at Adobe, suggested the creative process must evolve.
He likens creatives to an auto factory, where “creatives used to be the assembly line to make a single car.” However, today, creatives are tasked with creating more cars, each with unique adjustments such as personalization.
“The assembly line we built can’t accommodate that speed or volume,” he says. So the whole factory – the entire creative process – must be overhauled to adapt.
4. Quantitative Measurement Drives Creative Priorities
Current methods for measuring the value of creative teams center on outputs. That is to say, the metrics tracked tend to quantify the number of creative projects in progress, the rounds of review, and the number of projects completed over time.
These metrics are important, but alone they are insufficient. A complementary way to prioritize large volumes of creative requests is focusing on those tasks most likely to move the business needle. The barrier to achieving this is that most creatives aren’t kept informed as to the outcomes of marketing campaigns fueled by their creative efforts. This must change.
With the growing demand for content, the margin of error for applying creative resources to projects that don’t correlate to business results shrinks. Marketing organizations must build a feedback loop that brings quantitative results back to the creative team. In turn, creative teams must learn to use the data to drive their work priorities in collaboration with marketing.
5. Creative Resource Management Becomes Essential
Resource management is both a leadership concept and technology (or a combination of technologies). It’s a means to plan, track, collaborate and measure creative operations, including people, processes, and budgets.
Traditionally, planning and tracking of all things creative and marketing occurred in a spreadsheet. It works well when the future is generally predictable – yet cliché as it may be to say it – we are living in a state of uncertainty.
Like many trends over the last 18-24 months, the global pandemic “forced virtual experiences, disrupted marketing channels and campaigns, and accelerated companies’ transition to digital marketing,” according to Forrester. The research firm calls resource management “essential” because it helps move “planning from static spreadsheets to a dynamic and real-time environment.”
Final Thoughts
Yogi Berra paraphrased an old Danish proverb when he said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Even so, the pandemic has accelerated trends that were already underway, and these five trends are good examples. More than just watching them, creative and marketing leaders should take steps now to get ahead of them.
Featured image via Pexels.
SourceThe post 5 Creative Management Trends to Watch in 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
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20 Best New Websites, January 2022
Posted:Mon, 24 Jan 2022 14:45:57 +0000
So here we are, in a brand spanking new year—time for looking forward with fresh ideas and renewed hope for the year ahead. We are kicking off 2022 with a mixed bag and, we hope, something for everyone.Whether you’re looking for inspiration to update your site or a fresh approach to work for a new client or want to spend a little while browsing around some corners of the internet you might not usually, welcome to the first collection of the year. Enjoy!
Justice Reskill
Justice Reskill offers a learning platform and support for people who have been through the justice system. Information is presented clearly in a positive, uplifting tone, emphasized by a bright color scheme and friendly type.
TBD Post
TBD Post’s site is fuss-free, clean, and pleasant to navigate. Work is well presented, in an organized way, with just the right amount of supplementary information.
Speedy
Speedy is an online business bank, and this is a pretty standard, slick fin-tech site for the most part. The added extra is that the five versions of the site–with the same content in each–have different color accents based on the flag of the specific country listed.
Nuka
This site for Nuka eternal stationery is a beautifully simple single page. The use of handwritten type in places adds an intimacy while emphasizing the nature of the products.
Omono
This site for online business management app Omono presents a lot of information clearly, and with a calmness projected by the use of blues and greys and subtle animation.
Pienso
A combination of bold type, a slightly tweaked red, green, and blue color scheme, and on-scroll animations makes this site for Pienso pop.
Maison Margiela
Maison Margiela fully embraces the digital alternative to a live catwalk with this blend of single video and edited clips.
Marie O’Shepherd
This portfolio site for book designer and art director Marie O’Shepherd takes a minimal approach and allows the work to take center stage.
Angry Ventures
Angry Ventures add personality and humor to their site to draw the user in and entertain, while their actual portfolio is only available on request.
Chapter One
Chapter One’s site has light and dark theme options and some engaging animated graphics.
Vesti il Futuro
Vesti il Futuro for Mani Tese uses comic book-style interactive graphics to raise awareness of issues surrounding the environment and fast fashion.
Gazelle No.1
Some scroll-activated video enlivens this single-page site for Gazelle’s No.1 model.
TROA
This site for creative agency Troa is an excellent example of the effectiveness of a monochrome color scheme, and there are some pleasing transitions too.
BDCC
BDCC’s site has a bold, slightly jumbled feel that works really well. The falling lozenge menu items are a nice feature.
Mekanism
This is a great example of a stylish website for an agency portraying itself as well-established and super polished.
Redbrick
Redbrick’s site has a youthful, vibrant feel with colors that change to match the product branding.
Accounting Box
This site for Accounting Box makes good use of split-screen swapping from a vertical split on desktop to a horizontal split on mobile. The animations are pleasing too.
François-Joseph Graf
The design for François-Joseph Graf’s site does the right thing by getting out of the way to avoid competing with the rather stunning products on show.
Monsta Cats
Monsta Cats is a site dedicated to community focussed NFTs. The site is suitably anarchic and fun to browse.
Bien Fondé
And finally, some customizable good wishes for the year ahead from digital agency Bien Fondé.
Source
The post 20 Best New Websites, January 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
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Popular Design News of the Week: January 17, 2022 – January 23, 2022
Posted:Sun, 23 Jan 2022 14:45:06 +0000
Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site.The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s a handy compilation of the top curated stories from the last seven days. Enjoy!
Visa’s New Logo has a Clever Hidden Meaning
The 60 Hottest Front-end Tools of 2021
Faker.js is Now a Community Controlled Project
10 Design Principles Every Designer Should Know
Web Design How To: Back to the Basics in 2022
20 CSS Tickets
10 HTML CSS Skeleton Loading
UI & UX Micro-Tips: Volume Twelve
Why are Hyperlinks Blue
The Intersection of NFTs and Web Design
Source
The post Popular Design News of the Week: January 17, 2022 – January 23, 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
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How to Get Started with the MVP Workflow
Posted:Thu, 20 Jan 2022 14:45:40 +0000
Few things are more important to a web designer or developer’s chances of success than having the proper workflow. The term “workflow” applies to the set of standardized steps you or your company uses to create, test, and deploy designs or products.Over the years, as development processes have evolved, so too have the workflows experts use to bring their ideas to life. The MVP workflow, or “Minimum Viable Product” strategy, is one of the most popular options in 2022.
Here’s what you need to know about the MVP workflow and how it differs from some of the other standard workflows developers may be used to.
What is the Designer/Developer Workflow?
As mentioned above, the designer/developer workflow is a series of steps used by experts in the web design world to achieve a creative goal. The process includes the steps taken to start a project, evolve it, and finish it. Since software is never developed without tools, the technology you’ll access throughout the development process is also considered in most workflows.
An example of a standard development workflow might look like this:
- Scaffolding: This is the stage wherein you start your new web project, creating a git repo, downloading libraries, preparing file structures, and completing other tasks to make sure your product is ready to roll out into the world.
- Develop: This is where you’ll spend most of your time writing code for your application or website. The development process may include various specific tools and support from other staff members.
- Test: In this stage, you examine the functionality of your code to determine if everything works as it should. If there are errors or issues, you can go back and develop fixes to the potential problems. Your code may go through the development/test process several times before you can move to the next stage.
- Integrate: This is when you merge the code for your part of the development process with the rest of the team. You can also integrate your code into websites and existing apps at this point. If you’re working solo, you can skip this process.
- Optimize: You prepare all your assets for use on a production server during the optimization stage. Files are generally optimized to ensure your visitors can view your site easily or access your applications with ease.
- Deploy: In the deployment stage, developers push code and assets up into the server and allow for changes to be viewed by the public.
What is MVP? (Minimum Viable Product)
Now you know what a developer workflow looks like, you can begin to assess the concept of the “MVP” workflow. The term “MVP” stands for Minimum Viable Product.
The idea of “Minimum Viable Product” applies to a range of industries, from education to healthcare and government entities. This term comes from lean start-up practices and focuses heavily on the value of learning and changing during the development process.
When you adapt your workflow to focus on an MVP, you’re essentially adjusting your focus to a point where you can create a stripped-back version of something new – like an app or a website. The MVP is built just with the core features (the minimum), so you can bring the idea to market and test it as quickly as possible.
For instance, if your goal were to create an attractive new website for a client, an MVP would focus on implementing the crucial initial tools, and nothing else. While you may create checkout pages, product pages, and other aspects of the site, you wouldn’t populate it with content or start experimenting with bonus widgets and apps.
So, how does this offer a better alternative to the standard workflow?
Simply put, an MVP workflow is quick, agile, and easy. The idea is you can validate key concepts with speed, fail quickly, and learn just as fast. Rather than having to build an entire app and almost start over from scratch every time you find an error, you can race through the iteration and development process.
MVP workflows are also highly appealing to start-ups and entrepreneurs hoping to validate ideas without a massive amount of upfront investment.
Examples of MVP Workflows
Still confused? The easiest way to understand how an MVP workflow works is to look at an example.
Let’s start with a conceptual example. Say you were building a voice transcription service for businesses. The desired features of this product might include the ability to download transcription, translate them into different languages, and integrate them into AI analytics tools.
However, using the MVP approach, you wouldn’t try to accomplish all of your goals with your software at once. Instead, you’d focus on something simple first – like the ability to download the transcripts. Once you confirm you can do that, you can start a new workflow for the next most important feature for the app.
One excellent example of a company with an MVP approach is Airbnb. The entrepreneurs behind this unicorn company, Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky, didn’t have a lot of cash to build a business with at first. They had to use their own apartment to validate the idea of creating a website where people could share their available “space” in a home or apartment with the public.
To begin, Airbnb only created a very basic website, published photos of their property, and waited to see the results. After discovering people were genuinely interested in renting another person’s home, the company was able to begin experimenting with new ideas to make a site where people could list their properties for travelers.
The Pros and Cons of an MVP Workflow
There are a lot of benefits to the MVP workflow – particularly when it comes to gaining agility and developing new products quickly. However, there are downsides too.
Pros
- With an MVP approach, you can maximize your learning opportunities and create a more innovative, successful product at speed. You get to test every step of the way.
- You release iterations or versions of your product quickly, which means you discover problems faster, allowing you to quickly solve these issues.
- You build on the benefits of customer fans, “evangelists” in the marketplace who are keen to help your product or service grow.
- An MVP gives you more freedom to try out unique ideas and “risks” you might otherwise avoid with a traditional workflow.
- Because you’re focusing on creating only the “minimum viable product,” you don’t have to spend a fortune on initially setting up your workflows.
Cons
- Agile work with an MVP flow requires a lot of effort in collecting constant feedback from customers and releasing iterations.
- You’ll need to dedicate yourself to releasing many small and frequent product releases on a tight schedule.
- You might have to revise the functionality of your product or app a number of times.
Creating Your MVP Workflow
If you believe an MVP workflow might be effective for you, the first step is defining your “Minimum Viable Product.” The app, website, or product you design needs to align with your team’s strategic goals, so think about what your company is trying to achieve at this moment – before you get started. If you have limited resources, or specific purposes, like improving your reputation as a reliable company, now might not be the right time to develop a new MVP.
Ask what purpose your minimum viable product will serve and what kind of market you’re going to be targeting. You’ll need to know your target customer to help you test the quality and performance of each iteration of your MVP. Once you know what your ideal “product” is, ask yourself what the most important features will be.
You can base these decisions on things like:
- User research
- Competitive analysis
- Feedback from your audience
For example, if you’re producing an AI chatbot that helps companies to sort through customer inquiries, the most important “initial feature” may be the ability to integrate that bot into existing websites and apps owned by the company.
MVP Approach Guidelines
Once you have your hierarchy of most valuable features for your minimum viable product, you can translate this into an action plan for development. Remember, although you’re focusing on the “minimum” in development, your product still needs to be “viable.” In other words, it still needs to allow your customer to achieve a specific goal.
- Review your features: Reviewing your prioritized product requirements and the minimum level of functionality you can deliver with each of these “features.” You need to ensure you’re still providing value to your customer with anything you produce.
- Build your solution: Build your minimum set of features for the product or service. Remember to build only what is required. You can use methodologies like the agile or waterfall method to help guide your team during this process.
- Validate your solution: Release your offering into the market, and ensure you have tools in place to gather feedback from early adopters. Use beta programs, focus groups, and market interviews to understand how your solution works for your customers and where you can improve on your current offer.
- Release new iterations: Based on what you learn from your target audience, release improvements to your product quickly. Use your validation strategies to collect information from your audience with each release.
- Review again: Go back to your product requirements and desired features and start the process over again, this time focusing on the next most valuable functionality. Over time, the value of your minimum viable product will increase.
Using the MVP Workflow Approach
While the MVP workflow approach might not be the right solution for every development or design team, it can work very effectively in the right circumstances. The MVP approach doesn’t minimize the importance of understanding market problems and delivering value. Instead, the focus is on delivering quick value that gradually increases and evolves over time.
As many developers and designers know, the most useful form of product validation in most cases is real-world validation. When your customers have had an opportunity to use a product on a day-to-day basis, they can provide much more effective feedback.
Just keep in mind that committing to the MVP approach also means changing your workflow and committing to iterations – otherwise, other features may never be completed. You’ll need to be willing to work quickly and in small bursts without getting too heavily caught up in one feature or functionality.
Featured image via Pexels.
SourceThe post How to Get Started with the MVP Workflow first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
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10 Top WordPress Themes for 2022
Posted:Tue, 18 Jan 2022 16:45:34 +0000
If you’re looking for a WordPress theme for your 2022 projects, it never hurts to see what the experts consider to be the best of the bunch. That’s not to say that experts don’t have their favorites. They often do, and we are no different.We’ve tried, successfully, we believe, to avoid any biases we may have in compiling what we believe to be the 10 top WordPress themes going into 2022.
Working with a WordPress theme has the advantage of giving you a great starting point. It makes it much easier to create an attractive website that will charm any visitors who stop by and convince them to linger awhile.
Another advantage of using a theme can be its cost-effectiveness. Most of the popular WordPress themes are reasonably priced, they save you time, and they can save you money as well.
The main problem you’re apt to encounter is finding the right one since many of them are out there. You could spend hours and hours making comparisons among a host of candidates that appear to be reliable and easily customizable. Or you could select from among the following 10 top WordPress themes, all of which are guaranteed to give you your money’s worth and more.
1. BeTheme – The Biggest Multipurpose WordPress Theme with 650+ Pre-Built Websites
BeTheme justifiably lays claim to being the biggest WordPress and WooCommerce theme of all for several reasons.
- BeTheme’s 40+ core features give its users a complete tool kit to work with that includes 650+ pre-built websites and tons of design elements, aids, and options.
- A 240,000+ customer base also contributes to making this the biggest WordPress theme of them all.
It’s not just about size, of course. Performance is all-important, and BeTheme has it in spades thanks to:
- The Muffin Live Builder lets users edit live content visually and create, save, and restore design elements, blocks, and sections.
- The WooCommerce Builder helps users design engaging shop and single product layouts and is packed with customer-centric features and options.
- Full Elementor compatibility, with 30+ unique design elements and 120+ dedicated pre-built websites.
- Assurance that every website is 100% responsive.
- The Muffin Builder: this old standby is more intuitive than any other page builder on the market.
- Regular Updates, plus BeTheme purchasers also receive free lifetime updates.
Click on the banner. There’s much, much more to see.
2. Total WordPress Theme
Total is aptly named because of the tools it gives its users; tools that include a premium page builder, demo and template libraries, an assortment of design and layout options, and cool navigation features.
- The premium page builder is an extended version of the popular WPBakery frontend drag and drop page builder. Slider Revolution, another premium design aide, also comes with the package.
- Design options include more than 500 live customizer options and 100+ customizable builder blocks, page builder block animation capabilities, custom backgrounds, and custom title backgrounds.
- Layout options range from boxed and full-width and dynamic layouts to page and post designs and one-page site layouts.
- Header styles, local scroll menus, and mobile menu styles contribute to website navigation capabilities.
Total is easy to set up and work with, plus it is 100% responsive. Click on the banner to find out more.
3. WoodMart
WoodMart is a premium WordPress theme that has been designed from the ground up to enable its users to create superlative WooCommerce online stores. WoodMart doesn’t require the use of multiple plugins as the most important tools, and features users simply must have come right out of the box.
They include:
- For starters, a supply of 70+ demo layouts, 370 premade sections, plus an extensive template library for Elementor and WP Bakery.
- A powerful Theme Settings Panel with a graphics interface to make changes quickly and easily.
- AJAX techniques that guarantee the super-fast loading that is so important with multi-product pages and galleries.
WoodMart-built websites are search engine friendly, multilanguage ready, 100% responsive, and RTL and retina ready, and GDPR compliant.
Click on the banner to see what your WooCommerce store could look like.
4. TheGem – Creative Multi-Purpose & WooCommerce WordPress Theme
TheGem is the best-selling theme on ThemeForest, which isn’t surprising since its multiplicity of features has led to it being called the Swiss Army Knife of WordPress themes.
Key features include –
- 400+ beautiful websites and templates for any purpose or niche.
- TheGem Blocks with its 300+ pre-designed section templates to speed up your workflow – a genuine game-changer.
- Elementor and WPBakery page builders.
- An outstanding collection of WooCommerce templates for any shop type.
5. Uncode – Creative & WooCommerce WordPress Theme
Uncode is a pixel-perfect theme packed with dozens of advanced and unique features designed to produce a pixel-perfect website.
These features include:
- An enhanced Page Builder with a juiced-up Frontend editor
- A WooCommerce Custom Builder
- A wireframes plugin for importing 550+ professionally designed section templates
Uncode has sold more than 85,000 copies to date. It is the ideal WordPress theme for building an impressive blog, portfolio, eCommerce, and magazine sites.
6. Rey Theme for WooCommerce
eCommerce is said to rest on four pillars – filtering, search, navigation, and presentation. This WooCommerce-oriented WordPress theme fully addresses each one. Rey lets you experience design, innovation, and performance in ways you could only dream of before.
There’s:
- The powerful and popular Elementor page builder with built-in features supplemented with Rey’s extra spices.
- Ajax navigation, including infinite loading.
Rey is multilanguage-ready, obviously responsive, SEO friendly, developer-friendly, and performance-oriented.
7. Avada Theme
One easy way to know you’ve picked the right theme is to select Avada, the #1 best-selling theme of all time, a popular theme that is loved by 450,000+ happy users.
- Avada’s Fusion Theme Options, Fusion Page Options, and Fusion Builder will give you more than enough flexibility, while its 40+ free eye-candy demos provide the inspiration.
- Avada also gives you easy access to some of the most popular premium plugins.
And that’s just the beginning.
8. Impeka – Creative Multipurpose WordPress Theme
This simply impeccable WordPress theme is filled with potential for the advanced user and, at the same time, easy for a beginner to use. Using Impeka simply involves:
- Selecting Elementor, Gutenberg, or an enhanced WPBakery as your page builder.
- Using WooCommerce to build your online shop.
- Sifting through a multitude of features that include the Mega Menu and Footer and Popup builders.
Your website will be super-attractive, lightning-fast, fully responsive, and SEO perfected.
9. Litho – Multipurpose Elementor WordPress Theme
This popular multipurpose WordPress theme is built with Elementor, the world’s #1-page builder.
- Litho can be used to build websites of any type and for any business niche.
- It is excellent for building portfolio, blog, and eCommerce websites.
- There are 37+ home pages, 200+ creative elements, and 300+ templates to get you started and assist you along the way.
Litho-built websites are fast loading and deliver healthy SEO results.
10. XStore – Best Premium WordPress WooCommerce Theme for eCommerce
You can start with one of XStore’s more than 110 amazing pre-built shops, or start from scratch and let Elementor or WPBakery and more than 550 pre-built blocks help you along the way, together with:
- $559 worth of premium plugins.
- A Live Ajax theme option.
- A header builder and a single product page builder.
- A built-in WooCommerce email builder.
You can get this complete and highly customizable WooCommerce theme for an amazing $39.
One of the benefits of using WordPress is the number of great WordPress themes you can work with. Whatever your niche, your target audience, or your skill level may be, there’s a premium WordPress theme out there that looks and feels as though it was made, especially with you in mind.
If you’re planning to create a fresh and beautiful website for 2022, or you want to completely rebuild an existing one, or simply make some design changes, this roundup of the most popular and the best WordPress themes in the market is meant for you. And we really mean it!
This is a sponsored post.
SourceThe post 10 Top WordPress Themes for 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
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The Case Against UX Testing
Posted:Mon, 17 Jan 2022 14:45:33 +0000
Picture a dark office, blinds drawn. Picture a UX designer smoking a cigar. See the light filtered through the smoke whipped to fog by a spinning ceiling fan. Watch as the UX designer sits at a desk and considers the website.The UX designer has devised a series of tests to determine if a green button is better than a red button. One of them involves tipping a tortoise onto its back. He looks the website over carefully and says, “Describe in single words, only the good things that come to mind about your mother.”
The website pauses, sweating under pressure, then replies, “Let me tell you about my mother…”
BLAM! The website pulls the trigger of an unseen gun, and the UX designer collapses, leaving the project to be rebuilt from scratch in Material by Harrison Ford, with overuse of Post-its delegated to Edward James Olmos.
Who Does UX Testing Actually Serve?
In the past’s bleak dystopian future (1982’s Blade Runner was set in 2019) no one benefitted from asking the wrong questions. And little has changed.
Designing any test to verify UX is fraught with as many complications as administering the test. Questions are skewed by bias, conscious or otherwise, and competing agendas. Even with something as apparently simple as a split test, the potential for distortion is immense.
When planned by a designer, a UX test offers little benefit to a client; the benefit is to the designer, who can then say their ideas are validated (or not).
Imagine hiring a developer to code a website, only to discover that the developer didn’t know CSS and expected to be paid to learn it before completing the work. You would hire someone else because that developer isn’t qualified.
From a client’s perspective, a UX designer should know, through experience, whether a green button is better than a red button. Designing an elaborate test to split-test the button color serves little purpose other than indemnifying the designer against mistakes.
The ROI of UX Testing
It’s widely accepted that there is substantial ROI (Return On Investment) from UX testing. We’ve all heard apocryphal stories about sites that split-tested their checkout and improved retention by 5%.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that without user testing, that site could have improved its checkout retention by 4.9% simply by hiring a competent, experienced designer. But what about the remaining 0.1%? Well, for most sites, 0.1% represents very little profit. And the cost of recovering it via testing far exceeds the benefits.
When a company the size of Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, or Google split tests a website, it can afford to allocate $25k for user testing because it stands to gain 0.1%, and that represents far more than $25k. To meet the same 0.1% improvement, a small business has to design and run the same tests, incurring the same costs. But in the case of a small business, $25k could eat up all of its profits.
UX testing almost always works. But it is only profitable at scale.
If a good UI designer with a grounding in UX can improve checkout retention by 4.9%, tripling the project budget for just 0.1% more is a tough sell. Bluntly, that $25k is better spent on advertising.
What UX Designers Can Learn From Psychiatry
We all have the tendency to think we’re unique. It’s a survival trait attributed to our prehistoric brain. That belief in uniqueness is particularly strong in highly competitive people. We all think our site, our side-project, our approach are original. And we’re all wrong.
When a psychiatrist sits down with a patient, they have two immediate goals: categorize that patient into an established diagnosis, and assess the severity of the condition. It may be that the patient is depressed or anxious or even suffering from a potentially more debilitating condition like schizophrenia. What the psychiatrist is not trying to do, is define a new illness.
Occasionally — perhaps once per decade — a genuinely unusual patient will present themselves, and a new form of illness is considered. New treatments are found and tested. These treatments are rarely developed on behalf of individual patients; doctors work with grants from governments, medical schools, or the pharmaceutical industry and publish their results.
The vast majority of websites face similar problems. They deal with similar demographics, work within a similar culture, and deal with similar technology. As such, they can be categorized in the same manner a psychiatrist categorizes patients.
The key to delivering successful UX solutions is not UX testing in individual cases, but rather UX research, examining similar projects, and cribbing their solutions. If you categorize a project accurately, you’ll find a solution readily available.
Replacing User Testing With UX Best Practices
Your client doesn’t need to pay for UX testing to benefit from it. Enterprise sites, government sites, and even personal projects will test UX patterns. Sites like Shopify or Stripe will user-test their checkout processes at scale and enable companies to benefit from the results by adopting their platforms.
If you’re currently testing designs for small business, one of two things is true: either you’re wasting your client’s money investigating a problem someone else has already solved, or you’re designing something so original that it has no precedent (and you probably shouldn’t be).
Designers should be opinionated. Designers should know UX best practices and how they apply to a range of scenarios. Designers should be capable of making an educated guess. Designers should be self-validating.
Once or twice in your career, you may find a legitimate need to test something. However, the vast majority of the time, the correct answer is to tip the tortoise back onto its feet and choose whichever color button has the higher contrast.
Featured image: Still of Brion James in Blade Runner. Copyright Warner Bros. Entertainment
SourceThe post The Case Against UX Testing first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
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Popular Design News of the Week: January 10, 2022 – January 16, 2022
Posted:Sun, 16 Jan 2022 14:45:46 +0000
Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site.The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s a handy compilation of the top curated stories from the last seven days. Enjoy!
5 UX Tricks You Must Know in 2022
Clay.css
This Might Just Be the Worst Logo We’ve Ever Seen
14 CSS Reveal Animations
Wanda Design System
10 CSS Skeleton Loadings
The 9 Best Coding Games to Build your Programming Skills
PHP in 2022
My First Impressions of Web3
Minimator
Source
The post Popular Design News of the Week: January 10, 2022 – January 16, 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
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Quiz: Are You Prepped For Meeting Design Clients?
Posted:Fri, 14 Jan 2022 14:45:09 +0000
Walking into an initial meeting with a new client can be nerve-wracking. If you’re a freelancer, your income could depend on the outcome; if you’re part of an agency, then your colleagues’ incomes could rely on it too.More often than not, you’re meeting someone successful enough at negotiating to own a company. The time you spent learning code, or a design system, they spent brokering deals.
So how do you know that you’re ready for the meeting? What questions should you ask? What answers should you provide? Check you’re prepared for meetings by bookmarking this week’s quiz and testing yourself in advance.
We’ll get started with an easy one about anatomy…
Featured image via Pexels.
SourceThe post Quiz: Are You Prepped For Meeting Design Clients? first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
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How I Saved My Design Agency & Tripled My Profits
Posted:Wed, 12 Jan 2022 14:45:33 +0000
There was a point at which I was very close to losing my business, and I didn’t realize how close.I wasn’t always a good planner, and I didn’t plan to start an agency. One day I was a freelance graphic designer, my job list grew, I hired some help, and suddenly I was managing a team.
There isn’t a guidebook for new business owners, you have to learn on the job, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. We expanded rapidly from two to four people, then seven, and suddenly we hit 16 employees in just 18 months. It was pretty scary and felt like driving on the freeway without brakes. A client shared a story that they were turning over $20m, and the owner was only taking home $30k. It felt like where I was headed. At that point, I could easily have lost it all.
I took a hard look at the numbers and realized that we were barely breaking even, let alone profitable. That needed to change to stabilize the business and regain control of my operations. The change wasn’t easy, and there were some hard lessons, but 11 years later, with a strong local team and 40+ awards for our work, I’m thankful for that wake-up call.
There are other people in my position struggling with the same issues I faced, so I’d like to share the four key things I did that helped turn things around and move us from surviving to thriving.
1. Don’t Diversify Your Services
I wanted to do it all, and as the business owner, it was hard to turn down a new client. Our instincts are to help, and declining opportunities feels wrong. In our industry, digital agencies, especially web design agencies, try to cover all bases from marketing, SEO, adwords, design, photography, and coding. Everyone wants to be a one-stop shop for clients. I used to be that person: I would wash your car and shine your shoes if I could.
Do not give in to that fear.
When you’re a generalist, you spread yourself too thin. I know: a decade ago, we were offering dozens of services outside of the web design realm: packaging, branding, copywriting, sticker design, SEO, hosting, analytics, you name it, we provided it. We used over seven different CMS for our projects. If a client wanted it, we tried to offer it, no matter how unsuitable it was for us.
On the surface, we fulfilled our projects, and our clients were always thrilled with the results. But below the surface, our operations were dissolving into a mess. Our eyes weren’t on the prize; we were always chasing after each little job for cash. It took too much time to learn new skills. When I looked at our timesheets and deducted the unbillable hours, our projects would hardly break even.
What hurt us even further is that with diversifying, we had to manage multiple workflows, software, and systems: Sketch, Illustrator, Photoshop, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Google Analytics, Final Cut Pro, etc. It was expensive with minimal return. It was like an Olympic swimmer signing up for a swimming-diving-ice-skating club when their passion is swimming.
So I took a step back. I boiled it down to what we enjoyed and excelled at. Ask yourself: for what do you want to be known? For us, it was psychology-driven, conversion-focused web design. This was the service our team had the most skills in and collectively could give the best value to our clients. Once I’d figured that out, it was easy to eliminate those other services and specialize.
You can niche down by service or industry and be the specialist in what you offer.
2. Know Your Numbers
The first red flag that my business was in trouble was when I said to my accountant, “I feel like my business is doing great.” He replied, “I don’t care how you feel. The facts are in the numbers. Show me your accounts, and I’ll tell you if you’re actually doing well.” As an intuition-driven guy, it was a real eye-opener; I’d only ever relied on gut instinct.
At one point, we had a ton of work coming in, so I hired a few juniors to help the rest of the team. The team grew to 16, and the vibes in the studio were great, but the numbers weren’t. Instead of increasing efficiency, projects took 40 hours longer than they should have done. Why? The seniors and mid-level designers were taking time out to train the juniors! Reassessing the team showed me I needed to hire experienced staff, so projects ran on time and budget. It was a hard decision but a necessary one to keep us afloat.
The crucial numbers for any design agency are your timesheets, where bottlenecks lie, how much you’re spending, how long a project takes; these determine your actual margins. Setting up quantitative software like Toggl, Gantt, and Asana were a game-changer for us. They gave our project management real purpose and potential. Knowing the average hours our primary type of project took made it easy to give clients realistic deadlines, anticipate the need for fresh hiring, and know when our plates were full. You do not want to bite off more than you can chew.
3. Become The Best Fit For Your Target Market
You can’t please everyone, and frankly, you shouldn’t be trying to. One type of bait won’t attract every kind of fish. First, identify the type of fish you want to catch, the pond where this type of fish lives, and finally, bait your hook with something that type of fish can’t resist.
Your sales team should be able to identify them instantly, and all you then need to do is streamline your team, process, and systems towards being the best fit for them.
4. Double Down On Marketing That Works
There are many different marketing avenues you can go down, but go down too many, and it becomes a tangled web of confused messaging.
Remember, just because your competitors are doing it does not mean it’s the most effective approach for your target market.
There are really only inbound and outbound types of strategies, and it’s a great idea to list out the pros and cons (and the ROI of each) concerning your target market. Or, you can approach marketing based on your existing skillset — for example, if you detest being in front of a camera and don’t want to do video marketing, then just don’t do it.
Identify what works for you, and then be consistent. Consistency is the secret to a successful marketing strategy.
SourceThe post How I Saved My Design Agency & Tripled My Profits first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
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3 Essential Design Trends, January 2022
Posted:Mon, 10 Jan 2022 14:45:31 +0000
Happy New Year, fabulous new website design trends!This month’s design trends are a collection of the somewhat unexpected – from NFT website design to large text to illustrations; you won’t see a single photo or video here. Here’s what’s trending in design this month.
NFT Websites
This website design trend has more to do with the greater trends in digital marketplaces and commerce but has value in the design space as well. NFT websites are popping up everywhere.
Marketplaces for non-fungible tokens use modern design effects to draw users in and help them make purchases and view available images. If you haven’t delved into the world of NFTs, they are data units – often in the form of gifs – stored on a blockchain digital ledger. You can buy, sell, and trade these digital nuggets on various marketplaces.
The designs of NFTs could be explained as a trend of their own. Here, we’re focusing on the look and feel of the websites surrounding them. While some designs are relatively primitive, the best marketplaces have a full e-commerce feel with easy-to-use interfaces and a modern design.
Each of these three NFT marketplaces does it a little differently.
Styllar puts a focus on NFT avatars with a minimal aesthetic that gives plenty of room to individual NFTs. Sit on the website too long, though, and hundreds of options begin to cover the screen. Each visual element has a small text element to match that explains each image. It feels like a modern e-commerce experience that instills trust with users because of clean visual patterns. The site itself is just a gateway to a more traditional marketplace, but the calls to action are large, clear, and easy to follow.
OpenSea treats the NFT marketplace more like an art gallery with card-style buttons to look at different elements and images. Everything about the website design is tailored for the mobile user and quick browsing with large areas to click in the card format and easy-to-read headers that help you find your way through the NFT space, whether you want to buy, create, or sell. The site also does one more thing that’s not as common with e-commerce – it explains how to get started in this new digital territory with plenty of resources.
Rarible has an almost social media feel with lots of small blocks showing different NFTs. Digestible content in a grid-based design helps you navigate from images to rankings to what’s trending in NFTs. This site design is set up for high interaction and engagement, also featuring card-style elements and the ability to favorite items before bidding.
The key commonality with NFT website designs is that they are made for mobile users. These sites look good on desktops, but they are highly focused on a mobile, instant gratification user.
Text-Based Hero Headers
A trend in website design from 2021 is bleeding into 2022 with a lot of popularity: Hero headers that are mostly text. These designs have background texture and color, but for the most part, they don’t have a lot of other visuals.
These designs often rely on powerful language or messaging to help get user engagement. A secondary theme is the use of bright colors to help add focus and attention to the typography.
Font choices seem to be fairly neutral, with a lot of thicker sans serifs for the main headline and something a little lighter for secondary text options.
WeTransfer uses a smaller text block with multiple lines to create weight. The off-center placement draws the eye and is interesting even with the neutral background. Stacking elements create a nice focal area that encourages reading.
Halborn Blockchain Security goes with a less traditional font option and flips the color to the text to enhance the visual display. This design also uses an off-center, asymmetrical approach to create focus on the text element. The dark counterweight on the screen is an excellent guide to draw you back to the main hero headline.
FWD goes with giant oversized text elements to create a strong visual focus with this design. Other than the faint animation of the arrows next to “Here’s what they said,” everything is still and static. The color and blocky depth of the background help draw the eye through the text and to clickable elements so that you know what to do next.
Intricate Illustrations
Another trending design element is the use of intricate illustrations on homepages. These highly detailed images can tell a visual story, help add meaning to messaging, or serve as a remarkable visual element when you don’t have a photo or video.
The great thing about this trend is that the only limitation is your imagination.
Once you find someone to create the illustration (if you can’t do it yourself), the world is open to interpretation.
We are seeing three major themes within this trend, as showcased in the examples.
Multi-layer illustrations with hints of animation, such as the one from Highvibe Network. This illustration used lots of colors, layers, unexpected elements within outlines, and a little animation to pull it all together. The effect is rather stunning and provides a lot of interest for the user.
Realistic, painting-style illustrations, such as the one from Healthline, bring the content to life without real people or images. This technique is especially nice for industries where you may want to anonymize people in images. (Perfect for a healthcare website design because you don’t know if the illustrations are of real people or not.)
Detailed geo shapes and lines, such as the design from Radio Meuh Circus Festival. With great color and lines that draw the eye, this design can keep you looking and finding new depth for a long time. Color also helps draw you into the striking imagery.
Conclusion
What’s nice about all these design trends is that they have flexible elements that you can use and replicate across industries and projects. The common factor is that they lack traditional dominant imagery, which works exceptionally well.
These trends are likely a result of the worldwide pandemic as well. With less social contact, creating without conducting photo or video shoots is an ideal situation. Good luck trying some of these trending design elements on your own.
SourceThe post 3 Essential Design Trends, January 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.
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