#UXDesign Posts

What makes a winning UX portfolio? More than a showcase of skills, a UX designer’s portfolio is an opportunity for them to create an enjoyable user experience as well as demonstrate their UX mastery.

On this week’s Design Talks we discuss research in action with Caitria O’Neill, a UX researcher at Airbnb. She studies people’s relationships with technology and how they behave with digital products.

Design thinking goes beyond the usual problem-solving focus of most UI and UX designers and adds the aspect of deep empathy for the user to the entire product design lifecycle, increasing the prospect of success.

Human-centered design is about solving problems, not implementing solutions. This guide provides an overview of HCD, a process that ensures optimum user experiences, effortless interaction, and ultimately, business benefits.

A vital part of creating an optimal user experience, visual hierarchy determines the order in which people take in and process information on a page, regardless of whether it’s digital or print.

Sound can be easily overlooked in UX design, but it’s an essential element in building impactful user interactions, such as providing feedback for user’s actions and building brand recognition.

Billions are lost by businesses due to poor UX. This article outlines key UX statistics and insights that stress the importance of “knowing your user” (with infographic).

Conversational user interfaces are a new frontier that requires thoughtful consideration. The design process should include defining the purpose of the chatbot, and other design considerations to create a successful user experience.

Bad B2B UX is everywhere—but the situation is not hopeless. By understanding the pitfalls, and having a strategic user-centered design plan, designers can pave the way to saving enterprise software.

Design critiques are a key part of the product design process that encourage collaboration and improve ideas. This guide will help designers conduct productive, efficient critiques for actionable feedback.

When looking for inspiration, designers should consider what they can add to the work of others. Where can they make it better? More useful? More elegant? More efficient?

Many exciting trends in eCommerce are on the horizon, from AI and AR to chatbots and voice ordering. The future of eCommerce will be shaped by trailblazing tech and savvy UX design (with infographic).

This guide shows UX designers how to craft a brilliant portfolio by examining questions about process and sharing practical design tips.

There are many types of UX projects, and while each tends to have its own unique flavor, there are common challenges. Advance planning can help less experienced teams dodge problems.

When having the right UX tools is the crucial difference between having an effective design workflow and one that’s slow and unproductive, it’s important to stay up to date with the latest tools (with infographic).

Just as there are cause and effect relationships, there are the laws of UX: predictable outcomes and human behaviors in UX a designer can use to design superior products. This infographic explains it all.

In product design, the jobs-to-be-done framework is a well-known approach that is designed to deconstruct the “job” a customer is trying to get done.

Even exciting product ideas can flop without an understanding of the user problem to solve. A design problem statement is an essential step in the design process for creating products that truly matter.

Every month, we bring you compelling design news and inspirational content focused on design innovation. Here are six hand-picked pieces of intriguing design news.

Sketch is a valuable, time-saving resource for any designer’s toolbox. Though not every designer chooses to do so, creating style guides in Sketch can make it even more of a time-saver.

If a freshly minted app is getting low ratings, bad reviews, and complaints about its usability, or the website is not generating the expected conversions, it may be time to bring in a UX expert.

Designing an eCommerce site is not just about building a website to sell products, but designing a pleasant online shopping experience. This comprehensive guide walks us through the best practices.

UX design attempts to deliver the right solution, in the right way, at the right time and delight people when they use a product. This comprehensive UX guide walks through the various methods, tools, and techniques that make up the process.

Want to become a phenomenal designer? Take a multidisciplinary design approach and study the methods of other design disciplines.

Every month, we bring you riveting design news and inspiring content focused on design innovation. Here are five hand-picked pieces of design news.

When having the right UX tools is the crucial difference between having a highly effective design workflow, and one that’s slow and unproductive, it’s important to stay up to date with the latest tools.

Users form mental models around how products should work through use. In order to design for maximum usability, designers need to understand and leverage users’ mental models.

Creating meaningful designs, capturing customer attention, and influencing their behavior is something that designers and marketers will agree is one of the most difficult things to achieve.

Every month, we bring you riveting design news and inspiring content focused on design. Here are five hand-picked pieces of design news.

Gestalt principles are an important set of ideas for any designer to learn and their implementation can greatly improve the aesthetics of a design as well as its functionality and user-friendliness.

Every month, we bring you riveting design news and inspiring content focused on design. Here are five hand-picked pieces of design news.

UX testing is a crucial step in the design process but is often overlooked for tight budgets or deadlines. You do not need a formal lab to do quality research—just the right tools and a clear plan.

Human cognition is complex, and many factors play into instant impressions. Design psychology is coming to the forefront as more and more companies are using neuroscience to design better user experiences.

UX designers must understand the needs and goals of potential users, their tasks, and context of use. User research will shape and define the guidelines for creating a product with great user experience.

As several successful big brand products have demonstrated, designers can leverage game design concepts by adopting a game designer’s mindset to design better, more engaging products.

Every month, we bring you riveting design news and inspiring content focused on design. Here are five hand-picked pieces of design news.

Learn about information architecture—how designers and product managers build an IA using design principles as well as IA tools and best practices.

The inaugural issue of Toptal Design World News. Every month, we bring you riveting design news and inspiring content focused on design.

Redesigning a website is about more than making cosmetic changes; it’s about identifying the real issues that the business is facing and solving them with design.

Conducting UX analysis as part of an iterative process provides valuable, actionable insights into enhancing and optimizing a product’s user experience.

Product innovation happens at the intersection of desirability, business viability, and technological feasibility. Design thinking—with a proven ROI—integrates all three and delivers business value.

Microinteractions are single interactive moments in a product that enhance the workflow and make a product more enjoyable. This article highlights key parts of microinteractions and patterns.

Customer journey maps are a visual storytelling tool used to help designers empathize with users and identify actionable opportunities for providing a better user experience.

Great designers help teams and stakeholders make better decisions by using questions to identify opportunities, reveal underlying needs, and understand user context—all of which lead to better designs.

White space is a frequently overlooked and underutilized element in many TV interface designs that are often crowded and busy.

Thoughtful use of white space in TV UI design improves comprehension and focus, and it enhances the user’s experience.

Why do we still use buttons in our user interfaces? Technology has come so far and offers so many possibilities, there is no longer any reason to force our users to click the tiny rectangles we call “buttons.”

Dark-themed UIs can be dramatic, stylish and elegant. But despite the many benefits, they come with a slew of challenges and potential pitfalls that every designer would be wise to keep in mind.

After years without a dedicated UX tool and the mass migration to other options like Sketch, InVision, Zeplin, and Figma, Adobe started the development of Adobe XD, its new UX solution. Explore the Adobe alternative, its exclusive features and how it compares with Sketch, the market’s main choice.

Regardless of the environment or size of a project, UX professionals need a variety of deliverables to help facilitate design communication with various stakeholders and teams, document work and provide artifacts for meetings and ideation sessions. Here are 10 of the most common UX deliverables.

A well-produced, high-quality pitch video can go a long way toward helping a business or individual gain credibility and secure funding. Here are 7 tips.

What is a heuristic analysis? How do you run one effectively by employing a group of usability experts to dramatically improve a product’s UX?

It is now possible to more accurately shape experiences that dynamically personalize content by coupling behavioral design with data science and analytics.

Designing past mobile or desktop interaction boundaries and into the physical world opens up possibilities to create immersive environmental experiences.

A competitive analysis can dramatically improve customer satisfaction and conversion rates as well as give assurance that you stand apart from your competitors.

A wireframe map is handy as a tool for estimating work at the start of a project and as a checklist to keep you on track throughout the design process.

Discover the top 13 design podcasts that will inspire you in your work and keep you focused and entertained—a nice change from your usual background music!

It’s crucial that designers focus not only on cultivating their abilities with creative tools but also improve their ability to communicate design effectively.

Remote UX workshops call for meticulous preparation and the use of proven techniques as complex details make it a challenge with many potential pitfalls.

These 10 surprising UX books from various disciplines will broaden a designer’s perspective and provide insight into diverse approaches to problem solving.

Interaction design principles form the bedrock of awesome UX. Truly great interaction design relies on a set of conventions, standards, best practices and rules-of-thumb.

The relationship between art and design is often misunderstood, and although a design outcome can be artful, the process behind it is altogether very different.

The top five reasons why creating a styleguide early is especially important for startups in spite of the inherent challenges.

Reflections on the disappearance of web forms. How mobile biometrics could unlock a personal data vault that provides what’s necessary, killing forms entirely.

In many product design scenarios wireframes may not be necessary and skipping them altogether may cut down on confusion and save a lot of time.

Every blog publisher hopes to turn their blog into an effective marketing and sales tool. But how do you design a high-conversion funnel for your blog?

Toptal designer Peter Davis offers some helpful examples and describes a series of steps you can take to make it a success.

UX and usability testing analysis is a critical skill. How do you go about collecting data and analyze results? Here’s a way to stay sane during the process.

Two eCommerce sites were losing customers due to poor UX. A small set of UX improvements were made that greatly enhanced the sites’ usability and boosted sales.

Toptal designer Bronwen Rees explains how in persuasive design, social and psychological triggers can be utilized to influence user behavior.

The next wave of IoT will connect millions of devices. The skills needed in this new paradigm will shift from component thinking to whole systems thinking.

In this article, Toptal designer Sergio Ortiz writes about the Internet of Things, its design implications, how it will change the way businesses operate, and how we see the world—and how to help make homes, cities, and factories smarter and more efficient.

What can be done easily and inexpensively to substantially improve your product designs? User testing. User testing digital product designs is imperative if you are to design “useful” products.

This six-part process by Toptal designer John Roose describes how the insights you gain from observing how actual users use your product are well worth it.

Flipkart, India’s leading eCommerce marketplace, questioned why they were losing customers and asked themselves: How do you build a loyal customer base, increase engagement and solve the issue of app uninstalls? What behaviors should be studied to come up with a winning solution? The answer lay in designing a habit-forming experience.

Often, designers make the mistake of designing apps for their own vanity, focusing on the veneer instead of designing a great user experience. As Steve Jobs once said, “Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like.”

In this article, Toptal UX Designer Miklos Philips discusses Jobs’s point of view and clarifies the importance of designing for people.