Post pobrano z: 5 tips to get started with online visual collaboration

In 2019, convincing my clients to collaborate online on visual elements was quite hard. In 2020, for obvious reasons known by everyone, it’s much easier to explain to customers what are the advantages of online collaboration. They are still in time to move to a remote environment in a very fast way, adopt methodologies and start using all sorts of software like Miro’s online whiteboard or any of the video call tools, for better distance work.

1. Ensure you get the right setup

To work remotely and collaborate with people who are not in the same room as yourself, you should ensure that no technical issues will get in the way. Test your audio and video setup before getting started, you don’t want to lose precious meeting time and get everyone stressed. Don’t underestimate the importance of having good quality camera and microphone for better interactions. Obviously, having a good connection to the Internet is also crucial, don’t be greedy on the wrong things.

2. Prepare your meetings well

This tip goes for all meetings, but it is specially right for online visual collaboration. For an online visual meeting, you should ensure that everything you want to say is planned out, so you can make the points you wanted to make.

Ever been in a meeting where you felt that nothing of importance was said and that you wasted your time? If it happened, it was because nobody was ready for the working session. Don’t worry though, being ready for working together doesn’t mean that you need to prepare for hours, making a checklist in fifteen minutes is often enough to be ready. You can also dig into preparation principles for a good starting point.

3. Choose the right tools

In terms of tools, it is mostly the software that is worth mentioning. For visual collaboration online, Miro is the perfect companion. Better than your average whiteboard, Miro is an infinite canvas that helps you ideate, strategize, get organized, and work with your team.

You can kick off a project even faster by selecting one of Miro’s many pre-built templates. From business model canvases and user story maps, to fishbone diagrams, mind maps and more, templates provide an easy way to get your team ideating and collaborating.

When you need to meet with your team, use Zoom (which can be integrated with the mentioned whiteboard): after months of confinement, the company has improved its service, becoming the undisputed video call software -the easiest to use and the most secure, and the one that offers more integrations and personalization.

4. Ask the right questions

To collect feedback on your work, there are questions that will help you collect much better answers than others. Explain your design decisions to try to answer questions before they come, and be very specific on the type of feedback you need. For example, asking “What do you think of this logo design?”, you should write “I chose this font for this reason and that color for that reason, do you think it’s a good choice?”.

5. Follow-up

When the meeting is over, don’t wait for the next meeting to act upon what has been suggested and do everything you can immediately, your future self will thank you later. If you do this, not only you are already mentally involved in this task, which will make you more productive, but your colleagues or clients will also be ready and knowing what you are talking about.

Conclusion

The world is ready for online meeting and visual communication through the Internet now, so make the best of it. Use the tips given in this article wisely and you will become a more productive designer.

Post pobrano z: COVID-19 and UX: What’s the “New Normal” for the User Experience?

Think for a moment about how coronavirus has changed your life. You may have gone from commuting to an office to working at home. Instead of going to the gym, you exercise at home or not at all. You went from socializing in large groups to solely interacting with a small bubble of friends. You have replaced trips to the mall with online purchases. Fancy dinners out have been replaced with whole food delivery.

Individuals who visit your website are experiencing the same changes. As a result, their behaviors and preferences have shifted. This has changed what they expect when they visit your website. What was considered a good user experience at the start of 2020 may now seem out of touch and insufficient. According to the Toptal report, 88 percent of users are more likely not to return to a website after a bad user experience. Some research even showed that a well-designed UX interface could yield conversion rates up to 400 percent.

Now, anyone considering a job as a UX designer will need to value research as well as a proper education. The needs of users are shifting rapidly. Each group of users is unique and has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic differently. Designers must be cognizant of:

• Behavioral shifts
• Changes in user groups
• Psychological shifts
• Regional effects
• Temporal effects

Let’s look at some of these with the goal of understanding how they are creating the new normal in user experience.

How Behavioral Shifts Changed User Experience

Visitors to your website are not engaged in the same activities that they used to engage in. Or the frequency with which they perform certain activities has increased or diminished. Their motivation has also changed.

For example, your users may desire to use your product but feel afraid of catching the virus or spreading the virus. There are several industries that are affected by this. For example, the travel industry has seen a major downturn. This is true even in countries where people may fly around freely.

The economic consequences of COVID-19 are also changing the buying habits of people. Some people may have felt freer to charge purchases on their credit card because they were relatively confident that they were going to have a consistent paycheck. Now, they may avoid making purchases because they are worried that their future income is not guaranteed.

UX designers need to design with empathy for their customers’ worries, desires, and needs in mind. They need to dig past the superficial to uncover genuine concerns, needs, and behaviors when interacting with a website.

Designers need to think outside of the box and make websites that offer something that users will benefit from and come back to again and again. For example, people might not be booking flights yet. However, a website that also services as an easy portal to see travel restrictions across the world or that offers an up-to-date map of pandemic outbreaks and the ability to book flights might be a service that users come back to and eventually will opt to use for their flights.

Psychological Shifts and User Experience

Most people understand the immediate dangers caused by COVID-19. The psychological toll the pandemic is having has not yet been fully understood or quantified.

However, the pandemic has led to a lot of uncertainty. People want to feel secure. User design, whether it be of websites or of apps, can help generate less anxiety. Even if it’s not their primary function, digital apps can improve a person’s well-being and productivity. They can add a sense of normality to people’s lives, giving them something that they feel they can rely on.

UX designers must focus on building products that people want to use and want to come back to. They should also build products with their user’s mental health, especially considering the pandemic, in mind. Designers have the privilege and responsibility of creating products that society is going to use for the next years to come. They also have the benefit of years of studying user’s behavior.

This means that designers should be mindful of what they create. They should prioritize the impact of their design over its intent. They should consider the psychological makeup of their users and the long-term impact their designs can have.

It might sound like a stretch to say that websites and apps impact a person’s psychological well-being. However, most people have experienced the anxiety and stress that comes from not being able to check social media. They have experienced the elation that comes from getting positive feedback on something they post. Most know what it feels like to be bombarded with negative responses to a comment or post. This underscores the power of the impact of user design on the psyche of society.

Responding to Changes in User Groups

Not everyone has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic equally. Some groups are higher risk, especially individuals who have certain pre-existing conditions or who are of a certain age group. Some professions are at higher risk, especially those in the medical field. And other groups may feel that they have little to no risk, especially young healthy adults.

The user experience for each one of these groups is going to be different. Each group may respond to the same information differently. For example, a photograph of a hotel being disinfected by an employee in a hazmat suit might cause an older individual or someone with serious concern about COVID-19 to feel at ease and want to stay at the hotel.

Conversely, the same photograph might cause a younger user with little concern about COVID-19 to shy away from the hotel because the image forces them to think about something that is not forefront in their mind. Politics and culture also play a factor. Certain governments have taken COVID-19 seriously, so their citizens have responded in kind. Others have downplayed the risk of the virus, creating a mirrored response in their citizens. Designers will need to take these regional differences into consideration.

Research is key in providing your users the best experience possible. COVID-19 has presented several challenges for businesses in all sectors. It is also providing opportunities for user experience teams to make adjustments to the websites, apps, and products they work on to benefit the lives of their users in ways that were not previously possible.

Post pobrano z: COVID-19 and UX: What’s the “New Normal” for the User Experience?

Think for a moment about how coronavirus has changed your life. You may have gone from commuting to an office to working at home. Instead of going to the gym, you exercise at home or not at all. You went from socializing in large groups to solely interacting with a small bubble of friends. You have replaced trips to the mall with online purchases. Fancy dinners out have been replaced with whole food delivery.

Individuals who visit your website are experiencing the same changes. As a result, their behaviors and preferences have shifted. This has changed what they expect when they visit your website. What was considered a good user experience at the start of 2020 may now seem out of touch and insufficient. According to the Toptal report, 88 percent of users are more likely not to return to a website after a bad user experience. Some research even showed that a well-designed UX interface could yield conversion rates up to 400 percent.

Now, anyone considering a job as a UX designer will need to value research as well as a proper education. The needs of users are shifting rapidly. Each group of users is unique and has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic differently. Designers must be cognizant of:

• Behavioral shifts
• Changes in user groups
• Psychological shifts
• Regional effects
• Temporal effects

Let’s look at some of these with the goal of understanding how they are creating the new normal in user experience.

How Behavioral Shifts Changed User Experience

Visitors to your website are not engaged in the same activities that they used to engage in. Or the frequency with which they perform certain activities has increased or diminished. Their motivation has also changed.

For example, your users may desire to use your product but feel afraid of catching the virus or spreading the virus. There are several industries that are affected by this. For example, the travel industry has seen a major downturn. This is true even in countries where people may fly around freely.

The economic consequences of COVID-19 are also changing the buying habits of people. Some people may have felt freer to charge purchases on their credit card because they were relatively confident that they were going to have a consistent paycheck. Now, they may avoid making purchases because they are worried that their future income is not guaranteed.

UX designers need to design with empathy for their customers’ worries, desires, and needs in mind. They need to dig past the superficial to uncover genuine concerns, needs, and behaviors when interacting with a website.

Designers need to think outside of the box and make websites that offer something that users will benefit from and come back to again and again. For example, people might not be booking flights yet. However, a website that also services as an easy portal to see travel restrictions across the world or that offers an up-to-date map of pandemic outbreaks and the ability to book flights might be a service that users come back to and eventually will opt to use for their flights.

Psychological Shifts and User Experience

Most people understand the immediate dangers caused by COVID-19. The psychological toll the pandemic is having has not yet been fully understood or quantified.

However, the pandemic has led to a lot of uncertainty. People want to feel secure. User design, whether it be of websites or of apps, can help generate less anxiety. Even if it’s not their primary function, digital apps can improve a person’s well-being and productivity. They can add a sense of normality to people’s lives, giving them something that they feel they can rely on.

UX designers must focus on building products that people want to use and want to come back to. They should also build products with their user’s mental health, especially considering the pandemic, in mind. Designers have the privilege and responsibility of creating products that society is going to use for the next years to come. They also have the benefit of years of studying user’s behavior.

This means that designers should be mindful of what they create. They should prioritize the impact of their design over its intent. They should consider the psychological makeup of their users and the long-term impact their designs can have.

It might sound like a stretch to say that websites and apps impact a person’s psychological well-being. However, most people have experienced the anxiety and stress that comes from not being able to check social media. They have experienced the elation that comes from getting positive feedback on something they post. Most know what it feels like to be bombarded with negative responses to a comment or post. This underscores the power of the impact of user design on the psyche of society.

Responding to Changes in User Groups

Not everyone has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic equally. Some groups are higher risk, especially individuals who have certain pre-existing conditions or who are of a certain age group. Some professions are at higher risk, especially those in the medical field. And other groups may feel that they have little to no risk, especially young healthy adults.

The user experience for each one of these groups is going to be different. Each group may respond to the same information differently. For example, a photograph of a hotel being disinfected by an employee in a hazmat suit might cause an older individual or someone with serious concern about COVID-19 to feel at ease and want to stay at the hotel.

Conversely, the same photograph might cause a younger user with little concern about COVID-19 to shy away from the hotel because the image forces them to think about something that is not forefront in their mind. Politics and culture also play a factor. Certain governments have taken COVID-19 seriously, so their citizens have responded in kind. Others have downplayed the risk of the virus, creating a mirrored response in their citizens. Designers will need to take these regional differences into consideration.

Research is key in providing your users the best experience possible. COVID-19 has presented several challenges for businesses in all sectors. It is also providing opportunities for user experience teams to make adjustments to the websites, apps, and products they work on to benefit the lives of their users in ways that were not previously possible.

Post pobrano z: Victoria Rose Richards Creates Stunning Embroidered Landscapes of England

Art can come in many forms, even the most traditional ones. Embroidery is not typically associated in our minds with high-level creativity. If it was needed, Victoria Rose Richards gives us a creative glimpse of the British fields seen from the sky using embroidery as an art form.

A few of her amazing artworks are displayed in this post, more can be seen on her Instagram account, along with her other work.

Post pobrano z: Victoria Rose Richards Creates Stunning Embroidered Landscapes of England

Art can come in many forms, even the most traditional ones. Embroidery is not typically associated in our minds with high-level creativity. If it was needed, Victoria Rose Richards gives us a creative glimpse of the British fields seen from the sky using embroidery as an art form.

A few of her amazing artworks are displayed in this post, more can be seen on her Instagram account, along with her other work.

Post pobrano z: Volta Pasta Makes Creative Use of Typography

It’s not so often that you find some truly well designed packaging, so I was delighted to stumble upon this wonderful work done for Volta by Stamp.

Focused on typography and elements around it, the design uses lines, waves, and simple shapes to suggest the pasta rather than placing photos on it. The choice of colors and simplicity, along with simple line-based illustrations, are an amazing publicity for this Italian restaurant located in the heart of Osaka, Japan.

Post pobrano z: Volta Pasta Makes Creative Use of Typography

It’s not so often that you find some truly well designed packaging, so I was delighted to stumble upon this wonderful work done for Volta by Stamp.

Focused on typography and elements around it, the design uses lines, waves, and simple shapes to suggest the pasta rather than placing photos on it. The choice of colors and simplicity, along with simple line-based illustrations, are an amazing publicity for this Italian restaurant located in the heart of Osaka, Japan.