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Adobe acquires Figma, cue the memes 🤪

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From Photography to NFT Art: Twisted Digital Landscapes with Nate Hill

Still can’t get a UX job? Give up.

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Sticking to UI/UX trends is a losing strategy

<p>Published on <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/4-easy-tips-to-make-technology-more-human-centered-5be55dd8be26?source=rss----eb297ea1161a---4">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> Sabah Rahman <img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*N6q56ZBYt3FyOTLT6mAZ6g.jpeg"></p>
<p>It’s not a secret that technology has become like another limb that people use. There have been countless articles and research studies done on people’s “obsession” with technology. People rely heavily on applications or websites to get things done. They can barely go anywhere without any GPS tracking or map service. It’s becoming more and more common to use an app and pay someone to grocery shop for you as opposed to doing it for yourself.</p>
<p>Personally, I wouldn’t call this an obsession or even a reliance. I’d call this an <strong>adaptation</strong>. Humans, from the moment they began using tools, have used them to make their lives easier. That is the purest, main goal of user experience. To make people’s lives easier and more user-friendly. Humans have been doing this — on instinct — since humanity began.</p>
<p>If you haven’t been living under a rock, then you know of Amber Case. She is a brilliant Cyborg Anthropologist who popularized the concept of Calm Technology. The idea is that technology should be respectful and shouldn’t feel cold or jarring. The principles can be found <a href="https://calmtech.com/">here</a>.</p>
<p>As a UX or Product person, your goal is to create experiences that are human. What does it mean to be a human?</p>
<p><iframe src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FxPGREQvK-dQ%3Ffeature%3Doembed&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DxPGREQvK-dQ&#038;image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FxPGREQvK-dQ%2Fhqdefault.jpg&amp;key=a19fcc184b9711e1b4764040d3dc5c07&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=youtube" width="854" height="480" frameborder="0"><a href="https://medium.com/media/05cf3340356c2c7d27f7fc89baf714c9/href">https://medium.com/media/05cf3340356c2c7d27f7fc89baf714c9/href</a></iframe></p>
<h3>hu·man</h3>
<h4>adjective: <strong>human</strong></h4>
<ol>
<li><em>relating to or characteristic of people or human beings.</em></li>
</ol>
<h4>noun</h4>
<ol>
<li><em>a man, woman, or child of the species Homo sapiens, distinguished from other animals by superior mental development, power of articulate speech, and upright stance.</em></li>
</ol>
<p>Humans are soft, fragile, and make errors — yes — but they’re also resilient, bright, and remarkable. People are warm. They, usually, respond well to tranquility even when there’s chaos brewing inside them. They seek experiences that are warm and calm.</p>
<p>If you’re a young designer, a young researcher, or a young engineer (who’s hoping to get into the UX/Product Design world), here are 4 tips to remember when building experiences for others:</p>
<h4>Gain the users’ trust</h4>
<p>The first (and most obvious) tip for helping you inject warmth into technology is to go straight to the users. Your audience needs to be explored and understood. In order to create the best product — you should ask the users what they want so you can extract what they need. Users are not going to blame themselves if your product is confusing and shitty. They’ll just leave a scathing review or disappear because you wasted their time.</p>
<p>Many companies, especially young ones or ones that don’t have a strong user-centered process, rely on the designers to do usability testing or interview users. This is a rookie mistake because asking designers to test the products they create will always lead to bias. Behaviorally, it is impossible to separate your emotions from something that you had a hand in creating.</p>
<p>However, management teams seem to think this is the right thing to do. This is cutting corners and will hurt you in the long-run. Trying to cut corners early on in the design process will lead to wasting time on maintenance after release. Trust me when I say: unbiased testing and design iteration with the usability data in mind is key.</p>
<h4>Be data-informed</h4>
<p>This leads us to my next point of being well-versed in the data your research team (or your lone rock star researcher) collects. Here’s the thing, you <em>must</em> be data-informed. There is no excuse to not be data-informed with the amount of talent, tools, and software available for you to get the right data.</p>
<p>Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, or Twitter — any serious company is obsessed with analytics. Any type of data is valuable to them because they have learned how to use data wisely. They’ve figured out that the only way to succeed is to understand how their users experience the products. Who’s using it? Why are they using it? When are they using it? Are they sharing it? How long are they spending with the product? What are the top 3 things that they’re doing while using the product? What is their journey using the product?</p>
<p>Currently, there are so many young entrepreneurs trying to create successful startups (and there are _so many_ of you) that it’s important to remember why you’re doing what you’re doing.</p>
<p>Data is real; it’s not nice or mean. It’s the truth. So, treat it like it’s meant to be treated: with respect and not as an afterthought.</p>
<h4><strong>Design for everyone</strong></h4>
<p>I’m surprised as to how many people forget about accessibility. There is a completely different set of design standards associated with accessibility that any respectable UX/Product person should have memorized. Again, there is no excuse to not know the principles behind how to design with accessibility in mind because ignorance is not acceptable.</p>
<p>While designing the product, keeping the standards written somewhere will help you remember that people who have disabilities need to be treated with respect.</p>
<p>Personally, I search for the most diverse group of people to help test the products and there has to be someone with a disability in the test group. I do this because it’s fair and the user groups who are diverse tend to think up of the most unique, clever ideas.</p>
<h4><strong>Diversity inspires innovation</strong></h4>
<p>Now, we fall into what makes technology warm. It’s diversity. Diversity always leads to innovation and increases the usability of your product. It’s important because the narrow-minded idea that a specific group of people are superior based on their similar skin-tone or their biological sex is irrational. Inevitably, that way of thinking leads to regression.</p>
<p>I’ve heard a lot of excuses as to why diversity isn’t taken seriously in technology. All of them are bullshit. There is absolutely no reason as to why diversity should not be encouraged because based on simple biology: it’s impractical. People with different backgrounds who are from different places have different thought processes. Their perspectives are a goldmine of ideas.</p>
<p>It’s a wise decision to ask people who are all extremely different from one another what their experience is or what their needs are when using your product. Observing them is going to open up a new world of possibilities. The greatest ideas can come from the quietest, softest voices and can be found in the last place you’re willing to look. It would be foolish to not tap into the vast array of ideas that are swimming around in people’s minds.</p>
<h4><strong>In the end</strong></h4>
<p>There’s a certain melancholy that exists in humanity that has been largely blamed on the fast-paced movement of technology. Regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, or creed — encouraging and fighting to make sure that technology is softened and easy-to-use for everyone should be the utmost priority of any respectable UX researcher, designer, or engineer.</p>
<p>In this day and age, with the idea of transforming into cyborgs and the threat of evil robots becoming more and more plausible — it’s easy to forget that technology is still malleable. It’s up to us to design a better future for technology. It’s never too late to add warmth and use empathy when creating products.</p>
<p>So, you must remember, <em>your duty is to make sure that technology doesn’t feel like technology</em>.</p>
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<p><a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/4-easy-tips-to-make-technology-more-human-centered-5be55dd8be26">4 Easy Tips to Make Technology More Human-Centered</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io">prototypr</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.</p>


4 Easy Tips to Make Technology More Human-Centered

4 Easy Tips to Make Technology More Human-Centered

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