Day 63 - UI Layout - Try Single Columns Instead of Multi-Columns

Multiple columns break the eye flow and work flow. However a single column design will give you more control over the narrative. There's also plenty of room in the single column design for inline help and error messaging.

Having a single column leads to more scrolling. But don't feel perturbed into having scrolling if it's necessary.  Good tab ordering can help with this. User testing should give more objective results.

Try a single column layout and lead people through a story.  At the end of your story present your users with a call to action.

Day 62 - The Who, What, and How of Your Users

Personas are WHO your customers are.
User Stories are WHAT they want.
User Flows are HOW they get it.

These three together help you identify the who, what, and how of your customers. They can help you and your team empathize with your users and build a better product.

Day 61 - 10 Content Strategy Tips of the Day

1. Put yourself in the user's shoes and always keep them top of mind.
2. Speak in the customer's voice and language.
3. Don't use jargon your customers won't understand.
4. Segment your audiences for targeted messaging.
5. Focus on helping people.
6. Look for examples of effective microcopy. Microcopy is instructional text such as field labels, button names, error messaging, and confirmations.
7. Plan a content audit.
8. Use metadata for SEO, taxonomy, and accessibility.
9. Have calls to action.
10. Be goal oriented in your copy.

Day 60 - 4 Tips When Hiring UX Designers (or anybody really)

What should you look for when hiring a UX designer?  A great portfolio? Of course. Did he or she come via a referral or someone you know and trust? Yes, that makes sense too. But in addition to these traditional approaches for hiring, try and see if your candidates fit this framework by probing deep with questions.

1. Are they reliable.
2. Do they get things done.
3. Are they smart.
4. Do you want to spend a lot of time with them.

If they don't meet this criteria you probably want to think about hiring somebody else.

Day 59 - Time Estimate Formula

Try the PERT formula to help you guesstimate how long those project tasks are going to take. It's a three-point estimate which you can use for estimating costs or time durations.

So you'll take your best guess at filling out the formula

Fill out the "a" - Optimistic time in # of hours
Fill our the "b" - Pessimistic time in # of hours
Fill out the "m" -Most Likely time in # of hours

The 'm' (Most Likely time) is then multiplied by 4.
4m is the weighted average.

Next add those three numbers together:  a + 4m + b
Once you have that result divide that number by 6.

'E' is the result.

You now have your best guess at a time estimate as to how long something is going to take!

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Example.  Lets say you want to calculate how long it's going to take you to complete a wireframe for a simple search bar you're designing.  How long will it take?

E = (a + 4m + b) / 6

8 hours is your optimistic guess
20 hours is your pessimistic guess
12 hours is most likely guess based on your experience

E = ( 8 + 4*12 + 20 ) / 6
So the result is 12.6 hours

12.6 = ( 8 + 48 + 20 ) / 6

Day 58 - "To Make a Long Story Short ..."

UX in a nutshell.

Day 57 - Quick Tip - User Goals

When creating a user experience, you always need to strike a balance between the business objectives and the customer's goals.

Apply this easy trick to remember what the user goal is:

The User is a ________ (blank)

Who Wants to _______ (blank)

E.g.  If you were talking about a fast food business you might say "The User is an Office Worker who wants a fast, cheap meal".

'The user is a _( blank )_ who wants to _( blank )_ is a powerful tool to help you prioritize what's important in your project.

Day 56 - Wait, what's UX again?

Day 55 - User Interviews - Questions to Ask

UX is about building something based on research not intuition.

You want to build something people want. But in research interviews, you generally don't want to ask what people want.  It could lead to wrong insights. You want to discover problems and find their root causes.

Better questions to ask in user interviews:

1. What are you trying to accomplish?  Try and find some context for what they want to get done. 
2. How do you currently do this?  Try and understand the series of steps they go through.
3. What could be better about how you do this?  Search for opportunities.

Day 54 - Tip - Productivity and Goals

When building a business or product, don't start with tactics.  Want to be productive? Start with the end goal in mind and work your way backwards into tiny digestible steps on how you're going to get to the goal post.

1. Goals
2. Strategy
3. Tactics
4. Tools