Design of Form Validation – Small Task of Great Importance

Form validation design is as tricky as hyperactive squirrel. It’s a tiny thing that can steal your lunch (both a squirrel and dodgy form validation). No matter how boring it is for us designers – we need to follow certain rules to make the form validation our strength rather than weakness.

And believe me or not I needed to see results of A/B tests years ago to really buy the concept of spending lots (relatively) of time on the design of form validation.

As convinced follower of the idea of the importance of form validation, I welcomed opportunity to share my experience in the great Design Modo!

“A couple of years ago I saw Twitter’s form validation for the first time and I was absolutely amazed. User Interface nerds among you probably know what I’m talking about. At the time we were almost jumping with excitement.

The discrete charm of well-designed form validation in Twitter’s forms was absolutely seductive. Informative error messages popped out right when I’d made an error, immediately eliminating irritation. “Inline validation” helped me understand what was going on right away. I could feel that this simple form was trying to have an actual conversation with me. That was a revelation! At the end, I didn’t have to wait for a reload of the whole page to check if the form was filled in with the right data. This experience completely changed my approach to the design of forms. It helped me understand that form validations are meant to have conversations with users and guide them through the difficult times of errors and uncertainty.

Read whole article here: http://designmodo.com/ux-form-validation/

You can also use 6 design templates of great form validation (from Twitter, Etsy, Vimeo…) that are directly uploadable to your UXPin account (just as UXPorn UI elements) and play with this little video tutorial:

How important is the form validation design For You?

Photo Credit: epiclectic via Compfight cc

Should UX designers know how to code? Should designers code?

To answer the question whether designers should code we need to take a short ride into the nature of the web development.

Design wasn’t an initial part of the web revolution. Sad but true. We needed to fight for our place in the web development process. And it wasn’t easy.

If you remember first version of e.g. Yahoo you can easily understand that while coding was already in place, design was the song of, back than, unforeseeable future.

It was important to have a website, rather than to have a website that creates great user experience. Obstacles in the interface were treated with great deal of understanding. People were so excited to be online, that couldn’t be bothered with minor shortcomings. Just think about it… in 1995 people were extremely happy with Windows 95.

Yahoo in 1995

Google in 1996

When competition finally arrived, term “usability” started to become popular and webmasters were expected to create something usable.

Last 15 years changed everything. Design is generally considered just as important as technology. User Experience Design became the key to success and it’s hard to imagine any grown-up company, without UXers on board.

Today designers are meant to design and coders/developers/programmers are out there to code amazing things. Both positions have been forced to split apart, just because both became equally important. The web started to get fully professional and there’s no time for play of unicorns *.

As Roger Belveal said on Quora: “Some people can play the piano and the banjo, but when they play them both at once it sounds really crappy.” (recommended read on this subject, also by Roger: Yes Virginia, About Unicorns).

Professionalism equals ability to stay focused. Successful products needs people with different perspectives, working together and staying focused on their greatest strengths.

Coding designers and designing developers don’t (usually) know nearly enough about the alien field to work efficiently. The result is unsatisfactory and as Jared Zimmerman, said on Quora: “(they) end up only coding what they can design or designing within their limited coding abilities.”. That’s definitely not something that anybody dreams of. We want perfect design and perfect code for our products, right?

All right… hold on. So should we completely separate both fields and let designers only understand design and programmers only understand code?

No way!

We want people of different fields to have common means of communication. We want them to understand each other.

Danilo Campos summed that up beautifully: “A designer can be more successful by understanding the technological constraints behind whatever medium he or she designs for. An understanding of how certain approaches are “cheap” either in terms of development time or in terms of computational practicality can ensure that a design makes it out of a mockup and into some shipping software.

It’s great for a developer and designer to share skills because then they can use the same vocabulary. Anything that improves communication is, clearly, going to be a good idea.

And it goes both ways. Developers are well-served to understand design. They know what their code can do, and they know which approaches are resource-efficient. How nice when a developer can suggest a useful design opportunity they already know how to implement.

Design and development are neatly convergent – everyone wins when they understand more of both.”

And this is something that I strongly agree with. We don’t need coding designers and designing coders – we need people who can communicate, respect and understand each other.

Great developers and designers working together will grasp a little bit of knowledge from each other which will set foundation for efficient collaboration.

Say no to unicorns *. Appreciate differences.

/Marcin Treder

* An unicorn – designer who can design, code, manage projects and prepare thai food.

Guest post by: Georgina McNiff

How to get started with your UX freelancing: Be that much better.

There are many reasons why freelance work is appealing for UX designers: the ability to choose your own clients, to be your own boss, and the freedom to be able to work from home in your pajamas…sometimes. So for whatever reason you are thinking about beginning your own freelance or consulting venture there are a few things i’d like to share with you that have helped me land projects:

1. Your customer service needs to be that much better.

Because you don’t have extra support from your team or a business associate communicating with clients you have to that much more personable. You have to play all the roles of a small UX or design firm by yourself. So while producing great flow charts, mockups, and working prototypes is important, so is making your client feel like you are being attentive to their needs. What i have noticed is that getting your client on video conference or on the phone early can show them that you are making the extra effort to communicate with them, especially when working on small websites promoting only one person, product, or service. So now that you have established your pathos with the client let’s move on.

2. Your portfolio needs to be that much better.

So, we have established that your customer service needs to be that much better, you are most likely the only communicator with the potential client and you have to make a great impression…it’s all on you! Your portfolio also needs to be that much better. Many times just giving samples of your work isn’t going to convince clients, especially seasoned ones, that you know what you are doing. E-mailing clients a PDF with a few prior projects is the best way to do it. Just sending the link to your portfolio is informal and honestly a bit lazy. Unless your mailbox is overflowing with potential work opportunities take the time to e-mail your clients a well developed PDF portfolio. Using a portfolio format helps ensure that your information is kept private and it should be easier for you to get consent from prior clients if you ask to display work you’ve done for them in a private and secure way, rather than displaying their site’s embarrassing before and after pics for the whole world to see.

Place emphasis on your process! People want to see HOW you got to your finished product. I have heard this from the beginning and I recently attended a UXPA meeting in NYC where this was the emphasis of the meeting. Show how you got to your finished product. It will be easier for you to get fairly compensated for you time and hard work if you show your client that you are using a well honed process. In your portfolio describe and show (through pictures) that you have a process that works for you. Don’t be ashamed of showing pictures of your whiteboards, your post-it notes detailing your IA, or early sketches you did on a piece of computer paper. All of these things show that you have a process and that there is actual work that will go into your wireframes. If you client can conjure up the image of your working step-by-step on their project, chances are they will feel much more comfortable in hiring you.

3. Your designs need to be that much better!

There is nobody to fall back on but yourself. You might be working with a programmers to execute your designs, but at the end of the day as a freelancer you are the sole person responsible for your own work. This means that if you give your client a less than desirable user experience they aren’t going to recommend you to anybody. Unfortunately they might even spread the word about their negative experience working with you. So take your time and make sure to go over all aspects of your project. Small-scale user testing throughout product design, or redesign, will help keep you on track and will allow an objective and fresh pairs of eyes to asses your design.

4. Your prices need to be that much better, but not THAT much better.

If you are reading this then you are interested in receiving advice on how to get started with your UX freelancing…yes? Well what i have learned as a fairly new UX freelancer is that my prices have to be competitive. We all want to make a living, and sometimes it’s difficult to objectively think of a price for your client. Whether you want to charge per hour or one flat fee for a project research must be done regarding the amount of time and work you will have to put into the project. Giving a client a rough estimate at the beginning of a project will often alleviate the nervous feeling they might be having. It’s like the feeling of terror when you call the electrician over to your house. You hope that he/she will play by the rules, but in the back of your head you are a little worried they might leave handing you a bill with a bunch of zeros at the end, telling you they’ll be back tomorrow to begin the rewiring you “need” throughout your entire home…sorry to the electricians out there.

Doing research on what your peers are charging helps, but be honest, and charge what you think is fair for your work, your time, and your skill-level.

So there we have it folks.

Starting your freelance career off on the right foot means proving that you have what it takes to stand out against all of the other fish in the sea. It means taking time to build an online presence for yourself, in means hard focus on your designs, and it means seeing every opportunity as a way to better advocate for your UX abilities and your freelance venture. So go ahead, get started!

Biography

Georgina McNiff is a native New Yorker and received her education at the University of Minnesota. She earned her degree in scientific and technical communication and focused on user experience and design work. Freelance work for Georgina began right after graduation as a means of making money during her post- college job search.

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Click to see the full size it doesn’t get prettier, but certainly gets more readable.

The importance of copywriting in User Experience Design

Importance of copywriting in User Experience Design should never be underestimated. Whether you sell books, encourage people to read your blog, or try to persuade visitors to sign up to a b2b app – great copy is absolutely indispensable. Jeff Gothelf calls copywriting “The Secret Weapon of UX” and I simply couldn’t agree more.

Back in my UX Manager times I was dreaming about having dedicated, professional copywriter on my UX team. We’ve never found the right person, however I still think it’s the best solution for large organization. For smaller companies the only option is to encourage UX Designers to learn basics of copywriting, which really should be part of our skills.

Copywriting is a weapon that we should use mercilessly. Would you agree?